Santa Rosa Business Daily

Which groups spend more money on global warming research and public awareness?

A) Private companies (who stand to benefit from lack of new taxes and limits on carbon) funding skeptics' research and public relations campaigns? B) Governments (who stand to benefit from new taxes and limits on carbon) funding AGW proponents' research and public relations campaigns?

Public Comments

1. i would guess private companies because this is where most of the funding for the scientific research relating to this subject originates, just an educated guess though.
2. You seen to be under the mistaken assumption that government is a for profit organization... Have you looked at the [US] budgets from the past couple of decades? Of the two, government or companies, which do you think is more interested in profit? On a similar note, would you trust a publicly funded scientist, or someone who is paid as a consultant by a huge corporation by way of a PR firm and a couple of shell corporations? _
3. Both cause companies see their corporate image and government are gullible enough to not ask question and spend money they don't own. to much money as already burn on non effective solution to a non identified human cause, if any, of GW read the link : http://lcre.univ-lyon3.fr/climato/AFrenchclimatesceptic.pdf
4. Great question, thank you! I think it gets more complicated before it's over. On yahoo, or listening to ordinary people argue about these issues, it tends to be big issues like "is global warming real?" But when it comes to funding, there is a vast amount product-by-product. The coal & oil industries have vast amounts of money and influence, often focused against global warming science, but smaller industries put in their pressure not on the main debate by bill by bill. It used to be that industry money vastly overwhelmed green money, and from what I see it's still many times, but some industries (insurance was one of the first) have realized that the costs of doing nothing will be huge. We're also seeing some weird manipulations: Wall Street interests that aren't really central to the main debate are going to try to leach on our effort to save our planet for our kids, developing vastly complex, tradeable carbon-related asset schemes. Ethanol interests are incredibly powerful and have very little to do with the real debate, but people who make money from ethanol are getting their way. One of the key points of manipulation in the debate, where honest, ordinary people get trampled by corporate interests, is the easy reconciliation that should be possible between green and anti-tax folks. Look at it this way: if you didn't believe global warming was happening at all and think all taxes are bad, but thought that employing people was a good thing and funding Saudi Arabia and Iran was a bad thing, then it would still be a good idea to replace income (job) taxes with carbon (oil) taxes dollar-by-dollar. Conservatives could very easily lock the debate down and get an agreement from liberals and scientists for a tax-neutral switch from income to carbon taxes... and that is where you can find the clearest fingerprints of the money. Why aren't anti-tax people easily winning their official goal? If you can think of another reason besides the predominance of heavy-industry money behind those movements, which claim to be anti-tax but really prefer income taxes to resource taxes, I'd like to hear it. A big question for ordinary people is whether we'll treat this like the abortion debate, with good people lining up on one side or the other and screaming at each other which gives politicians & special interests easy ways to manipulate us, or do we figure out that there are some fundamental compromises that work better for both sides than what money will push through congress if we scream at each other?
5. C.) Progressive Advocacy Groups. Its their way of gaining control and power, by using a made up disaster.
6. regarding manipulating public opinion, A regarding what's actually going on, B Of course, if you write off all research that's ultimately government funded, there's not much left, in any area of knowledge at all. So what?