So what I wanted to see is a responsible debate with science being used for evidence. However, what I saw were conservatives saying that Global Warming was not happening so lets do nothing and liberals saying that it was definitely happening, so lets get to 0 emissions. Extremes are bad, but in this case, I rather error on the side of safety than on the side of danger.

And don't knock X-ray lasers. Ok. Maybe they are not a good tool for shooting down missles, but sometimes research into stuff like that leads to other interesting ideas.

I don't agree with your example; the government shouldn't regulate that. But anyway, my argument isn't always that scientists are liars, that's not it at all; but when the global warming thing started, and Gore was getting money to any scientist SUPPORTING it, so we have one big, government funded, ideologically bent science base, it's going to naturally skew data. There is no reason, none, why we should accept one group of scientists over another; while a limited view of credentials should be held, the most important aspect of science is to avoid authority figures dictating what is and is not true, don't you agree? Government bodies, with massive funding and support, will naturally become the behemoths, and the fact that these bodies are staffed by whatever party is in charge is a threat (it's just naive to think Bush is doing it but no other politician ever has). Add to that the fact that most universities are liberal, and it's worse.

Point is, since there is no way to create a reliably apolitical body, the best choice is to pull the wool off our eyes and see the bias and work with it. We need to take both sides and find the truth. Business and grass roots organizations and colleges will still fund science if we did this; it wouldn't be as much, but that's a good thing--we could stop researching crap like X-Ray lasers to shoot down missles.

We need government to support science in a non-political way. This is because good science is now more expensive. A person sitting at home with a chemistry set or a bunch of books is not going to produce as much or as good as a person with thousands of parallel computers doing simulations. If you look at many scientific papers, you will see so many authors because of all the interactions it takes to get new and interesting discoveries. If there were no government labs, government funded colleges would have to cut back research.

I think one role of science should be to answer questions for the government. For example, a politician asks "Is it safer to force parents to put seat belts on their babies in an airplane?" Science goes off and models this without influence from politics or industry and comes back with an answer. (In this case, it is safer to leave off the seat belts because the extra cost of a seat for the baby causes some people to drive instead of fly. Driving in a car is more dangerous for a baby than flying.)

As a scientist, I do not see people trying to support liberal ideas just because they are liberal. Most scientists rather go againstthe flow if they can justify it because it is funner to defend a hard position. However, discussions always have to resolve around studies and observations.

What I see personally is that most of the scientists I know tend to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

I don't mind conflicting interests funding science, because it's ALREADY HAPPENING. Harvard, a bastion of liberal politics, does alot of research; why should I trust them? I do trust scientists, I do; eventually. It all eventually works out, if we let them battle it out. Just like competition works out other problems in the market. But, granting a government monopoly over the most esteemed groups and funding, you are doing exactly the thing that, ironically, most liberals hate when it occurs in the business world.

No, I have to disagree flat out over your assertion that Bush is the only biased president. The reason no one ever complained before is because the bodies were stacked with the SAME PEOPLE that controlled government. Now that we have a powerful republican influence, these democrats are complaining. Many groups have been complaining about global warming scares, CFC junk science, the global ice age the warming advocates were all over, etc, since they came out. It's just that since liberal politics had a control of the science groups, they won.

We have no ozone hole; we noted over 100 years ago that the Antarctic has massive changes in ozone. I believe it's once or twice a year, the ozone disappears in a large chemical shake up, that eventually settles again. ANd not one study has ever been able to link CFC's DIRECTLY to any negative effects.

Okay, so let's trust scientists who, by supporting every scare that comes out, get millions of dollars in reasearch funding? Oh, there's no conflict of interest there! It's just as bad. And actually, Milloy rarely is that sarcastic. Check out his site; he gives you links directly from the IPCC, NASA, etc. He doesn't just go off on rhetoric and ignore the data.

And since Mann has refused, repeatedly, to release his data for over ten years, I hardly support that he gave "no complaint". But, okay, so alot of data was asked for; so what? Why does that matter? Just give it and move on. Oh no; a huge stir had to be made, with all sorts of accusations of meddling in the UN affairs. Well, damn, how dare he want the info released to someone besides the IPCC!

It's funny RealClimate keeps coming up, seeing as how they have accused Junkscience of distortion without basis. Again, we come back to the blame game. The only difference here is thus; I don't believe either side, liberals fully believe one side and fully disbelieve the other. I see that as naive. Sorry, but I do. I try to read both sides, I try to read the Yahoo news when it comes out with something on global warming, then check out Fox as they bring out the OTHER data from whatever report is being discussed and show the counter-evidence the other media "conveniently" forgets. I try to balance both. I can't read everything, I'm not an expert, but I see two, valid sides that I try to balance in my own view. I feel that's a rational, free-thinking way to go about things. I do NOT think believing one side and throwing ad hominem attacks about funding at the other is anything but being as dogmatic as a Christian fundamentalist. As long as the government reports are incomplete, biased, or omit important, contrary info, yes, I want businesses to come out and fund their own reports. To trust ANYONE or ANY SIDE blindly is not, I thought, what was advocated here.

