You want to get money from the public? Televangelists have often known one way to get the money to roll in is to put the fear of God into viewers. Oral Roberts famously warned his followers that if he didn't raise enough money, God was going to call him home. Unfortunately, Roberts was either wrong or God reneged and Roberts survived.

Climate scientists have been doing the same thing for decades -- first with the "next Ice Age" and now with global warming. Just ask yourself this question: If the Earth's warming was overwhelmingly a natural occurence that had happened numerous times before, would scientists be getting boatloads of grant money to study it?

The answer is self evident, and now some scientists are beginning to wonder whether their tales of incipient doom have had the unforseen consequence of shooting their credibility in the foot.

In their efforts to capture the public's attention, then, have climate scientists oversold global warming? It's probably not a majority view, but a few climate scientists are beginning to question whether some dire predictions push the science too far.

"Some of us are wondering if we have created a monster," says Kevin Vranes, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado.

I encourage you to read the entire article and consider whether the science is at the heart of climate research nowadays or whether it is the quest for ever more grant money. I also wanted to point out this gem near the end of the story:

Would junior scientists feel compelled to mute their findings, out of concern for their careers, if the research contradicts the climate change consensus?

"I can understand how a scientist without tenure can feel the community pressures," says environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., a colleague of Vranes' at the University of Colorado.

Pielke says he has felt pressure from his peers: A prominent scientist angrily accused him of being a skeptic, and a scientific journal editor asked him to "dampen" the message of a peer-reviewed paper to derail skeptics and business interests.

Does this sound like science, religion or just a scam?