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<div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gcc1010</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">code bad astroturf troopers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">new sum:  </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC was created in 1989, shortly after the founding of the IPCC, and operated out of the  National Association of Manufacturers offices until 1997. API, Chevron  Exxon, Ford, GM, CoC... Hired Steven Milloy and E Bruace Harrsion; In 1995 an internal report actually acknowledged the reality of global warming, but continued to lobby the IPCC (got some of its language in verbatim;  on 2nd Assessment, accused Santer of "scientific cleanising" though his grandparents died in Holocaust; Tracker fund??]  while discrediting climate science.  Cited Lindzen and Michaels even though they knew them dubious; aggressive outreach to media; Influenced Cheney and Paula Dobriansky sp acknowledged their centrality in withdrawing from Kyoto; Eventually negative PR led to mass defections from the GCC by industry, which in turn led to a restructuring which included no companies, just trade associations.  The GCC disbanded in 2002 after claiming victory: that the Bush administration had a techno-fix that would be supported voluntarily by industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bak html  sought advice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">api, exxon and BP knew on ghg and took wrong road: gcc pivot for api:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">vs cooler heads had no corp members, just trade groups and astro and CTT?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">is sci for sale singer:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GCC tries to caPITALIZE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-coalition-collection/1994-nightline-press-office/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This 1994 Global Climate Coalition (GCC) letter to journalists encouraged coverage of ABC’s Nightline piece, “Is Science for Sale?” The special covered the work and funding of climate science deniers often cited by the GCC. The industry-funded GCC opposed greenhouse gas regulations through direct engagement and collaboration with affiliated climate deniers from 1989 to 2002. Its membership spanned across the automotive, utility, manufacturing, petroleum, and mining industries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In this 1994 letter, GCC’s media representative Donald Rheem pitched a story to journalists about Al Gore attempting to influence that segment of Nightline. Rheem explained that Gore called Ted Koppel, the show’s host, and suggested that he “might want to look into connections between scientists who scoff at the so-called greenhouse effect… and the coal industry.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rheem stated that the immediate need to take action on climate change was untrue, “…environmental special interest groups have tried to convince the public and policy makers that the scientific community is certain of a future threat of a disastrous increase in global temperatures and on the need to take drastic actions now … Neither assertion is true, and it is important that as reporters and scientists enter this public debate, they are not vilified for their participation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This document is part of the private collection of Nicky Sundt, a Washington-based climate change science, policy and communications expert.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/25/global-climate-coalition-documents-secretive-fossil-fuel-lobby-un-programs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">docs:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://climateinvestigations.org/global-climate-coalition-documents/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Climate Coalition: Documents Reveal How Secretive Fossil Fuel Lobby Group Manipulated UN Climate Programs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Mat Hope and Karen Savage • Wednesday, April 24, 2019 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Climate Coalition logo and 1997 strategy document cover </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A fossil fuel–backed industry group was able to influence the process behind the United Nations climate assessments for decades, using lobbyists and industry-funded scientists to manipulate international negotiations, a cache of recently discovered documents reveals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The documents include hundreds of briefings, meeting minutes, notes, and correspondence from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). They were released Thursday by the Climate Investigations Center in collaboration with DeSmog and Climate Liability News. The documents date from 1989 and continue through 2002, when the lobbying group disbanded as its fossil fuel industry backers succumbed to public pressure to disavow its tactics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The documents show how the GCC influenced international negotiations, manipulated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) process, and undertook a disinformation campaign designed to cast doubt on mainstream climate science.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George W. Bush speaking about climate change in 2008.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President George W. Bush speaks on climate change during remarks from the Rose Garden April 16, 2008. Credit: White House photo by Noah Rabinowitz, public domain]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What was the Global Climate Coalition?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC was initially part of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), before becoming its own entity in 1995. NAM has a long history of defending portions of its membership, including tobacco companies that were facing an onslaught of liability litigation, with aggressive tactics that include discrediting science, attacking scientists, and misleading the public.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Founding members of the GCC were mainly fossil fuel producers and utilities, including oil majors Shell, Texaco (now a part of Chevron), and Amoco (now part of BP); oil refiner and retailers ARCO (now a subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum) and Phillips Petroleum; coal miners BHP-Utah International and Peabody; and utilities American Electric Power and Pacific Gas and Electric.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other companies, including Exxon, joined later — and the international oil giant would go on to be a key player in the group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revealed in the documents is a decades-long campaign that continued until 2002, intended to protect its members’ interests by denying and casting doubt on climate science. Internally, the group acknowledged the dangers of climate change and the scientific consensus that it is overwhelmingly driven by the burning of fossil fuels as early as 1995.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The campaign reached the highest levels of U.S. government, with the State Department giving the GCC credit for leading President George W. Bush to reject the landmark Kyoto Protocol in 2001. An internal State Department briefing, prepared for a meeting with the GCC later that year and included in the documents published Thursday, shows officials were instructed to tell coalition representatives that Bush’s decision was “in part, based on input from you.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Kyoto Protocol, agreed upon in 1997, was the first large-scale international agreement to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. was one of only three UN members that did not ratify the treaty (Canada later withdrew).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Influencing the UN’s Panel of Climate Scientists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC took a particular interest in the operations of the UN’s official scientific advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produces the international climate assessments that form the basis for global climate policy and negotiations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GCC representatives regularly met with IPCC scientists to lobby the panel to accept industry language in its reports, the documents show. Tax returns show hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on an “IPCC Tracker Fund” to monitor and lobby the IPCC’s meetings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In one instance detailed in the documents, the GCC boasted its suggested language was “accepted almost in its entirety” after intensive lobbying by its representatives and after “assistance from several countries.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC also publicly questioned the validity of the IPCC’s peer-review process and launched public attacks on its scientists, while simultaneously using the IPCC’s status as a respected scientific body to promote the credentials of its own climate science denial research.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC went beyond targeting climate science. In 1995, Exxon gave a presentation to the GCC on how to counter the evidence linking climate change to human health impacts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1997, the GCC wanted to expand its reach with a network of state and local committees that would educate the public about their views on climate change and serve as liaisons to other business and public interest groups with similar views. This plan was implemented, the documents show, with the help of Koch Industries, the U.S.’s largest private energy company, which is an infamous funder of climate science denial across the globe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Collapse of the GCC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the mid-1990s, however, the GCC’s aggressive tactics and continuing effort to cast doubt on accepted climate science had started to become a problem for some of its members. Nine corporations left the GCC from 1996 to 2000: two automakers, one chemical manufacturer, one utility, and five oil companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BP was the first major oil company to leave in 1997, stating that “the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Additional Takeaways: Infiltrating UN Climate Negotiations, Embracing Climate Deniers Publicly But Not Privately</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The documents published Thursday on the Climate Investigation Center’s Climate Files archive, also show:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC stacked UN meetings with its members. Some attended meetings transparently, registering as GCC members, while others registered with other NGOs. Often GCC members outnumbered delegates from developing nations at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC coordinated to monitor IPCC meetings. After IPCC meetings, GCC notes reveal attendees met to discuss strategies for exploiting scientific uncertainties in IPCC climate models and amplifying scientific differences of opinion. On at least one occasion, a contractor for the Electric Power Research Institute planned to keep tabs on IPCC proceedings.  </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC internally refuted climate deniers, yet continued to publicly cite their work: Exxon scientist Lenny Bernstein, who co-chaired the GCC’s committee on science and technology assessment, called the work of climate deniers Richard Lindzen and Patrick Michaels “not convincing” in a draft document in 1995. The final copy of that document included no mention of Bernstein’s comments and the GCC continued to cite the two — as well as other known deniers — through at least 1998.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC aggressively attempted to control media coverage of climate change: Press releases were sent to reporters praising media coverage featuring climate deniers and correcting those that did not. One document encouraged reporters to contact the GCC for “balance in the global climate change debate.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/documenting-fossil-fuel-companies-climate-deception/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Damning Paper Trail</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 340 pages include not only Soon’s contracts, but also a 1998 API disinformation road map memo as well as a 2014 Western States Petroleum Association memo on creating phony grassroots consumer groups to challenge California’s climate policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One eye-opening, formerly secret document reveals that scientific experts commissioned by the Global Climate Coalition (GCC)—a coalition of 50 U.S. corporations and trade groups including British Petroleum (now BP), Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Mobil, and Shell—warned that heat-trapping gases were indeed causing global warming. Regardless, the GCC continued to conduct a multimillion-dollar lobbying and public relations campaign to undermine national and international efforts to address global warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the GCC’s “backgrounders” for legislators and journalists, for example, claimed “the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood” and emphasized that “scientists differ” on the issue. But the 17-page, internal 1995 GCC primer written by the companies’ own scientists states: “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied [emphasis added].” The primer’s lead author, Leonard S. Bernstein, a staff scientist at Mobil Oil, would later participate as a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports in 2001 and 2007.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One draft version of the primer even addressed and dismissed the major arguments made by climate change contrarians, such as the “solar variability” argument touted by Soon. “The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes,” the draft stated, “but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change.” This section was deleted from the primer’s final version.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three years later, the API set up what it called the Global Climate Science Communications Team to try to derail the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international agreement signed by 192 countries—but not the United States—to meet binding carbon emissions reduction targets. A leaked 1998 campaign memo from this team, cowritten by representatives of the API and API members Chevron and Exxon, laid out a road map for climate deception largely based on the tobacco industry’s strategy to stave off government regulation by deceiving the public about smoking hazards.[smoking gun]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Echoing that strategy—encapsulated in the notorious internal tobacco industry memo claiming “Doubt is our product”—the API memo states: “Victory will be achieved when: average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.” The API team planned to emphasize “uncertainties” in climate science at least partly by identifying, recruiting, and funding previously unaffiliated scientists. After all, the memo notes, such scientists would have more credibility with reporters and the public than those already known to be working with the fossil fuel industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://insideclimatenews.org/news/22122015/exxon-mobil-oil-industry-peers-knew-about-climate-change-dangers-1970s-american-petroleum-institute-api-shell-chevron-texaco</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The group was initially called the CO2 and Climate Task Force, but changed its name to the Climate and Energy Task Force in 1980, Nelson said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A background paper on CO2 informed API members in 1979 that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was rising steadily, and it predicted when the first clear effects of climate change might be felt, according to a memo by an Exxon task force representative.  </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, API task force members appeared open to the idea that the oil industry might have to shoulder some responsibility for reducing CO2emissions by changing refining processes and developing fuels that emitted less carbon dioxide.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bruce S. Bailey of Texaco offered "for consideration" the idea that "an overall goal of the Task Force should be to help develop ground rules for energy release of fuels and the cleanup of fuels as they relate to CO2creation," according to the minutes of a meeting on Feb. 29, 1980.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The minutes also show that the task force discussed a "potential area" for research and development that called for it to "'Investigate the Market Penetration Requirements of Introducing a New Energy Source into World Wide Use.' This would include the technical implications of energy source changeover, research timing and requirements."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet by the 1990s, it was clear that API had opted for a markedly different approach to the threat of climate change. It joined Exxon, other fossil fuel companies and major manufacturers in the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a lobbying group whose objective was to derail international efforts to curb heat-trapping emissions. In 1998, a year after the Kyoto Protocol was adopted by countries to cut fossil fuel emissions, API crafted a campaign to convince the American public and lawmakers that climate science was too tenuous for the United States to ratify the treaty....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PIVOT PT:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BP Withdraws</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the immediate aftermath of the speech, BP announced that it would be withdrawing from the Global Climate Coalition.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It issued a short statement which included the following quote from Browne: “The time to consider the policy dimension of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shell would follow shortly after, and the transatlantic coalition would slowly unravel. The environmentalists, by targeting shareholders and leveraging Blair's influence over his friend Browne, had delivered a knockout blow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sceptics in the oil industry had lost their extremely well-funded, effective and brutal weapon in the war against climate regulations. Energy companies could not rely on openly funded, and in some ways honest, special interest-lobbying front groups.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The executives at Exxon faced the prospect of having to come to terms with climate science and rebuild their multi-billion dollar company in its entirety, from the tip of the rotary oil drill, along the pipelines and refineries, to the nozzle of the petrol pump pushed into the back of the SUV.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Or they could instead go it alone in the public relations and lobbying war. Exxon and the remaining oil companies would have to find new allies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DOCUMENTING FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES’ CLIMATE DECEPTION</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jul 15, 2015 by Casey Coates Danson</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate denier dossiers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Leaked internal memos reveal a coordinated, decades-long disinformation campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Elliott Negin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When internal documents revealed earlier this year that ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel interests were secretly funding scientifically discredited studies authored by climate contrarian Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, the news didn’t come as a complete surprise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Back in 2007, a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report identified Soon—an aerospace engineer with little formal training in climatology—as one of a dozen scientists affiliated with more than 40 ExxonMobil-funded think tanks that then constituted the backbone of the climate change–denier PR machine. Soon, who erroneously claims the sun is largely responsible for global warming, produced work for at least five of these ExxonMobil-backed groups, including the now infamous Heartland Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the latest cache of documents, obtained by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, lays bare a wealth of detail that was not available eight years ago. For example, they show that Soon received his funding exclusively from fossil fuel interests, including ExxonMobil, utility giant Southern Company, and Charles Koch. He described his scientific work and congressional testimony as “deliverables” to