"One can make a big mistake by assuming scientists don't have agendas. A scientist funded by an industry is automatically treated with suspicion, and his results often dismissed on that basis alone."

One can make an equally large mistake by assuming that scientists do have agendas. At the end of the day, they are subject to peer review. The output of peer review is ultimately the very essence of their careers. Respect is afforded in science by being right, by being able to defend your ideas against all comers. By not being proven wrong by your peers. Respect is also afforded in science by proving others wrong via the peer review process- and the more visible the theory disproved the more respect you get. I have participated in this process, I would guess that you have not, nor that Larry has.

In the end the output of the peer review process is all an academic has- its (I think) a lousy life and a lousy way of making a career- but they submit themselves to it.

Does science or scientists have political agendas? Yes, sometimes, but more often then not those political agendas are expressed outside the academic process(*)- even if they want to dress it up in scholarly garb. Case(s)-in-point: Noam Chomsky, Teller, Carl Sagan.

There is politics in science just as much as there is in engineering or software design. However, just as in engineering, the product is divorced from the politics. There is no such thing as a workable 'Liberal' skyscraper or 'Family Values' Hydroeletric Dam. There is no such thing as a peer reviewed and vetted 'liberal' climate model or 'anti-abortion' cell model.

Scientists may be motivated by their politics to study a field, but if they produced Biased, flawed or worse- outright faked product, then it comes out in peer review and their careers suffer. They don't get tenure, they loose grants and they end up working at a Jr. College in Arizona. There are DOZENS of post-docs slavering after every opening, and HUNDREDS of impoverished top-notch European, Russian and Asian researchers dying to get into the american grant system by winning a spot in a department. Academia is where the brightest go to compete against eachother, from all over the world, and it is fierce!

What you want me to believe is that there is a vast Emperors New Clothes conspiracy going on in climate study- where whole schools of thought are publishing flawed bullshit and getting away with it. This is a nice bedtime story told by someone who has not 'served time' in academia. But thats all it is. This is propaganda. Crap. It doesn't work that way.

Furthermore, you cant show me a concrete example of this- can you? Unless you turn to the works of a few discredited researchers or a few kooks outside climatoology who want to demonstrate 'the entire field' as 'fakery and nonsense'. This happens all the time, Tom, this animosity between academic fields. Most recently- the biologosts made a good run at the field of Anthropology with some rather 'stunning' results. You have Geneticists making these grandious claims about how Anthropology wasn't a 'real' science and that 'they' knew how to do this better.

In the end, most of the genetic data was shown to be flawed and naive- hell the famed 'mitrochondrial eve' stuff was shown to be crap recently when it was found that its NOT the case that all mitochondrial DNA is inherited in-toto from the mother.

What you and your 'Bloggist pseudo-intellectual' set has done is latch onto a few trivial obsetrvations (that climate change happens in general), and a few inter-academic rivalries and are trying to say that 'all science behind global warming is biased'. I think you are on a fools errand, and have the fools arrogance.

In the end, the science of global warming may be wrong or it may be right, but in the end the only politically motivated half-assed conclusions in the process are, frankly, yours.

Davin L.

(*)I would be more concerned about the polics inside academia skewing results than the politics outside. I have seen promising Grad Students destroyed because they said the wrong thing in answer to a question at a conference. These have nothing to do with Left/Right politics, and everything to do with what school or tradition of thought you belong to