The Economics of Climate Change | Hacker News Reader

The Economics of Climate Change

online.wsj.com

9 pointsenvitar18 comments

I agree with the article that any global policies have to be very well-founded since they involve very large sums of money, but these research grants? It's pocket change.

My guess is that at the bottom of this there's actual data that shows worrying trends that the involved scientists think are important to continue doing research on, and that some of them fudged it, exaggerated a bit, and polished it a bit to make it easier to "sell" it to the politicians in charge of handing out the grant money.

But that there's some sort of malicious conspiracy to fool then entire world that everything is going to hell? For what's practically pocket change that pays the salaries of a large group of scientists? No, that makes no sense.

And what have they spent the research money on? Hookers and blow? Of course not, it's been spent on climate research and taking us closer to understanding what's happening and what, if anything, we can do about it. Spin-off effects of this is that money has been going into research projects for cleaner energy, more efficient energy use, alternatives to fossil fuel, and all these things are undeniably good.

The media hype, that I could live without, and the Copenhagen Climate Conference is becoming I don't know what, but I hope that cooler heads prevail and that actual non-fudged data and science is used there, because there is of course a lot of that, just because the leak showed one instance of bad data, it doesn't mean that the entire thing is bad.

It might be pocket change to Google or J.P. Morgan. In the academic world, those are career making amounts.

And big grants do give financial rewards to the PI. Say I get a $10 million grant; my university will take about $5 million off the top in "overhead" (to be spent on overpaid administrators, student stress counselors, the latino student center, and maybe even education). I turn to them and say "give me a 50% pay raise or I leave". The university then compares the cost of a 50% pay raise to half my grant, and gives me a 75% raise.

Saying science grant money goes to latino student centers jumps out as odd. Where has this happened?

As I explained in my post, universities take about half of any grant given to them as "overhead". Sometimes it goes down, but rarely below 25%. The overhead is taken from the grant and put into the general fund of the university.

The general fund of the university is used to pay for things like football coaches, the LGBT.* Formal Ball or rock concerts (note: these are all real examples).

In theory, the overhead only pays for facilities and administrative services necessary to use the grant (e.g., rent and electricity for a lab). In practice, the overhead taken is vastly more than what such services actually cost.

> ...think are important to continue doing research on, and that some of them fudged it, exaggerated a bit, and polished it a bit to make it easier to "sell" it to the politicians in charge of handing out the grant money.

This is precisely the kind of thinking that got the United States into the War in Iraq.

Isn't that how all politics are conducted? It would be non-trivial to come up with a better system, too.

I get the feeling that the entire purpose of the CRU email leak is to create FUD leading up to Copenhagen. What exactly was the motive of this anonymous whistleblower? If the person who leaked these emails had the best interest of climate research in mind why were they conveniently leaked right before Copenhagen? I do not believe this leak was done in the interests of clarity because I believe the timing of this leak was significant to the whistleblower. I do hope this leak leads to more openness in climate research. But I don't think openness was the motive of the leaker.

I also doubt any analysis of these emails and their conclusions so close after the leak. It will take time and analysis to understand how the supposed infractions and rigged data actually affected the dialogue surrounding climate change. It's not enough to say someone fudged data. What we need to see is how that fudged data affected the actual debate over the climate's change. And that analysis should take longer than a week.

"But in this decade, according to one of the leaked documents, the total shot up to £11.8 million,"

Holy shit, ELEVEN MILLION POUNDS??? They must be criminals. Nobody makes that much money legally.

Just think how many weather stations, researchers and assistents you could buy for that. Oh wait...

But yeah, research involves a lot of politics.

If only there was some organization on the other side that could afford that sort of money. They'd easily be able to get scientists to produce the results they wanted.

Is that sarcasm or what? During the George W Bush's tenure as president, the US government (backed by the massive oil companies) WAS that organisation. Why did they not prevail? Cause the science doesn't work. This is likely to be the very reason why some climate change scientists have such a hard nosed attitude

Even if you don't believe that is what happened then you must admit that the existing energy companies have a huge incentive to stop this and easily have the funds to compete with the current spending. Please explain why they haven't managed to do this successfully.

The most likely answer is that the science doesn't work and the scientific community has eventually rejected their money. So the energy companies have moved on to funding sceptic groups instead.

I'm pretty sure phenwoods was being sarcastic here, and his comment can be read as saying

"Many companies with much lose from CO2 induced AGW being true have plenty of money. If there was a scientific case to be made for it being false they would have been able to fund it."

Only like every oil company on earth? You don't seriously believe what you wrote?

Not even sure if there are not skeptics on government grants - why shouldn't there be? Do you have any insights into who is researching, and on whose money?

However, a honest question: who benefits from belief in global warming, and who benefits from belief in global not-warming? I have a hard time coming up with big industries benefiting from global warming belief, but there might be some?

Sorry, I was being sarcastic.

But it is one thing to suggest that a scientist's work might be influenced by who's financing the work. It's quite another to suggest, as this article did, that scientists would delibratly concoct a hoax just to secure more funding.

And if it really were the case that scientists are fabricating scares for a few million pounds, why are thry not also fabricating reasuuring theories to secure funding from those with an interest in maintaining the status quo?

Reading that article I was actually shocked at how little money was being spent studying climate change.

Meanwhile, being a "skeptic" is good money these days:

http://tinyurl.com/22go3n

http://tinyurl.com/yzgojux

http://tinyurl.com/2kzqd7

http://tinyurl.com/2ozbrc

http://tinyurl.com/yhealhs

http://tinyurl.com/mrmb9j

http://tinyurl.com/yfq5tam

http://tinyurl.com/yhuhceh

http://tinyurl.com/yf8pekp

(not spam, all links relevant in terms of providing some balance)

There's no need for URL shorteners here

True but the links are quite relevant and telling.

But they're still short and anonymous. Besides relevant and telling, they would be more appealing if they weren't shortened.

"For the world's economy, of course, trillions of dollars are now at stake in pursuit of emissions reductions based on the flawed science that these leaked emails have helped lay bare."

From what I've read about them the emails lay little bare about the science - more about the politics of trying to keep down the FUD-slingers and easily-publicized, some-what contrary findings.

Further, a huge increase in funding does not constitute evidence that it is being used for "flawed science".

The future of powerful data and analysis of climate changes is in sad shape if (unsigned) articles in WSJ.com by persons of unknown scientific credentials become the guides for world policy.

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