Do you think climate science reseach funding should be eliminated?

Question

Either 72% of Yahoo Answers Environment users agree that climate science funding should be eliminated, or something fishy is going on with the voting system.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071126113024AAl0Qiw

How do you feel about climate science research funding? Should it be increased, stay the same, cut, or eliminated altogether? Please defend your answer.

As a side note, how do you think this particular answer got 21 best answer votes while the second-most got 3?

Answer 1

The majority of people on this forum agree that global warming is caused by humans. Have a look at any of the 'is global warming a myth' or 'is global warming natural or manmade' type questions and 70 to 80% of answerers believe it is real and caused by humans. Here are three such questions...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnNeSwYu1WupYSHPrPlaIZ8S.Rd.;_ylv=3?qid=20071024100604AArAlZF
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=At23saJ0nC.UFXPHAB6sK9AS.Rd.;_ylv=3?qid=20070521110645AADVFX2
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AhGs4nSn0VvGb4vq28zqA2sS.Rd.;_ylv=3?qid=20071015124055AAb3lxK

(Note to skeptics: I didn't choose these questions becuase they have the most people saying global warming is true, I chose them because they received the most answers. You can choose your own questions to look at from here http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index;_ylt=AnI7zzUsrLqeyYD6hYG6J00S.Rd.;_ylv=3?link=over&sid=2115500306&more=&s=-answer_count )

No question in global warming ordinarily gets 21 votes apart from the Nancy Pelosi question where the best answer was chosen with 23 votes (from the 2800 people who answered it). The Cate Blanchett question had 200 answers and the best answer was chosen with just 8 votes.

Unfortunately there are some people on here who not only break the rules but have an obsession about trying to gain credibility and to this end they vote for their own best answers using multiple accounts, give themselves lots of thumbs up then declare it's because they have lots of fans, use the same accounts to give many thumbs down to the people who don't agree with them.

No doubt you will also have noticed that several of the supposed skeptics on here are in fact the same person. Each of us has our own writing style and even if we try to disguise it, there are certain characteristics that remain. Graphologists are experts in this field but you don't need to be an expert to spot the unique characteristics found in the answers from supposedly different people.

Not only are these types behaviour in contravention of the rules (and likely to lead to suspension if reported), but it shows utter contempt and disregard for the other users of the forum. There is a great deal that can be learned about the personality of the person(s) who adopt this approach, I won't go into details here as it's not a particulalrly attractive portrayal of their character(s).

An interesting point. The point-gaming approach is adopted by a sizeable number of the skeptics on here. The proponents such as yourself, Keith, myself etc have upwards of 90% of best answers chosen by the asker but several of the skpetics have a majority of best answers chosen by the voters, despite the majority of users on here disagreeing with them. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that the majority of skeptics have private profiles whereas the majority of believers have public profiles.

Dana, at the end of the day Yahoo records the IP address of every question, answer, page visited, vote cast, thumbs up, thumbs down etc. If you wished you could email or phone Yahoo (I have the email address and phone number should you require them). You could request that Yahoo suspend the accounts of the people who are abusing the system.

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Turning to your question about funding. Sir Nicolas Stern, former Vice President of the World Bank and an economics expert, calculated that the current cost of global warming is 1% of global domestic product, about $500 billion a year. This is expected to rise to 4% ($2 trillion a year) by 2050 and to a maximum of 20% ($10 trillion a year) in the worst case scenario.

The GDP of the US is $13.2 trillion per year, 1% of this is $132 billion, that's the current cost to the US economy of global warming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

In the US the enacted climate change budget for 2005 was $5.147 billion and the proposed budget for 2006 was $4.955 billion. http://faculty.msb.edu/brewert/Brewer%20BTA%20Project%20July%2020%202005.pdf For every $1 that climate change is costing the US it's investing $0.04 in tacking the issue.

Over the course of this century the economic cost of climate change would be in the order of $1 to 3 quadrillion if it's not addressed soon. Even if we went mad and spent as much as $1 trillion on addressing climate change it's a drop in the ocean compared to the long term costs.

Then of course there's all the environmental, technological, scientific and health benefits that have come out of studying climate change so we're getting a good return on our comparatively small investment.

Given that global warming is already having an impact on the economy and the environment, I think it would be prudent to increase spending substantially.

