Quote of the Day

"... the vast majority of the most respected environmental scientists from all over the world have sounded a clear and urgent alarm... In essence, [they] are telling the people of every nation that global warming caused by human activities has become a serious threat to our common future and must be confronted... In spite of the clear evidence available all around us, there are many who still do not believe that global warming is a problem at all. And it's no wonder, because they are the targets of a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation pushed by the administration and lavishly funded by polluters...

Wealthy right-wing ideologues have joined with the most cynical and irresponsible companies in the oil, coal, and mining industries to contribute large sums of money to finance pseudoscientific front groups that specialize in sowing confusion in the public's mind about global warming. They issue one misleading 'report' after another, pretending that there is significant disagreement in the legitimate scientific community in areas where there is actually a broad-based consensus...

In early 2007, just as the new international scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was being released, one of these front groups financed by ExxonMobil offered $10,000 for each pseudostudy or paper disputing the findings of the scientific community...

In the case of the global climate crisis, Bush has publicly demeaned scientists in his own administration who author official reports that underscore the extreme danger facing the US and the world. Instead, he has preferred a self interested and deeply flawed analysis financed by the largest oil company on the planet, ExxonMobil...

The Royal Society- the UK's equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences- formally renewed its request that ExxonMobil stop disseminating to the public 'very misleading' and ‘inaccurate’ information that is ‘not consistent’ with what is accepted in the scientific community about the climate crisis. The Royal Society also called upon ExxonMobil to stop paying millions of dollars per year to organizations that ‘misrepresented the science of climate change...'

Another organization of scientists, the US- based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), prepared a lengthy report in 2006 showing that 'ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.'

'ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer,' said Alden Meyer, UCS director of strategy and policy. 'A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as big tobacco did for over 40 years.'"