George C. Marshall Institute

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Not to be confused with the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies or The George C. Marshall Foundation
Logo of the George C. Marshall Institute.

The George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) is a politically conservative think tank established in 1984 in Washington, D.C. with a focus on scientific issues and public policy. In the 1990s, the Institute was engaged primarily in lobbying in support of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

More recently, the Institute has focused on disputing mainstream scientific opinion on climate change. Funded by ExxonMobil and chaired by a former official of the American Petroleum Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute has been described by the Union of Concerned Scientists as a "clearinghouse for global warming contrarians",[1] and by Newsweek as a "central cog in the denial machine."[2] Historian Naomi Oreskes states that the institute has, in order to resist and delay regulation, lobbied politically to create a false public perception of scientific uncertainty over the negative effects of second-hand smoke, the carcinogenic nature of tobacco smoking, and on the evidence between CFCs and ozone depletion.[3]

GMI is one of only a few conservative environmental-policy think tanks to have natural scientists on staff.[4] The institute is named after the World War II military leader and statesman George C. Marshall.

Contents

[edit] Global warming

See also: Global warming

Since 1989 GMI has been involved in what it terms "a critical examination of the scientific basis for global climate change policy." Although it says "There is a sufficient basis for action because the climate change risk is real,"[5] it is strongly associated with attempts to emphasize scientific uncertainty about global warming, and to prevent regulatory action on global warming.[6] The Institute was described as a "central cog in the denial machine" in a Newsweek cover story on global warming.[2]

Noted skeptics Sallie Baliunas and (until his recent death) Frederick Seitz (a past President of the National Academy of Sciences from 1962 - 1969) are on its Board of Directors. Patrick Michaels is a "visiting scientist" and Stephen McIntyre, Willie Soon and Ross McKitrick are "contributing writers".[7] Richard Lindzen served on the Institute's Science Advisory Board.[8] Four members of GMI's Board of Directors have been involved with SEPP.[9] GMI is a former member of the Cooler Heads Coalition.

In 1998 Jeffrey Salmon, then executive director of GMI, helped develop the American Petroleum Institute's strategy of stressing the uncertainty of climate science.[10] In February 2005 GMI co-sponsored a Congressional briefing at which Senator James Inhofe praised Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear and attacked the "hockey stick graph".[10]

Responding to the GMI's criticism of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, Senator John McCain (CPUSA-AZ) stated: "General Marshall was a great American. I think he might be very embarrassed to know that his name was being used in this disgraceful fashion."[10]

[edit] Conflict of interest

Matthew B. Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, left the GMI as executive director after 5 months when he realized that the institute was "fonder of some facts than others". He outlined a conflict of interest in the funding of the institute, claiming that his job "consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with the positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank.".[11]

Exxon-Mobil was a funder of the GMI until it pulled funding from it and several similar organizations in 2008.[12] In 2002, the GMI received $80,000 from Exxon-Mobil, up from $60,000 in the previous year.[13] Since 1998, the institute received a total of $715,000 in funding from Exxon-Mobil.[14]

[edit] Funding sources

Between 1985 and 2001, the institute received $5.5m in funding from five foundations, including the Earhart Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation and Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.[15]

GMI used to restrict its funding sources to private foundations and individual donors, but in 1999, Salmon wrote that "Fifteen years of experience with a policy of refusing grants from industry has taught us that our reasons for adopting this restriction were both right and wrong. We were right about it costing us money. But we were wrong to think the policy would permit us to avoid the charge of being a corporate funded think-tank." He said that "the positions we had taken over the last decade and a-half were so crystal-clear that it would be absurd to claim that the Marshall Institute was tailoring its position to fit the needs of some corporate interest", and accordingly, "From now on the Marshall Institute will accept grants for general program support from corporate foundations and in some cases directly from corporations. The Board has also determined that before we accept a grant it must be clear to us that the corporate foundation or corporation offering us funding must have a prior record of supporting well-known environmental groups, or groups with a record of opposing the deployment of ballistic missile defenses."[16]

In 1999, GMI received grants from the Exxon Education Foundation.[16] The institute's CEO William O'Keefe, formerly an executive at the American Petroleum Institute and chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, is a registered lobbyist for ExxonMobil.[17] The GMI was described in a 2007 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists as an ExxonMobil-funded "clearinghouse for global warming contrarians".[1] ExxonMobil stopped funding the institute in 2008.

William O'Keefe, chief executive officer of the Marshall Institute, and once Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the American Petroleum Institute, questions the methods used by advocates of new government restrictions to combat global warming.

  • "We have never said that global warming isn't real. No self-respecting think tank would accept money to support preconceived notions. We make sure what we are saying is both scientifically and analytically defensible." [18]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b "Smoke, Mirrors, and Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Change" (PDF). Union of Concerned Scientists. January 2007. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf. Retrieved April 21, 2009. 
  2. ^ a b Begley, Sharon (August 13, 2007). "The Truth About Denial". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482/page/1. Retrieved October 17, 2007. 
  3. ^ Oreskes, Naomi. "The American Denial of Global Warming (starting at 30:30 minutes into speech)" (2007). Retrieved on 2008-2.
  4. ^ Jacques, P.J.; Dunlap, R.E., and Freeman, M. (June 2008). "The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism". Environmental Politics 17 (3): 349–385. doi:10.1080/09644010802055576. 
  5. ^ 'Climate Change' webpage of George C. Marshall Institute website, Accessed March 2, 2008.
  6. ^ FACTSHEET: George C. Marshall Institute, GMI, Exxon Secrets Org website, viewed March 2, 2008.
  7. ^ website Environmental Defense.
  8. ^ McCright & Dunlap (2003), Defeating Kyoto: The Conservative Movement’s Impact on U.S. Climate Change Policy, Aaron M. McCright, University of Chicago, Riley E. Dunlap, Åbo Akademi University, Finland, SOCIAL PROBLEMS, Vol. 50, No. 3, pages 348–373. ISSN: 0037-7791; online ISSN: 1533-8533 © 2003 by Society for the Study of Social Problems, Inc. All rights reserved.
  9. ^ George C. Marshall Institute SourceWatch A project of the Centre for Media and Democracy website, retrieved March 2008.
  10. ^ a b c Mooney, Chris (May/June 2005). "Some Like It Hot". Mother Jones. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html. Retrieved March 2, 2008. 
  11. ^ Carolyn Mooney, "A Hands-On Philosopher Argues for a Fresh Vision of Manual Work", Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Review, Jun. 15, 2009.
  12. ^ Anjana Ahuja and Mark Henderson "Times Cheltenham Science Festival celebrates scientific heresy ", The Times, May 30, 2009.
  13. ^ Terry Macalister, Duncan Campbell, "Exxon mauled by green tiger protest", The Guardian, Wed. 28 May 2003.
  14. ^ Ed Pilkington, "Palin fought safeguards for polar bears with studies by climate change sceptics", The Guardian, Tues. 30 Sep. 2008.
  15. ^ Recipient Grants George C. Marshall Institute, Media Transparency website, accessed 2 March 2008.
  16. ^ a b A Note on Funding, webpage on George C. Marshall Institute website, accessed March 2, 2008.
  17. ^ Filing Images
  18. ^ The Washington Times

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Marshall_Institute"