Where they keep the money

From the New York Times:

The Republican presidential contenders regard global warming as a hoax or, at best, underplay its importance. The most vocal denier is Rick Perry, the Texas governor and longtime friend of the oil industry, who insists that climate change is an unproven theory created by “a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”

What never seems to occur to the numbskulls of the right as they pander to their ignoramus base is that climate scientists are smart people, not just highly educated people. If these scientists were really conniving world wide for a couple hundred thou a year, wouldn't they whore out to interests with a little more money than the government? Wouldn't you, if you had a Ph.D. just lying around waiting to be monetized, think about getting paid maybe a mill instead? As long as it's going to be dirty money, why not hit up the American Petroleum Institute? Or, the coal industry could really use a friend.

This story that Republicans tell each other tries to assuage their own knowledge that they in fact are the bought and paid for assholes, not the climate scientists. It's another false equivalence. Industry's in the global warming fight strictly for the money, so the other side - the side of reality - must be in it for the money too. Yeah, that's the ticket.

There's no explanation for wingnut credulity on this except that they want to believe it so badly that they choose to ignore its and their own stupidity.