Having worked for both industry and National Labs - a couple of observations.

1. Scientists dependent on government funding are under constant stress. When they find a dependable source of funding, they hold on very tightly.

2. Private industry has to be correct to be successful. Government scientists only have to be creative. The difference between "applied" and "basic" research.

It is necessary that we have government scientists off researching every wacky idea which comes into their head. One basic research idea out of a hundred turns into something valuable, and our country absolutely depends on that technical innovation.

What the press and politicians don't seem to understand, is that the other 99% of the research they fund ends up in the garbage heap of scientific history.

None of us could survive a week without the oil companies, but we would all be better off if the AGW scientists retreated to their ivory towers until they turn their models into something resembling the real world.

Tierney made excellent points, but I am all for knowing how private organizations are funded. The problem is when that becomes the only issue. Proponents of the Hockey Stick started this when they accused McIntyre and McKitrick of being funded by Big Oil way back in 2003. Nows, it's almost reflexive.

I do think that accusations of bias due to corporate sponsorship (which it appears are untrue) have been used as an easy way to attack anyone who dares to challenge the generally accepted AGW viewpoint.

I would love it if industry were to support science more strongly as what is needed for this and any other debate is more information!!

We have heard this before from those who embrace AGW whenever their beloved theory is challenged on scientific terms. The Heartland Institute is tiny by comparison to pro AGW groups like The Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council. How tiny? Well, here are revenue comparisons (FY 2006) of the three groups:
1. Sierra Club Foundation revenue $29,315,259
2. NRDC (NY) Revenue $70,139,209
3. The Heartland Inst. $2,704,355

I find it quite disingenuous for critics to smear groups or individuals who disagree with their view. Their unfounded criticism only serves to discredit them, not the group they are attacking.

"When there’s a well-financed majority dominating the public debate, I find it odd to hear its members objecting to anyone else receiving money or attention, says Tierney."

What I find odd is the fact that when skeptics say 'follow the money', no one else seems to be able to see any bias, conflict of interest or political influence peddling.

"Tierney is basically tired of this talk about the money and wants more focus on substance. What do you think?" It is nice to see this tiny bit of honesty. But I wonder if it isn't because he knows how the funding of the "well-financed majority" would look if sheeple actually paid attention to it.

Tierney does make an attempt to look at the other side. Some excellent points are made in the article.

Telling commentary can be had though, by reading the lame platitudes and attacks of the Hysterics in the 'Comments' portion proceeding the article. Once again, they attempt to crucify the messenger, the data always gets pushed aside. It appears that the comments are about 10-1 Hysteric, All wanting to talk about Skeptic sponsorship as opposed to that of the Hysterics.

The FIRST thing that needs to be done is to check ALL these 'uniform' surface stations as to their sitting location, accuracy, etc, and whether they meet the criteria set forth in the station specifications. The government spends hundreds of billions on 'study' of global warming, upgrades satellites for better accuracy, while many uniform stations are sitting in the middle of asphalt parking lots engendering 5-8% higher increase of mean temperature recording in the summer. Get these stations up to spec. We had a recent poster who brought up anomalies in Washington, DC, Charleston, SC and other cities. Well, no city is an island where innate temperatures vary wholesale with the freezing temperatures all around. In these instances, it makes sense to take a look at the 'messenger'.

It is one thing for someone to make a legitimate criticism of an article when some factors are obviously left out to buffer the premise of the author, such as the garbage the world dumps into the oceans may be a factor in the 'dead area's'. This is certainly a reasonable factor over an above simply subscribing the incidence to 'global warming'.

Time will tell, it always does. The question is: After how many billions are taken from the general populace furthering this scam?

Patrick H is spot on in his observations (they parallel mine).

Secondarily, Greenpeace makes a HUGE deal about Exxon funneling 23 million into Anti-AGW funding between 1998 and 2006. Not even $3 milion per year....Um...hello?? This is BIG money???!

According to a study done by the MArshall Institute http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/289.pdf
$35-$50 million per year is given by private funds to climate studies the vast majority of which are pro AGW. The US government gave out $2 BILLION in 2004 alone for climate stuides!

Where's that money going? Mostly universities and grants, etc.

It seems pretty clear that folks aren't in touch with reality when they think that "Big Money Exxon" and others are funding this dissent and doing it in a meaningful way.

With the amount of funding going into pro AGW funding, it's a miracle any other opinions get heard at all....

Attacks on skeptics as being funded by oil companies are ridiculous. First of all, "oil" companies are called that because the predominant energy they provide is from oil. This is because they are in the energy business and these same "oil" companies are often on the leading edge of research for "alternative" energies. Even the big oil companies know that oil will run out one day regardless of what the truth about global warming is. In business, companies stay current, or they fall behind and eventually die. So to say that an oil company first funds research to allow them to keep using only oil illustrates a complete lack of understanding about how capitalist business works.

