Industry Lobby Ignored Its Own Scientists on Global Warming, Report Says

An industry coalition spent more than a decade refuting the idea that greenhouse gas emissions could result in global warming, even though its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science “cannot be denied,” according to a New York Times report. The Global Climate Coalition, which during the 1990s led a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort on behalf of the oil, coal and auto industries, routinely advised U.S. lawmakers that the role of greenhouse gases in climate change “is not well understood.” Meanwhile, the coalition’s own scientists confirmed in an internal report in 1995 that “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.” That lobbying took place during the buildup to the 1997 international climate agreement that would become the Kyoto Protocol, even as the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that human activity was contributing to climate change.