As an aside, the Cato Institute turned down a donation from Fannie Mae before the financial crash so as to avoid the appearance of bias in their advocacy, so I have a bit of respect for them. How many think-tanks would do the same?
Yes, they were founded with a gift from the Koch families decades ago, but does that invalidate the work of Michaels, who by all appearances is a climate scientist that has published real research? Should we dismiss his thoughts outright and not listen to what he has to say?
(Update: a link below shows 3/4 of Cato's annual funding comes from individual donations, only 2% comes from corporations. Presumably, the rest comes from non-profit foundations.)
Sorry, I accidentally up-voted you when attempting to do the opposite.
I'd like to call it out more, but there's so much of it -- it's a lost cause, I think.
Looks like they receive funding from ~20 corporations annually accounting for 2% of their overall funding.
If global warming advocates are right what do they get? Gold star, notoriety for being great scientists, pat on the back and a gold watch? Even billions of dollars in research grants? Once they're right research money dries up, and you still have to fix the energy crisis that would ensue. And, big oil is handing out money left and right for any study saying the opposite. If funding were your only incentive you could just as easily get money from the other side. If you can prove global warming is or IS NOT caused by human activity you'll be very very famous, maybe rich.
Still that's paltry in comparison to the revenue of the oil, coal, and to some degree gas industries. I can't seem to make the the pay offs for being right equal out.
I like to not be so paranoid, but quite frankly this whole debate just seems like a smoke screen from both sides at the moment. Which could be yet another tactic since status quo benefits the CO2 producers.
I donate money to the NRA because they support gun rights. The NRA doesn't support gun rights because I personally give them money.
"Some journalists are digging even deeper into the sources of Soon and Baliunas’s funding. Their Climate Research paper includes acknowledgements to NOAA, NASA and the US Air Force, as well as to the American Petroleum Institute. Yet NOAA flatly deny having ever funded the authors for such work, while the other two bodies admit to funding them, but for work on solar variability not proxy climate records, the topic that has caused such a storm."
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm
And now here we are on "Hacker News", where this axe-grinding swill keeps getting endlessly posted by the same axe-grinding posters to "Hacker News" and voted up by folks who frankly haven't taken the time to begin to look into the actual science.
("Hacker News"? This particular little niche website is fast becoming Wall Street Blog West. People who came for the tech are leaving because of the increasing emphasis on how to make a few fast buck any old way.)
Meanwhile, as an experiment a few days ago I posted an article from FactCheck that concluded "ClimateGate" is overblown nonsense, and that, "The American Association for the Advancement of Science released a statement "reaffirm[ing] the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of 18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society." The American Meteorological Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists have also reiterated their positions on climate change, which they say are unaffected by the leaked e-mails."
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/
"Hacker News" response: ~crickets~
It was obvious that facts are the last thing Cato and the Wall Street Journal and the axe-grinders here are interested in.
I agree. I found it depressing that your comment was down-voted to the negatives.