Another good essay. Let me repeat my latest comment on Phil Jackson’s essay here.

(It repeats your cliché about “stinkin”. ☺ BTW, with all due respect, in view of the caliber of readers & commenters here, I don’t think you needed to explain the reference.)

Inwood

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Seems to me, a non-scientist but not a scientific illiterate, that the current Copenhagen Conference is easy to understand, both for intelligent non-scientists as well as for not-really-interested dummkopfs: it’s all governance, all the time. It don’t need no stinkin’ scientists. And the scientists who are there just need to know how to shut off mikes & call the gendarmes when inconvenient truths are brought up by skeptics who must be personally destroyed in the harshest terms possible.

It’s the politics, stupid, the economic politics, that is, which is being urged by economic illiterates who call their critics scientific illiterates: government control, confiscatory taxes, punishing regs, & government redistribution of the “ill-begotten wealth of the Western World” (a) to the rest of the world who are poor because we are rich & (b) to Western World charlatans for their allegedly green businesses.

Newsflash to scientists & those of a scientific bent: politics & critical thinking about science are not always reconcilable.

Newsflash to economically-illiterate scientists: Google “cost-benefit analysis”.

BTW, a rather fair & balanced (to coin a phrase) analysis in the NYT Opinionator Blog, yes the NYT:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/global-warmings-cold-shoulder/

Some things I am pondering:

1. If you are in a gang, who are your peers? Should we trust them? Dr Wegman essentially proved this in 2006.
2. Do the sharks that stand to profit when the money mandated in Copenhagen flows into corrupt governments and non-productive sinkholes care about evidence? How cynical are they?
3. If, as may be likely, we are on our way to a peak similar to the MWP (with or without a CO2 boost), will the temperature climb doom us to this lunatic and futile exercise? Or can the climate science improve enough to put CO2 in proper perspective and quell the hysteria has been ginned up?
4. Even though the current course seems crazy, might we get to better energy sources as a result?

If you examine the infrastructure of “science” in America, it reveals what drives these clever schemes to hustle a gullible and trusting public. Besides educating many of the world’s scientists, who came to our colleges and then returned to their home countries, our world class universities produce, each and every year, many native scientists, lab and technical support personnel, computer programmers, etc. who want and need a job in “science”. Older American males remember the Vietnam era where keeping clear of the draft meant young men remained in college, desperately clinging to their student deferments while majoring in “cake” subjects like anthropology, sociology and political science – once the war wound down, these young men switched their majors to business or engineering or went on to earn a masters degrees in subjects which offered likely employment.

While anthropology, political science or sociology are useful subjects and have their place in society, the Vietnam era job market simply couldn’t absorb all the degree holders and reward them with well-paid jobs and long term career opportunities. But science is different, there is a mindset that says we should absorb these graduates, they possess valuable talents that must be nurtured and allowed to grow in their chosen field. A career in sales and marketing or within a trade like HVAC repair doesn’t appeal to someone who worked very hard to earn an advanced degree in molecular biology.

Consequently, periodicals like “Nature” or “Science”, as well those specialty journals in narrow scientific fields, devote much space to blatant editorials demanding more government funding, debating where funds are needed, who should benefit, the whole enchilada of scientific micro-economics. The life cycle starts with seed money, often government provided, that establishes the initial research. Once the basic research determines the vectors that further research should take, more grant applications are written, more funds provided and the snowball really starts to roll.

Scientists have learned that certain areas of science are very attractive to politicians and, once the political dynamics are learned, politicians can be successfully approached for funding on a massive scale. Viewed from the political side, there are many claimants to taxpayer money, so a decision within a legislative session to invest $10 billion of public funds into either entomological research or into cleaning-up and rebuilding Detroit Michigan is complex and requires consideration of cultural factors beyond a “clear need for further research”. Obviously, scientific research must have an emotional “hook” on taxpayers to command large scale government funding – scientists understand and accept this relationship – although it doesn’t mean they have to like it.

Looking at the other end of the current Big Hustle, there are ramifications of government funding that need to be explored. What is the ratio of public to private funding – if it’s close to 100% public funds, we should be looking for a skunk in the woodpile. How are the patents from publicly funded research controlled? And who makes those decisions – a panel of scientists and politicians deciding whose name goes on the patent is bad news for the public trust but often good news for individual scientists and politicians.

Is the stated goal of the research really the goal? In California, embryonic stem cell research was sold as research leading to an Alzheimer’s cure (remember Nancy Reagan) – that was the initial carrot which secured state supplied funding. But now, science admits that embryonic stem cells will likely have no practical application within this area and as a therapeutic cure. If goals are re-defined once the funding is obtained, is the public fully informed, is the funding reduced accordingly, is there a hidden agenda that had nothing to do with the stated original goal and where is that agenda going?

Journalists are attracted to ideological and emotional issues involving morality, integrity, politics, what have you – but exploring the “money” culture of modern science in detail and with hard questions being asked would go much farther toward educating the public about where their science dollars should and should not be invested. Journalists should study Big Science’s economic infrastructure and produce probing essays and factual exposes that address more than just emotional “hot buttons”.