[kingkongrevenge]

It's always relevant to consider the source. I like to keep in mind that the material arguing problematic anthropogenic warming all comes from public grant funded researchers, who would like to keep getting grants. "Impending Catastrophe" scares up money, I would think.

[dejb]

I think it is probably most relevant to consider where the funding comes from - 'He who pays the piper calls the tune'. You really would have to involve those who fund the research in your little conspiracy theory for it to make sense. Publicly funded research money generally comes from the government. I don't really see enough incentive for the governments of the world to be paying for biased research in favour of global warming. In fact I would argue that the previous US administration demonstrated a significant bias against the global warming case.

In the case of private organisations the incentive to pay for biased research is obvious and it is an expected tactic.

When proposing a conspiracy theory such as the one you are with respect to global warming it can help to point to a previous examples of where a similar thing has occurred. As an counter conspiracy theory example I'll put up the debate over smoking. Although public research started to show signs of health problems, the smoking industry fought with their own paid 'research'. Millions of lives have probably been lost as a result of the delays in changes to public policy because of the FUD spread by the smoking lobby. To me the incentives with global warming seem to be the same as with smoking was and I see every reason to believe the situation is the same.

[jrmurad]

> I don't really see enough incentive for the governments of the world to be paying for biased research in favour of global warming

The incentive seems obvious to me but correct me if I'm wrong: increased taxes and regulation resulting in more power for politicians.

[dejb]

It seems your conception of the conspiracy runs deaper than I could have imagined. You are only one step from arguing that global warming as the basis for a plot to enslave the people of the world.

In the end governments have people's expectations of improved living standards to deal with. If the people don't approve of the way things are going they are voted out of office (or removed some other way in non-democracies). Unless you actually believe some kind of 'enslaved world' theory you'd find that the additional costs associated with the carbon reduction are somthing most goverments are keen to avoid for as long as possible.

[Tichy]

Doesn't regulation limit the power of the politicians, too? And the taxes would have to be increased for specific spending, not for stuff the politicians might prefer to spend the money on.

[anamax]

> Doesn't regulation limit the power of the politicians, too?

No. Regulation is an opportunity to pass out favors.

> And the taxes would have to be increased for specific spending, not for stuff the politicians might prefer to spend the money on.

No, spending doesn't have to be for specific things. (What fraction of alcohol taxes goes to alcohol treatment?)

Moreover, controlling more spending is typically more interesting than controlling specific spending.

To put it another way, dollars are fungible wrt political power.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/climate-debate-...

[anamax]

> I don't really see enough incentive for the governments of the world to be paying for biased research in favour of global warming.

Then you don't understand monkeys. (Govts are groups of monkeys.)

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/climate-debate-...

> In fact I would argue that the previous US administration demonstrated a significant bias against the global warming case.

And, you don't understand large organizations. (The president and/or congress doesn't actually have strong control over the bureaucracies.)

Even Louis XIV was probably wrong when he said that he was the state.

[mkn]

Ah, the despicable grant-money trope rears its ugly head again. Fine and fair enough, we all agree that research takes money. But I would really like to see, from people who run this one up the flagpole, substantive evidence indicating that 1) Advocating falsehoods is a good way to get grant money, rather than to earn scientific ridicule and a sure death to one's research credibility, and/or 2) A significant number of theories have risen to acceptance within the scientific community based on the supposed ease they afforded in obtaining funding, and have later been dropped when the scandal was discovered.

Note that the above two, if supplied, would still not rise to the level of proof that any particular area of research was lethally contaminated by researchers' avarice. For that, you would actually have to show 1) That the research was flawed or came to an incorrect conclusion, and 2) That the researchers responsible were falsifying data or inventing specters with the intent of obtaining funding. To discredit research in this way, you would have to use the scientific method to convince scientists, and/or courtroom procedure to convince a jury in, say, a civil trial to recover fraudulently obtained research dollars.

The above should be enough to show why these accusations occur in online forums, editorial pages, and blogs, rather than in research journals or courts of law. Simply put, it cannot be done because these accusations are so patently absurd as to be rejected out of hand by people whose expertise is actually in finding things like this out. If it were otherwise, one could make an academic career out of showing it. If you are so sure of it, please do so. Get published in Nature, or another respected journal. Do such groundbreaking research that you get invited to give talks to academic audiences. Your service to mankind by debunking a flawed institution that claims (at this point legitimately, I might add) the mantle of being the best way that the human race has of gaining new knowledge will be immeasurable, even if you did not, in the same stroke, supply humankind with another and superior edifice. Until then, by perpetuating this silly vicious lie, you are merely pissing in the fountain of knowledge* for the purposes of self-aggrandizement.

Our current body of scientific knowledge has been made possible by the scientific method. This method is designed to ruthlessly root out falsehood. Look at cold fusion. I would imagine there would be no easier way to get funding than the promise of cheap, relatively low-tech, non-polluting, and abundant energy. Yet, Pons and Fleischman were immediately discredited and now stand as objects of ridicule to this day. Everything that you rely on to supply you with your modern lifestyle comes from this kind of scientific rigor. Medicine, transportation, hygiene, materials, manufacturing, computers, the list goes on.

Show a little bit of the proper respect due to the edifice that has done so much for you.

*"[P]issing in the fountain of knowledge" borrowed from YouTube user Thunderf00t's excellent videos on young earth creationism whackos. I highly recommend them, even if you think you're sick to death of that whole 'debate.'

