You know, most people's funding isn't climate-related. Sure you can suck-up to a coal company and say whatever they want for cash, but most academics have a lot of academic freedom. I think the pressure to publish is more immediate, and if you're not working on anything urgently, showing how someone else's study is crap is relatively easy to do. Honestly, a study like this is probably made for the cheap-shot headlines. Nobody apart from popular science writers and beer companies are likely to pay much scientific attention to such an insignificant topic.