Accusations that climate science is money-driven reveal ignorance of how science is done
by John Timmer - May 24 2012
One of the unfortunate memes that has made repeated appearances in the climate debate is that money isn't just influencing the public debate about science, but it's also influencing the science itself. The government, the argument goes, is paying scientists specifically to demonstrate that carbon dioxide is the major culprit in recent climate change, and the money available to do so is exploding.
Although the argument displays a profound misunderstanding of how science and science funding work, it's just not going away. Just this week, one of the sites where people congregate to criticize mainstream climate science once again repeated it, replete with the graph below. That graph originated in a 2009 report from a think tank called the Science & Public Policy Institute (notable for using the serially confused Christopher Monckton as a policy advisor).
The report, called "Climate Money: The climate industry: $79 billion so far—trillions to come" (PDF) and prepared by Australian journalist Joanne Nova for the Science & Public Policy Institute, claims to show how money has distorted climate science. There are several aspects to this argument, but we'll start with the money itself.
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http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/05/accusations-that-climate-science-is-money-driven-reveal-ignorance-of-how-science-is-done/
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Who's cancer research lab I worked in while getting my BS in biochemistry/biotech. The man was doing some very good work, yet he drove a beat-up Honda Accord to work every day, and either ate in the student cafeteria with us because the faculty restaurant was too spendy or just brown-bagged it.
Yeah, those damn research scientists are really raking in the money 
