Foes of global warming theory have energy ties

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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 " >www.climate.org

Ross Gelbspan: www.heatisonline.org " >www.heatisonline.org

Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change:

www " >www " >www:co2science.org

 

 

 

 

 

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