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Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study
By Ian Sample
The Guardian UK
Friday 02 February 2007
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. The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs". Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. "The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to take on sound scientific advice," he said. The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report. "Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy." One American scientist turned down the offer, citing fears that the report could easily be misused for political gain. "You wouldn't know if some of the other authors might say nothing's going to happen, that we should ignore it, or that it's not our fault," said Steve Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university. The contents of the IPCC report have been an open secret since the Bush administration posted its draft copy on the internet in April. It says 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. Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious scientific institute, said: "The IPCC is the world's leading authority on climate change and its latest report will provide a comprehensive picture of the latest scientific understanding on the issue. It is expected to stress, more convincingly than ever before, that our planet is already warming due to human actions, and that 'business as usual' would lead to unacceptable risks, underscoring the urgent need for concerted international action to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. However, yet again, there will be a vocal minority with their own agendas who will try to suggest otherwise." Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash." On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming. Go to Original Exxon Mobil Posts Record Annual Profit By John Porretto The Associated Press Thursday 01 February 2007 Houston - Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) on Thursday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company - $39.5 billion - even as earnings for the last quarter of 2006 declined 4 percent. The 2006 profit topped the previous record, also by Exxon Mobil, of $36.13 billion set in 2005. The record earnings amounted to roughly $4.5 million an hour for the world's largest publicly traded oil company, which produces about 3 percent of the world's oil. It also equals the approximate gross domestic product - a measure of all goods and services produced within a country in a given year - of countries like Ecuador, Luxembourg and Croatia. Also eyepopping was Exxon Mobil's revenue, which rose to $377.64 billion for the year, surpassing the record $370.68 billion it posted in 2005. "Exxon Mobil continued to leverage its globally diverse resource base to bring additional crude oil and natural gas to market," said Rex W. Tillerson, chairman of the Irving, Texas-based company. Still, it marked the first time since the third quarter of 2002 Exxon Mobil had a year-over-year quarterly earnings decline. Exxon Mobil's record annual earnings followed a year of extraordinarily high energy prices as crude oil topped $78 a barrel in the summer - driving up average gasoline prices in the United States to more than $3 a gallon. Prices retreated later in the year. The fourth-quarter decline reflects lower profits from Exxon's refining and marketing operations and a sharp dropoff in natural gas prices. The company said earnings from exploration and production were $6.2 billion for the quarter, down from about $7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005. Earnings also fell on the refining and marketing side to $1.96 billion in the most recent quarter from $2.4 billion a year ago. Oil production for the quarter was up slightly from a year ago, while natural gas production was off slightly. The company said it ended 2006 with $32.8 billion in cash, and debt of $8.3 billion. Tillerson and other company executives plan to meet with Wall Street analysts March 7 to discuss ongoing business plans. Exxon Mobil's results for the October-December period mimicked those of U.S. competitor ConocoPhillips, which last week said its fourth-quarter profit fell 13 percent - also primarily because of lower natural gas prices and refining margins. But hefty earnings earlier in the year helped Houston-based ConocoPhillips post its most profitable year on record, earning $15.55 billion. ConocoPhillips is the nation's third-largest integrated oil company behind Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp. (CVX), which is scheduled to report 2006 results Friday. Also Thursday, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) reported a 21 percent rise in fourth-quarter earnings, buoyed in part by high energy prices and the sale of some operations. Net profit came to $5.28 billion, up from $4.37 billion. But excluding divestitures and other one-time items, Shell's earnings from oil production fell 3 percent, while fourth-quarter sales were flat at $75.5 billion. The Anglo-Dutch company also said it had taken important steps to bulk up its proven reserves, which were revealed to have been inflated in a 2004 accounting scandal. At Exxon Mobil, profit for the fourth quarter of 2006 declined to $10.25 billion from the $10.71 billion Exxon earned in the 2005 quarter - a record quarterly profit for any U.S. public company. That best-ever profit came when the price of both natural gas and crude oil skyrocketed in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which damaged wells, pipelines and refineries in the key energy-producing Gulf of Mexico. Analysts largely have predicted declines in fourth-quarter earnings for the big U.S. oil companies because of the moderation in prices. Exxon Mobil's per-share earnings in the fourth quarter rose to $1.76 from $1.71 as the company reduced the number of shares outstanding. Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Financial had forecast earnings of $1.51 a share. Excluding special items, Exxon Mobil earned $9.84 billion, or $1.69 a share, in the final three months of 2006. Quarterly revenue fell to $90 billion from $99 billion in the year-ago period. For the year, Exxon earned $6.62 per share in 2006 versus $5.71 per share in 2005. Exxon shares rose 47 cents to $74.57 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. They have traded in a 52-week range of $56.64 to $79.
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