This video says about itself:
Watch as ExxonMobil funds junk science, wrecks the Arctic Refuge, and spills oil on endangered wildlife.
From Think Progress blog in the USA:
AEI Letter Offers $10,000 Payments Only For Views Critical Of The IPCC Report
On Friday, The Guardian reported that the American Enterprise Institute — which has received more than $1.6 million from ExxonMobil — was offering to pay global warming skeptics to speak out in an effort to push back on the new IPCC climate change study.
The IPCC report states that it is “very likely” that man-made greenhouse gases were the main cause of the Earth’s recent warming trend.
The article reported that one American scientist — Steve Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university — turned down the offer citing fears that the report could easily be misused for political gain.
“You wouldn’t know if some of the other authors might say nothing’s going to happen, that we should ignore it, or that it’s not our fault,” he said.
ThinkProgress has obtained the AEI letter.
Exxon said to be backtracking somewhat: here.
But is it really?
Bush administration gags scientists on climate change: here.
Climate change ‘skepticism’ and Cold War market fundamentalism: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Global warming threatens Scottish puffin paradise
By Paul Kelbie, Scotland Correspondent
Published: 03 March 2007
One of Britain’s largest puffin colonies is being wiped out by an invasive plant that is thriving in warmer temperatures brought about by climate change.
In just seven years a colony of 29,000 breeding pairs of puffins on the island of Craigleith, just a mile from the coast of North Berwick, has been reduced to fewer than 3,000. They have been driven to the edge of extinction by a dusky-pink, 8ft flowering plant called tree mallow. Introduced by 18th-century lighthouse keepers and sheep farmers on nearby Bass Rock the woolly-leafed plant is renowned for its medicinal properties and was used as natural bandage.
Over the years the plant, lavatera arborea, spread to other islands in the Firth of Forth but for centuries the Mediterranean plant was kept at bay by harsh Scottish winters and the appetites of wild rabbits. However, since 1999 the rise of myxomatosis along with a series of mild winters has left the plants to spread rapidly across more than 85 per cent of the island.
Helped by fertilisation of the soil from the puffins guano and the birds’ burrowing habits, the cauliflower-like plant has advanced rapidly over Craigleith at the expense of native grasses and coastal plants such as thrift, pink campion and the rare lesser celandine and spring cinquefoil.
Puffins can live for up to 20 years but, as they tend to return to the same burrow year after year, the spreading plant means their nests are often choked and impenetrable, leaving them vulnerable to predators such as peregrines and great black-backed gulls which will kill puffins to steal their sand-eel catch.
Scientists fear that, after four centuries of relatively harmless existence, climate change has created the right conditions for the mallow to thrive and provided a foretaste of a future in which natural ecosystems will be threatened by invading alien species.
Now, efforts have been launched to save the endangered puffin colonies that nest
on Craigleith and a smaller island of Fidra in the Firth of Forth. Hundreds of thousands of pounds from a tax on rubbish dumped in landfill sites is to be used to stop the plant smothering the island.
The Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick has secured a grant of £235,000 from national waste management company, Viridor Credits to hack back the tree mallow on what is regarded as a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
“The five-year project will make a significant impact locally with real and lasting benefits for our local environment, its wildlife and our community,” said Tom Brock, chief executive of the centre. “It gives us the opportunity to save this important species from local extinction and prevent the loss of further habitats for the amazing wildlife in this area.”
The grant will pay for squads of volunteers to take regular boat trips to the island so that they can cut back the mallow – and for four solar-powered cameras to be set up on the island to monitor the birds.
The Atlantic puffin is one of the country’s most recognisable and best-loved birds. It is an Amber list species, because almost half of all UK numbers are concentrated in just a handful of sites.
Life in the skies
* Atlantic Puffins are about 18cm tall and weigh 500g. They can fly at up to 55mph with 400 wingbeats a minute
* Sixty per cent of the world’s puffins live in Iceland. Britain has about 10 per cent, with more than 500,000 breeding pairs
* For centuries, puffins have been hunted for food in Norway, Iceland, and the Faro Islands. Aside from humans, their other main predators are great black-backed gulls, herring gulls and skuas
* Although their Latin name, Fratercula Arctica, means ‘Little brother of the north’, puffins outlive many other birds. The oldest recorded was 29 years old.
* You can adopt a puffin for just £50 by visiting http://www.projectpuffin.org.
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