There was a flurry of comments a couple of weeks back which, in part, repeated the argument that climate change is a trumped-up fiction created by a world-wide web of self-serving scientists, all of them desperate for a share of the government funding currently devoted to climate research.
I don’t get this argument. Last time I checked, the Republicans had a death grip on the Executive and Legislative branches of the U.S. government – and the Republican policy is to challenge climate change science on every front. (Exceptions made for Arnie Schwarzenegger, et al, at the state level.)
It seems to me that if a no-account scientist was really keen to get unearned government support, said scientist would be pitching research that took issue with climate change, thereby earning the approbation of the current administration. Such a scientist might even bump the fiction-writing Michael Crichton from his position as George W. Bush’s expert-of-choice.
