How Big Oil Tried to Capture the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The lobby group focused its efforts on trying to constrain the strength of the IPCC’s statements about human causes of climate change in the run up to the UN’s annual climate meeting in Kyoto in 1997, where world leaders agreed to the world’s first global climate change treaty. Officials from President George W. Bush’s administration would later credit the GCC for influencing his decision to abandon the landmark Kyoto treaty.
Despite sophisticated coordination, connections to the highest political echelons, and huge resources, the GCC had limited success at influencing the UN’s main scientific body. The group was disbanded in 2002 after many members left, citing reputational risks around the groups’ peddling of climate science denial as the reason for their departure.
The documents show the GCC:
- Spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ‘IPCC Tracker Fund’ to monitor and lobby the UN’s climate science advisory body in the three years leading up to world leaders signing the Kyoto Protocol;
- Attacked the IPCC’s peer-review process, while also using the body’s status as a well-respected scientific institution to bolster its climate science denial claims;
- Targeted specific scientists responsible for establishing human activities caused climate change, using adverts and op-eds in the mainstream media to attack the scientists’ credibility……..
Industry efforts to quash inconvenient scientific conclusions continue, according to Robert Brulle, a Professor of Sociology at Drexel University. He told DeSmog the “efforts of the GCC continue to live on in the ongoing efforts of many conservative think tanks to dispute the findings of climate science, and to attack climate scientists.”
“One key component of this effort was to manipulate climate science as summarized in the IPCC reports. Not unlike other industries, such as asbestos, tobacco, or lead, scientific findings pose a major threat to fossil fuel corporations’ bottom line. Hence one key part of their strategy has been, and continues to be to minimize the anthropogenic factor driving climate change.”
“This is still a common talking point among politicians.” ndustry efforts to quash inconvenient scientific conclusions continue, according to Robert Brulle, a Professor of Sociology at Drexel University. He told DeSmog the “efforts of the GCC continue to live on in the ongoing efforts of many conservative think tanks to dispute the findings of climate science, and to attack climate scientists.”
“One key component of this effort was to manipulate climate science as summarized in the IPCC reports. Not unlike other industries, such as asbestos, tobacco, or lead, scientific findings pose a major threat to fossil fuel corporations’ bottom line. Hence one key part of their strategy has been, and continues to be to minimize the anthropogenic factor driving climate change.”
“This is still a common talking point among politicians.” https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/24/how-big-oil-tried-failed-capture-un-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change?utm_source=dsb%20subscriber%20newsletter
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