Well, maybe you can find one in Australia; looking at this ad:

http://www.cawcr.gov.au/jobs/PCCSP.php

it is apparent that loudmouths are far more important than scientists.

It is quite a dilemma; how do you at least get the policy makers to listen when you’ve got some very loud headless chickens? We can’t really pay a loudspeaker like Morano to do the talking because they’ll be spreading even more untruths.

It doesn’t help that newspapers enjoy printing anything ‘controversial’ even if it is Dr. X vs the local garbage collector.

This battle will not be won by fighting it out on the pages of the Gray Lady or the Washington Post. The Morano’s of the world do not have enough people, time or money to takes us all on in every venue that we can find. It we really want to win this argument, it will come though organized, planned, grassroots efforts.

If you have read Chris’s columns, write your own. That is how we win.

People who want to tell the public the facts about phenomena like global warming — let’s call them “environmental journalists” if they strive to be apolitical, and “activists” if they see themselves as blatant actors within or against “the system” — must generally undertake the same amount of investment and expense as those who, for whatever reasons, end up employed at spreading disinformation about these same phenomena. The same years of costly education, and “apprenticeships” via internships and low-paying early jobs. The same costs of life, such as medical bills, overdue fees at the library, vacations, rent-slash-mortgage, raising progeny, gifts for family members on their birthdays, the occasional purchase of some insane luxury like a piece of jewelry or a nice pair of shoes. Etcetera.

However, do-badders can look forward to an endlessly rising ceiling of pay and professional opportunities to make all this up. While, the pay ceiling is about waist high for the do-good opposite numbers of the Marc Moranos.

My own (somewhat tongue in cheek) theory about why this is, is that right wingers don’t have a fundamental ethical problem with wanting and having money, as a concept or a reality. While liberals, progressives, and leftists, who need to position themselves against the abuses of “the system,” even when they ARE the system, distrust money, and disdain the notion that anyone who wants to make good money really sincerely cares about doing good. And God knows they must be sincere!

Some keep hoping they’ll wake up in the antiseptic Star Trek future where we’ve overcome the need for dirty money and can just get on with doing the good work.

Others actually are making good money, but have to dissemble so much about it to maintain the appearance of ideological purity, that nothing fundamental changes. (See the right-wing attacks on Al Gore’s investment endeavors for demonstration of this phenomenon turned into an enemy weapon. Kudos to Mr. Gore’s business acumen, sez I, and imagine how much better things might become if Royal Dutch Shell followed his lead.)

I don’t know what excuse the environmental journalists have, however. Like any journos, we’re certainly cynical enough to have known from the start what we were getting ourselves into.

By contrast, there are a lot of interests that stand to lose a lot of money if we take AGW seriously. All the fossil fuel companies, all the companies that use fossil fuels in large amounts — this is going to cost them billions and billions of dollars. And so it’s a good investment on their part to finance opposition to AGW.

So yes, the money favors the opponents of AGW. In general, I would be reluctant to argue this point, because it is ultimately invidious. Moreover, we don’t need it; we have the science on our side. And politically we’re winning.

However, there is an ugly hypothesis that bears consideration: the possibility that opponents of AGW are paying sock puppets to argue their case online. “On the Internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog.” There certainly seems to be an army of such people out there, and their online presence far exceeds their presence in the real world. Out in the real world, these people are generally regarded as extremists; here on the Internet, they are ubiquitous. I certainly don’t want to advance some sort of dark conspiracy theory; I suspect that some fraction of the online opponents of AGW are sincere if misinformed. For them, this is an expression of the culture wars. Just look at the vituperation they vomit forth — clearly this is not a scientific issue for them, but a deeply emotional one. Indeed, I would expect that any paid sock puppets would be much more reasonable in their approach, the better to undermine confidence.

Why these people are motivated by such anger and hate is another question entirely.

Not too long ago, I spent an hour at a bar trying to convince a pretty smart guy that the dew point was really not at all related to climate change. His argument was confusing, convoluted, and ultimately very seductive if you didn’t know a lot about science. He didn’t come up with the argument on his own. There’s a team of very smart people formulating and disseminating these arguments, and they’ve got all the resources they need to do so.

That we have scientific facts behind us should strengthen our rhetorical position but doesn’t mean we don’t need to have one. We can be right all day long and still lose the argument if we fail to convince everyone else that we’re right. Framing a debate takes time and talent, and ultimately it takes money, too.