Stephen C

Both sides of the global warming argument tend to claim that money and personal interests are lined up on the other side.

Dirty Energy Money ( http://dirtyenergymoney.com/ ) just put out some big numbers about oil money. I haven't seen anything specific like this from the skeptic side. I'd be interested to see some footnoted explanations of the claims about money influencing politicians -- have you seen a million dollars or so go to a politician in a way that might push them to be either a GW-believer or GW-denier?

Both sides -- I'm just looking for actual numbers, actual payments, not theories.

I find the debate over carbon taxes odd. Let's say you're an anti-tax Republican who believes that global warming is a hoax and all taxes are bad and distort the economy. Wouldn't it _still_ be better to force taxes away away from income (=Work, a good thing) to carbon (=using resources that we import, not particularly good even if there is no climate effect). Taxes are bad, but the worst thing you can tax is what we currently tax.

Can some people against carbon taxes tell me why I'm wrong -- it especially seems odd to me because if Republicans accepted carbon taxes under the requirement that income taxes go down, they could probably make that stick right now... but are mostly losing the debate about whether global warming is happening and so by not making that compromise we're likely to see a net increase in government interference in the economy.

I keep hearing that politicians (and sometimes scientists) are pressured to be for or against the theory of global warming due to the money from special interest lobbies. How much money comes from GreenPeace and all the other "Global Warming is a disaster" groups, and how much comes from CO2 producing industries and "Global Warming is a hoax" groups? Please answer with actual numbers and ideally references!

[If you believe free markets are most often the best answer:]

Are car fuel efficiency standards a good idea from a free market perspective -- forcing everyone in the nation to spend more money in the short term to cut their collective demand for oil?

Do you think that OPEC's cartel benefits OPEC?

My first gut feeling is that CAFE standards will be seen as a bad idea from a free-market perspective and be something that the WSJ will oppose, and OPEC or other cartels (if you can get away with creating one for what you have to sell) are obviously good for the participants... what's the difference?