[RightWhale]

Scientists look for why all the time.

Unfortunately some do and shouldn't. Why implies purpose, purpose belongs to humanistic sciences such as psychology and politics, history. Scientists look to describe. If they seek cause they should not be in the field of mathematical sciences.

[RogerFGay]

OK. So you have a degree in humanities. And you’re better qualified to figure out why climate changes? How so?

[chipengineer]

>Why implies purpose, purpose belongs to humanistic sciences such as psychology and politics, history. Scientists look to describe. If they seek cause they should not be in the field of mathematical sciences.

Are you saying that trying to understand why, for example, a semiconductor has specific properties, is not proper science? If so, I disagree.

[RogerFGay]

Giving non-scientists control over science has always been a devastating formula. In both Russia and China, agricultural science and practice driven by political ideology led to mass starvation, for example. In the US, political ideology pretending to be science led to the destruction of marriage and family - and at the root the elimination of individual rights.

Allowing policy to be created based on false problem definitions and false information about cause and effect just defies common sense. It throws our modern society back into the dark ages with rules and investments based on superstitian. It is truly the way to bring civilization as we know it to an end.

But doing this stuff is not unusual these days. The root of the problem is pork barrelling; and the two parties are not giving up on exponential growth in this corruption. They've been forced to say something about it, and as usual they've defined the problem with much smaller scope than the actual problem, and will likely address only a small part of that - with a way around the solution so that there is no actual reduction in pork barrel spending.

Then of course there are constantly new initiatives, like this global warming thing that will push the practice farther faster. Here is where you will actually find a hockey stick relationship leading to an international crisis that will be very, very difficult to deal with. I predict that we will enter a new dark age because of it. At this point, no one seems to know how to address it - and the masses continue a zombie like imaginary "lesser of two evils" approach to letting the two parties continue to rule in the US.