Sivad wrote:The facts aren't in question. Everyone, including Hansen, accepts that Hansen received these benefits.
No one is denying that.
The question is whether or not these funds were an incentive to lie. As far as I can tell, they were not. Moreover, this is merely one scientist. Even if we accept that Dr. Hansen lied because he was paid for travel expenses associated with speaking engagements, this does not mean that the thousands of other climatologists who have corroborated Dr. Hansen’s work are also being paid the same.
Finally, these nuisance suits never went anywhere because Dr. Hansen did nothing unethical.
It has nothing to do with that, we're discussing the various incentives that influence climate scientists.
Yes, that is exactly what the “article” is about.
If the article was not about your claim, you should not have cited it.
If we are discussing what incentives influence the vast majority of climatologists, why are we looking at the exceptional case of the most famous one of them all, who is perhaps the most sought after climatologist in terms of speaking engagements? He is definitely not an example of an average climatologist.
It's irrelevant to this conversation. It doesn't matter where the information came from, it only matters that it's factual. And it is factual.
You are claiming that money exerts an undue influence on science and politics. I pointed out that this scientist has been the target of nuisance suits, and that these nuisance suits come from a neoliberal think tank funded by fossil fuel interests. I think I am also giving an example of money exerting undue influence in science and politics.
I don't care what motivated it, the point is Hansen gets a lot of comps.
Yes, you do seem apathetic about how neoliberal capitalist groups have been using money to influence the climate change debate.
What are “comps”?
Then your reading comprehension is as screwy as your logic because the paper is definitely referring to both.
No.
The author is complaining about certain tendencies in fields where the amount data is poor, and there is very little opportunity to test hypotheses. Paleoclimatology is one of these fields. Modern climatology is not. The author also uses the example of string theory in physics.
Then there is the fact that paleoclimatology is specifically mentioned in the paragraphs preceding and following the text you cited.
Here is a working link to the paper:
http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonl ... eocean.pdfThe paper is called:
Towards Understanding the Paleocean
By Carl Wunsch