Science for sale

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Global warming threatens our planet and our species, in particular the human subspecies of professional obfuscators in the Hot Air Industry.
We refer to the handful of far-right think tanks fronting for American corporate interests, such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They've spent years -- and millions of dollars in energy company contributions -- trying to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming.
Now comes the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was prepared by 600 international climate experts. The report, released last week, lays out in sobering detail how global warming already has begun, how effects such as rising sea levels and acidity and warmer temperatures will continue over the next century or more with disastrous ecological and economic consequences, and how continued inaction will exacerbate the problems. There is at least a 90-percent certainty human activity is the cause.
Dark arts
Sheesh. How do you spin news like that? That's where amateurs who wish upon a star are separated from true masters of the dark arts.
The spirit of enterprise is working overtime at the American Enterprise Institute. Before the ink was dry on the latest global warming consensus statement, the institute was soliciting scientists willing to contribute to a book-length critique pooh-poohing the report and its conclusions on the perils of global warming in return for a 10,000 "honorarium" (perhaps we should call it a "dishonorarium.")
Scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change aren't paid. That's to protect against conflicts of interest. But that's apparently not a concern at the American Enterprise Institute. It's searching not for the best science that money can buy, but the most plausible-sounding way to forestall action on global warming.