Some people here think there may be a conspiracy of climatologists to bamboozle the public. Alternatively, someone may have threatened these researchers, bashing in their cars. People who take these hypotheses seriously should give some thought to the practical ramifications. Such as --
How many people do you need to bribe? CNN polled 3,146 climate experts. 97% agreed that global warming is real. http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-19/world/eco.globalwarmingsurvey_1_global-warming-climate-science-human-activity?_s=PM:WORLD It would not do any good to bribe 10 of them, or 100. Scientists do not have much influence on one another. The top 100 leaders in a field could not impose fraudulent data on all of the others. Someone would spot it, and would use this information to oust a top leader and take his place. They often fight for power. So you need to bribe many. Perhaps not all. Let's say you bribe 2,000 and you hope the others will go along because they don't want to be in the minority. Scientists seldom worry about being in the minority, and they often pay no attention to what other scientists say, so this is a risky proposition. You may need to bribe 97% to pull this off, but let's say 2,000. How much do you need to pay? These are middle class people who studied until age 30 to enter the profession. They probably never did anything else, and they are not qualified to do much else. If they are caught taking a bribe, they will be fired and their lives will be ruined. They will spend the rest of their lives working in fast food restaurants and living on food stamps. I suppose they make an average middle class salary of $50,000. You can't bribe them for $5,000 each. No one would risk ruin for that. You can't give them $1 million each. Their colleagues and the IRS would notice they live in huge houses and drive Ferraris to work. Also, that would cost $2 billion. That is a heck of a lot of money to risk on scientists, who are undependable at best, and who have little or no influence on society. Even though these people have published hundreds of papers, Congress has done nothing to address the problem. So the person spending $2 billion to bribe them has so far earned nothing in return. I suppose $200,000 would be a reasonable sum, paid over 10 years. That's $400 million. I wish someone would bribe the cold fusion researchers for that amount! And me!!! So you pay them. Many problems might arise -- You have to hope their bosses, their unbribed colleagues, new reporters, bloggers and others never hear a word about this. No one notices these researchers are suddenly flush, buying new cars and sending their kids to private school. It means that every single person you approach agrees to be bribed. Not one turns you in. Not one demands $400,000 instead of $200,000. Some of these people may be independently wealthy, so this sum would not impress them. Some may have high moral standards. You take a big risk that you will get every last one of them to along. You can't say: "no payoff to anyone unless you all agree." It means they all stay bought. None of them reneges, or decides to turn you in for the publicity, or to collect a huge reward from the people who think climate change is a hoax. It is said that two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. It is difficult for me to imagine 2,000 scientists, and their spouses and relatives would all keep this secret. Frankly, I think it is impossible. Someone would get drunk and start boasting. The anti-global warming people would root around and uncover the plot, offering counter-bribes, pretending to be climatologists, and so on. You can't do this once and leave well enough along. There is a steady flow of new grad students entering the field as older people retire. Every time someone is hired you would have to show up at her apartment with a briefcase full of cash, and hope she is not a trust-fund baby, or the one climatologist who has moral objections to accepting $200,000, or a secret agent of the anti-global warming people, with cameras in her apartment. You would have to have agents in all other first world countries, suborning their scientists. The actual facts of the matter would be abundantly clear to your 2,000 co-conspirators. They are experts. They could see at a glance that the data shows no global warming. The signs of global warming are not ambiguous. The s/n ratio is large. It is like the excess heat in the top tier of cold fusion experiments: you can't miss it. So your scientists would have to work hard, devoting many hours to producing fake data, covering up, and trying to make the fake data so convincing that the other 1,146 experts fall for it. From time to time, outside experts become interested in this and they review the data independently. All 2,000 of you would have to generate airtight, superb frauds to fool the rest of the world. Generating fraudulent data can be as hard -- or harder -- than collecting real data. Experts at NASA would wonder why your people do not allow anyone to review the software they upload to weather satellites. (In real life, there is not the slightest chance they would allow this, but let's pretend.) When Taubes accused Bockris of "spiking" a cell with tritium, Storms did some tests actually adding tritium to a cell. He showed that it is impossible to make this look like spontaneous generation within the cell. Experimental researchers are very, very good at spotting errors in experiments. Abd disputes this, but I think they would instantly spot bogus data and techniques that cannot produce the claimed results. Harassing these 2,000 people, or smashing their cars would also involve many risks of exposure, plus the risk of arrest on criminal charges. I can see smashing one or two cars, but not 2,000. I can think of many other ways this plot might fail. As I said, someone who wishes to steal money from the public can find a better way. Something with less risk which is more likely to pay back. Stock market manipulation, medicare fraud, buying elections, or overcharging on Pentagon contracts come to mind. I think it is incumbent on people who take this hypothesis seriously to think it through and address some of these issues. This applies to cold fusion and to many other areas of scientific research, and also to conspiracy theories about how the 9/11 towers fell and so on. It is difficult to imagine how you would manipulate such a large group of professionals. In my opinion, most conspiracy theories are untenable for reasons like this. That includes the theory that oil companies and other vested interests are conspiring against cold fusion. I think the researchers and I would have heard about these conspirators by now. To be sure, there are some prominent scientists who have it in for cold fusion. They have cancelled publication of proceedings at the last moment, made threats to cut funding for entire departments, fired researchers, threatened deportation and so on. However, these people are not hiding. They are not conspiring, which is defined as acting secretly in an organized fashion. They are well known to me and to all cold fusion researchers. They often gloat publicly about their exploits. They are members of the Jasons, the APS and high officials in the DoE. Some of them were interviewed by "60 Minutes." - Jed
