My last post talked about some research into reflective plants that in my opinion will do nothing to combat global warming (even assuming humans are causing the earth to warm). But I actually think this research is a good thing.
Sure, it won’t cool the planet. But it is a great way of getting EU funding. Global warming is the current fad in science. If you want funding, you make sure your proposal mentions global warming somewhere. At the end of the day this will just be plant science and genetic engineering research that the scientists want to do. It is bound to further knowledge of genetic engineering techniques, or photosynthesis, or achieve something else useful. But they can pitch the research towards global warming this year to get funding, and in a few years time the same facilities can be used to combat cancer, or global cooling, or whatever.
Quality research requires long-term projects. But it is very hard to obtain funding for long-term projects these days, most funding being given in 3-year cycles. It is also hard to obtain funding for research for the sake of furthering human knowledge, funders want to see something useful after 3 years – which is fair enough as they are paying for it. But research purely for the sake of finding out the unknown is also vital, because it may be useful in the future in ways we cannot imagine today.
So you have to follow the fads and ensure that however society’s goals change you can satisfy those goals to get funding, while keeping your long-term, more widely useful but not currently fashionable work going at the same time.
So don’t panic too much thinking money will be wasted on something pointless, it all pushes the boundaries of scientific knowledge that bit further, using the money of whoever wants to fund research this year. And the more global warming money that can be put into research rather than thrown away on carbon trading and other rubbish the better.
So I wish them luck and hope they find out something useful to further our knowledge of plant science.
Samuel Dennis 