According to an undercover investigation carried out by Greenpeace, fossil fuel companies secretly gave money to prominent scientists to create doubt about mainstream climate change science.

Greenpeace UK in its research took an unconventional approach in which members of the environmentalist groups posed as representatives of fake oil and coal companies. Two climate change skeptics were also asked to write papers promoting the benefits of carbon dioxide and coal in developing countries.

The two academic groups--Frank Clemente of Pennsylvania State University and William Happer of Princeton University--agreed to write the reports and not to reveal their source of funding.

Jesse Coleman, a Greenpeace activist who participated in the probe, said that this academics-for-hire tactic has materially changed the debate about climate change. “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”.

In the similar way, the tobacco companies once used to convince people for something that was not at all true, said Coleman. For decades, tobacco corporations deceived consumers about the dangers of smoking by covertly funding contrarian research.

Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that if the Greenpeace findings were true, they were deeply disconcerting.

He stressed that accepting money from industry to do research is not a breach of ethics, but taking money from any source without transparency is totally unacceptable.