http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/124642_warming02.html

Monday, June 2, 2003
Foes of global warming theory have energy ties
By JEFF NESMITH
COX NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- Non-profit organizations with ties to energy interests
are promoting a controversial new study as proof that prevailing views
of global warming are wrong.

The scientists who wrote the study contend that the global warming
of recent decades is not without precedent during the past 1,000 years,
as other scientists have claimed. In fact, they say the Earth was
even warmer during what is known as the "medieval warm period"
between A.D. 900 and 1300.

The paper has touched off a worldwide storm of e-mail among climate
scientists, some of whom have proposed organizing a research boycott
of two journals that published the study.

The links among authors of the new study, the non-profit groups
and the energy interests illustrate a three-way intersection of
money, science and policy. Energy interests underwrote the study
and help finance the groups that are promoting it.

The study also illustrates a strategy adopted by some energy companies
in the late 1980s to attack the credibility of climate science, said
John Topping, president of the Climate Institute and a former Republican
congressional staffer who founded the institute in 1986.

By relying on the news media's inclination to include both sides
of a story, the industries were able to create the impression that
scientists were deeply divided over climate change, Topping said.
"It was all very shrewdly done," he said.

The institute, which takes the position that climate change
threatens the global environment, promotes international cooperation
to address the issue. Less than 1 percent of its funding has come
from oil industry sources, Topping said, with the rest coming from
foundations.

Most climate scientists think the rise in global climate -- largely
stable until the late 1980s, they say -- results from the atmospheric
buildup of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases," especially carbon dioxide
released by the combustion of fossil fuels. Industry-backed groups
claim their study challenges the validity of this view by presenting
evidence of global warming when fossil fuels were not being burned
in appreciable quantities.

The study, "Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes
of the Past 1,000 Years: A Reappraisal," was published several
weeks ago in a British scientific journal, Energy and Environment.
The authors contend in the 65-page paper that their reanalysis
of data from more than 200 climate studies provides evidence of
global temperature shifts that are more dramatic than the current
one.

The research was underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute,
the trade association of the world's largest oil companies.
Two of the five authors are scientists who have been linked
to the coal industry and have received support from the ExxonMobil
Foundation. Two others, who are affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics, also have the title of "senior scientists"
with a Washington-based organization supported by ExxonMobil Corp.

The organization, the George T. Marshall Institute, is headed
by William O'Keefe, a former executive of the American Petroleum
Institute. He also was at one time the president of the Global
Climate Coalition, a now-defunct organization created by oil and
coal interests to lobby against U.S. participation in climate
treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol.

"Statements made about the warming trend of the 20th century
and the 1990s do not withstand close scrutiny," O'Keefe said
at a luncheon for study author Willie Soon, a physicist and
astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, to present
a summary of the new research.

Major news organizations did not publish a Harvard-Smithsonian
Center news release that declared that the scientists "determined"
that the warming trend is neither the hottest nor the most dramatic
change in the past 1,000 years. But it was picked up by the
Discovery Channel Online.

That article was copied and distributed by the staff of the
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, headed by
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a climate-change skeptic.

The principal target of the paper was Michael Mann of the
University of Virginia, whose compilation of thousands of
proxy indicators led to the conclusion that the past two
decades have been unusually warm.

Mann said the Soon study does not even attempt to reconstruct
global average temperatures, but simply highlights anecdotal
evidence of isolated trends. Soon acknowledged that his research
does not provide a comprehensive picture.

The energy industry provides significant funding for groups
that employ some of the authors or promote their new study.
Soon's co-authors were Sallie Baliunas, also from the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center; Sherwood Idso and his son,
Craig Idso of Tempe, Ariz., who are the former president
and the current president of the Center for the Study of
Carbon Dioxide and Global Change; and David Legates,
a climate researcher at the University of Delaware.

The Idsos, who have been linked to Western coal interests,
do not reveal financial sources. But IRS records filed
by ExxonMobil Foundation show that it provided a grant
of $15,000 to the center in 2000.

These records and others show that ExxonMobil Foundation
and ExxonMobil Corp. also have contributed $160,000 to the
George T. Marshall Institute in the past three years and
more than $900,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Soon declined to say how much he is paid to serve as a
"senior scientist" with the Marshall Institute. Both he
and Baliunas have that title.

Other board members include techno-suspense novelist Thomas
Clancy Jr., newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer,
Dr. Bernadine Healy, former director of the National
Institutes of Health, and Frederick Seitz of Rockefeller
University.

Ross Gelbspan, a former Boston Globe reporter and editor
whose 1997 book, "The Heat is On," details industry efforts
to discredit climate change science, said conclusions that
greenhouse gases are causing the planet to heat up are the
result of the "most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific
collaboration in history.

"The contradictory statements of a tiny handful of discredited
scientists, funded by big coal and big oil, represent a
deliberate -- and extremely reckless -- campaign of deception
and disinformation."

AT A GLANCE

THE PREVAILING VIEW: Climate change threatens the global environment.

THE CONTROVERSY: Most climate scientists think the rise results
from the atmospheric buildup of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases,"
especially carbon dioxide released by the combustion of fossil
fuels such as coal and petroleum.

Industry-backed groups claim their study challenges the validity
of this view by presenting evidence of global warming at a time
when fossil fuels were not being burned in appreciable quantities.

THE JOURNALS REPORTING IT: British scientific journal,
Energy and Environment; Discovery Channel Online

THE BACKERS:

The research was underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute,
the trade association of the world's largest oil companies.

Two of the five authors are scientists who have been linked
to the coal industry and have received support from the
ExxonMobil Foundation.

Two others, who are affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics, also have the title of "senior
scientists" with a Washington-based organization supported
by conservative foundations and ExxonMobil Corp.

The organization, the George T. Marshall Institute,
is headed by William O'Keefe, a former executive of the
American Petroleum Institute.

PRINCIPAL TARGET OF THE STUDY: Michael Mann of the University
of Virginia, whose landmark compilation of thousands of "proxy"
indicators led to the conclusion that the past two decades
have been unusually warm.

On the Web: The Climate Institute: www.climate.org

Ross Gelbspan: www.heatisonline.org

Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: www.co2science.org

 

 

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