Royal Society Pissed, Going Directly After ExxonMobil - Guardian

[hatrack]

It takes quite a lot to get Britian's most august scientific body, the Royal Society, riled. But now it has had enough. It is trying to bring an end to a ten-year campaign of disinformation about the world's most important scientific issue. Throughout that period, journalists who have no background in science, and who appear to know less about the subject than the average 12-year-old, have been filling the pages of the Mail, the Telegraph and the Times with articles claiming that manmade global warming is a fraud.

In January this year, for example, the Daily Mail's columnist Melanie Philips asserted that most of the atmosphere "consists of water vapour". She now admits that this was a mistake, but she still maintains that the planet was two degrees warmer 1,000 years ago, that there has been no overall rise in global sea levels and that as many glaciers are expanding as shrinking - all of which are just as wrong. In the Times last month, Tim Hames maintained that "if man's activities were driving this warming process then one would expect the rate of that increase to have accelerated in modern times. This evidence has singularly failed to materialise, despite satellites having been available to measure the Earth's temperature since the late 1970s." In fact, most of the global warming of the past 100 years has taken place since 1970 and the rate has accelerated rapidly.

EDIT

On the whole, these journalists did not generate the false stories they have been spreading. They are the unwitting dupes of a deliberate campaign of distortion and confusion. As I will reveal on Newsnight tonight, the Royal Society has now attempted to strike at the heart of this campaign by sending its first official letter of complaint to a corporation - the oil company Exxon. And yesterday the society's president, Lord Rees, sent the Telegraph what must be one of the most damning letters it has ever received.

"In her sixth article in five months which misrepresents the science of climate change in the business pages of The Daily Telegraph, Ruth Lea erroneously asserts that 'there is wide scientific disagreement' about the likely impact of climate change. In fact, the peer-reviewed scientific literature, of which Lea appears to be completely unaware, shows that continued growth in greenhouse gas emissions will lead to a rise in global average temperature of between 1.4 and 5.8 centigrade degrees by 2100 ..." (Emphasis in original)

EDIT

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_monbiot/2006/09/post_399.html

[phantom power]

1. Good on them. But I wonder...

will it make any difference? The reason I'm skeptical is, I assume that most people targeted by Exxon's dis-information campaign don't know the difference between peer-reviewed science and junk science. Sadly, these days it appears that includes most American politicians. If the fundamental concept of what makes science a sound epistememological tool is entirely lost on people, then all the clarification in the world about what peer reviewed conclusions versus Exxon-funded conclusions is just pissing in the wind.

[YankeyMCC]

2. Very nice

maybe if groups like the RS go on the offensive like this the word will spread.

[CHIMO]

3. Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial

Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial

Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".

The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".

The Royal Society's move emerged as Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, warned that the polar ice caps were breaking up at a faster rate than glaciologists thought possible, with profound consequences for global sea levels. Professor Rapley said the change was almost certainly down to global warming. "It's like opening a window and seeing what's going on and the message is that it's worse than we thought," he said.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1876538,00.html