his funders. And some of his contracts specifically dictate that the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where Soon works, not disclose the names of his funders. These internal documents, on top of what UCS had already uncovered, indisputably establish Soon’s efforts as part of a calculated climate deception campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dossiers of Deception</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Willie Soon, however, is just a small part of a much bigger story, according to a new UCS report, The Climate Deception Dossiers. After spending nearly a year reviewing and analyzing a wide range of internal corporate and trade group documents, a team of UCS researchers has, for the first time, compiled a broader tale of climate deception. The Climate Deception Dossiers draws upon evidence culled from 85 documents that were pried loose by leaks, lawsuits, and FOIA requests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spanning nearly three decades, these documents reveal that the world’s largest fossil fuel companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, coal giant Peabody Energy, and Shell—were fully aware of the reality of climate change but continued to spend tens of millions of dollars to sow doubt and promote contrarian arguments they knew to be wrong. Taken together, the documents show that these six companies, in conjunction with the American Petroleum Institute (API)—the oil and gas industry’s premier trade association—and a host of front groups, have colluded to intentionally deceive the public; their corporate officials have known for at least two decades that their products are harmful; and their disinformation campaign continues today—despite the fact that most of the companies now publicly acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A team convened in 1998 by the American Petroleum Institute—the country’s largest oil trade association whose member companies include BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell Oil—outlined a road map for climate deception including a plan to cultivate purportedly independent scientists as climate misinformers. The campaign would achieve “victory,” according to the memo, when “average citizens” believed that the realities of climate science were uncertain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The collected documents reveal a variety of deceitful tactics, including creating front groups, secretly funding purportedly independent scientists such as Soon, and even forging letters from nonprofit groups to try to influence members of Congress. But you don’t have to rely on UCS’s interpretation. All 340 pages of the documents in seven “deception dossiers” are available online, so you can read them and reach your own conclusions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Damning Paper Trail</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 340 pages include not only Soon’s contracts, but also a 1998 API disinformation road map memo as well as a 2014 Western States Petroleum Association memo on creating phony grassroots consumer groups to challenge California’s climate policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One eye-opening, formerly secret document reveals that scientific experts commissioned by the Global Climate Coalition (GCC)—a coalition of 50 U.S. corporations and trade groups including British Petroleum (now BP), Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Mobil, and Shell—warned that heat-trapping gases were indeed causing global warming. Regardless, the GCC continued to conduct a multimillion-dollar lobbying and public relations campaign to undermine national and international efforts to address global warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the GCC’s “backgrounders” for legislators and journalists, for example, claimed “the role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood” and emphasized that “scientists differ” on the issue. But the 17-page, internal 1995 GCC primer written by the companies’ own scientists states: “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied [emphasis added].” The primer’s lead author, Leonard S. Bernstein, a staff scientist at Mobil Oil, would later participate as a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports in 2001 and 2007.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One draft version of the primer even addressed and dismissed the major arguments made by climate change contrarians, such as the “solar variability” argument touted by Soon. “The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes,” the draft stated, “but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse gas emission-induced climate change.” This section was deleted from the primer’s final version.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Three years later, the API set up what it called the Global Climate Science Communications Team to try to derail the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international agreement signed by 192 countries—but not the United States—to meet binding carbon emissions reduction targets. A leaked 1998 campaign memo from this team, cowritten by representatives of the API and API members Chevron and Exxon, laid out a road map for climate deception largely based on the tobacco industry’s strategy to stave off government regulation by deceiving the public about smoking hazards.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Echoing that strategy—encapsulated in the notorious internal tobacco industry memo claiming “Doubt is our product”—the API memo states: “Victory will be achieved when: average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.” The API team planned to emphasize “uncertainties” in climate science at least partly by identifying, recruiting, and funding previously unaffiliated scientists. After all, the memo notes, such scientists would have more credibility with reporters and the public than those already known to be working with the fossil fuel industry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What makes the secret API memo so revealing is how closely its instructions seem to have been carried out in the Soon case. One of the API memo’s contributors, Robert Gehri, even negotiated one of Soon’s contracts on behalf of his industry backers. All told, Soon received more than $1.2 million from fossil fuel interests over the last decade and failed to disclose that conflict of interest in most of the scientific papers that money underwrote. More than $400,000 came from a subsidiary of the Southern Company, a large utility holding company with a fleet of coal-fired power plants. ExxonMobil gave Soon $335,000. The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation kicked in another $230,000. The API, meanwhile, contributed more than $100,000.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What did they get for their money? The papers conclude that solar activity is the main cause of global warming and that carbon emissions have had little or no impact. Despite the speciousness of Soon’s findings, members of Congress—notably Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe—routinely cite his work to argue that climate science is a hoax.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the Industrial Revolution began more than 250 years ago, more than half of all industrial carbon emissions have been released since 1988—after major fossil fuel companies knew about the harm their products were causing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Holding the Perpetrators Accountable</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The tobacco industry successfully stalled meaningful regulations for decades. The fossil fuel industry has been using virtually the same strategy, at least when it comes to federal legislation. Meanwhile, as the fossil fuel companies’ deception campaign has continued, we’ve taken a heavy toll in rising temperatures and a host of climate impacts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the new UCS report notes, recent research has documented that 90 state- and privately owned corporations alone have produced and marketed the fossil fuels and cement responsible for nearly two-thirds of the world’s industrial heat-trapping carbon emissions over the past two and a half centuries. Of these, 50 are investor-owned coal, oil, and natural gas companies, including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Peabody, and Shell. Furthermore, nearly 30 percent of all industrial emissions can be traced to just 20 investor- and state-owned companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s more, the rate of carbon emissions has increased dramatically in our rapidly industrializing world. As a result, more than half of all industrial carbon emissions have been released into the atmosphere since 1988—after major fossil fuel companies indisputably knew about the harm their products are doing to the climate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What Is to Be Done?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are a number of potential ways to hold large industrial polluters accountable for their actions. Shareholder engagement, divestment campaigns, and state court litigation could all play an important role in forcing them to take responsibility for their emissions, ending their disinformation campaigns, and even requiring them to pay reparations to cover the cost of climate damages, preparedness, and mitigation. The most effective tactics remain a subject for debate. But, as the picture of the fossil fuel companies’ efforts to deceive the public becomes clearer, it is high time to hold these companies accountable for their actions and the damage they’ve done</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1989-2002 milloy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">attack on santer: This criticism of you and your</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">work on the Second Assessment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">is still propagating itself</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">across the Internet like some</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sort of meme.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is rather frustrating.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I can’t alter what people</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wrote about me on some</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">op-ed page. It’s unfortunate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">but beyond my control. Likewise,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I have no control over</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the weird and wacky motives</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that climate-change skeptics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ascribe to me.