The trillion dollar guess and the zombie theory - Climate Change: The Facts - page 117

things got more creative. In paper after paper the hot-spot kept being 'found' (albeit in
odd conditional ways). Absent from the paper-flow was a single paper from those same
scientists that headlined that it had gone missing. Pretty much the only time anyone
admitted it was lost was in the introduction to a paper where they thought they had found
it. Confirmation bias anyone?
Lessons in marketing zombie-science
It's been a dedicated, relentless quest to resuscitate the meme that died a thousand deaths.
Those who were convinced in the theory really had nothing to work with (except a lot of
money) but somehow they managed to keep the fear in play.
#1 Start with money
It takes a lot of money to keep a really silly idea afloat. (It's best if it's someone else's
moneyandevenbetterifyoudon'thavetopayitback—thankthetaxpayersoftheWestern
world).
Sceptics are largely volunteers, and even the largest and most well recognised sceptical
organisation—the Heartland Institute—runs on a small budget of around six or seven
milliondollarsannually(forallitsprojects),yetthegovernmentgravyflowsoverbelievers
like the Amazon river. Over $100 billion in scientific research buys a lot of irrelevant
repetitive 'me-too' type of papers. 35 Each of those papers gets its own press release. To
some extent, academia and science publishers are de facto advertising agencies, and they
only have one customer—the government.
When the carrot is a $2 trillion global carbon market, it even brings out the green side
of investment bankers. Deutsche Bank were so concerned about the environment they paid
for a 70-foot-high carbon clock of doom in New York. (When will the bankers build a
whale clock wall? When they can trade Humpback Credits.) This debate is so paranormal,
Deutsche bank didn't think the IPCC, UN, NOAA, NASA, and worldwide academia were
doingenoughtodefeatscepticsandevenissueda50-pagesciencereportthemselvescalled
Climate Change: Addressing the Major Skeptic Arguments . 36 Is it a coincidence that in
March 2009, Deutsche Bank had about $4 billion under management involving climate
change?
Meanwhile the same teams of intrepid journalists who denounced and hunted Exxon
for funding sceptics had no problem at all with bankers promoting believers. There were
no headlines 'Bankers profit from Carbon Scare' or 'Deutsche protects market with
Scare-Mongering Report'. Presumably journalists felt the banks were just interested in
saving the planet.