ExxonMobil funds global warming disinformation campaign

The Union of Concerned Scientists, a Massachussets-based think-tank, has confirmed to the world that US oil company ExxonMobil deliberately set out to confuse and muddy the science of global warming.

"ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," said Alden Meyer, the Union's Director of Strategy & Policy.

The report says that Exxon, who have handed out $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 organisations prepared to challenge climate change theory, have:

• raised doubts about even the most indisputable scientific evidence
• funded an array of front organizations to create the appearance of a broad platform for a tight-knit group of vocal climate change contrarians who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings
• attempted to portray its opposition to action as a positive quest for "sound science" rather than business self-interest
• used its access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming.

A spokesman for Exxon said that the report was:
"an attempt to connect unrelated facts, draw inaccurate conclusions and mislead the audience with a fiction about ExxonMobil's true positions."

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