...My point is that you are a whore wether you take money from Exxon or from Greenpeace....
If they came to you with cash because they think you will serve their objectives, then you will be considered a whore if nothing you find is in opposition to their POV, in an area where some things clearly are. For example, working for greenpeace and concluding global warming is only do the man or for Exon and concluding none is due to man.
The "scientist" I called a whore - did exactly that ("man is contributing nothing"). - Clearly the increase in CO2 and CH4 (all those beef industry cows farting
etc.) do decrease the rate at which Earth shine IR in their absorption bands leaves Earth.
True scientists can disagree about how large is the fraction of the global warming that man is adding. I tend to think it still a minor part. I also think by their opposition to well done (as in France) nuclear power, Greenpeace is responsible for a large fraction of the global warming due to man.
My main concern is that the fraction that man does add to increase rate of global warming may be sufficient to trigger the decomposition of the methane hydrates. - Then it is possible that Earth will be transformed into a cooler version of Venus. I.e. no liquid oceans on Earth -all H2O on Earth as a very high pressure steam atmosphere, (but no the lead lakes as are found on Venus, because we are too far from the sun for that.)
This risk of a runaway instability is small, IMHO, but real as the amount of methane that can be released is now large* and with man speeding of the natural warming, may come into the atmosphere in a time too short to be removed by low temperature oxidation or dissolved into the oceans.
Thus I think it prudent, in our state of ignorance, to slow the release of CO2 - We may be in the process of making this planet sterile.
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*The relative amount of free methane that can be released is also higher than any prior thermal oscillation that Earth has had because most of it is a direct product of living organisms and the methane producing biomass of Earth has never been so large before. I.e. not only can it come out of the hydrates into the atmosphere more quickly, but their may be more of it. Some estimates are that there is more energy in methane in these hydrates than all the petroleum man has ever burnt.
