<quote>But a lot of scientists seem to have noticed that tacking "climate change" onto their funding proposals increases the odds of them being accepted.</quote

<quote>But a lot of scientists seem to have noticed that tacking "climate change" onto their funding proposals increases the odds of them being accepted.</quote> First of all, it's not at all clear that this is true. But it _is_ exactly what you would expect if there was a perfect consensus that global warming is a threat. It's also exactly what you'd expect if global cooling were the threat. Public research money tends to flow toward issues of great public concern, and not surprisingly, possible change in the global climate is of great public concern.