In yesterday's exchanges in the Energy and Climate Change Committee there was an interesting exchange between Peter Lilley and Lord Deben, with the latter expressing outrage at the suggestion that a scientist might have said that their results had no effect on the broader global warming hypothesis simply so as to ensure they didn't lose their grant funding.
Deben's outrage quickly switched onto a subtly different point, namely the idea that scientists might be motivated solely by the need to keep grant funding moving on. He then sought to occupy the moral high ground by saying that he didn't engage in such behaviour himself:
I don’t think I have ever accused those who disagree on climate change with unworthy motives. People working in the climate change area do so because they are scientists; because they want to find the truth. I find it increasingly unacceptable for people to undermine their position by saying they are only doing it for the grant or they say this to protect themselves. I don’t think that’s a worthy way for any of us to behave. I’ve never said this about the Global Warming [Policy] Foundation…I don’t think ad hominem arguments are acceptable in any circumstances and we won’t use them.
Now when I appeared on Radio Five a few months ago, Lord Deben was moved to ask his Twitter followers whether the BBC gave a "platform to those who don’t believe smoking causes cancer?", so I don't think we should take his protestations seriously. But unfortunately for Lord D, Lilley later recalled the Fisher House Conference, which was reported on this site at the time, and during which Deben had apparently encouraged the audience to read a book called The Deniers, which, Lilley said was full of the arguments about motivation that Deben said he eschewed. Many readers here will recognise that The Deniers is actual Lawrence Solomon's sceptic-flavoured book about scientists who take dissenting views on global warming. However, from the conversation between Lilley and Deben it is fairly obvious that the book that was discussed at the Fisher House Conference was in fact Merchants of Doubt, by Oreskes and Conway.
Confronted in this way, Deben started to improvise, saying that the book was not an attack on the motivations of scientists but was instead a record of how the US coal industry had sought to undermine the global warming consensus. I've never read the book, so I was surprised when I took a look at its front cover:
That's right. It's subtitle is "How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming".
Oh dear.