[A-List] Climate change: hot air and smokescreens

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Oil firms fund campaign to deny climate change

David Adam, science correspondent
Thursday January 27, 2005
The Guardian

Lobby groups funded by the US oil industry are targeting Britain in a bid to
play down the threat of climate change and derail action to cut greenhouse
gas emissions, leading scientists have warned.

Bob May, president of the Royal Society, says a "a lobby of professional
sceptics who opposed action to tackle climate change" is turning its
attention to Britain because of its high profile in the debate.

Writing in the Life section of today's Guardian, Prof May says the
government's decision to make global warming a focus of its G8 presidency
has made it a target. So has the high profile of its chief scientific
adviser, David King, who described climate change as a bigger threat than
terrorism.

Prof May's warning coincides with a meeting of climate change sceptics today
at the Royal Institution in London organised by a British group, the
Scientific Alliance, which has links to US oil company ExxonMobil through a
collaboration with a US institute.

Last month the Scientific Alliance published a joint report with the George
C Marshall Institute in Washington that claimed to "undermine" climate
change claims. The Marshall institute received £51,000 from ExxonMobil for
its "global climate change programme" in 2003, and an undisclosed sum this
month.

Prof May's warning comes as British scientists publish new research in the
journal Nature showing that emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide
could have a more dramatic effect on climate than thought. They say average
temperature could rise 11C, even if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is
limited to the levels expected to be reached in 2050.

David Frame, who coordinated the climate prediction experiment, said: "If
the real world response were anywhere near the upper end of our range, even
today's levels of greenhouse gases could already be dangerously high."

Emission limits such as those in the Kyoto protocol would hit oil firms
because the bulk of greenhouse gases come from burning fossil fuel products.

Prof May writes that during the 1990s, parts of the US oil industry funded
(through the so-called Global Climate Coalition) sceptics who opposed action
to tackle climate change. The GCC was "deactivated" in 2001 once Mr Bush
made clear he intended to reject the Kyoto protocol."But the denial lobby is
still active and today it arrives in London."

The Scientific Alliance was set up in 2001 and is run by Mark Adams, a
former private secretary for parliamentary affairs at No 10 and a private
secretary to Tony Blair for six months after the 1997 election.

An alliance spokesman said today's meeting was sponsored but its policy was
not to reveal its funders. ExxonMobil said it is not involved. The alliance
spokesman said funders do not influence policies.

One adviser is Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian
Centre, a noted global warming sceptic and senior scientist with the
Marshall Institute. In 1998 Dr Baliunas co-wrote an article that argued for
the release of more carbon dioxide. It looked like a paper of the US
National Academy of Sciences and was mass-mailed to US scientists with a
petition asking them to reject Kyoto.

Prof King said several speakers at today's event have been to briefings he
attended, including a summit meeting he organised in Moscow last July.
"Astonishingly, when I arrived the programme had been dramatically altered.
This was in the run up to the ratification of Kyoto by Putin and clearly the
same group of people had decided to target our attempt to explain the
current science."

Larry Elliott in Davos adds:

Tony Blair yesterday softened his stance on climate change to persuade
President Bush to sign a global accord. Giving the keynote address at the
World Economic Forum, Mr Blair said climate change was not universally
accepted. With chief executives of many US firms in the audience, he said:
"The evidence is still disputed."

Evidence of climate change dangers had been "clearly and persuasively
advocated" by a very large number of "entirely independent voices ... they
are the majority, the majority is not always right but they deserve to be
listened to".

------

Under-informed, over here

The climate change denial lobby - funded by the US oil industry - has now
moved to the UK, warns Bob May

Thursday January 27, 2005
The Guardian

During the 1990s, parts of the US oil industry funded - through the
so-called Global Climate Coalition (GCC) - a lobby of professional sceptics
who opposed action to tackle climate change by cutting greenhouse gas
emissions. The GCC was "deactivated" in 2001, once President Bush made it
clear he intended to reject the Kyoto protocol. But the denial lobby is
still active, and today it arrives in London.

The UK has become a target because the government has made climate change a
focus of its G8 presidency this year. A key player in this decision is chief
scientific adviser Sir David King, who became public enemy number one for
the denial lobby when he described climate change as a bigger threat than
terrorism.

In December, a UK-based group, the Scientific Alliance, teamed up with the
George C Marshall Institute, a body headed by the chairman emeritus of the
GCC, William O'Keefe, to publish a document with the innocuous title Climate
Issues & Questions. It plays up the uncertainties surrounding climate change
science, playing down the likely impact that it will have.

It contrasts starkly with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), the world's most reliable source of information on
the effects of greenhouse gas emissions. In its last major report in 2001,
the IPCC adopted an evidence-based approach to climate change and considered
uncertainties on impact. It concluded that "overall, climate change is
projected to increase threats to human health, particularly in lower income
populations, predominantly within tropical/subtropical countries", and that
"the projected rate and magnitude of warming and sea-level rise can be
lessened by reducing greenhouse gas emissions". More than 2,000 of the
world's leading climate experts were involved in compiling the report - the
most authoritative scientific assessment to date.

But today, the Scientific Alliance is holding a forum for members of the US
and UK denial lobby to challenge the case for acting on the findings of the
IPCC. The intention appears to be to get its retaliation in first before a
meeting of climate change experts next week at the Hadley Centre, at which
Sir David King will take part.

Possibly more worrying is how much prominence their views are receiving in
the UK media. The Daily Telegraph bizarrely used an anonymous leader on the
tsunami in Asia to question the value of cutting emissions: "Whether or not
this would have the effects claimed by ecologists - and the science is
inconclusive - any gain would be insignificant next to the changes in
temperature caused by forces outside our control."

But the Daily Mail seems keenest to board the well-oiled bandwagon. Fresh
from its now discredited campaign against MMR, it has run six opinion pieces
over the last year questioning the science of climate change. David Bellamy
and columnist Melanie Phillips have perhaps predictably joined in, but more
surprising has been the conversion of Michael Hanlon, the paper's science
editor.

Last week, Hanlon cited Michael Crichton's research for his new novel as a
further indication that climate change science is a con. The theme of
Crichton's story is that environmentalists exaggerate the threat from
climate change and eventually trigger its extreme effects themselves.

It demonstrates the flakiness of the Hanlon case that he should need to rely
on a sci-fi writer who has previously warned of the dangers of bringing
dinosaurs back to life and of nano-robots turning the world into grey goo.
All entertaining scare stories, all complete nonsense.

So there we have it. On one hand we have the IPCC, the rest of the world's
major scientific organisations, and the government's chief scientific
adviser, all pointing to the need to cut emissions. On the other we have a
small band of sceptics, including lobbyists funded by the US oil industry, a
sci-fi writer, and the Daily Mail, who deny the scientists are right. It is
reminiscent of the tobacco lobby's attempts to persuade us that smoking does
not cause lung cancer. There is no danger this lobby will influence the
scientists. But they don't need to. It is the influence on the media that is
so poisonous.

In a lecture at the Royal Society last week, Jared Diamond drew attention to
populations, such as those on Easter Island, who denied they were having a
catastrophic impact on the environment and were eventually wiped out, a
phenomenon he called "ecocide". It's time for those living in denial of the
evidence about the impacts of climate change to take note.

· Lord May of Oxford is president of the Royal Society and was chief
scientific adviser to the government 1995-2000