crosspost from LBN: Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study - Guardian

Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study


Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday February 2, 2007
The Guardian

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one
of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be
published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank
with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that
emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).

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The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff
have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head
of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel
as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that
are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully
explore the limitations of climate model outputs".

-snip-

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI,...

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