Speculation and implications

After much careful research, including but not limited to the invention and manipulation of data, I have succeeded in reconstructing a typical day in the life of an acolyte in the Temple of Climate Change. He begins early, rising with the sun, although not paying any particular attention to it, because, after all, the sun never changes, and he knows for a fact that nothing about the sun could possibly affect climatic conditions on Earth. He gathers with other devotees before the graven image of Mike Mann nailed to a hockey stick, and they spend an hour or so chanting, "The science is settled. The science is settled." After a meal of grass and rainwater (because he believes in "eating locally" and nothing else grows here at this time of year), he sits down at his computer and plays with temperature graphs, flattening bumps and raising dips with the fervour and conviction of an Old Testament prophet ("Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low"). Having coaxed all his raw data to resemble the Divine Hockey Stick, he then forwards it to a select group of cronies for that process of dedicated and thorough rubber-stamping known as "peer review," then it's off to the useful idiots of the mainstream media, who will unquestioningly publish it with headlines including such hot-button words as "crisis," "urgent," and "emergency." Should anyone have the temerity to challenge him on the validity of his work, or to suggest - horrors! - that it may be somewhat lacking in such minutiae as truth, fact, or reality, he simply calls them nasty names and reverts to chanting his mantra: "The science is settled," along with its variants: "The evidence is overwhelming" and "Thousands of scientists agree..." - knowing that scientific fact is, of course, established by consensus.

After a long day of such arduous toil, he can relax, watch the weather forecast ("record cold") and possibly toy with his latest grant proposal, although this is a mere formality, since the Temple clearly has the UN in its back pocket, along with such credulous nincompoops as the President of the United States, as well as the tinpot dictators of sub-Saharan Africa, who don't give a flying poop about the climate, or their people; they just want our money and this seems like a remarkably easy way to get it. (Is anyone gullible enough to believe that Mugabe, for instance, is going to spend money on infrastructure? Give me a break...)

What makes me laugh, albeit sadly, is that, having thrown out God and replaced Him with science, we then foolishly expect our new idols to exhibit the same integrity and righteousness as the God of the Bible. Why should scientists be any less fallible than politicians, CEOs, cult leaders, or used-car salesmen? We routinely expect lying and cheating from these others; why are we so shocked when scientists do it, too? What happens when the academic community, the repository of vast amounts of specialized knowledge which the rest of us lack, turns to forwarding a totalitarian ideology?