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Comment by Tycho | Hacker News Reader

Do you have figures on the size of government funding for climate research relative to the size of private funding for climate research?

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Federal spending is just shy of twelve billion as of 2014 plus an additional twenty-six billion [0] ,and has likely increased since then. Private funding is harder to measure. I also think there's a case to be made that many people are "integrating backwards", looking for a specific answer and finding the research to justify that. This always happens when an issue is politicized, and this issue is undoubtedly politicized.

[0] https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/climate_change_funding_manage...

Meanwhile in the oil & gas drilling and exploration sector:

> According to market research by IBISWorld, a leading business intelligence firm, the total revenues for the oil and gas drilling sector came to $2 trillion in 2017.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030915/what-percent...

>total revenues for the oil and gas drilling sector came to $2 trillion in 2017.

And all that money was immediately given to dirty evil fake scientists, right?

Funding is irrelevant to this question, salary is the important part: if the scientist is selling out their principles for personal gain, it's their take home that will matter to them.

There is a LOT of documentation on scientists making a lot more money in private industry than in government sponsored research.

Any examples of high profile climate scientists who have moved on to make a lot of money doing research unrelated to global warming?

Not that I've ever seen. That's the weird part of the original accusation, climate deniers are, almost as a rule, people with degrees in unrelated fields (often education ironically). This "climate advisor" of the original article is a Physics Professor specializing in atomic physics, optics and spectroscopy.

Accusing climate researchers of skewing their results for funding makes no sense when they are ALL on the same side of the argument and that you could make hay in the current adminstration by being on the other side.

Occams razor would lead us to the conclusing that the evidence really is super overwhelming ...

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