Scientists: "Oops, My bad!

Thaat's pretty much the summary of the findings of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A summary of the conclusions are that:

1. Global warming IS taking place at a rapid pace
2. Humans ARE primarily responsible.
3. Warming will continue for 100s of years
4. The effects are goiing to be fewer but more devastating hurricanes, longer and more devasting heat waves, droughts and a rise in sea levels....

There isn't much that can be done at this point but slowing emissions will perhaps slow the effects.....

I talked with a meteorologist today who, like most good scientists, has tried to stay above the political fray and rely on the science to settle the matter. Today, he considered the matter settled. I asked whether he thought that the argument would now be about whether it's actually "worth the effort" to try to mitigate the change. He was very unscientific in his answer but profound nevertheless: "Not doing anything is like saying "See ya in hell!" He's right I think.

But even as the words of the report start to spread around the world, the "deniers" are busy at work. Look at this article from The Guardian. It seems that our favorite right wing "think tank", The American Enterprise Institute, has put out a notice that it will pay $10,000 to any scientist who will contridict today's report. (Olbermann reported on this tonight but the video
isn't up yet) Here's a snippet:

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).

Later on in the article we find that somewhere around 20 AEI employees have been consultants to the Bush Administration. It doesn't take much of a memory to recall that the AEI is the favorite venue for Bush and Cheney to deliver speeches hyping their policies....that's because the policies were most likely written by the AEI in the first place.

AEI "Fellows" are all over the place. The one who irks me most is CNN's Chief Political Analyst who is sometimes identified (in his credentials) as an AEI Fellow.....that's fair...
The point is, AEI is not an honest broker in any sense. They aren't there to analyze the news, they there to spin the news...

I hope the exposure the Guardian article and Olbermann gave them today makes them less likely to confuse the issue again.