The Commission is aware of the ‘Global Warming Petition Project’, referred to in the question, which was initiated in 1998. However, the Commission does not agree with the key statements of the ‘Global Warming Petition Project’, which deny that human released greenhouse gases have an impact on climate. This is in disagreement with the conclusions of the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2007. The EU policy on climate change takes into consideration the latest (state-of-the-art) scientific results including results from EU Research Framework Programme projects and consensus as it appears in peer-reviewed journals and assessed by recognised international bodies such as the IPCC.

The Commission believes in the need for an open and robust dialogue with the scientific community, and the IPCC has been and will be in the future an indispensable tool for this.

Since research and technology development are key for tackling climate change, the EU and in particular the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7, 2007‑13) delivers answers to: climate processes, observations and projections, impacts, adaptation and mitigation options.

FP7 puts particular emphasis on international cooperation and will continue to facilitate and advance international climate science with participation from all countries.

The objective and independent approach followed by the Commission for selecting research proposals allows researchers with different scientific and social background to participate in EU research projects and thereby to contribute to the common knowledge base.