Wal-mart is a joint stock corporation. The chain of decision making goes: line employees < middle management < executives < board < shareholders. So on the big decisions, executives, the board, and for really big decisions, the shareholders must vote.
The United States is essentially a giant property management company, run as a consumer co-op. The chain of decision making is: civil service (including NSF funded climate researchers) < Congress < voters.
So as voters we actually do need to research and understand the big issues, just as a shareholder needs to research the companies they invest in.
Of course, perhaps the U.S. should not be run as a consumer co-op (aka democracy). I am sympathetic with that view, but that is really a whole other discussion. But for now it is, so people do have to take an interest in the issues.
It would be nice if we could just delegate these issues to a class of experts. But how we do know if these experts are on the right track? At some point we must do at least some verification ourselves. There is no other option.
I am not an expert in climate science. But I do know quite a bit about politics and government. In college I began to major in political science. But I found that the researchers in political science were incredibly off base. Their research was wrong, irrelevant, and used models that couldn't properly work.
Thus I do not have a strong, baseline trust in academia. My experience in political science shows me that systematic error can flourish among "scientists". These leaked emails illustrate the climate "scientists" are not scientists seeking truth wherever it may lead, but are advocates with an institutional agenda.
So we have climate scientists who are smart, but who should be treated with the same amount as trust as the prosecutor lawyer in a criminal case. We have the hoi polloi who are ignorant. That leaves us, smart, thoughtful people, who have to make the best judgments we can.
