On The Pipeline, Tom Finnerty produces some scary numbers about the scale of climate change spending. Specifically, citing Stephen Moore, he notes that the American government under Barack Obama spent about $150 billion in his first term on climate and green energy subsidies… not counting the tax breaks for wind and solar. Around the world, in 2013, a pro-panic group said it was $359 billion which fell far short of what they said was a needed $5 trillion. Now having money doesn’t make you a bad person, a fool or venal. But in case it does, we’d like to ask everyone who’s been insulting us for being skeptics-for-hire to direct their venom at the people who seem to be getting paid a whole lot more to be alarmists.
Research costs money. We don’t begrudge academics the salaries they need to feed their families and afford hobbies as well as basics. Although we would like to see how much some of them could command in a private market on the basis of the satisfaction of their students. We just want people to be decent as well as honest.
When he left office in 1961, Dwight Eisenhower gave a famous “farewell address” warning about “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”. It was especially striking because Eisenhower was himself both a Republican and a former (five-star) general, not some hairy left-wing peacenik. But as some climate skeptics like to recall, Ike also warned that as the “technological revolution” proceeded, “research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government…. the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity…. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.” Moreover, while respecting research and discovery “we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Nowadays vast sums of government money are spent at the direction of such an elite that regularly makes sure a large part of it goes to them in a self-perpetuating cycle. In the spirit of Eisenhower’s caution, we should not allow respect for research, and for its inherent costs, to blind us to the fact that a great deal of money is now available to people who say what the government wants to hear. Or tolerate the slur that it’s the climate alarmists who are begging for scraps while we skeptics feast on an endless flow of biased money.
Thank you for taking on this crucially important subject!
"A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government…. the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity…. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.” Moreover, while respecting research and discovery “we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Nowadays vast sums of government money are spent at the direction of such an elite that regularly makes sure a large part of it goes to them in a self-perpetuating cycle. "
Would it be possible to trace and expose several examples of how this is currently happening? If students knew that the research projects they were choosing to work on were based on false premises, would they actually choose to go in this direction?
This subject ties in with the imbedded 'experts' within universities.