Do you honestly care about Global Warming?

[John Feeney]

Other scientists are just as capable of warning of alarming outcomes of not funding their research. But the only ones being accsused of it seem to be the climate scientists.

There could be a few reasons for that. Among them: (a) Climate scientists are particularly opportunistic and greedy, so they are among a minority of scientists who make alarmist proclamations, (b) Most scientists make extreme, alarmist proclamations, but since there's a chance of significant amounts of tax money being spent to address those of the climate scientists, right wing ideologues only worry about them, (c) Though they're all human and bits of exaggeration and spin are inevitable, scientists, on the whole, don't make extreme, alarmist proclamations, but since there's a chance of significant tax money being spent on the concerns of climate scientists, right wing ideologues (and oil companies) accuse them of making such proclamations to try to discredit them and slow any such spending.

Since I haven't seen many warnings of a "world coming to an end" nature from climate scientists, and since tax money does get spent on things stemming from the findings of other scientists, I'm inclined to think third possibility is the more likely. There could be others. Someone might argue, for instance, that the nature of climate science provides particularly good opportunities for alarmism. But I think there are many other areas of research with equally good opportunities.

Also, consider how most of what we hear about this comes through the media. (unless we read the climate journals etc.) Seems to me it's only reasonable to expect more spin from political commentators and ideologues than from scientists, no matter how hard the latter try to engage in it. So isn't that logically where the lions share of the spin is coming from?