Having received my degree in Biology from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines, I was schooled in the disciplines of scientific research in ways that are slightly different from students taught here. When I moved here, I learned of the concept of “consensus science,” and realized just how much the science in this nation is ruled by politics.

I know that the ubiquity of government grants and the mad scramble for research funding has something to do with the way the scientific culture has developed. While the casually scientifically literate are always a small portion of the populace no matter civilication, I expect more from Americans than I do other nationalities. It’s only right that I hold the citizens of this great nation to a higher standard than everyone else.

I learned early in school that science is defined as “knowledge through causes.” It is knowledge that is learned and tested and proven. It is knowledge that is built from observed data and interpreted and understood using the rational faculties of man.

Climategate (Wikipedia) is proof that scientists are equally fallible human beings, despite their efforts at proving themselves above the rest of humanity. This scandal has blown open the religious and dogmatic nature of the gatekeepers of knowledge; those gates are the peer-reviewed journals that they so jealously guard with thousands-of-dollars subscription fees, obfuscated language and rigorous review processes. In a bygone era, the peer-review process was a great way of protecting false information from being entering the people’s knowledge on a cultural level. Now, with the information technologies available to our species, Open Source Science may be a viable alternative to less rarefied fields, like climatology. The large body of conjecture in the field is built on correlative statistical studies with a glaring lack of proof of causation. Climatology—the hudu behind AGW—is not knowledge through causes; it’s mostly assurances through coincidences.

This mass panic has reached a cacophonous crescendo. It’s become the vehicle for massive governmental waste programs (Cap-And-Trade, Cash For Clunkers), ubiquitous advertisements, ridiculous corporate policies, and in general, the rationalization for misanthropy. How else could you explain the inclusion of “Climate Change advice” as a pseudo-homeopathic treatment to Subjects Of The Crown? The religious approach by which AGW is pushed upon everyone is depressing at the very least. Even assuming the best of intentions, all this climate change bullshit leaves people disliking their humanity. People chase “smug points” for doing the least of commonly-decent actions. By taking the focus away from people, people are distracted from doing good by other people. They’re too busy trying to save the planet, or not caring.

Scientists are people, too

Imagine for a second a fortysomething raindancer who calls himself a “climate change scientist.” He’d have tailored his education and built his career proving the world view that people are slowly turning the planet into an easy-bake oven. This person has gained eminence by banging the drum and preaching the evils of humanity’s ways. He’s created this world around him where he makes money from peddling what he believes to be true, and yet hasn’t really spent all that time discovering the truth. Multiply this by thousands upon thousands of raindancers who have control over the publication and authentication of discovered knowledge and what you have is environmentalism as religion, and the raindancers its high priests.

By cleaving to this orthodoxy, the raindancers are able to get the kind of power that ll people crave. Raindancers and legitimate scientists are human just like the rest of us. They have personal psychological needs to be met, and they have chosen this field to stroke their egos.

The makeshift windmills

I have this theory—in the popular, not scientific sense—that environmental activists, climatologist raindancers, and their ilk do what they do because they have a low view of humanity: helping people is hard work. You might not get the thanks that you expect. People will disappoint. The mental and rational immaturity of these people bother me. It’s a tough, wild world out there, and facing issues such as the Islamic oppression of women, the Chinese repression and “genocide” of newborn girls (“gendercide” sounds tacky), the AGW crowd has chosen “saving the planet.” How else could they justify the vapidity of their cause? There is so much evil to be faced and confronted and for whatever reasons, they build the windmills against which they can tilt to their hearts’content.

To be pitied, but also to be hated

The Climategate documents show that the raindancers are nothing more than scandalmongers. These people have gained so much and caused massive damage in the economic and social realms that have little chance of reparation. Their lies have entered the cultural knowledge—a term I use to refer to the shared headspace of most of humanity—and will take a while to dispel, and not entirely, either.

Their world view is not based on fact. That they have known of this is cause for pity. That they have kept this discovery—true science—from the rest of humanity, whatever their reasons, is cause for hatred. Their actions have damaged not just their reputations, but that of the entire culture itself. The ensuing disrepute of legitimate science by guilt through association is perhaps the greater, enduring crime, one that doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves.