- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- Larry Elliott in Davos adds:
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- 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."
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- 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".
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2005
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/
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