SCIENTISTS OFFERED CASH TO CHALLENGE CLIMATE REPORT
IAN SAMPLE, GUARDIAN, UK - 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 an ExxonMobil-funded think tank with close links to the Bush
administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasize the
shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change. The AEI has received more than $1.6m from Exxon Mobil
and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush
administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of Exxon Mobil, 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".