More Heat than Light?

There's an article up on TCS Daily about recent developments in the global warming debate. Several things he mentions are interesting, but this is the section that amused me:

From the other side of the battlefield, Al Gore and Newsweek coordinated an assault on a few skeptics with all kinds of guilt-by-association accusations. They allege that a few scientists were offered $10,000 (!) by Big Oil to research and publish evidence against the theory of manmade global warming.

Of course, the vast majority of mainstream climate researchers receive between $100,000 to $200,000 from the federal government to do the same, but in support of manmade global warming. Apparently, that's okay since we all know that the federal government is unbiased and there to help, whereas petroleum companies only exist to force us to burn fuels that do nothing more than ruin the environment.

Little damage was done by the Gore-Newsweek assault, though, since the attack amounted to little more than a verbal "Well, your mama wears Army boots!" It didn't help matters that the magazine's own columnist, Robert Samuelson, published a follow-up article saying the allegation of bribes offered to scientists "was long ago discredited" and that "the story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading."

I suppose this was supposed to sound good in a magazine, but 10k sounds like a pretty pathetic research grant. Also, this parting shot:

Oh, and by the way, in the interests of a fair fight, the next time someone sees Al Gore, could you ask him to stop calling us "global warming deniers"? I don't know of anyone who denies that the Earth has warmed. I'm sure this has just been an honest misunderstanding on Mr. Gore's part, and he'll be more than happy to stop doing it.

I suppose the idea was to make it sound like "holocaust deniers". And "people who deny that human activity is primarily responsible for global temperature increases" just doesn't sound as incriminating.

[HT: John Farrell]