The government-worshipping Salon.com site is back with another essay on the politics of global climate change. According to Salon, Exxon may have spent as much as 16 million dollars during a 7-year period from 1998 to 2005 on “organizations [which] muddy the scientific waters.”
Two points: (1) $16 million is NOTHING. Exxon has spent vastly greater amounts on government-sponsored and approved climate “research” and messaging; and (2) $16 million is an UTTERLY TINY sum compared to the vastness of government funding (which is in the high hundreds of BILLIONS) of the climate-change-by-CO2-is real hysteria.
Salon repeats assertions that fossil-fuel businesses should be investigated by the government for investigating climate-change claims, and suggests that funding for climate change research of a skeptical nature is somehow illegal.
Several questions arise from this chain of reasoning:
* Are energy companies not allowed to debate in a scientific area where their commercial interests are involved?
* Are business not legally permitted to challenge a government’s scientific assertions?
* Are business not even allowed to look into governmental science claims?
* Isn’t the scientific process about inquiry, doubt, testing and skepticism? Since when do scientists want LESS research into a scientific question?
* Doesn’t any governmental ‘investigation’ into private science funding set a bad precedent by chilling inquiry? Or might that be the purpose of the New York State Attorney General’s Office?
