Sunday, February 04, 2007
SCIENCE! vs. MONEY!
Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with a report that clearly stated that climate change will have a serious effect on the world, is caused by human interference, and must be changed now. Well, you'd think that'd be the end of it, right?
Hell, no! Obviously, money must be thrown at it until it goes away:
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).
Yup; once again, ExxonMobil is bribing scientists to throw something approaching legitimacy behind an argument that global warming is not having any effect on us. Only now they're actually being open about it. Oh, but look who's behind this effort:
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.
You remember Lee Raymond, right? The man who, when questioned about high oil prices by Congress, said, "We're all in this together"-- right before retiring and getting a $400 million package? Who worked for a company that made more than $75,000 per minute in 2006? Apparently, he figures there's a way he can get even richer, environment be damned.
Maybe he's trying to save enough for a space station so he can look down on us plebians while we drown.
Hell, no! Obviously, money must be thrown at it until it goes away:
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).
Yup; once again, ExxonMobil is bribing scientists to throw something approaching legitimacy behind an argument that global warming is not having any effect on us. Only now they're actually being open about it. Oh, but look who's behind this effort:
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.
You remember Lee Raymond, right? The man who, when questioned about high oil prices by Congress, said, "We're all in this together"-- right before retiring and getting a $400 million package? Who worked for a company that made more than $75,000 per minute in 2006? Apparently, he figures there's a way he can get even richer, environment be damned.
Maybe he's trying to save enough for a space station so he can look down on us plebians while we drown.
