Although I’m not going to do someone else’s legwork and come up with total funding levels (and I think that’s a red herring because I don’t know that the question can be factually answered, as it would involve a detailed examination of the source(s) and characterization of the sourcing groups that would be open to argument at every turn), don’t pretend that it happens on both sides. I was paid more than $20,000 to write a paper proving that reducing greenhouse gases at a power plant was good for everyone economically, undercutting other papers that said it wasn’t. Of course, I used “just the facts”, but ultimately the paper hinged on an assumption of two critical things which were only estimates and which had wide variables where, depending upon what you assumed, could say that GHG reduction was the worst thing you could do, or a no-brainer. (the two assumptions were, in effect, “true” cost per ton of CO2 and the available tons of biomass annually from the US Forest Service and a native American facility).
In the end, I did a sensitivity analysis on both parameters as a matrix of solution points, and let the reader decide what they wanted to assume, since it wasn’t scientifically valid for me to choose any single assumption for the two variables. I fear the result went over the head of the audience, as people kept asking me “I don’t care, just tell me the answer!” As a result, my attempt to encompass the variability of real life was not well-received.
As far as total levels of funding, I have no idea. I know that I’ve written or helped write an enormous number of technical papers, and in all that time the number of times where undue influence has been exerted on me is about 1/4 of the time or less. However, that influence has come from folks on the GW-belief, GW-non-belief, and the “we don’t give a shit about GW” side fairly equally. The vast majority of the time - and note that I work fairly heavily for the “evil” coal plants - they just want the facts, and they decide what it is they do with those facts, and that is where the “influence” comes into play. But I also do work for environmental folks trying to push their schemes (coal beneficiation, biomass solids, bio-oil, etc.) for GHG reduction.
And you better believe that the same folks who make money building power plants are rubbing their hands with hope, yes hope, that CO2 capture/sequestration will be mandated in some form. Because who’s going to get those EPC contracts? Them. A very high-up person at B&W told me at a conference, over drinks that night, that they’re anticipating that far ahead in the future carbon capture will make up as much as 50% of their business, and be highly profitable. Just like the same people who built the plants (like, oh, my company) made and are making enormous amounts of money off of scrubbers, SCR/SNCR, mercury capture, and all the studies, tests, and conceptual designs out there.
There’s a huge entrenched industry that is waiting and ready to make money off of GHG reductions. Read that as either positive or negative, depending on your position.
You underestimate humanity, but quite a bit. As an extreme case, do you doubt that a full nuclear exchange wouldn’t have affected the environment (even if it didn’t cause a nuclear winter?) Even been to LA during a smog alert? Read about the hole in the ozone layer, and how we both caused it and cured it.