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1996, at the time of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">publication of the IPCC Second Assessment, I was</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a messenger bearing news that some very powerful</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">people did not want to hear. So they went after the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">messenger. They were very good at it. I’m sure there</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">was no personal animus involved. I just happened</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to get in the way and had to be discredited.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Any apologies from these people as the science became</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">clearer?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No. No apologies. The Global Climate Coalition</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[GCC] was the major instigator of the unfounded</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">allegation that shenanigans had gone on during the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">IPCC’s Second Assessment. The GCC accused me of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“scientific cleansing” at a time when “ethnic cleansing”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">was being committed in Bosnia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">My paternal grandparents died in concentration</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">camps during the Second World War. They were subjects</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of Hitler’s “ethnic cleansing”. So maybe you can</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">understand why the “scientific cleansing” charge</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">was so abhorrent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC was one of the many now-defunct industry</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">groups?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yes. The GCC was a consortium of energy interests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was heartening to see—even back in 1996—that a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">number of GCC members were very unhappy with...http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es063000t</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">grist:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Say this for Glenn Beck: He works fast. Less than 48 hours after we at 350.org launched our campaign to let businesses say that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn't represent them, Beck hit back. A true friend of Chamber (here's a picture of him broadcasting from the group's roof -- certainly worth the $10,000 he donated from his $32 million annual earnings), he put little old 350.org up on his notorious board Friday night next to a hammer and sickle. We were part of a communistic conspiracy that also included the Apollo Alliance and the Service Employees International Union. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rs: </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As he shaped climate policy, Cheney took his cues from the Global</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Coalition, an alliance of anti-Kyoto polluters that included</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the top lobbying arms of the oil and coal industries. In June 2001,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the administration dispatched Paula Dobriansky, the undersecretary of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">state for global affairs, to address the GCC at the headquarters of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the American Petroleum Institute. In her speech, Dobriansky was glad</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to give the industry crowd credit for the president's decision to</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">withdraw from the international treaty designed to slow climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">change. Her talking points from that day read, "POTUS rejected Kyoto,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in part, based on input from you."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act also reveal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that Dobriansky had received a copy of the GCC's "21st Century</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Action Agenda," a game plan crafted by polluting industries</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that calls for "a new approach to climate policy" focusing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on "voluntary actions" rather than mandatory limits on greenhouse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gases. On February 14th, 2002, Bush gave a speech at the National</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that laid out his policy on</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">global warming for the first time. The speech was a Valentine's Day</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gift to polluters, officially enshrining the GCC's agenda, almost</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">point for point, as the White House's climate policy. Under the plan,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">planet-warming pollution would actually increase by thirty-four</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">percent by 2030. Bush vaguely promised to cut the "intensity" of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">carbon emissions by eighteen percent over the next ten years -</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">neglecting to mention that the nation was already on track for a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fourteen percent reduction. He touted $700 million in new funding for</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">technologies that might someday reduce emissions - money that</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">government auditors were later unable to find any trace of. And he</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">promised that the entire plan would be thoroughly reviewed and re-</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">evaluated - in 2012, four years after he left office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The National Academy of Sciences blasted the policy, saying it lacked</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a "guiding vision, executable goals, clear timetables and criteria</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">for measuring progress." Even the technology promoted in the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">president's plan was bogus. "It's as if these people were not</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cognizant of the existing science," one member of the academy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">remarked. "Stuff that would have been cutting-edge in 1980 is listed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">as a priority for the future."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hoggan  GCC report in 1995 said gw real p 12  cf revkin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Climate_Coalition</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) was one of the most outspoken and confrontational industry groups in the United States battling reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Prior to its disbanding in early 2002, it collaborated extensively with a network that included industry trade associations, "property rights" groups affiliated with the anti-environmental Wise Use movement, and fringe groups such as Sovereignty International, which believes that global warming is a plot to enslave the world under a United Nations-led "world government."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contents</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 Personnel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2 History</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3 Excerpts from the GCC web site</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 Funding</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 Internal Documents</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6 Case Studies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7 Contact Information</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8 Other SourceWatch Related Resources9 External links</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Personnel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Glenn Kelly, Executive Director</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gail McDonald, President</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William O'Keefe, Chairman, an executive for the American Petroleum Institute (exxon)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Frank Maisano, Media Contact, is a member of the Potomac Communications Group, whose other clients include Con Edison, the Edison Electric Institute, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In April, 2006, E magazine interviewed Maisano, reporting that he is now working with Bracewell and Giuliani.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">History</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1989, the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The members of the IPCC are governments. At approximately five-year intervals, the IPCC assembles a group of some 2,500 climate scientists from throughout the world to evaluate the evidence linking anthropogenic greenhouse gas and other emissions (such as particulates) to global climate change. The Global Climate Coalition was created in 1989, shortly after the IPCC's first meeting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC operated until 1997 out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers. Its early members included Amoco, the American Forest & Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, Chevron, Chrysler, Cyprus AMAX Minerals, Exxon, Ford, General Motors, Shell Oil, Texaco, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For PR and lobbying, the GCC has employed "Junkman" Steven Milloy's former employer, the EOP Group, as well as the E. Bruce Harrison Company, a subsidiary of the giant Ruder Finn PR firm. Within the public relations industry, Harrison is an almost legendary figure who is ironically considered "the founder of green PR" because of his work for the pesticide industry in the 1960s, when he helped lead the attack on author Rachel Carson and her environmental classic, Silent Spring.