Climate Cover up?

[Starlight]

My goodness, you might as well cite an AIDS denialist website as your resource when discussing virology.

Wait, AIDS denalism is a thing?

Wow, random things I didn't know. I'm afraid I'm too young to know much about the AIDS crisis aside from what I'm heard or read in passing.

[Adam]

I fell, Mea culpa.
I returned to my indulgence in cynicism to "Amen" I bunch of posts by Starlight in this thread, even though I had said in another thread that I was so livid with rage against Star that I was fed up with him and would not "Amen" his posts any more. Couldn't resist, I clicked "Amen" a bunch of times here. Worse yet, some were my distrust of and anger at Seer, who has gotten the best of my (infinitesimal) patience over these years. He seems to exult in exasperating people.
Can I go back now and delete all my "Amens" here? I don't think the system allows it, I won't try.

[Jichard]

Wait, AIDS denalism is a thing?

Yes.

Wow, random things I didn't know. I'm afraid I'm too young to know much about the AIDS crisis aside from what I'm heard or read in passing.

Unfortunately, AIDS denialism is still around. It's especially popular amongst many folks who share other implausible ideas on medicine, such as that vaccines cause autism.

[Starlight]

The dark side is irresistible Adam. As Yoda said, "once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny". The system doesn't allow you to un-amen my posts for that reason.

[Jichard]

Leon did you see what Oxmixmudd posted about this in Natsci?
The problem lies here in the U.S. That Both sides (Left and Right) are promoting there own agenda, and using money to fund studies. Each study then looks very biased. For example, the left wants more dollars spent on funding campaigns regarding population control (including unlimited abortion, abortifacient birth control, euthanasia and infantcide) The far right of course does not want this to exist at all because it is an intrinsic evil. Both have a vested interest in finding a certain portion of global warming theory to go their way because they get money, which means more votes for a certain agenda. Whether something is a science problem isn't of concern anymore because now there is an agenda that can be pushed.

This makes no sense. By the logic you're citing, thousands of scientists of diverse political backgrounds, nationalities, religions, and so on, are all in on a agenda-driven conspiracy regarding AGW. This is utterly ludicrous. It's akin to the AIDS denialists who claim that thousands of diverse doctors, virologists, immunologists, etc. are all in on an agenda-driven conspiracy to promote the idea that HIV causes AIDS. Or Holocaust denialists who claim that thousands of diverse historians are all in on an agenda-driven conpiracy to promote the idea that the Holocaust occurs.

Seriously, you're inventing a conspiracy theory out of whole cloth. As hard as it might be for many conservatives to understand, science is not some massive, agenda-driven conspiracy. You're not going to get thousands of scientists (who form the vast majority of the experts in their discipline) to go along with an agenda-driven conspiracy. Scientists are not as biased and dishonest as many conservatives like to make them out as being.

It's like many conservatives think they're just so much more honest than the average scientist, such that the average scientist would dishonestly skew their research for the sake of an agenda, while you conservatives wouldn't do that. Seriously, that makes no sense.

[Starlight]

In my observation (as a scientist, who's not a climate scientist but who has worked with some), there are indeed some scientists (in general) who are willing to sell-out to private companies. eg a honey company approaches them and says "hey we've got a lot of money here for research, could you prove our particular honey products have semi-miraculous healing properties". And maybe as many as 1 in every 100 scientists would be like "oh yeah, I'm totally willing to produce some 'research' that 'proves' that, if the price is right." The other 99 in every 100 would probably be perfectly willing to study the topic if the price was right, but wouldn't be willing to fake or bias the results. So I'd say about 1% of scientists are prepared to produce deliberately dishonest results if the price is right.

In times when funding in general is running low, a lot of scientists often gravitate towards studying whatever they think they can get funding for. There is indeed a lot of interest in climate change at the moment, and subsequently a lot of funding for it. So a lot of scientists are naturally incentivized to study the topic (or, more often, rework the descriptions of their current projects to highlight to the funding agencies any connections, however indirect, between their current project and the issue of climate change). But, let me again emphasize that the research they produce as a result of that funding is highly highly likely to be honest in its conclusions. Getting a grant from the government, be it a few thousand dollars, or a zillion dollars, to study a particular topic, has absolutely no influence on the conclusions produced from that study.

It's obvious why a scientist employed by the oil companies might be prepared to find 'proof' that climate change is not happening. But I can't see any incentive to reach the opposite conclusions. Why would a scientist be motivated to say climate change was happening? There's no motivation to reach that conclusion other than the data showing it to be the case. The only (bad) argument I can think of is something like "well, if scientists say it's happening they'd need to study it more right? And thus they could get more funding." But it simply doesn't work like that.

Firstly, if you want to study something more as a scientist, the way to do it is say "the previous study was inconclusive, we need further study". Scientists do that all the time (mostly because most studies are inconclusive in some manner, or leave out aspects which can be explored further later). If you ever say "we conclusively proved X" then by definition you don't need further study. So if scientists were in it for the money, they wouldn't be saying that global warming definitely is happening, they would be saying they were very not sure about it and needed much much more study.

Secondly, money allocated to a general field is not the same thing as money allocated to oneself. So saying "more climate study is needed" is not a good way of getting more money for your own research, because at best the government allocates more money to a general budget for 'climate research' and there's not the least guarantee that any of that will ever end up in your own direction. It's just not a reliable method of getting money.

Finally, it's not as if there's a shortage of things to study. If 'climate research' wasn't getting the government money then some other scientific field would be getting that exact same budget, and scientists would just migrate towards whatever that other field was. It's not as if we've run out of science to do, and there's a zillion things that aren't climate research that get a truck-ton of funding. So, as a scientist, the idea that climate change is a scientific conspiracy to get funding doesn't make any sense to me. 99% of scientists wouldn't be prepared to fake their data under any circumstances - most people are in this for the love of truth and the love of science - and given the incentive structure of the way funding works it only makes rational sense to fake data when working for private companies to 'prove' their products are amazing, the incentives on public policy issues such as climate change just don't exist (unless one is being paid by the oil companies to say climate change doesn't exist).