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Comment by briandear | Hacker News Reader

Doesn’t the anti-fossil fuel crowd have similar incentives?

Shouldn’t all studies be held with skepticism?

If the results were the opposite, people with ideological intent would be trumpeting this study as further confirmation of their own bias.

Basically it sounds like you are saying, “be skeptical of anything that goes against my deeply held beliefs because my cause is just while the other side is evil.”

Selective skepticism is a bad way to do science. Scientists should be skeptical of everything that doesn’t have repeatable experimental evidence.

Am I understanding your point correctly?

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I feel the controversy comes from the fact that one side has a large fund of money and is biased towards keeping things the way it is, whilst the other has significantly less funding and does not earn any money, or likely even significant benefits from the other side (mostly the young and poor will be affected, neither of which hold as much political clout).

All studies should be held with skepticism, but (assuming skepticism is a "resource" that can be exhausted), we should likely focus more of our skepticism on studies that clearly benefit from the result of the topic being discussed.

I object to the idea of limiting new carbon production is keeping the same. It is more like a victory. Solar continues to grow, and fossil fuel companies are being forced to come up with ways to make themselves carbon neutral. Sounds like a win.

Technically a good quarter with positive cash flows is profitable - even if the firm has been making losses for years.

The oil giants have helped suppress research, pervert justice and many other things to prevent this day.

It is here because the inevitability of reality makes it so.

I’m glad we are here, but we needed this 30 years ago.

No. The anti-fossil-fuel movement, in general, doesn’t have tens of billions of dollars at their disposal. Deeply held beliefs may certainly influence scientific research, and that should be guarded against, but by itself it doesn’t let you buy scientists wholesale.

The diehard AGW "skeptic" needs just two simple maneuvers to counter any high-profile messenger warning about climate risks:

1) If the messenger has not invested their own money into efforts to reduce emissions, say "they won't put their money where their mouth is."

2) If the messenger has invested their own money into efforts to reduce emissions, say "they're just scaring people about climate to profit from their investments."

It's funny how people are still having these conversations on the eve of the bicentenary of climate science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fourier

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