Global warming professors are third highest paid profession in the public sector

3/2/11, "More on the climate gravy train," WashingtonExaminer.com, Iain Murray, opinion

"I'd just like to add something to Max Border's excellent Opinion Zone post on the climate gravy train below. There is actually strong empirical evidence that climate scientists are very highly paid, and it comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The BLS conducts a National Compensation Survey every year to assess how much workers are paid. Most valuable is the fact that it puts everything down to an hourly wage, so you can judge how well people are paid in professions that work long hours (like firefighters - 2556 hours a year) compared to profession that work fewer hours (teachers - 1408 hours a year).

Here's the link to the 2009 survey. Here are the highest paid occupations, along with a few others that we normally think of as high paid:

1. Airline pilots...$112.97

2. Law Teachers, public sector, postsecondary (ie law school professors)...$100.24 per hour

3. Chief Executives (private sector)...$91.18

4. Physicians and surgeons...$89.51

5. Law school professors, private sector...$82.36

6. Private sector engineering professors...$76.11

7. Psychiatrists, public sector...$73.37 per hour

8. Dentists...$73.19

9. Health specialty professors, private sector...$71.45

10. Atmospheric, earth, marine, and space science teachers,postsecondary, public sector...$70.61 per hour

Public sector CEOs...$58.13 per hour, Judges...$56.77, Private sector Lawyers...$59.53, Public sector Business school teachers...$63.55, Public sector Health specialty teachers...$66.12, Financial sales agents...$54.61, Marketing managers...$50.19, Petroleum engineers...$52.91, Accountants and auditors...$29.77

These are all mean earnings, which accounts for the very high earnings of some CEOs and so on. If median earnings are used instead, our global warming professors are almost equal with private sector CEOs - $75.29 per hour compared with $75.48 - and better paid than General Practitioners - $73.48 an hour.

So global warming professors are the tenth highest paid profession in the nation and the

• third highest paid profession in the public sector.
  

In terms of median earnings, they are paid as much as the average private sector CEO.

• Mothers, have your daughter marry a global warming professor!"

via Tom Nelson