Evidently, Thursday is the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, and we are all to honor this event with a Darwin Day celebration.

There is something about this that bothered me. It took a moment to understand the source of my discomfort. It is difficult to explain, so I'll approach it by discussing the manipulation of information for a higher cause and global warming.

A number of years ago I did an environmental and economic impact study of a problem that will remain nameless to protect the guilty. The problem was an industrial by-product that was valuable but not valuable enough to create a separate industry. The by-product was biodegradable, but some zealot at the feds had declared that it was a "hazard."

At the end of the report, I added a section that gave the dimensions of a pit where all this material in the state could be buried. The hole would be finite in size because the material decomposes into valuable soil. It also was surprisingly small.

Its dimensions suggested no environmental crisis and gave no justification for continued money to study the problem. That section of the report was removed before any outsider could see it.

Several years ago I wrote a book about the streams of Northeastern Iowa.

I received a call from a reporter at The Des Moines Register. She was writing a story on water pollution in Iowa and asked me to comment on the condition of these streams.

I replied that they were improving. She asked the question again, and I gave the same answer. She asked a third time, using different words, and I replied that most of the streams were actually improving. She hung up, and my comments never appeared.

You see, the streams, according to some, were turning into an environmental hell and this reporter was doing a story shouting "Wolf ? Wolf!" When I said, "Sheep," she had no interest.

In the 1980s, both Soviet and American scientists warned that a major nuclear exchange would result in something called "Nuclear Winter." Not only would cities and military targets be destroyed, but the climate would be so altered that almost everyone would be exposed to famine and environmental collapse. In other words, there could be no winners of a nuclear war.

When this idea became commonly accepted, it arguably reduced the probability of war.

Unfortunately, whether this theory was true or false, scientists learned a lesson about the relationship between the truth and the common good that the left had used for over a century to justify lying.

How does this relate to a Darwin Day celebration and global warming?

If you lived 600 years ago, and if you were rich and didn't have to work, you could take on the task of learning everything there was to know, and no one would be astonished at your ambition.

If someone were to say the same today, we would wonder if they were sane. Know everything there is to know; about what? Sharks? What aspect of what type of shark?

The difference in the amount of knowledge that is available is due to a number of factors, but primarily to something called the Scientific Method.

What many modern scientists seemed to have learned is that it is OK to violate and ignore the logic and rules of normal science if that is what it takes to advance a cause that is deemed important.

Think about what the idea of human-caused global warming justifies. It demands global solutions dependent upon global governments. It demands that business and production be controlled. It demands that human behavior be controlled even down to private decisions that now magically become public policy; such as how many children a person may have.

There are numerous leftist and environmental groups that want global warming to be true so bad they could wet their pants.

There is no "consensus" on the causes of global warming. Saying so does not make someone a "top" scientist, as portrayed by the ignorant press.

To be blunt, it makes that person no different from any other political hack.

What about a Darwin Day celebration? Why not a Newton Day, or a Neils Bohr Day? Both are rated higher on scientific importance than Darwin on many historical rankings.

Why Darwin? Because, like the science of global warming, there are some "sciences" that are more important to personal and political aggrandizement than others.