Answer 2

The added comment by Larry is better though. The idea that business will step up and start to do climate research is naive. Googling search strings like "climate forecasts business" and "climate forecasts commercial" return no links to anything with a .com addy (with the exception of Weather Underground). I doubt there are any firms whose major product is climate forecasting, although perhaps some of the big re-insurance firms have in-house forecasters. But the hard work of developing the models and making sure they are accurate and correct is done at academic departments and national laboratories. This is also true of commercial weather services, which for the most part repackage data acquired by government-funded instrumental networks and satellites and use models developed in academia.

Interestingly, all of the regional climate forecast sites that do pop up are .org ones that are consortia of universities, .edu ones, and .gov ones. From my cursory look, I highly suspect if the federal government cut off funding there would be no climate research. Maybe that would be better in a way, nobody would know what was coming and we could all just go out on the beach and watch the big waves crashing onto the shore, just like all the residents of Galveston in 1900, blissfully unaware that those waves were generated by the approach of Isaac's Storm.

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/isaacsstorm/

Answer 3

Of course global warming research needs funding. So we can design the optimum strategy to reduce it.

At the risk of being tiresome.

Yes, voting can be rigged. As can thumbs up/down. Fact of life, and there's nothing that can be done about it. This isn't the Academy Awards.

So ignore it, and carry on.

Actually Larry got hosed by it on this question:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArcJKSXWeBAX1k8_UHCFMhvty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071126140732AAnikXY&show=7#profile-info-7hs3WPzlaa

I gave a reasonably supportive answer, but was blasted out by a number of votes given to an answer with no intellectual content.

Somewhat poetic justice.

It's amusing to me, not a problem. If I cared about the "Best Answer" deal I'd never post an answer to a "skeptic". And frequently, the person posting the question loses all credibility by picking an answer that clearly has no content.

Answer 4

I'm not sure how much funding they already have, but this is a global problem that other countries are researching so I do think it should receive funding. If it were strictly based on opinion, like abortion, then I don't believe it should have government funding but since this can be shown scientifically, regardless of opinion, research should be funded. Besides, if the skeptic's and deniers are so sure there's nothing to worry about, they need more data supporting that claim and so far, I and many, many others are not convinced.

Answer 5

Funding the science is great. The thing that is desperately needed is some perspective. There are obvious facts that are ignored because of the bias of the funding. One fact is that increased CO2 allows plants to open their stomata less to get the same amount of CO2 so the plant is more efficient in the use of water and probably more efficient in general. The only funding for that is some guy that whines about the spread of poison ivy like it is going to destroy the world and is the only plant affected. They need to do the thing that liberals claim to want and that is provide EQUAL funding for opposing views and see how much actual science suddenly springs up showing how it isn't going to destroy the world. The scientists want long term funding and saying there is no problem doesn't help pay the mortgage.

Answer 6

A lot of the global warming research funding is funding from the environmental groups.(ketchup money)
No one says anything about there side.
But they make a big deal about the anti global warming side being funded by the oil companies when it is not.
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20819

if the oil companies do not believe in global warming why are they investing in solar and wind power companies.
answer that question.

Research payed for by ether side is useless research.
as it will be biased to get you to believe what they want.

ALL research papers published should require a disclosure statement.
There is to much biased research being done. not only on global warming but medical research, drug research.
research on toxic chemicals (agent orange, trichloroethylene,etc) etc etc.
All this research is a waste of money. and it hurts people in many cases.
If the money is tax payers money it is fraud and theft of our money.

Answer 7

I think funding should be drastically reduced. I don't trust the corrupt politicians to administrate climate research, social security, health care or much of anything else. I feel like we would get real objective science from private institutions that have no agenda and no federal funding.

The answer most likely got 21 best answers because most people don't trust the government or think climate research is agenda driven science.

Answer 8

With a war going on, all fundings will be eliminated. Why fund for anything when we are virtually going to destroy the planet. Doesn't make sense.

Answer 9

maybe dr jello just has 20 mulits.

climate science should have extra funding but i don't think that US government funded reports can be trusted that much if one of bushes advisers can edit a scientists work. even if human caused climate change is not happening we still need to understand what changes are happening so that we can plan for the future. climate science has also provided many other good things like weather reports and natural disaster warning systems.

Answer 10

The results of a poll where people have to go to a website to vote are always going to be skewed. There's nothing remotely random about it.

Whatever you think of the current climate debate, it's hard to imagine an issue of greater importance. Of course research should continue.