fossil fuel companies secretly funnel money into prominent scientists' pockets to manufacture doubt about mainstream climate change

An undercover Greenpeace investigation released on Tuesday suggests that fossil fuel companies secretly funnel money into prominent scientists' pockets to manufacture doubt about mainstream climate change science.Greenpeace UK took an unconventional approach to the research: Members of the environmentalist group posed as representatives of fake oil and coal companies and asked two climate change skeptics to write papers promoting the benefits of carbon dioxide and coal in developing countries. The two academics the group approached -- Frank Clemente of Pennsylvania State University and William Happer of Princeton University -- reportedly agreed to pen the reports and not to reveal their funding source.The group's expose follows revelations from The New York Times earlier this year that Willie Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, accepted donations from fossil fuel companies and anonymous donors to write papers that challenged the consensus on climate science -- without saying where his funding came from.This academics-for-hire tactic has "materially changed the debate about climate change,"said Jesse Coleman, a Greenpeace activist who participated in the probe. "You could say that one of the reasons we're facing such dire climate change risks is because these fossil fuel companies are funding climate change denial." "It's the exact same playbook" tobacco companies once used to "convince people of something that is just not true," Coleman added.For decades, tobacco corporations deceived consumers about the dangers of smoking by covertly funding contrarian research. Manufactured data, concealed conflicts of interest and misleading conclusions, as The Huffington Post has previously reported, are also evident in influential research on vaccination, organic food, secondhand smoke, lead paint and chemical flame retardants. But perhaps no environmental or public health issue is as high-stake as global warming.Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that if the Greenpeace findings were true, they were "deeply, deeply disconcerting." He emphasized that while accepting money from industry to do research is not itself a breach of ethics, taking money from any source without transparency is "totally unacceptable."
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/undercover-greenpeace-invest...
Great, so is there anything I can do?

Yes! It’s important for our leaders to know that we want real and tangible action on climate now. That’s why hundreds of thousands of people will be marching for the climate in cities around the world on 29 November. Find out how to join the march in London or elsewhere.Want to know more?There is lots more detail about what is being discussed at COP.The most significant thing has got to be the historic China-US climate agreement announced last November, in which the world’s two biggest carbon emitters and global superpowers indicated their commitment to moving away from fossil fuels.Obama has made a global climate deal a priority for his legacy while the G7 – Canada, France, Germany, UK, Italy, Japan and US – have agreed to decarbonise over the course of the century, aiming for zero emissions by 2100.Meanwhile, countries that were previously seen as barriers to a global agreement, including China and India are driving renewable energy in a big way (though India also wants to double coal production by 2020).
www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/5-things-you-need-know...

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Taken on: March 1, 2016

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Camera:	Apple iPhone 6
Aperture:	f/2.2
Exposure Time:	1/3968 sec
Focal Length:	4.2mm
ISO:	32
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
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Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
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