King Science of my generation, politicized, exploited and prostituted by agenda-driven money-mongerers, has suffered a cataclysmic, humiliating collapse. I am shaken to the core. I well remember the lectures of chemistry, physics and astronomy teachers as they cast the sacred principles of the scientific method in reverent terms. All of life’s answers were to be found in petri dishes, test tubes, electron microscopes and sine curves. Proud science towered over all things meaningful—impervious to tribal legends, religious dogma, historical spin, prejudicial feelings, social sentiment, elitist preferences, political pressure and power brokers. It was the hot knife cutting through the butter of unsubstantiated beliefs. It was the bucket of ice water thrown on supremely comfortable and cozy traditions. It was the blaring wake-up horn jolting the lazy and lethargic from their stupors. If we could believe anything, we could believe science. If we could trust anyone, we could trust scientists. If we could know anything, we could know the conclusions of the scientific community.
Climate change—now humiliated by Climategate—has exploded our solemn view of omnipotent science. The embarrassment is so deep that the mainstream media has not—as of this writing—dared to mention it. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USAToday and other major news outlets have totally ignored the story. Professor Phil Jones of East Anglia University, UK, considered the High Priest of Climate Change, has confessed to the egregious manipulation of the data, all done to “prove” or at least enhance the claims of the climate change believers. Liberal elites around the world are so totally invested into the theory that the planet is getting warmer, that, evidently, they cannot disabuse themselves of the notion. The politics of the coming transformation planned for society because of global warming involved such colossal shifts of wealth and power that those who were and are engineering it cannot walk away from it. This is a hoax of epic, historic proportions.
Climate Change is not a stand-alone theory. Its fraudulent seed has generated an undergrowth of theories and actions that have had wide repercussions in the sciences. Coming under its shadow are the sciences of climatology, meteorology, ecology, anthropology, geology, oceanology and biology, just to name a few. It has cast aspersions on renowned agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), not to mention the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But, the tenets of the climate change faith will wane and its priests, like Al Gore, will live in infamy. (Has the Nobel Peace Prize ever meant less?) There is a much greater damage, however, that the entire field of science has incurred. The scientific world was so corrupted by its proclivity to embrace a political agenda that it may struggle for decades to regain the unassailable prestige that it once enjoyed. One wonders how many other routinely accepted proclamations of science will now come under suspicion. If the people who espoused the theory of anthropogenic global warming were either so unscientific or so unscrupulous as to propagate it without the critical investigation and peer review that they themselves codified over a century ago, then why should we believe anything they say?
For example, why should we believe any statement scientists make about the origin of the universe or the theory of evolution? What data are they leaving out? We now know that they can fabricate a “hockey stick” graph to favor their pet theories. Their computer models may indeed project a preferred outcome, but we do not know whether or not the raw data they feed into the formulas are made up. How much does junk science or pop science figure into the conclusions they draw?
All kinds of social science theories are now up for question as a result of climategate. What do we really know about the so-called population explosion? What about sexual orientation? What about the constant vilifying of the food industry through “scientific” nutrition studies? What about the medical sciences’ pontifications about pandemics like the “swine flu?” Should we accept their opinions as bible?
In addition, what about the environmentalists claims about cutting down old growth forests? Is off-shore drilling really bad? Are the claims that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will kill off the caribou really true? Who said? How did they gather their data? Who stands to gain grant money by keeping the oil companies at bay? What about other claims that urban expansion will harm endangered species? Are these people really scientists or are they people in the business of perpetuating a myth in order to profit from government handouts?
I still believe in science—true science. I don’t much believe in scientists anymore. True science establishes fact. It does not concern itself with the politics of the facts. Whenever science starts caring about what the facts imply, it is no longer science, but a religious faith. Climate change was never a science. The fact that it was accepted as such by scientists no less, says more about the scientists than it does Climate Change. Those who backed it were not dubious sci-fi free-lancers whose work got published in the National Enquirer or Star Magazine. They represented our premier men and women of knowledge.
It is impossible to calculate the damage they have done to themselves.