Was Confusion Over Global Warming a Con Job?

The industry's influence even extends into the White House -- where up until a few months ago a former oil industry lobbyist, Phil Cooney, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, was one of the president's top environmental advisers, editing scientific reports to make global warming seem less threatening.

"From now on, we don't have scientists write reports and just take them," said Rick Piltz of the group Climate Science Watch. "We pass them through a White House filter before they're ever published. I mean, that's scandalous."

A few oil companies, led by BP, have changed their tune and are now aggressively addressing the problem. But some continue to promote the idea there are "uncertainties in the science."

ABC News' Geoff Morrell reported this story for "World News Tonight."