22/09/2006

Global Warming is a Myth?

Senior figures from the US Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), have described global warming as a myth. According to Guardian Unlimited, "the CEI [have also] responded to the recent release of Al Gore's climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, with adverts that welcomed increased carbon dioxide pollution."

Well done to ExxonMobil for no longer funding the CEI!

However, Bob Ward of The Royal Society - Britain's premier scientific academy - has written to the Director of Corporate Affairs at Esso UK, accusing ExxonMobil of continuing to communicate an "inaccurate and misleading impression of the evidence of climate change". Added to this, the Royal Society points out that in 2005, ExxonMobil donated a total US$2.9million to a further 39 organisations that have also "misrepresented the science of climate change".

Read the letter in full here (592kb PDF)

This claim is based on a piece of public information literature entitled "ExxonMobil 2005 The Worldwide Giving Report" which apparently only lists US organisations(?), the Royal Society is wondering how many other organisations are benefitting from this kind of 'greenwash' funding.

At least two of the organisations have links to the UK. The International Policy Networkis a thinktank with HQ in London. In 2005, their Executive Director wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph entitled "Greenhouse gassing" in which she argued: "...the cost of taking action now is likely to be far higher than if action is delayed. Current technologies for reducing emissions are expensive. Their rapid implementation would divert resources from more important activities."

In 2004, a US institute jointly published a report with the UK group the Scientific Alliance which claimed that global temperature rises were not related to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

"There is not a robust scientific basis for drawing definitive and objective conclusions about the effect of human influence on future climate," it said.

Bob Ward concludes his letter to Esso UK as follows: "...I have shared the contents of your documents with some climate researchers who are Fellows of the Royal Society and it would be useful to update them about whether ExxonMobil will be continuing to express views that are inconsistent with the findings of their work."

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