Those who hold the pursestrings require obeisance before the alters of "global warming", "climate change", and "sustainability" before they will cough up the dough. I see it all the time because I edit scientific papers for a living.
Wonderful, I was about to mention something along the same lines. I can't begin to count the number of scientific papers I've read describing valid science, then adding some phrase ascribing their results to "global warming", usually (but not always!) alongside their discussion of what the authors really think their results mean. I've seen the same phenomenon occur at scientific conferences, as well.
Then we see anthropogenic global warming (AGW) advocates claiming that thousands of papers prove AGW is really occurring and the science is settled. Um... no. Remove all the throw-away mentions of AGW--how many papers remain? I've yet to see one that actually discusses research designed to test the hypothesis that increasing CO2 concentration actually has an effect on temperature, or on atmospheric energy content.
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/committeeview.aspx?key=49446
Search: biological, biodiversity, global warming, global change, climate and Earth (studies) in their bios.
This panel will decide NASA’s new strategic direction. I wonder what it will be...