SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — I’m mad as hell. The GOP used to be the party of national defense. No more. What happened? In 2003 Bush launched the Iraq War to “defend our freedom.” Flash forward: Last week 227 of 231 GOP members of the House voted to turn the Pentagon into climate-science deniers, a decision certain to weaken national security. That’s about as absurd as telling Silicon Valley they can’t use technology.

The Pentagon building in Washington. AFP/Getty Images

Seriously, the Republicans just passed an amendment to the $607 billion National Defense Authorization Act funding the Pentagon in 2014. Yes, 227 members of the GOP-dominated House just voted to limit the Pentagon’s ability to defend America, by preventing military planners from using any strategic research the military’s been gathering for years about threats to national security. Listen:

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available by this act may be used to implement the U.S. Global Change Research Program National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, the United Nation’s Agenda 21 sustainable development plan, or the May 2013 Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order.”

Get it? The Republican Party is now officially on record as the party of climate-science denialism. These research programs, ongoing and widely used by the Pentagon in strategic national defense planning for many years, could, if the Senate agrees, become illegal to use.

Yes, this Marine veteran is mad as hell. GOP science deniers have “crossed the line,” they’re now messing with national security. America is now under attack from an enemy within, irrational science denialism, a toxic mind-set, a spreading, self-destructive mental virus. Yes, this is a “War on America.” The military has been using climate-science research for decades. This vote is self-destructive. These research studies are essential in our national defense.

If you’re at all concerned about the safety of your family and our nation, you’ll be mad as hell, too, about this new “War on America.” All 227 Republicans are on record as science deniers, a real dumb message to send to our allies worldwide. Why? If the GOP regains the Senate in November, it may become the law of the land.

For the Democrats, this should be the last straw. These 227 GOP science deniers exposed a dangerous mind-set that’s more than just part of an attack sabotaging our national defense, but a deep attack on America’s moral conscience. This vote exposes a toxic virus spreading nationally. In fact, the GOP’s science denialism is now so self-destructive even the Koch Bros. should be embarrassed for no other reason than that the military is the world’s largest consumer of oil.

Pentagon’s historic use of climate-science research in defense planning

What if the GOP regains control of the Senate? Ask the CNA Corporation Military Advisory Board, a longtime Pentagon consultant that includes 16 retired generals and admirals. They just updated a report that earlier “described projected climate change as a threat multiplier.”

Get it? The Pentagon has seen climate change as a threat to our national defense for over seven years. Their updated report “drills down on the new vulnerabilities created and tensions amplified due to climate change, which it deems a catalyst for conflict.” No wonder the Dems warned GOP leaders before that radical amendment to the budget vote: “That’s science denial at its worst and it fails our moral obligation to our children and grandchildren.”

So here’s the likely scenario if the GOP takes back the Senate. The senator most likely to head the Senate Armed Services Committee is ranking GOP Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, “a vocal skeptic of the established science that greenhouse-gas emissions contribute to global warming.” Inhofe “scoffed at the idea that climate change is linked to national security threats.”

Inhofe dismissed the updated Pentagon report by personally attacking retired Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, one of the 16 contributors. “There is no one in more pursuit of publicity than a retired military officer,” said Inhofe. “I look back wistfully at the days of the Cold War. Now you have people who are mentally unbalanced, with the ability to deploy a nuclear weapon. For anyone to say that any type of global warming is anywhere close to the threat that we have with crazy people running around with nuclear weapons, it shows how desperate they are to get the public to buy this.”

When the report was first released, Secretary of State John Kerry said that for years climate-science research has alerted the U.S military to hot spots and increasing regional conflicts: “Tribes are killing each other over water today. Think of what happens if you have massive dislocation, or the drying up of the waters of the Nile, of the major rivers in China and India. The intelligence community takes it seriously, and it’s translated into action.”

Now imagine Inhofe chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee enforcing the GOP’s climate-science-denialism amendment, warning Pentagon generals never to use climate science in national defense planning.

Yes, the GOP crossed a line ... now attacking national defense

This is scary, in fact a “War on America” ... from deep within America’s collective conscience. Science denialism is spreading wide and deep, sabotaging our ability to intelligently plan the defense of our nation ... by tying the hands of the Pentagon. Yes, this attack takes direct aim at America’s status as the global leader in science and technology, a role that elevated us as the world’s largest economy and military superpower.

Don’t get us wrong, science deniers are entitled to all Bill of Rights freedoms, to fight carbon taxes, energy regulations, to deny the existence of the science that’s made so many oil billionaires. Yes, they can dismiss climate science is a hoax, the biggest conspiracy against the American people. But don’t vote climate-science denialism into a law limiting military defense planning.

The GOP fringe minority is now a dangerous majority. When 227 Republicans crossed the line, they exposed a vision of a GOP-run America, with a weaker national defense strategy. If this antiscience amendment passes the Senate and becomes law, why in God’s name would anyone ever join the military of a nation run as an irrational anarchy?

Ironically, this is not the first time: The GOP’s climate-science denialism was part of the Bush strategy in selling the Iraq war. The London Observer/Guardian exposed the GOP’s plans with this headline in 2004, a year after the attack: “Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us ... Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war ... Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years ... Threat to the world is greater than terrorism.” But it was then too late to stop a war that was really all about oil.

That was a decade ago. The Guardian exposed Bush’s hidden 2003 warnings that “climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.” That secret report to Bush was “suppressed by U.S. defense chiefs.” The report warned “that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, megadroughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.”

America’s own climate-science research predicts global anarchy

The public was not warned “that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies.” Worse, “the threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism ... Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,” as “warfare would define human life” on Planet-Earth. The Guardian as quoted a Greenpeace spokesman: America has a “president who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you’ve got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars.”

And it gets even worse: After noting the world was already overpopulated, the Guardian added: “Climate change ‘should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern,’ say the report authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.”

Why? Because “by 2020 catastrophic shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war,” with “widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations.” They knew climate was a a “threat multiplier” over a decade ago

Flash forward: Today ClimateProgress.org tells us Pentagon planners know “sea level rise is impacting naval bases. Climate change altering natural disaster response. Drought influenced by climate change in the Middle East and Africa leading to conflicts over food and water, for instance, Syria. The military understands the realities of climate change and the negative impacts of heavy dependence on fossil fuels. The U.S. House does not.”

Bottom line: Unfortunately the GOP is now politicizing everything in their blind obsession with regaining absolute power over America. They had it back in 2003. Misused that power to lead America into two wars. Now will do anything, including sabotage the Pentagon’s strategic national defense planning to rule America ... proof of the historic warning that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Exactly what’s happening with the new amendment to the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act.