A Bribe by Any Other Name

Is still a bribe.

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group
funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate
change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an
ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered
the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the
UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Travel expenses and
additional payments were also offered.

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely
regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will
underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the
Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments
were given a draft last year and invited to comment.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20
of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond,
a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of
trustees.

This is disgusting. The legs that global warming skeptics are standing on could not be any more transparent and rotten. The IPCC report states the following:

there is a 90% chance that human activity is warming the planet, and that global
average temperatures will rise by another 1.5 to 5.8C this century, depending on
emissions.

It makes me really sad to think about it. This is something that has been evident for at least the last 20 years - just ask Al Gore - but anyone who said so was marginalized in the - corporate bought and owned - media. Moreover, this collective denial was orchestrated by those who stood to gain the most from hurting the most and furthered by those who believed them. The impact is now irreversible.

As a people, we are too far past the time when we put stock in blind faith and refused to examine and learn from reality. Let us study facts. Let us study people. Let us study the world around us and cast off false assumptions. Let us grow. It is all too clear what will happen if we do not.

(sorry, guess the bribe story touched off a bout of self righteousness)