GCC Climate Models Shortcomings and Limitations Press Release and Backgrounder

This Global Climate Coalition (GCC) press release and backgrounder criticized general circulation models’ (GCMs) ability to accurately analyze or project changes in climate. The industry-funded GCC opposed greenhouse gas regulations through direct engagement and collaboration with affiliated climate deniers from 1989 to 2002. Its membership spanned across the automotive, utility, manufacturing, petroleum, and mining industries.

The GCC wrote that GCMs were unable to “adequately describe several key factors that will influence the climate’s response to an assumed doubling of CO2.” The GCC addressed policymakers, stating that GCM “scenarios cannot be considered an accurate picture of the future.”

While eschewing climate modeling, the GCC cited economic models that reflect climate change regulation negatively impacting, “energy prices, consumer costs and U.S. competitiveness in world markets.” According to Harvard University’s David Levy and Sandra Rothenberg, “general equilibrium economic models” like the ones cited by the GCC are “more complex and rest on less secure theoretical foundations than GCMs.”

A similar copy of this backgrounder was also included in GCC’s Science and Technology Assessment Committee’s (STAC) April 1996 meeting minutes and materials.

This document is part of the private collection of Nicky Sundt, a Washington-based climate change science, policy and communications expert.





Interested in more GCC documents? See more in the full Global Climate Coalition collection.

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