The Real Money in the Climate Debate
I have yet to meet a skeptic who reports getting any money from mysterious climate skeptics. A few years ago Greenpeace had a press release that was picked up everywhere about how Exxon was spending big money on climate denialism, with numbers that turned out to be in the tens of thousands of dollars a year.
The big money has always been in climate alarmism. Climate skeptics are outspent a thousand to one. Here is just one example
It sounds like the makings of a political-action thriller. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded Arizona State University a five-year, $20 million agreement to research the effects of climate change and its propensity to cause civil and political unrest.
The agreement is known as the Foresight Initiative. The goal is to understand how climate-caused disruptions and the depletion of natural resources including water, land and energy will impact political instability.
The plan is to create visually appealing computer models and simulations using large quantities of real-time data to guide policymakers in their decisions.
To understand the impacts of climate change, ASU is using the latest advances in cloud computing and storage technologies, natural user interfaces and machine learning to create real-time computer models and simulations, said Nadya Bliss, principal investigator for the Foresight Initiative and assistant vice president with ASU's Office of Knowledge and Development.
I can tell you the answer to this study already. How do I know? If they say the security risks are minimal, there will be zero follow-up funding. If they say the security risks are huge, it will almost demand more and larger follow-up studies. What is your guess of the results, especially since the results will all be based on opaque computer models whose results will be extremely sensitive to small changes in certain inputs?
Postscript: I can just imagine a practical joke where the researchers give university officials a preview of results. They say that the dangers are minimal. It would be hilarious to see the disappointment in the eyes of all the University administrators. Never in history would such a positive result be received with so much depression. And then the researchers would say "Just kidding, of course it will be a catastrophe, it will be much worse than predicted, the badness will be accelerating, etc."
