Follow the money

John Stossel on Global Warming:

The fundamentalist doom-mongers ignore scientists who say the effects of global warming may be benign. Harvard astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas says added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may actually benefit the world because more CO2 helps plants grow. Warmer winters would give farmers a longer harvest season.

Why don't we hear about this part of the global warming argument?

"It's the money!" says Dr. Baliunas. "Twenty-five billion dollars in government funding has been spent since 1990 to research global warming. If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and most to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn't be as much money to study it."

Comments

[Jon Melia]

Remember that energy is neither created nor destroyed, just converted from one form to another. How is it possible to burn milions of barrels of oil, conversion of energy into heat, and not expect some effect. This also applies to other forms of energy manufacturing, i.e., Wind Farms, Hydro etc. The wind energy is depleted as it crosses the mountains in northern California, how can this not effect the climate on the other side of the mountains? Hydro stores power to be released at preplanned times. This energy fluctuation of everything Downstream is affected.
How is it possible that all of the buffoons in the energy theater be it Oil or wind or tidal have such blinders on that they refuse to accept FACTS od science. It is not just oil that causes the warming, that is just a major player but if we were to convert to solar or wind dramatically the shift would be towards them for causing Global Warming.

[Teresa]

Always follow the money. The predictions of doom and disaster generally get the most return on investment for these people. As Bjorn Lomborg said in The Skeptical Environmentalist (in general I'm not going to go look for specific quotes), the only way they can get funding is if they keep yelling about how bad things are. If they note any improvement, funding drops off. So you will never hear an environmentalist tell you that anything we've done to date has improved the Earth's environment - although it has - only the doom and gloom are allowed to be broadcast.