Anyway, I feel like everytime this subject comes up, it becomes some hugs debacle. I'd rather not continue, because I know the next counter-response of mine will require substantial research to start getting down into the gritty aspects. I'd rather not, because my only point is that for every valid claim, I see a valid counter. They are there, and attempting to discredit one side with accusations of association while ignoring that the other side has the same fallacy gets us nowhere. I advise that anyone interested in this bookmark Realclimate and Junkscience, and read both of them. Ignore the accusations and the rhetoric and see what you find in the numbers. THat's what I'm trying to do, and no amount of cajoling or link-tossing is going to change that.

A blank? Just about ever food scare is liberal science, or the IPCC and every other global warming scare.

I was referring specifically to the idea that liberal groups fund science to obtain results favorable to themselves. Unlike the many cases where industry groups have done exactly this, I know of no comparable examples from the other side of the aisle.

I'm afraid you are ignoring history; are you telling me that Galileo was funded by the government? Copernicus? No, independent science is just that; independent.

Yes, but science funded by special-interest groups - whether corporate or ideological - with a stake in the outcome is not independent. To take an example from Mooney's book, when a 2002 EPA study suggested that the herbicide atrazine causes bizarre developmental abnormalities in frogs and other species, the company Syngenta, which manufactures atrazine, funded research that - amazingly - failed to reproduce those effects. Would you really trust those results to be objective, considering they were bought and paid for by a company that had a profit motive in finding a negative result? That is a massive conflict of interest.

It means that whoever is in control of the science bodies is now the dictator of science.

That is how it is becoming, thanks to the Bush administration, but that is not how it always was. Prior to this administration, scientists were not complaining that scientific advisory committees were being deliberately stacked with ideologues, or that results contradicting administration policy were being squelched. Now they are saying so. (For one, Mooney cites a 2004 petition signed by 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 135 members of the National Academy of Sciences that demanded the Bush administration stop tampering with science. Nothing remotely comparable has happened under any previous president.) There were many good former presidents, both Democrat and Republican, who let science guide their policy rather than fixing the science to reflect their policy. The current administration has taken a radical detour from that course.

I've been flipping around http://www.junkscience.com, for example. It's republican, and yet, it references and discusses scientific reports from all over, showing environmentalist and liberal bias, like the meaningless scare over CFCs, or PVC, or pesticides, or DDT, etc.

Pardon me, but what do you mean by the "meaningless" scare over CFCs? An ozone hole the size of a continent does not sound meaningless to me. (Thankfully, that is an older picture, and ozone depletion has begun to decline since the worldwide adoption of the Montreal Protocol - but the damage will not be fully reversed for several more decades, due to the long residence times of CFCs in the atmosphere.)

Your mention of Milloy is quite relevant, since he is mentioned numerous times in Mooney's book. I strongly recommend you take his claims with a grain of salt. Far from being an unbiased skeptic, Milloy is actually a paid spokesman for many of the industries whose products he defends. For example, according to an article in the January 2006 New Republic, two nonprofits run by Milloy received $90,000 from ExxonMobil between 2000 and 2003. (Small wonder he thinks global warming is unproven, wouldn't you say?) He has also taken money from Phillip Morris, following which he attacked findings linking smoking to lung cancer. When asked about these affiliations, Fox News, Milloy's current employer, said that they were not aware of these connections and that he should have disclosed them in his columns, which he did not.

Milloy's usual strategy is to label as "junk science" any finding that might suggest the need to regulate one of those industries' products, regardless of whether he can identify any specific problem with the research; and like J.P. Holding and other loudmouthed Christian apologists, his conclusions are always delivered full of rhetorical bombast and sneering derision to distract from their usual lack of substance. I do recommend you find a more trustworthy source.

The first article mentions the deal with the Senate that dared ask for the methodology to be released on calculating Munn's hockey stick; how dare a Congressman try to facillitate open science debate!

Again, I'm afraid, you have been substantially misinformed as to what is going on here. Do you realize exactly what Joe Barton asked for? He did not simply ask for Mann's data (which, I should note, Mann released to him without qualm or complaint). He asked for an enormous amount of data, much of it completely irrelevant to any imaginable investigation - basically, he asked for a complete accounting of the scientists' entire life's work - and gave them approximately two weeks to provide it. Any unbiased look would conclude that this was done not out of a sincere desire to know the truth, but as a blatant attempt at intimidation. You can read more about this debacle at RealClimate and an article by Mooney for the American Prospect, Mann Hunt.

So, I agree we can't have perfect data, and I never said that. All I am saying is that we need to establish some measurement techniques now, and then hold those for years. And then we need a hell of alot more data about things like the effect of solar radiation. Then come talk to me. I'm not willing to sacrfice trillions of dollars over a 1 or 2 degree change, I'm just not.

And the article was nice, but is merely smoke.

Satellite measurements

Borehole analysis

Glacial melt observations

Sea ice melt

To really deduce anything reliable, we need a set way of taking measurements that we start now and continue on with for 50 years,

That is just irresponsible, considering that we already have the data, and that it will be too late in 50 years.

And this article (BBC) may give you something to think about.

BTW, I liked how that site brought up a point that I mentioned earlier, about how groups try and shield the IPCC from inquiry (RealClimate that is). The first article mentions the deal with the Senate that dared ask for the methodology to be released on calculating Munn's hockey stick; how dare a Congressman try to facillitate open science debate!