Agreed, quite fascinating. What really puzzles me are people with strong scientific backgrounds, usually on the right, who think the relatively minor "profit motive" for mostly government scientists is enough to have them all be in on some grand scientific conspiracy, with regard to global warming, yet ignore the far larger "profit motive" of the big energy/oil companies, who underwrite much of the "skeptical" science.
I know a couple of well-respected climatologists, one of whom is quite liberal and one of whom is fairly conservative, but each of them has no doubt that GW is real and that human activities are at least partly to mostly responsible. They also say that there's no shortage of climatologists who regularly question elements of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) theory and realize that if someone were to find some giant flaw in the theory or models, fame and fortune (well fame, at least) would follow, like it would for any major scientific breakthrough
And it goes beyond that: many of these folks claim "big science" (climatology) can't be trusted, yet they have nearly full trust in other examples of "big science," such as pharma. It's a huge contradiction. I've been in big pharma for 27 years now and while I personally believe the industry is generally fairly trustworthy (I'm very confident my company is, just knowing how seriously everyone takes scientific rigor and ethics), there have been enough scandals and there's certainly quite a big "profit motive" in this industry (like energy, way more than for government climatologists) to at least have people question the industry.
In addition, there are people on the left who have become so strident about AGW that I believe they actually hurt the credibility of the science, especially those who use the long term threats of AGW as a weapon to try to force relatively draconian social change, when that might not be the best path forward. Personally, I believe in doing what we can to reduce consumption of fossil fuels (and production of resulting greenhouse gases) by focusing on both conservation (looking for reductions and efficiencies help companies and individuals) and a "Manhattan Project" of sorts to try to develop "clean" alternative energies to make them competitive with fossil fuels on a kwh basis. The bonus is maybe we also become a lot less dependent on foreigh oil. I also believe we can utilize energy taxes in reasonable ways to help fund things like improved infrastructure and research into alternative fuels.
