1999 George C. Marshall Institute letter to Clinton Administration

This 1999 document is a letter from the George C. Marshall Institute, addressed to President Bill Clinton. The George C. Marshall Institute is a non-profit, “dedicated to providing rigorous, unbiased technical analyses of scientific issues which impact public policy.” The Institute has received over $800,000 from ExxonMobil since 1988, and notably received $50,000 in 1999 (the year of the letter) for “support for science and public policy education programs.”

In the letter, the authors state that the “Kyoto Protocol is based on uncertain science and that the total cost of responding to man-made global warming . . . .would not be increased by a delay of several decades.” The statements made in the letter are based on a study (published in a October issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) which found that the forces behind climate change could not be ascertained with sufficient accuracy. Consequently, the authors urge the President to reconsider the obligations in the Kyoto Protocol, and to reorient the climate change policy towards promoting the efficient use of all energy resources. The letter exhibits many of the climate change denial techniques employed by ExxonMobil, including attacking the sufficiency of climate change research.

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