Follow the Money
This is hearsay but I would give it a good chance of being accurate.
From
Bishop Hill:
Follow the money
This is stolen from the comments at WUWT:
A reader commented as follows:... it is possible that this is just a big conspiracy by climate scientist around the world to boost their cause and make themselves more important. Though I find it hard to believe that thousands of scientists...all agreed to promote bogus science ...Pretty hard to do without being discovered.
To which another reader, a scientist named Paul Vaughan, responded as follows:Actually not so hard.
Personal anecdote:
Last spring when I was shopping around for a new source of funding, after having my funding slashed to zero 15 days after going public with a finding about natural climate variations, I kept running into funding application instructions of the following variety:
Successful candidates will:
1) Demonstrate AGW.
2) Demonstrate the catastrophic consequences of AGW.
3) Explore policy implications stemming from 1 & 2.
Follow the money � perhaps a conspiracy is unnecessary where a carrot will suffice.
This confirms the stories that I've been hearing over the last few years.
And it is well worth reading the comments to this post -- a few examples:
A similar anecdote:
A friend is a lecturer in a Higher Education establishment (an agricultural college in fact; I won't say more because there are not many and he won't want to be identified).
He showed me their prospectus for next year's courses. It is entirely stuffed with wibble about "green farming", "environmental" this that and the next thing, "low-carbon" so-and-so, and is suffused with the underlying assumption that the AGW hypothesis is completely true and unchallengeable.
I commented on this.
He agreed, and pointed out that "if you don't do this stuff, you won't get any funding".
Q.E.D.
Another:
As an interesting comment a few months back I reviewed a short technical paper on gas diffucion through butyl rubber septa that are used to seal sampling vials (vacutainers etc.) The opening sentence in the introduction was 'With the onset of global warming.....'
And another:
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/stim09c.htm
"The final bill provides $3.5 billion for energy R&D at the Department of Energy (DOE) and would fund climate change-related projects in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)"
As I said, at this moment these stories (except for the last one) are anecdotal but I would not be surprised if scans and screencaps are "leaked" in the next week or two.
Fraud on the highest level...
Posted by DaveH at December 10, 2009 8:57 AM