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GCC activities have included publication of glossy reports, aggressive lobbying at international climate negotiation meetings, and raising concern about unemployment that it claims would result from emissions regulations. It distributed a video to hundreds of journalists claiming that increased levels of carbon dioxide will increase crop production and help feed the hungry people of the world. In the lead up to the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the GCC and other industry interests successfully lobbied the US government to avoid mandatory emissions controls.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1997, the GCC responded to international global warming treaty negotiations in Kyoto, Japan by launching an advertising campaign in the US against any agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions internationally. This was run through an organization called the Global Climate Information Project (GCIP), which was sponsored by the GCC and the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers, among others. The GCIP was represented by Richard Pollock, a former director of Ralph Nader's group, Critical Mass, who switched sides to become a senior vice president for Shandwick Public Affairs, the second-largest PR firm in the United States. (Recent Shandwick clients include Browning-Ferris Industries, Central Maine Power, Georgia-Pacific Corp., Monsanto Chemical Co., New York State Electric and Gas Co., Ciba-Geigy, Ford Motor Company, Hydro-Quebec, Pfizer, and Procter & Gamble.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GCIP's ads were produced by GoddardClaussen/First Tuesday, a California-based PR firm whose clients include the Chlorine Chemistry Council, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, DuPont Merck Pharmaceuticals, and the Vinyl Siding Institute. GoddardClaussen is notorious for its "Harry and Louise" advertisement that helped derail President Clinton's 1993 health reform proposal. Its anti-Kyoto advertisements falsely claimed, "It's Not Global and It Won't Work." They also claimed that "Americans will pay the price. . . 50 cents more for every gallon of gasoline." Actually, there was no treaty at that point, and no government proposals, then or now, have suggested a "50 cent" gallon gas tax.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By 1997, the growing scientific and public consensus regarding global warming forced a number of GCC supporters to reconsider the negative PR implications of their involvement in a group that was increasingly recognized as a self-serving anti-environmental front group. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BP/Amoco withdrew from GCC after BP's chairman admitted that "the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point." Other prominent companies that have publicly abandoned GCC include American Electric Power, Dow, Dupont, Royal Dutch Shell, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Southern Company, Texaco and General Motors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In March 2000, GCC announced a "strategic restructuring" designed to "bring the focus of the climate debate back to the real issues." Under the restructuring, individual companies were no longer asked to join the GCC. Instead, membership would be limited to "only trade associations" and "other like-minded organizations." By seeking support from trade associations instead of individual companies, GCC hoped to create a layer of deniability so that affected industries could continue to support its campaign of global warming denial while avoiding boycotts and other public campaigns against individual companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC disbanded in early 2002, explaining that it "has served its purpose by contributing to a new national approach to global warming. The Bush administration will soon announce a climate policy that is expected to rely on the development of new technologies to reduce greenhouse emissions, a concept strongly supported by the GCC." After years spent denying that greenhouse emissions were a serious environmental problem, the organization's parting shot at history combined a tacit admission that it had been wrong all along, along with an endorsement of the George W. Bush administration's proposal for ineffective "voluntary" industry measures to address the problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Excerpts from the GCC web site</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Global Climate Coalition has been deactivated. The industry voice on climate change has served its purpose by contributing to a new national approach to global warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Bush administration will soon announce a climate policy that is expected to rely on the development of new technologies to reduce greenhouse emissions, a concept strongly supported by the GCC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The coalition also opposed Senate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol that would assign such stringent targets for lowering greenhouse gas emissions that economic growth in the U. S. would be severely hampered and energy prices for consumers would skyrocket. The GCC also opposed the treaty because it does not require the largest developing countries to make cuts in their emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At this point, both Congress and the Administration agree that the U.S. should not accept the mandatory cuts in emissions required by the protocol.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is the GCC?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Global Climate Coalition is an organization of trade associations established in 1989 to coordinate business participation in the international policy debate on the issue of global climate change and global warming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Currently, GCC members collectively represent more than 6 million businesses, companies and corporations in virtually every sector of U.S. business, agriculture and forestry, including electric utilities, railroads, transportation, manufacturing, small businesses, mining, oil, and coal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a leading voice for business and industry, both domestically and internationally, GCC volunteers and staff attend all international climate change negotiations. They also closely monitor the activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and contributes to the IPCC's scientific assessment documents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Domestically, the GCC represents the views of its members to legislative bodies and policymakers. And it reviews and provides comments on proposed legislation and government programs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Businesses and industries that make up the GCC's member trade associations are active participants in voluntary programs for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are part of the federal government's U.S. Climate Action Plan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Funding</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC website was decorated with numerous photos of happy children playing in idyllic farm fields, but it did not provide any information about its budget or where its money comes from. GCC was not registered as a nonprofit organization and was not required to make public disclosures of its IRS tax filings, so it is difficult to obtain even basic information about its finances. However, the information that is publicly available shows that the GCC has spent tens of millions of dollars on the global warming issue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Los Angeles Times (December 7, 1997) the GCC spent $13 million on its 1997 anti-Kyoto ad campaign, an amount roughly equivalent to Greenpeace’s entire annual budget.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Common Cause has documented more than $63 million in contributions to politicians from members of the Global Climate Coalition from 1989-1999.[1]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GCC's efforts were coordinated with separate campaigns by many of its members, such as the National Coal Association, which spent more than $700,000 on the global climate issue in 1992 and 1993, and the American Petroleum Institute, which paid the Burson-Marsteller PR firm $1.8 million in 1993 for a successful computer-driven "grassroots" letter and phone-in campaign to stop a proposed tax on fossil fuels.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GCC's members and supporters included the following companies and trade associations:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Air Transport Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Allegheny Power</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aluminum Association, Inc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Automobile Manufacturers Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Commercial Barge Line Co.