why do you think the skeptical side is driven by bad intentions and paid for by Big Oil?
Because of a few things:
1) An overwhelming majority of the experts accept AGW. That tells me there is very little evidentiary justification for opposing it.
2) The level of opposition and the close alignment between political viewpoints and AGW viewpoints tell me that the opposition is not motivated by the evidence.
3) The considerable, physical evidence that the fossil fuel industry IS financing a disinformation campaign and has been doing so for many years.
I think if I had to say, I'd say that the "bad intentions" of the denialist camp is a result of their political outlook on the world. Republicans are not, generally, humanitarians. They see bad in others whether or not such views are justified.
Steve McIntyre is one of the most influential skeptics in the world.
That's not saying much. He caused one paper to be adjusted but the adjustment had NO effect on the paper's conclusion.
I personally think he should have been rewarded by someone, or some govt, at least to the tune of enough of a stipend that he could hire an intern to do some of the research. he gets nothing and it actually costs him money.
He is free to apply for research grants. If he is as successful and influential as you suggest, companies should be lining up to finance his work.
do you actually believe that the majority of skeptics are motivated by anything else than the weakness of the evidence?
I think Professor Curry has it right when she brings up motivated reasoning. We are all subject to it. That makes it more important than ever that we follow the evidence. And the evidence is NOT weak. The evidence points to AGW. But there is a small camp of people who have motives for rejecting that evidence and their reasoning is affected to reject that.
has Freeman Dyson been bought off? really????
Dyson is a bit of a case. The man is currently 90 years old. He has always considered himself a "subversive" and a "heretic" and believes that such roles are crucial to the advancement of science. From, Wikipedia:
Global warming
Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that "[o]ne of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."[37] However, he believes that existing simulation models of climate fail to account for some important factors, and hence the results will contain too much error to reliably predict future trends:
The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world we live in...[37]
He is among signatories of a letter to the UN criticizing the IPCC[38][39] and has also argued against the ostracization of scientists whose views depart from the acknowledged mainstream of scientific opinion on climate change, stating that "heretics" have historically been an important force in driving scientific progress. "[H]eretics who question the dogmas are needed... I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies."[37]
Dyson says his views on global warming has been strongly criticized. In reply, he notes that "[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have."[40]
More recently, he has endorsed the now common usage of "global warming" as synonymous with global anthropogenic climate change, referring to recent "measurements that transformed global warming from a vague theoretical speculation into a precise observational science."[41]
He has, however, argued that political efforts to reduce the causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority:
I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I'm saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans.[42]
Since originally taking interest in climate studies in the 1970s, Dyson has suggested that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be controlled by planting fast-growing trees. He calculates that it would take a trillion trees to remove all carbon from the atmosphere.[43][44]
So, if you're looking for support from Dyson in rejecting the greenhouse effect or replacing it with TSI, you're going to be disappointed.
