United Nations:Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 (€7,680) 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, an ExxonMobil-funded think tank 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). Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.
The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science.
It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.
The American Enterprise Institute has received more than $1.6 million 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 the American Enterprise Institute's board of trustees.
The letters, sent to scientists in 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".
Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation which wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia.
"The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice," he said.
The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.
"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."
One American scientist turned down the offer, citing fears that the report could easily be misused for political gain.
"You wouldn't know if some of the other authors might say nothing's going to happen, that we should ignore it, or that it's not our fault," said Steve Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university.
The contents of the IPCC report have been an open secret since the Bush administration posted its draft copy on the internet in April.
It says there is a 90 per cent chance that human activity is warming the planet, and that global average temperatures will rise by another 1.5° to 5.8° this century, depending on emissions.
It projects that Arctic ice will shrink, and perhaps disappear in summers by 2100, while heat waves and downpours will get more frequent. The numbers of tropical hurricanes might decrease but the storms will become stronger.
The Gulf Stream bringing warm waters to the North Atlantic could slow, although a shutdown is highly unlikely, it says. And sea levels are likely to rise by between 28cm and 43cm (11-17in) this century, a lower range than forecast in 2001.
Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The American Enterprise Institute is more than just a think tank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra.
"They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."
- (Guardian Service, Reuters)