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Farm Bureau Federation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Forest & Paper Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Highway Users Alliance</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Iron and Steel Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Petroleum Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Portland Cement Alliance</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amoco</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Association of American Railroads</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Association of International Automobile Manufacturers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Atlantic Richfield Coal Company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Baker Refineries</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bethlehem Steel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BHP Minerals</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chamber of Shipping of America</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chemical Manufacturers Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chevron</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chrysler Corporation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cinergy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CONRAIL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consumers Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Council of Industrial Boiler Owners</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CSX Transportation, Inc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cyprus-Amax</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dow Chemical Company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Drummond Company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Duke Power Company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DuPont</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eastman Chemical</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Edison Electric Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ELCON</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ExxonMobil</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fertilizer Institute</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ford Motor Company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">General Motors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greencool</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hoechst Celanese Chemical Group</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Illinois Power Company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McDonnell-Douglas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mobil Corporation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Association of Manufacturers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Lime Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Mining Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Ocean Industries Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Petrochemical and Refiners Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Natural Rural Electric Cooperative Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Norfolk Southern</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Northern Indiana Public Serv. Co.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ohio Edison</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parker Drilling Company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Process Gas Consumers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shell</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Society of the Plastic Industry</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Southern Company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steel Manufacturers Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TECO Energy Inc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Texaco</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. Chamber of Commerce</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">USX Corporation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Union Carbide</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Union Pacific</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Virginia Power</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Western Fuels Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Internal Documents</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Climate Coalition, "Primer on Climate Change Science· Final Draft", January 18, 1996.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Case Studies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Accu-Weather's science for hire</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Climate Coalition</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1275 K St, NW</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Washington, DC 20005</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Phone: (202) 682-9161 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (202) 682-9161      end_of_the_skype_highlighting</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Email: gcc@globalclimate.org</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.globalclimate.org</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other SourceWatch Related Resources</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">climate change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">External links</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bob Burton and Sheldon Rampton, "Thinking Globally, Acting Vocally: The International Campaign to Overheat the Earth," PR Watch, vol. 4, no. 4, 4th Quarter 1997</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lester Brown, "The Rise and Fall of the Global Climate Coalition, Worldwatch Institute. This essay examines the significance of member companies' defections from the GCC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Disguise the Limit: the Global Climate Coalition," Corporate Watch UK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Cooking the Books: the Bogus Economics of the Global Climate Coalition"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Global Climate Change: Nations, Business Interests Struggle Over Policies Before Kyoto Meeting," Chemical & Engineering News, November 17, 1997</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a speech to Greenpeace, Ford Motor Company CEO William Clay Ford, Jr. explains why his company left the Global Climate Coalition: "The present risk is clear. The climate appears to be changing, the changes appear to be outside natural variation, and the likely consequences will be serious. From a business planning point of view, that issue is settled. Anyone who disagrees is, in my view, still in denial."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Heat Is Online, a website by journalist Ross Gelbspan, explains the science of global warming and industry's disinformation campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Rhetoric of Uncertainty." This essay examines the two-pronged strategy used by opponents of regulating carbon emissions: an assault on the scientific foundations of climate change theory, and a rhetorical campaign to discredit its proponents and their proposed mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. http://yyy.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1501646,00.html">Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance", The Guardian, June 8, 2005</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much of the information for this article was taken from "...http://www.prwatch.org/improp/gcc.html" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.prwatch.org/improp/gcc.html">Global Climate Coalition," from the PR Watch Impropaganda Review. (Used with permission)<...Thank You for Emitting, interview with Frank Maisano, E magazine, March/April 2006.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew C. Revkin, ...http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html...As he shaped climate policy, Cheney took his cues from the Global</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Coalition, an alliance of anti-Kyoto polluters that included</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the top lobbying arms of the oil and coal industries. In June 2001,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the administration dispatched Paula Dobriansky, the undersecretary of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">state for global affairs, to address the GCC at the headquarters of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the American Petroleum Institute. In her speech, Dobriansky was glad</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">to give the industry crowd credit for the president's decision to</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">withdraw from the international treaty designed to slow climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">change. Her talking points from that day read, "POTUS rejected Kyoto,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in part, based on input from you."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act also reveal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that Dobriansky had received a copy of the GCC's "21st Century</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Climate Action Agenda," a game plan crafted by polluting industries</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">that calls for "a new approach to climate policy" focusing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on "voluntary actions" rather than mandatory limits on greenhouse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gases. On February 14th, 2002, Bush gave a speech at the National</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that laid out his policy on</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">global warming for the first time. The speech was a Valentine's Day</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gift to polluters, officially enshrining the GCC's agenda, almost</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">point for point, as the White House's climate policy. Under the plan,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">planet-warming pollution would actually increase by thirty-four</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">percent by 2030. Bush vaguely promised to cut the "intensity" of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">carbon emissions by eighteen percent over the next ten years -</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">neglecting to mention that the nation was already on track for a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fourteen percent reduction. He touted $700 million in new funding for</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">technologies that might someday reduce emissions - money that</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">government auditors were later unable to find any trace of. And he</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">promised that the entire plan would be thoroughly reviewed and re-</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">evaluated - in 2012, four years after he left office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The National Academy of Sciences blasted the policy, saying it lacked</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a "guiding vision, executable goals, clear timetables and criteria</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">for measuring progress." Even the technology promoted in the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">president's plan was bogus. "It's as if these people were not</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cognizant of the existing science," one member of the academy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">remarked. "Stuff that would have been cutting-edge in 1980 is listed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">as a priority for the future."