Puncturing the Conspiracy Myth

At Daily Kos, David Brin posted a nice, meta rebuttal to one of the central assertions of climate skeptics: that anthropogenic global warming is some mass conspiracy within the discipline of climate science, a solid wall of group think that none of the field’s scientists dare to cross. As Brin observes:

This uniformity of craven venality has to include even the ambitious postdocs and recently-tenured junior professors who, in every other field, sift constantly for some flaw in the current paradigm in order to go gunning after the big boys and thus make a reputation.  What, even the Young Guns are sellouts?  Even the paladins of skeptical enquiry are conspiring together in a grand cabal to…

…to what?  Ah, now the story gets even better.  All the scientists and post-docs are colluding to foist this scam, in order to win a few ten-thousand dollar grants.  This  loose-change-grubbing, paradigm slavery is cited to explain the GCC imbroglio — while the oilcos and petroprinces, who operate major propaganda outlets and have TRILLIONS staked in the status quo… they have no agenda at all.

The whole post is worth a read.