Secondly, even if the first premise is true, the assumption is also being made that the oil company is funding the research, thus they are paying off the scientists to come to a conclusion they want. There may be some merit to this argument on both sides if for example the final release of research is through a report edited by people who want the outcome to look like it leans toward their agenda (this accusation has also been leveled against editors of the IPCC reports). But when scientists make statements on their own outside of a report, the assumption must be that oil companies are paying them to do it. Why would oil companies pay to keep only one technology when they have the resources to dominate new ones as well as old ones? That's like saying Microsoft pays off techies to promote text editor interfaces rather than the graphical window interface we all use. If Microsoft had done that, they'd be out of business, the same goes for energy companies if they don't listen to the market and keep up.

Speaking of funding, did anyone see the show on National Geographic on Sunday night screaming doom and gloom and how it is very well possible that ALL the ice in the world may be gone by 2045 and see levels could rise up to 150 feet?

It was so ridiculous, I don't think that even most people on the AGW side could give it merit.

They also claimed among other things Anarctica is warming 3 times faster than the rest of the planet so all the ice melt there could easily result in meters of rise in sea level in just a few decades.

I wonder who funded this.

RSS data is out for February.

Coldest February worldwide since 1994.
All of 2008 has been below normal so far.
http://www.remss.com/pub/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_1.txt

No matter how much money the IPCC pumps into research, they just can't seem to get those temperatures up where they are supposed to be.

IPCC stands for "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Without climate change panic, they have no reason to exist. No lavish trips to Bali or Honolulu. No fame and press conferences. No feeling of importance.

Another few months of cold weather and the alarmists drop off the map - or worse. What fun is that, and what could be more corrupting than that?

Of course they will try to keep the fun alive by pointing to every windy, rainy, snowy, calm, cold, hot or dry day as a sign of "climate change."

Check out this August 2007 report on the monumental funding advantage promoters of climate fear have over skeptics. Not even close. (Full report here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=38D98C0A-802A-23AD-48AC-D9F7FACB61A7 )

Excerpt: Newsweek reporter Eve Conant was given the documentation showing that proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so, but the Magazine chose instead to focus on how skeptics have reportedly received a paltry $19 MILLION from ExxonMobil over the last two decades.

Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter, who has testified before the Senate Environment & Public Works committee, explained how much money has been spent researching and promoting climate fears and so-called solutions.

�In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one," Carter wrote on June 18, 2007. (LINK )

[Note: The U.S. alone has spent $30 billion on federal programs directly or indirectly related to global warming in just the last six years, according to one estimate. (LINK) ($5.79 billion in 2006 alone) Adding to this total is funding from the UN, foundations, universities, foreign governments, etc. Huge sums of money continue to flow toward addressing climate fears. In August, a State Treasurer in California "proposed a $5 billion bond measure to combat global warming," according to the Sacramento Bee. (LINK) Even if you factor in former Vice President Al Gore's unsubstantiated August 7, 2007 assertion that $10 million dollars a year from the fossil fuel industry flows into skeptical organizations, any funding comparison between skeptics and warming proponents utterly fails.(LINK) ] Update: Gore to launch $100 million a year multimedia global warming fear campaign. Gore alone will now be spending $90 million more per year than he alleges the entire fossil fuel industry spends, according to an August 26, 2007 article in Advertising Age. (LINK)

Global Warming 'A Big Cash Grab'

Meteorologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, formerly a senior scientist for climate studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and currently principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, called the Newsweek article part of a �coordinated assault� on skeptics.

�[Newsweek] alleges that a few scientists were offered $10,000 (!) by Big Oil to research and publish evidence against the theory of manmade global warming. Of course, the vast majority of mainstream climate researchers receive between $100,000 to $200,000 from the federal government to do the same, but in support of manmade global warming,� Spencer wrote in an August 15, 2007 blog post. (LINK)

Full Report here:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=38D98C0A-802A-23AD-48AC-D9F7FACB61A7

Also, FYI: Read about the latest scientific defectors from man-made climate fears here (as well as full report on Skeptical climate conference in NYC last week):

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=865dbe39-802a-23ad-4949-ee9098538277&Issue_id=

Thanks,
Marc Morano
Comm. Dir. Minority
U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee

Last year and so far this year, it has been cooler and wetter than almost anytime before in parts of the US and the climate change hysterics are worried that their global warming disaster is not unfolding as they have announced. There does indeed need to be a rational debate about climate change, its causes, cyclicity, and the rationale for the predicted effects. So far the science does not justify the hysterics' claim of catastrophic, irreversible damage which, they claim, justifies their political control of the world.

We all know what an isidious evil political correctness is. It pervades private industry as well as academia. I don't think private industry could care less about climate change even if oil were the cause (which it isn't), except that it is now fodder for "green" advertising which appeals to more consumers to buy their products. In academia PC is rife in all levels of interaction including the seeking and granting of funding for climate research. There is a bandwagon that some scientists hop onto, as some would in other fields, hoping to get more money for some spin on research related in some way to global warming. Even if their results do not support global warming they do not generally dare expose these facts, and the ones that try will not get new funding and will get their reputations tarnished. Others simply give up and study something else. Others in different fields see an easy PC opportunity to add "global warming" to possible reasons for almost any research finding from crop yields to the behavior of bacteria. Hence we have an out of control system driven by hysteria, fear, and one-way "evidence".