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his Valentine's Day speech, Bush gave credit to the man who Cheney</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">had placed in charge of crafting the nation's climate policy to suit</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the needs of big polluters. "I want to thank Jim Connaughton, who is</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality," Bush</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">declared. "He's done a fabulous job of putting this policy together."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Connaughton's mission at the CEQ was to make sure climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">regulations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">never got in the way of energy development. A Yale-educated lawyer,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Connaughton comes across like a slightly caffeinated Ron Howard, with</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a manic energy and a balding pate of wispy red hair. As head of the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CEQ, he put a green spin on polluter-friendly measures: Lowering air</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">quality became the "Clear Skies Initiative," while allowing timber</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">companies to step up their clear-cutting was dubbed the "Healthy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forests Initiative."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To direct the White House's spin on global warming, Connaughton</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">appointed Philip Cooney as his top deputy. Cooney had the right</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">experience for the job: He worked as "climate team leader" for the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Petroleum Institute. In 1998, the API took part in an</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">industry coalition that created the "Global Climate Science</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Communications Action Plan." The plan, recently entered into evidence</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by the House Oversight Committee, maps out an elaborate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">disinformation campaign to prevent "precipitous action on climate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">change." The strategy was to sow doubt about global warming,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">disseminating industry-funded research to challenge "the science</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">underpinning the global climate change theory."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now, with Cooney in the White House, the industry had its own anti-</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">climate man running the disinformation campaign. As the "action plan"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">directed, Cooney set out to censor the EPA's science on global</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">warming and inject the industry's denialist positions into government</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">documents. "They decided they didn't need to win the debate on</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">climate," says Piltz, the former official who exposed Cooney's</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tactics. "They just had to leave an atmosphere of uncertainty about</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">it and dissipate the will for political action."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kevin grandia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"http://www.desmogblog.com/manufacturer-associations-legacy-of-spin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manufacturer Association's legacy of spin ;With the death of their PR industry front group, the <b>Global Climate Coalition, the National Association of Manufacturer’s</b> has taken it upon themselves under their own name to continue to propagate the PR spin confusing the public on the issue of climate change.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The  http://blog.nam.org/archives/2006/07/global_warming_25.php">most recent piece of misinformation by the MAS comes from thier head spin doctor Pat Cleary, the organization’s Vice President of Communications.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s a brief history of the NAM’s attack on the science behind climate change provided by the good people at Sourcewatch:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Global Climate Coalition was created in 1989, shortly after the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first meeting. The GCC operated until 1997 out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers. Its early members included Amoco, the American Forest & Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, Chevron, Chrysler, Cyprus AMAX Minerals, Exxon, Ford, General Motors, Shell Oil, Texaco, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>For PR and lobbying, the GCC has employed "Junkman" Steven Milloy's former employer, the EOP Group, as well as the E. Bruce Harrison Company, a subsidiary of the giant Ruder Finn PR firm. </b>Within the public relations industry, Harrison is an almost legendary figure who is ironically considered "the founder of green PR" because of his work for the pesticide industry in the 1960s, when he helped lead the attack on author Rachel Carson and her environmental classic, Silent Spring.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By 1997, the growing scientific and public consensus regarding global warming forced a number of GCC supporters to reconsider the negative PR implications of their involvement in a group that was increasingly recognized as a self-serving anti-environmental front group. BP/Amoco withdrew from GCC after BP's chairman admitted that "the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point." Other prominent companies that have publicly abandoned GCC include American Electric Power, Dow, Dupont, Royal Dutch Shell, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Southern Company, Texaco and General Motors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In March 2000, GCC announced a "strategic restructuring" designed to "bring the focus of the climate debate back to the real issues." Under the restructuring, individual companies were no longer asked to join the GCC. Instead, membership would be limited to "only trade associations" and "other like-minded organizations." By seeking support from trade associations instead of individual companies, GCC hoped to create a layer of deniability so that affected industries could continue to support its campaign of global warming denial while avoiding boycotts and other public campaigns against individual companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC disbanded in early 2002, explaining that it "has served its purpose by contributing to a new national approach to global warming. The Bush administration will soon announce a climate policy that is expected to rely on the development of new technologies to reduce greenhouse emissions, a concept strongly supported by the GCC."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After years spent denying that greenhouse emissions were a serious environmental problem, the organization's parting shot at history combined a tacit admission that it had been wrong all along, along with an endorsement of the George W. Bush admistration's proposal for ineffective "voluntary" industry measures to address the problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Astroturf Troopers: How the polluters' lobby uses phony front groups to attack the Kyoto treaty.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Keith Hammond...Thu <b>Dec. 4, 1997</b> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the battle to shape public opinion on global warming, the big polluters are fighting dirty. In tandem with their air war of bogus advertising, the major carbon-emitting industries are mobilizing phony grassroots troops on the ground to lobby against the global Climate Change Treaty being negotiated this week in Kyoto, Japan. And some of those troops would be right at home in Tim McVeigh's militia unit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Global Climate Coalition (GCC), run by<b> Washington P.R. firm Ruder Finn</b>, represents the big oil, gas, coal, and auto corporations. And while its stated mission is to coordinate "the active involvement of U.S. business in the scientific and policy debates," a MoJo investigation found that GCC is also coordinating a secret coalition of extreme right-wingers and astroturf groups—fake grassroots lobbyists funded by conservative foundations and corporations—including so-called "<b>Wise Use" radicals, John Birchers, Lyndon LaRouchites, and anti-UN New World Order conspiracists.</b>...<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">GCC chairman William O'Keefe, an executive with the American Petroleum Institute, kickstarted this secret coalition in 1996 when he hired former lobbyist Susan Moya to set up a national network of "grassroots" groups, a network that now includes dozens of industry-funded astroturf groups in several states.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moya denied the existence of her astroturf network, but the MoJo Wire has obtained a memo that says otherwise, written by Moya herself. Moya and GCC refused to answer questions about their grassroots setup, but some of the corporate-funded astroturf groups named in her memo, including T<b>exas Citizens for a Sound Economy and People for the West</b>, confirmed that they were part of Moya's network of "state grassroots leaders," and that they received this memo. Moya's network also includes right-wing extremist groups, some of them downright wacky:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At a GCC "grassroots" strategy meeting this spring—held at the swank Washington offices of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association—executives and lobbyists from the oil, auto, and utilities industries listened intently as<b> Sovereignty International chairman Henry Lamb boasted that his Wise Use anti-environmental network could deliver thousands of astroturf phone calls urging Congress to spike the Kyoto treaty</b>, says a business lobbyist who attended the meeting. (Lamb also labeled Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) a "socialist" for his efforts to curb pollution in New England.) Duly impressed, GCC chairman O'Keefe, who was directing the meeting, pledged to give Lamb whatever resources he needed for astroturf lobbying.