Oil companies tried to pay scientists to undermine climate change report

Yesterday, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a major report on climate change. [Read the report (PDF).]

According to the Unon of Concerned Scientists:

After six years of assessing climate science research from around the world, the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has solidified the scientific understanding that key heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere "have increased markedly as a result of human activities," and the "net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming." The report states that evidence of the climate's warming "is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level."

"This report reaffirms that our emissions are the primary cause of global warming," said Peter Frumhoff, Director of Science and Policy at UCS. "The good news is that by taking action today to dramatically reduce our emissions, we can avoid much of the warming projected in this report."

[Read more.]

Sounds like the kind of official validation we need to actually start doing something in this country to curb our carbon emissions, right?

Well, maybe not.

You see, even as the Rep. Henry Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was conducting a hearing to investigate political interference in the work of government climate change scientists, the British newspaper The Guardian was preparing to report that "the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration," offered money to scientists for articles that criticize the IPCC report. [Read story.]

Money can perhaps buy lies, money can buy spin, but money can't change the truth about the real damage that we're doing to the earth.

But unmitigated profits are apparently more important to these rich oil executives than the health of this planet or its effects on their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.