The Climate-Industrial Complex

The ongoing Climategate email scandal makes people wonder about the motives of the scientists. Today, Bret Stephens writes that money plays a part:

... [T]he European Commission's most recent appropriation for climate research comes to nearly $3 billion, and that's not counting funds from the EU's member governments. In the U.S., the House intends to spend $1.3 billion on NASA's climate efforts, $400 million on NOAA's, and another $300 million for the National Science Foundation. The states also have a piece of the action, with California -- apparently not feeling bankrupt enough-- devoting $600 million to their own climate initiative ... .

And all this is only a fraction of the $94 billion that HSBC Bank estimates has been spent globally this year on what it calls "green stimulus" -- largely ethanol and other alternative energy schemes -- of the kind from which Al Gore and his partners at Kleiner Perkins hope to profit handsomely.

Climate researchers and activists have every incentive to exaggerate their doomsday scenarios.  Their self-worth depends on it.  Their livelihoods depend on it.   The more they prove a need for alarm, the bigger cut of climate funding pie they'll receive:

... [F]or every additional billion in government-funded grants (or the tens of millions supplied by foundations like the Pew Charitable Trusts), universities, research institutes, advocacy groups and their various spin-offs and dependents have emerged from the woodwork to receive them.

Today these groups form a kind of ecosystem of their own. They include not just old standbys like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, but also Ozone Action, Clean Air Cool Planet, Americans for Equitable Climate Change Solutions, the Alternative Energy Resources Association, the California Climate Action Registry and so on and on. All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God.