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> "science is clearly telling us ... we must act with increasing urgency"

Forgive me for this meta-detour, but:

Science tells us that the climate is changing in ways that most of humanity would consider harmful. Science tells us that carbon emissions are one of the major drivers of those changes. Science tells us what we can expect to happen if we take certain courses of action. But science doesn't tell us what we "must" do or what course of action we "must" take; science only tells us "is".

"Must" is necessarily a matter of ethics, philosophy, politics, or religion. Science doesn't tell us what course of action is better or worse, only what the expected outcomes are. Things-other-than-science are how we determine what we mean by "better" or "worse" (for an extreme example, consider that some people want humanity to go extinct; their idea of "better" and my idea of "better" do not remotely resemble each other.)

What's HN without the meta-detours!

You're certainly correct, but brevity of the writer and intelligence of the reader means I don't have to be explicit about every point, just as if I were to write that a cockpit altitude alarm is telling a pilot he must act with increasing urgency to pull a plane up from a perilous dive.

I could be explicit, and say that the alarm itself is just a combination of electrical circuitry and detectors that change behaviour due to input thresholds, and that the alarm does not particularly care whether the plane crashes or not, but I trust that the reader understands what I'm saying when I say the alarm is telling the pilot he must pull up.

In the case of a cockpit altitude alarm, "pull up from a perilous dive" may not be the appropriate response; "lower your nose and throttle up to build airspeed and get out of a perilous stall" may instead be called for. Additionally, pilots will universally agree that it is worth taking certain actions in order to avoid crashing. Thus, the use of shorthand in that situation is fairly reasonable.

When it comes to declaring what science tells us we "must" do, the picture is far less clear. One reason to be explicit about the difference between "is" and "must" is that even intelligent readers and writers sometimes hold mistaken beliefs here. Another reason is that, even among those in total agreement about the science and in total agreement about certain predictions, there is still disagreement about whether various tradeoffs are "worth" the cost. At that point, science is simply the wrong tool to tell us what we "must" do.

It's been pointed out to you that there is no 'well funded fight', except that plenty of government money is available to people who are looking for the 'right' answers.

You can argue on whatever other point you might like, but the fact is they mythical 'big oil' funding has been debunked many times over. Even the oil companies themselves fund more activities by strongly alarmist climate change people than they do for scientists who are skeptical of the catastrophic man-made climate change theories.

This scratching around for evidence is so manic it led to Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute committing identify theft and fraud to try and conjure up some evil plan from the Heartland institute. As it was the money he found wouldn't cover the canapes bill at an UNEP conference.

As pointed out, one of the most influential people in proxy temperature reconstructions is Steve McIntyre, who is retired and self funded, and does it out of a desire to make sure things are correct.

It's time to drop the 'half baked fringe conspiracy theory' that 'big oil' are somehow funding some sort of disinformation campaign.

It's also time to drop the '95% of climate scientists' meme, because it is the result of an unscientific online poll with a dismal response rate - the '95%' was 75 out of 77 scientists who self-identified as climate scientists taken from a poll of 10,250, of which there was 3,000 responses.

> climate change scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to increase funding Conspiracy is the wrong word, but I don't know a single person who relies on funding to be interested in having it decreased. The simple truth is that funding should be blind, so that the researcher has no idea of who is paying for it. This applies to all disciplines, not just climate related.

"except that plenty of government money is available to people who are looking for the 'right' answers."

From the outset, you've flagged that you subscribe to the 'global warming conspiracy'. That a global conspiracy of scientists are co-ordinating a disinformation campaign to justify and increase funding. I mean, seriously, it's just absurd.

Although I think that sentence of yours brings the absurdity to new heights. Because why on earth would a government want scientists to give 'right' answers which have massive economic and social implications, and not in a good way? Your mental model of this issue really does not seem well thought out.

Your refutation of the scientific consensus on this topic is bizarre (you seem to think that the consensus is based on an 'unscientific online poll'!) Here's what the consensus actually looks like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...

I certainly agree with you that funding on any research should be blind, but the practicality of that in many situations means it's an idealistic position.

In one corner, we have lawyers, lobbyists, and political groups whose sole mission is to cast fear, uncertainty, and doubt over claims of anthropogenic climate change. Every day they prevent action on CO2 emissions is another X $million made.

In the other corner we have people whose entire professional life is predicated on being right and carefully and systematically proving each other wrong. People who have repeatedly explained the basic physical mechanism by which CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas, and shown that (and how) it accumulates in the atmosphere.

You seem to prefer trusting the lawyers, lobbyists, and political groups over the people whose entire culture is based in reasoned argument, systematic research, precision, accuracy, and integrity. I don't know why any reasonable person would do this.

I am merely responding to the bullshit conspiracist alarmist link of the parent, nothing more.