Should membership in, or receipt of funds from, UCS or Greenpeace be considered a sign of bias?

Question

in the same way that receipt of funds - however indirectly - from an energy company is considered a sign of bias?

And what about global energy trading firms, or energy companies with large trading arms, like BP, Duke and GE, who stand the most to gain from institution of a worldwide and required carbon credit trading market? Don't they have a financial stake in the AGW theory?

Is it misleading for AGW proponents to suggest that it's an "admission" for Duke's CEO to show support for AGW given that his firm makes so much money in trading and given that trading represents the only realistic avenue for significant growth for his company?

Answer 1

Of course, and working for or receiving money from the IPCC is as well.

Answer 2

I don't think either Greenpeace or UCS funds a lot of research on climate change.  They don't organize conferences on climate change, nor do they pay scientists to write editorials on climate.  What galls you, I think, is that while AGW proponents do it for free out of a sense of scientific objectivity, the skeptics have to pay for it.  That's always been true, conservatives in general have to pay for what liberals get for free (although if you're paying, you get exactly what you want so it's not all that bad).  

Your second part would make sense if GE, BP, and Duke were on the climate change bandwagon from the start.  However they weren't.  Once the science was certain, they did what any good corporation would do, found a way to exploit a situation to make money.  I don't make value judgements against them for doing them this, but for you to read their actions as having fomented a "climate crisis" is a near willful misreading of the chronology of their support, and how the science gave them the opportunity.  They did not create the science to give them a way to make money.

Your final question is the same as the second.  Do you object to corporations making profit?  It sounds like capitalism in action to me.  Are you a socialist?

Answer 3

Yes

Yes

Yes