- Scientists deliver the result that the funding agency wants
- Science has a political agenda other than “please fund science”
- Politicians like to flog climate change because it gives them power
No, no, no, not even close on any of them!
There are many, many things wrong with science, but I have never ever seen a case within public science where scientists “get research money to answer questions in a way that pleases the provider of funds”. Funding agencies’ agenda is to keep science moving forward and otherwise avoid controversy. Also, the scientific community is united on few things but they would object vehemently to any RFP that implicitly or explicitly demanded a specific result.
The bureaucracy’s job is to not strangle the goose that laid the golden eggs. They don’t relish controversy that impacts back onto the policy sector. They just want to run a quiet, well-appreciated bureaucracy.
Nor do scientists relish getting involved in policy. You can see this by what a bad PR job we are doing!
Also, the idea that liberal politicians WANT there to be climate change is just weird. They hate it — it’s a problem with large short term costs to avoid long term impacts.
The naysayers have to believe these things, or else they can’t begin explain what is going on within the scientific community. But these beliefs are completely at odds with reality, even more so than their denial that greenhouse gases are accumulating due to human activity and or their denial that this accumulation disrupts the natural climate system.
What’s actually going on is that the evidence that we are on a dangerous track is extremely compelling, and so honest science must say so even if it’s against the personal interest of those saying it.
Science is not constructed to be able to deliberately misrepresent. It is specifically constructed to systematically avoid misrepresentation. It obviously works pretty well, and the climate case is no exception. That’s why every major scientific body supports the climate consensus.
Scientific opinion on climate change — Wikipedia
These claims are matters of faith inculcated by the forces of denial. And they sort of need to be true for climate not to be a real problem. But they ain’t true. Not even partly true.
Science is a mess, but not in these ways. There is just no truth to this stuff; that’s not where the perverse motivations are.
==
image: (chris 論 [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