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>So what? So Sovereignty International is a leading promoter of United Nations paranoia, claiming that environmentalism is part of a plot to establish a "one world government."</b> The group was founded in 1988 by Lamb; Tom McDonnell of the American Sheep Industry Association, who has collaborated with Lyndon LaRouche followers; and Dr. Michael Coffman, a self-styled expert on global environmentalism who did a national speaking tour this summer sponsored by the John Birch Society. His topic: The U.N.-corporate-environmentalist conspiracy to seize private land in America, hand it over to wild animals, and herd all the humans into crowded communities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In June, GCC President Gail McDonald was an unscheduled speaker at the seventh annual Fly-In for Freedom, the anti-environment lobbying blitz on Washington run by the <b>Alliance for America</b>, which networks more than 600 Wise Use groups nationwide. Though her name didn't appear on Fly-In materials, McDonald appeared on a panel on global environmental issues, and gave a presentation to the assembled anti-enviros. Her message was familiar: Global warming is just a theory, and even if it's real, it can't be blamed on the CO2 polluter industries. McDonald, a former Clinton appointee turned corporate lobbyist, also spoke briefly at a Fly-In luncheon sponsored by People for the West—a mining industry front that blames environmentalists for Western economic woes.</font></div><div>
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</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In November, GCC organized a "national conference" in Washington, D.C. opposing the Clinton administration's position on global warming.</b> Invited speakers, representing groups like the United Mine Workers and the<b> South Carolina Black Chamber of Commerce,</b> complained that the Kyoto treaty "could raise taxes, drive up consumer prices and change American lifestyles." But while the guest list seemed pretty mainstream, GCC's conference was sponsored by radical anti-enviros and astroturfers, including Clean Water Act foes the American Farm Bureau Federation, mining front group People For the West, and the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO), an anti-environmental umbrella group run by New World Order crank Henry Lamb. Founded and funded by land developers, ECO claims to network more than 300 Wise Use groups, most of them funded by the extractive industries. For an in-depth look at ECO and its ties to other right-wing and corporate astroturf groups fighting the Kyoto treaty, click here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Dogging the EPA's regional workshops on global warming this year was Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), perhaps the premier corporate-funded astroturf crew</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">To protest the Kyoto treaty, CSE fielded handfuls of demonstrators in Dallas in October, Atlanta and Chicago in September, and Boston in June—some of them <b>sporting military camouflage, blue helmets</b>, and signs saying "50 Cent U.N. Gas Tax." </span>The Dallas stunt (see photo above) was co-sponsored by the National Center for Policy Analysis, a corporate-funded free-market think tank.<b> CSE's Patrick Burns appears on Moya's contact list</b>—when we asked Burns if his group had coordinated its "grassroots" demonstrations with the GCC, he hung up the phone.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Global_Climate_Coalition">http://www.p<b>owerbase.info/</b>index.php/Global_Climate_Coalition</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Climate Coalition (GCC) is a coalition of the largest oil, gas, coal, car and chemical companies and trade associations, set up in 1989 'to coordinate business participation in the scientific and policy debate on the global climate change issue'. Members include corporate giants such as Exxon, Du Pont and Union Carbide. Both Shell and BP Amoco have recently left the GCC in an attempt to project a more environment-friendly image.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GCC employs E Bruce Harrison, one of the main anti-environment PR firms, to direct its campaign to discredit the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and undermine the global climate change treaty. This panel of 300 independent experts has published several reports which concluded that the earth is warming up due to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and urgent action is needed to avoid the destructive impact of climate change - flooding, extreme weather etc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GCC has successfully lobbied the US government to avoid or water down inter-national controls at climate negotiations at Rio, Berlin and Kyoto. Its strategies include questioning the scientific basis of climate change, shifting the blame of climate change to developing countries, and using the threat of US job losses. It promotes the research of industry-funded scientists, and sets up its own 'grassroots' campaign groups which promote 'wise use' of the earth's resources. Another tactic is the sponsorship of front organisations such as the <b>National Wetlands Coalition </b>which projects an image of environmental protection while promoting oil drilling in wetlands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Climate Coalition Ignored its own scientists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a recent article in the New York Times entitled “Industry Ignored its Scientists on Climate” [1]. Andrew Revkin points to new evidence concerning the Global Climate Coalition. It states that the GCC for more than a decade ‘led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases lead to global warming”. The coalition in that time pointed to uncertainty in the scientific world, fostering an argument against the idea that greenhouse gases were responsible. However, new documents have come to light which shows that even as the coalition worked to manipulate opinion, that its own scientists were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases was sound. In an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995, the coalitions scientists wrote “The scientific basis for Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied”. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stating that in 1997, the year that the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated, that the budget of the GCC was, according to tax records, $1.68 Million, much of which came from the petroleum industry, Revkin continues “Environmentalists have long maintained that industry knew early on that the scientific evidence supported a human influence on rising temperatures, but that the evidence was ignored for the sake of companies fight against curbs on greenhouse gas emissions ... By questioning the science on global warming, these environmentalists say, groups like the Global Climate Coalition were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about the consequential issue and delay government action” [2]. They didn’t have to win the argument it is suggested, only cause as much confusion surrounding the issue as possible, in order to divide public opinion. According to Revkin, documents in the shape of minutes, of a committee meeting, concerning a 17 page primer by advisors, reveal that the coalition knowingly excluded sections of the primmer which went against its agenda. One section states “The contrarian theories raise interesting questions about our total understanding of climate processes, but they do not offer convincing arguments against the conventional model of greenhouse emission-induced climate change” [3]. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to minutes, the committee gave its approval to the primer, but only after advisors agreed to omit the section above. The primer itself was never distributed publically. In essence the coalition had in the findings of its experts, evidence which supported the position of environmentalists at the time .Yet it knowingly decided to suppress this information. Although the coalition came to an end in 2002, lobby groups such as the American Petroleum Institute continue to take a stance against any law or policy to drastically cut emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">External Links</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bob Burton and Sheldon Rampton, "Thinking Globally, Acting Vocally: The International Campaign to Overheat the Earth," PR Watch, vol. 4, no. 4, 4th Quarter 1997</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lester Brown, "The Rise and Fall of the Global Climate Coalition, Worldwatch Institute. This essay examines the significance of member companies' defections from the GCC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Disguise the Limit: the Global Climate Coalition," Corporate Watch UK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Cooking the Books: the Bogus Economics of the Global Climate Coalition"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Global Climate Change: Nations, Business Interests Struggle Over Policies Before Kyoto Meeting," Chemical & Engineering News, November 17, 1997</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a speech to Greenpeace, Ford Motor Company CEO William Clay Ford, Jr. explains why his company left the Global Climate Coalition: "The present risk is clear. The climate appears to be changing, the changes appear to be outside natural variation, and the likely consequences will be serious. From a business planning point of view, that issue is settled. Anyone who disagrees is, in my view, still in denial."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Heat Is Online, a website by journalist Ross Gelbspan, explains the science of global warming and industry's disinformation campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Rhetoric of Uncertainty." This essay examines the two-pronged strategy used by opponents of regulating carbon emissions: an assault on the scientific foundations of climate change theory, and a rhetorical campaign to discredit its proponents and their proposed mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Vidal, "Revealed: how oil giant influenced Bush White House sought advice from Exxon on Kyoto stance", The Guardian, June 8, 2005...http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html</font></div>