How Many Nobel Prize Winners Support the AntiGlobal Warming Crowd 99

On Sun, 25 Jun 2006 09:20:36 -0700, Snit

Then I think you need to reexamine the situation. If you think scientists are unbiased, then you really need to get out more often. The scientific method may be unbiased, but the people interpreting the results *always* apply some sort of bias. Among scientists, there also seems to be a tendency towards self-aggrandizement. Any time there's a threat that could cause a problem, scientists studying the problem are quick to overemphasize it. If it's not climatologists going on about global warming, it's astronomers going on about near earth asteroids. If it's not astronomers going on about near earth asteroids, it's nuclear physicists going on about nuclear weapon proliferation. If not that, then it's disease researchers freaking out about potential superbugs. Etc, etc.

I think it's a result of federal research money being distributed, in part, based on the level of threat perceived by the public from an issue. If climatologists make global warming out to be a major threat, then a lot more money gets spent researching the 'problem'. That's not to say it's some mbuttive conspiracy to get research funds--it's a universal tendency towards enlightened self-interest on the part of scientists depending on the money. That's not to say that they're out and out lying about the results, but rather that their *conclusions* are biased in favor of their own situation.

When dealing with something like, say, how galaxies form, do you often hear scientists talk about certainties? I don't know about you, but most of the ones I've heard seem to live in the realm of probabilities and likelihood (not that this is a bad thing). But when we talk about something like global warming, they suddenly become damn sure about the cause. Why?