The Global Climate Coalition Files: How Big Business Funded Climate Science Denial and Regulatory Delay

About the Series

The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) — a fossil-fuel backed industry group launched in 1989 as a project of the National Association of Manufacturers — was for decades able to influence the scientific process behind the United Nations climate assessments, using lobbyists and industry-funded scientists to manipulate the international UNFCCC climate change negotiations and attack climate scientists, a cache of recently discovered documents reveals.

The library includes hundreds of GCC briefings, meeting minutes, notes, and correspondence. They were released by the Climate Investigations Center in collaboration with DeSmog and Climate Liability News. The documents date back to 1989 and continue through 2002, when the lobbying group disbanded as its fossil fuel industry backers succumbed to public pressure to disavow its tactics.

The documents show how the Global Climate Coalition influenced international global warming negotiations, manipulated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) processes, and undertook a disinformation campaign designed to emphasize uncertainty and cast doubt on mainstream climate science.

In This Series

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We’ve all heard the dodgy arguments: ‘the science is uncertain’, ‘climate change is natural, not down to humans’, ‘science has been hijacked by politics’… Now a new cache of documents sheds light o...
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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 interna...
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A secretive fossil fuel lobby group undertook a decades-long campaign to undermine mainstream climate science while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and influence major scientific r...