At the risk of engaging in a flame war (when I really should be working)...

As far as climate change goes, I think I would go with the consensus of the scientists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Scientific_consensus

Key bits:

The finding that the climate has warmed in recent decades and that this warming is likely attributable to human influence has been endorsed by every national science academy that has issued a statement on climate change, including the science academies of all of the major industrialized countries. At present, no scientific body of national or international standing has issued a dissenting statement. A small minority of professional associations have issued noncommittal statements.

But no doubt this post will follow with reams of people telling us why these opinions are suspect.

An interesting thing that has been happening with the vaccine debate is that the very people who are most expert on the field are prevented from weighing in on the issue, as in "well, we can't believe Dr. X, he published a Nature paper on immunology so clearly he is biased and can't be trusted".

Government has been funding science for much much longer than a couple of decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_society

Just out of curiosity, if pure science is not funded by government, how should it be paid for? By private industry? Do you somehow think that we can place greater trust results of science paid for by corporations?

The lay public has been mistrusting science for quite a while now. Witness the disbelief in findings regarding the lack of connection between autism and vaccines, brain cancer and cellphones and climate change.

We're already well into the era when people doubt the motives and findings of scientists. You can see it here on /. all the time - cue all the rants about how nobody gets funding unless they parrot the party line about global warming and how doctors who support vaccinations are just puppets of Big Pharma.

Problem is, people really believe that they can become experts on extremely complicated topics and weigh the evidence for themselves. I'm not saying we need to have blind trust in authority, but sometimes you've got to recognize that someone who studied climatology for X years might actually know a thing or two that you can't pick up from reading a blog.

posting to undo mistake 'redundant' mod