@richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
Post #3765389
2026-07-12 16:37 UTC
There is a long history of imperial science making the public confuse funding with irreplaceability. Early on British scientists were funding to dig up artifacts and study strange "primitive" peoples. Who would study them if not a well-funded expedition sent halfway around the world? Certainly not the people living there -- right?
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@richpuchalsky@mastodon.social 2026-07-12 16:40
But back to climate science. The function of US funding of climate science was to make people around the world pretend that the US wasn't the most powerful country that was sabotaging any attempt to do something about use of fossil fuels. For a while elites were content to hire scientists to study the problem, long after we knew the practical basics, and meanwhile make sure that no actual reduction in fossil fuel use really happened.