I really didn't want to get involved with this discussion but I guess I just can't help myself.
GE, who seems to be making a killing selling wind turbines these days. There are corporate interests on BOTH sides, but AGW alarmists seem to ignore one side entirely.
Totally agree.
Yes there are corporate interests on *both* sides. But the question is what is the magnitude of those interests?
In reality you're comparing pennies to dollars.
It's tough to get the sum totality of numbers but you can get at enough of them to get an idea of the kind of scale that we're talking about.
For example GE totally dominates the world market in wind turbines installing one of every two new wind turbines in the U.S.
Also from http://www.gepower.com/about/press/en/2009_press/050409d.htm.
"GE Energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and energy delivery technologies, with 2008 revenue of $29.3 billion. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, GE Energy works in all areas of the energy industry including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy; renewable resources such as water, wind, solar and biogas; and other alternative fuels."
In other words GE Energy's total *revenue*, of which wind turbine and other "alternative" energy equipment is only a *fraction*, totals $29.3 billion and because of GE's dominance in the world market this probably represents about half of such revenue in the world.
Contrast that to just *one* oil company ExxonMobil whose 2008 *profits*, not revenue, totalled $45.2 billion. It should be pretty clear that while ExxonMobil is large, it doesn't dominate the world oil market anywhere near the level that GE dominates the wind turbine market. And then of course there's the entirety of the coal industry to consider as well.
So OK I'll grant that you have a point that there is financial motivation on both sides of this argument however can you honestly deny that the oil/coal interests don't totally swamp out something as inconsequential as wind turbines?
You can even go ahead and add the slightly less than $2 billion a year in federal funding that goes to support climate research and you'll still end up with *far* more financial motivation on the side of AGW deniers then there is on AGW "alarmists" as you call them.
Like I said it's comparing pennies to dollars. Can you honestly deny this?