Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
I am going to start with an analogy. A farmer is paid by the market for his crops. The market wants the farmer to make tomatoes and they will pay him well for that. However, if he makes potatoes, the market will not pay him.
This is what has happened in the scientific world. All the scientists are getting their grants and money from the government, not-for-profits and other private companies who want them to say global warming is real. If they tell the truth, they will not be paid or have a job. The website experiment-resource.com explains how this happens in the pharmaceutical industry:
There is a lot of money invested in research and development of drug companies. It is the back bone of their structure. This need to produce positive results can make or break a drug company. The pressure is tremendous to produce the results that are hypothesized will be produced.
The same idea applies to climate research. If there are millions of dollars at stake for a scientist to say that global warming is caused by humans, what do you think the scientist will do? Say it is real! It is hard to blame the scientists. They are caught in between a rock and a hard place. I do not believe in any way that 97% of climate scientists actually believe global warming is caused by humans. Of the ones that do, most likely many of those do not think humans are causing such an adverse effect on the earth that Al Gore describes.
I believe that where people get their information from can be a major issue. If people base all of their global warming opinions off of some bum in a basement that created a global warming website, it is likely that they have received some false information. It would be nice if there was a god of the internet that could take all the bad, false, and useless things off the internet, but there isn’t. If a website has a misspelling, false fact, or misleading sales pitch, it is probably not a good site. People should be careful in choosing where they receive their information, so they will not be mislead. Also, people must remember to think. As crazy as it sounds, many people are forgetting to think, reason, and form their own opinions, because they let their favorite news source do it for them!
5 responses to “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”
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Envirowriting 2012-2013 
Michael,
I love the passion behind your post. I think you bring up a really interesting topic about motive that deserves further exploration. You’ve got the evidence that demand drives scientific research within the pharmaceutical world, and you extrapolate that into the climate science world. However, I’m curious….what makes you think that. Does the If A=B and B=C then A=C formula work here? I am missing the link between the B and C! Can you provide some links/evidence to enhance your argument about why you think 97% of climate scientists must be motivated by funding and would produce “canned” results that would please the government? Do you see evidence that the government is acting on the “fake advice” of 97% of climate scientists by implementing programs to stop global warming?
Thank you for your thinking and your challenge to us all to think and reason!
Mrs. W
Michael I feel like you bring up a really good point about not letting your favorite website do the thinking for you. Because a lot of those websites like CNN and FOX may have very different views on the same story because of politics. This might be misleading to the reader and get him easily confused. But when you say to think for yourself, I feel like you should still use the info on the websites because they probably have experts in the field, but you do need to be careful about which are politics statements and which are facts.
I think that this is a very good post, and I also agree with the fact that many scientists will be swayed by money. However, I disagree with the fact that all of the scientists do not think global warming is anthropogenic. Because I do not believe many people would pay to have someone say that it is anthropogenic. All in all good post.
I understand the direction you are coming from, but I strongly disagree with the fact that you said people are paying climate scientists to say that global warming is happening. The drug companies need FDA approval so that they can make their money, but the government doesn’t gain anything by scientists saying that global warming is an issue; in fact, it is the complete opposite. The only way that the government will be able to solve global warming is by spending money, and right now that is the worst thing to do. To me, there is no reason that somebody would want to pay the scientists that are conducting this research.
Arman I do not disagree that all the scientists are being paid, I was just saying that some of them (i.e. The ones that backed up the Great Global Warming Swindle and An Inconvenient Truth) have been pressured to give a certain response. Also, I do not disagree that many climate scientists think global warming is caused by humans, I just think 97% is exaggerated, I think around 80% sounds much more accurate.