[anamax]

> But I would really like to see, from people who run this one up the flagpole, substantive evidence indicating that 1) Advocating falsehoods is a good way to get grant money, rather than to earn scientific ridicule and a sure death to one's research credibility, and/or

The "AGW support gets funding" argument doesn't require that anyone lie. It merely requires that AGW support be used as a criteria for determining funding.

> 2) A significant number of theories have risen to acceptance within the scientific community based on the supposed ease they afforded in obtaining funding, and have later been dropped when the scandal was discovered.

Again - scandal isn't necessary.

AI before the winter qualifies. So does room-temperature fusion. In fact, all of the "trends" do.

Funding is a social process.

[dejb]

> AI before the winter qualifies.

No it doesn't. Modelling a natural systems (climate) on the one hand and technological progress (AI) on the other hand are 2 enirely different areas. You wouldn't have found a predominance of scientific papers in respectable journals saying they had accurate models of the progress of AI development.

> So does room-temperature fusion.

You didn't read the post you replied to did you? I'll re- quote the relevent parts.

>> This method is designed to ruthlessly root out falsehood. Look at cold fusion. I would imagine there would be no easier way to get funding than the promise of cheap, relatively low-tech, non-polluting, and abundant energy. Yet, Pons and Fleischman were immediately discredited and now stand as objects of ridicule to this day.

You don't seem to understand the level of scientific agreement with regards to global warming. If it was as obvoiusly false and many deniers say then it would be - by far - the most significant failure of the scientific system in memory.

[anamax]

> You didn't read the post you replied to did you? I'll re- quote the relevent parts.

Actually I did. Room temperature fusion actually proves my point that trends exist. The fact that the room temperature fusion one ended doesn't change that fact.

Funding is political. I'm not saying that it's wrong for it to be political, but denying that it is is a serious error and often leads to scientific ones.

If you want to argue that funding isn't political, feel free to explain why certain diseases get lots of funding while others don't. (For example, guess why we know a lot about tobacco plant diseases. Does the relative funding for breast and prostate cancer make sense?)

> You don't seem to understand the level of scientific agreement with regards to global warming. If it was as obvoiusly false and many deniers say then it would be - by far - the most significant failure of the scientific system in memory.

Whenever someone says "scientific agreement" or "scientific concensus", I'm reminded of 5000 German scientists.

When I hear "scientists" arguing that folks should be put in jail for disagreeing with them ....

When I hear "scientists" say that they're not going to release data to folks "who want to prove them wrong"....

I've no doubt that bogus arguments are being trotted out on both sides.

However, one side wants to use force to change my behavior.

It's somewhat interesting that their "recommendations" line up with a belief system that predates this round of falling sky and that they reject any solutions that don't line up with that belief system. They wrap themselves in "science" to stifle debate and to support conclusions that have no basis in their actual data.

I'm not saying that those non-scientific behaviors prove that they're wrong, but ....

> You don't seem to understand the level of scientific agreement with regards to global warming.

Are you claiming actual relevant personal expertise?

Or, are you going, as I am, by "monkey sign"?

[dejb]

Cold fusion shows that the scientific process can quickly correct for errors before they become widely accepted. Even if those theories are ones that would lead to major increases in scientific funding. Maybe in your conspiracy-theory, wacky-science world 'room temperature fusion' was actually a widely accepted theory but in the actual scientific world it was nothing more than a theory proposed by a few people that was rapidly disproven. If that is the best comparable case you can find then you might as well give up.

The fact that politics exists doesn't provide particular evidence that any widely held scientific view is incorrect. Your arguments could just as easily apply to evolution, quantum mechanics or ozone depletion

> When I hear "scientists" arguing that folks should be put in jail for disagreeing with them

What? Where?

> When I hear "scientists" say that they're not going to release data to folks "who want to prove them wrong"

Um what?

> When I hear satan telling me to...

OK I made that one up. Seriously though this is getting a bit far off the deep end.

[anamax]

>> When I hear "scientists" say that they're not going to release data to folks "who want to prove them wrong"

> Um what?

Philip Jones, in response to a request for "his" data (which was paid for by taxpayers), said "We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it."

Does this prove that he knows that he's hiding something? No. It doesn't even prove that he's unknowingly hiding something. For all we know, his data could be perfect or even more supportive of his theory than he's stated. (However, there is the small matter that it looks like every correction to the prominent AGW research has gone the other way, which is statistically odd.)

However, it does demonstrate that dejb's "pure/rational scientists" theory is bunk.

> Seriously though this is getting a bit far off the deep end.

What's "deep end" about the truth?

Scientists are monkeys and they (occasionally) behave like monkeys. If your belief system requires otherwise, you've got a problem.

[anamax]

> The fact that politics exists doesn't provide particular evidence that any widely held scientific view is incorrect.

I never said that it did. You're the one claiming that a political process, namely funding, is a strong indicator of scientific truth. Or, are you still arguing that funding isn't political?

>> When I hear "scientists" arguing that folks should be put in jail for disagreeing with them

> What? Where?

"In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623...

> > When I hear "scientists" say that they're not going to release data to folks "who want to prove them wrong"

> Um what?

I'm still looking for that cite. (While looking for the incident that I was referring to, I found suggestions that Mann et al, the authors of the "Hockey Stick" paper haven't released their methodology, but that wasn't the one that I was looking for.)

[dejb]

Should have proof read this.