Scientists have failed to educate the public properly about the scientific process in regard to this issue. Granted it is a very political issue that seems to have exploded out of nowhere, and much of the ruckus has not been in the labs and classrooms but in political halls, TV talk shows and a very political news media that is beyond the purview of most scientists. Scientists simply don't have the time to go out and lobby, write letters, organize people and make noise. In fact many university rules and contracts forbid this behavior. Climate science is also generally an obscure branch of science outside of the nightly weather forecaster.

Any climate scientist or group of scientists should vigorously publicize and promote evidence against global warming as a counterbalance to the excessive, hysterial doomsaying talk of the global warming fanatics. Don't speak in the usual cautious terms of science like "this suggests" or "more study is needed." They don't. You're doing battle on a political stage now and your scientific interpretations need to be elevated to the level of claims, charges, and accusations. They'll never understand science, they don't care for the facts which would confuse them, it's entirely a battle of proselytizers. Most of them now truly believe that Al Gore is the world's most genuine climate scientist. Master the catch-phrase and sound bite. This is not a rational debate of scientific evidence and theories, it is a battle with hysterical climate change fanatics for control of our political and social world. You have an obligation to fight back.

An elaboration on a post by Chris B above. Over at Tierney's sight a discussion ensued on the same lines between those who accuse skeptic scientists of being in "Big Oil's" pocket and a physicist who went by the name of Dr. Adams, from Sydney . Dr. Adams makes a very interesting point about why we should not assume that Energy companies are against AGW abatement programs. They are in business to make money by whatever means they legally can. If they see a Cash Cow coming , they'll be the first ones to open the barn door to let the cow in. You can find Dr. Adams' comments here [see Posting No. 38] http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/global-warming-skeptics-convene-in-ny/ .

How ironic that 2 days after announcing that politics should play no role in climate change debate we have an article in support of the Heartland Inst. From their "about Heartland page". The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit research and education organization, tax exempt under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code, and founded in Chicago in 1984. It is not affiliated with any political party, business, or foundation.

Heartland's mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.

Since when are free market solutions to social and economic problems political?

5% from the oil industry, but no other information on hand about where the other 95% comes from. Oil is not the only industry that profits from denying the existence of AGW. I give you coal, chemicals, big agriculture, automobiles and the hiway construction behemoths they support.

Do I have a political axe to grind? You bet your cowboy belt buckle I do. We're headed for the crap heap and the deniers are right out in front leading the stampede? Oh, did I mention Oil at $107 a barrel, coal at $103 a ton and the markets in the tank again? Wahoo! Ride'em cowboy. KAG

"Excerpt: Newsweek reporter Eve Conant was given the documentation showing that proponents of man-made global warming have been funded to the tune of $50 BILLION in the last decade or so."

So the NSF is corrupt? This sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.

Substance? There is no substance! It's part of the charm of this supposed crisis. We'll see how this period of global cooling unfolds with its attendant increase in co2 emissions. Always remember that this anthropocene of warming will be the backdrop to natural variability. As with anything, time will tell! Gore may be vindicate yet.

"Of course, the vast majority of mainstream climate researchers receive between $100,000 to $200,000 from the federal government to do the same"

How much do you think Hansen makes? BT and I had a discussion on his income before, I assume he living quite comfortably and that he has a vested interest in being able to continue his research to receive a paycheck plus some money on the side. I know making 6 figures is not the same today as it was 10 years ago, but it is a decent living. I bet Hansen makes plenty of money.

Well, ive been thinkin about that for some time now, and ill be honest, i would like to get my hands in or on some of the money tossed around
Trying to educate people on just what Global Warming is. As with every thing the want and need of money finds it's self attached to every thing worth looking at twice.
like this site
http://www.cafepress.com/getgreencpi

Any funding is good for science no matter where it comes from. If fossel fuel industries weren't criticized so much, they'd probably contribute much more. This would help in all aspects of scientific research and understanding on either side of this debate. They've got lots to burn. Why not utilize it?

"If I write about prominent climate scientists like James Hansen of NASA, I don�t feel obliged to note how much research money they get � or how much extra money is going to their field because of the concerns they�ve raised about climate change. I don�t dismiss Al Gore�s warnings just because his campaign against global warming has been so good for his career. I don�t obsess about how much he gets per lecture or what he does with the money."

You should feel obliged to talk about money and who is well funded and who is not because "Scientific" analysis on a "global warming theory" has been contaminated by government research and grant money as well as media and political hysteria.

Man made Global Warming is not about science, indeed, with the non-reproducible assumptions made, it is really about world economic control and power.

The man made global warming rhetorical phenomena is only a contrived crisis for the purpose of further economic consolidation and further consolidation of power.

Vaclav Klaus has it right. And that is what we should be talking about.

Listen to Klaus' story. He's already been down this road and he is trying to tell us something very important.