wait … if they prove me wrong I get to call them deniers? Interesting …

At the end of this month an album will be launched in Canberra of the wildly unperformed play, Kill Climate Deniers. Supposedly a satire of the confrontation between unyielding government and the “irresistible” force of climate change, it stars an all female cast, (of course it does), who do their best to battle it out over the fate of the earth.

Yawn. It will undoubtedly be a steaming pile of dreck. If you can’t even get the title right what hope is there for the rest of it? Who the hell denies that there’s a climate? I’m pretty sure the earth has a climate, at least there was the last time I looked outside. Oh, they mean climate change. That old tautology. As I’ve said over and over again, the climate is always changing, it’s what it does, we can’t effect it although we would dearly like to be able to, but we can’t, so shut up about it, oh and by the way, would you prefer it to be getting warmer or colder? Hmmm? Think about that one, you plonkers.

My dear old grandfather used to joke around saying, “Now then, young fella – one day the government will even try to tax the very air we breathe! Ahahahahaha!” Yeah, sorry grandad – you were right.

The problem of course is the way that science has been completely compromised. Scientists have gone from the men who put other men on the moon to the ones that publish “studies” and “papers” that are all “peer reviewed” on topics such as whether or not women are predisposed to monogamy. Uh huh. Seems like some decent regression has taken place. What the hell have scientists even done since the high water mark of 1969 and the Apollo program? Sitting on their laurels and lording it over the rest of us, that’s what. Don’t point at your iphone and say that is science. That is fucking private enterprise and capitalism.

They haven’t even managed to cure cancer. Do you know how long they’ve been at it? US president Nixon declared war on cancer, (what is at about the Yanks and declaring war anyway?) 45 years ago if your history sucks. And what? What have they done? Cancer rates per head of population are through the roof. But then lucked onto climate change. Oooohhhh, climate change, wave the hands in the air, boogyman, ooooohhh.

Science sprang from Christianity in the West, just so you know. No other civilization on earth came up with the scientific method outside of the Christian West. The glory days for science was the second half of the 19th century. And who were the scientists? Wealthy amateurs. Typically a village chaplain with a lot of time on his hands would develop an interest in the creepy crawlies down the bottom of his garden. He would study them and confer with other like minded gentlemen. Then they would form small groups and associations where they would compare notes and present their findings.

Meanwhile life went on around them, mainly little things like the industrial revolution and the British Empire. The scientists didn’t ask for money as they didn’t need it and everyone left each other alone. The industrialists got on with their industry and the government got on it with its world building and conquest and the amateur scientists got on with their little bits of interest like coming up with the theory of relativity. Einstein, remember, was a patent clerk. He was doing this stuff in his spare time. For love and passion and the sheer thrill of discovery.

Now we have our “scientists” today. They are not independently wealthy. They depend on a university or a government check coming at the end of the month. At the end of every month. As a result they have become political. This is completely understandable as it is a requirement for financial survival. But you cannot become politically biased and perform neutral science at the same time. Your scientific results will need to reflect the desires of your financial sponsor. Because if they don’t you might find that they go and get a different scientist to tell them what they want to hear.

Politics is the art of consensus. Science is the art of evidence. You can have 999,999 scientists all saying that x=y but if only a single scientist empirically demonstrates that x=z and not y then the one scientist is correct and all the other scientists have to fall into line. Which is hard for scientists to do. Even back in the glory days of science it was said that science only evolved when the next generation of scientists came along after the old stick-in-the-muds had had the grace to die off.

But now we have science by consensus. 97% of scientists believe in humans causing climate change! (yes, I know the paper was bogus). So we must be right! We did a survey of Mexicans and 90% of Mexicans think we’re right so we must be right too!

And then, when people outside of science with half a functioning brain cell observe this sorry state of affairs and utter words of protest we get to the next step. The condescension. The scientists look down on us mere mortals and shake their heads and go tut tut tut. They call us stupid and ignorant even though it is our taxpayer money which pays for their ridiculous findings in the first place.

Finally we get the artists to jump in with “brilliant” satire such as “Kill Climate Deniers.” It’s appalling when viewed through the lens of the 19th century. Einstein spoke the truth and his lines of truth conquered the world. Science today needs slavering hordes of halfwits to cry Denier! at the top of their lungs and point and shriek while the scientists hope that everyone keeps looking the other way. They may as well be trying to turn lead into gold.

UPDATE: From Tim Blair’s blog today, a taxpayer funded study from the University of NSW for a research grant that “intends to address how the evolutionary phenomena of intra-sexual competition and intersexual conflict interact with economic circumstances to shape gendered behaviour and attitudes”. Funded to the tune of $592,000.

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