REMEMBER the days when tobacco companies denied there was a link between smoking and cancer? Litigation put an end to that, but the tactics live on elsewhere. The US Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says that misinformation and denial continue when it comes to global warming. This time it鈥檚 the world鈥檚 biggest company, ExxonMobil, that has been fingered as the bad guy.
UCS, a non-profit organisation based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has published a 68-page report accusing ExxonMobil of exaggerating uncertainties over the causes of global warming. UCS says ExxonMobil has done this by funding 43 bodies critical of claims of climate change, such as Frontiers of Freedom based in Washington DC, in the apparent expectation that these groups will propagate disinformation about global warming even when what they are publicising has been shown to be wrong. 鈥淭hey gave life to views discredited by the scientific community,鈥� says the report鈥檚 main author, Seth Shulman. 鈥淣ot a penny should be spent on this.鈥�
In fact the petroleum industry has spent rather more than a penny 鈥� ExxonMobil, for example, spent some $16 million between 1998 and 2005, according to the report. In 1998 ExxonMobil-sponsored organisations promoted a report that said carbon dioxide emissions posed no warming threat. The report was authored by, amongst others, Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist affiliated with at least nine ExxonMobil-funded groups. In 2003 Baliunas published a review paper in Climate Research (vol 23, p 89) claiming that the climate had not changed significantly in the past millennium. Her conclusions were challenged by 13 of the scientists whose work she cited, but ExxonMobil-funded groups have continued to promote it.
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ExxonMobil told New Scientist that the company does not control the views of the organisations it sponsors. 鈥淲hile there is more to learn on climate science, what is clear today is that greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors that contribute to climate change and that the use of fossil fuels is a major source of these emissions,鈥� the company says.
David Read of the Royal Society in London says the debate about climate change must not be controlled by industry-funded lobby groups. 鈥淕iven the tactics of many of these organisations to date, we should not be surprised if they redouble their efforts ahead of the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment report.鈥� The IPPC report is due next month.
