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).

(Continued here.)

Here's the story on the report itself:

Global warming man-made, will continue

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

A panel of international scientists predicted Friday that global warming will continue for centuries no matter how much people control pollution, in a bleak report that blamed humans for killer heat waves, devastating droughts and stronger storms.

The report said people were "very likely" the cause of global warming — the strongest conclusion to date — and placed the burden on governments to take action.

"It's later than we think," said Susan Solomon, co-chair of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are to blame for fewer cold days, hotter nights, heat waves, floods and heavy rains, droughts and stronger storms, particularly in the Atlantic Ocean, the 21-page report said.

It highlighted "increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level."

(The rest is here.)