The George C. Marshall Institute ( GMI ) was a nonprofit conservative think tank in the United States. It was established in 1984 with a focus on science and public policy issues and had an initial focus in defense policy . Starting in the late 1980s, the institute advocated for views in line with environmental skepticism , most notably climate change denial . The think tank received extensive financial support from the fossil fuel industry .
36-625: Though the institute officially closed in 2015, the climate-denialist CO 2 Coalition is viewed as its immediate successor. GMI's defense research was absorbed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies . The George C. Marshall institute was founded in 1984 by Frederick Seitz (former President of the United States National Academy of Sciences ), Robert Jastrow (founder of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies ), and William Nierenberg (former director of
72-511: A children's comic book teaching about carbon dioxide as an essential part of life. Climate scientist Andrew Dessler said "By focusing 100 percent on this idea that plants need CO 2 , they’re intentionally misleading people by avoiding the real problems of CO 2 , which they didn’t talk about at all." The Coalition also distributed a pamphlet challenging what it called "NSTA's embrace of the hypothesis of 'harmful man-made warming' despite its basis in flawed science and government opinions...." In
108-525: A disinterested objectivity on the part of scientists and policymakers: Ideally, the scientists or analysts who generate estimates of harm that may result from a risk would consider all the relevant facts and alternative interpretations of the data, and remain skeptical about tentative conclusions. Ideally, too, the agency officials and politicians, who have to enact a regulatory program, would consider its costs and benefits, ensure that it will do more good than harm, and remain open to options to stop or change
144-443: A few contrarian scientists associated with conservative think-tanks who fought the scientific consensus and spread confusion and doubt about global warming. The book Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science and History , noting that GMI received funding from the automobile and fossil fuel industries and espouses "a mix of conservative, neoliberal, and libertarian ideological positions", states that GMI has "supported authors opposed to
180-420: A very high degree regulated by the labour market parties themselves (self-regulation) in contrast to state regulation of minimum wages etc. Regulation can be assessed for different countries through various quantitative measures. The Global Indicators of Regulatory Governance by World Bank 's Global Indicators Group scores 186 countries on transparency around proposed regulations, consultation on their content,
216-610: Is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocacy organization in the United States founded in 2015. Its climate change denialist claims conflict with the scientific consensus on climate change . The CO 2 Coalition is a successor to the George C. Marshall Institute , a think tank focusing on defense and climate issues which closed in 2015. William O'Keefe, a chief executive officer of the Marshall Institute and former CEO of
252-493: Is analysed in empirical legal studies, law and economics, political science, environmental science, health economics , and regulatory economics . Power to regulate should include the power to enforce regulatory decisions. Monitoring is an important tool used by national regulatory authorities in carrying out the regulated activities. In some countries (in particular the Scandinavian countries) industrial relations are to
288-530: Is critical of the Marshall Institute and contends that the conservative backlash against global warming research was led by three prominent physicists— Frederick Seitz , Robert Jastrow , and William Nierenberg , who founded the institute in 1984. According to Hamilton, by the 1990s the Marshall Institute's main activity was attacking climate science. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway reach a similar conclusion in Merchants of Doubt (2010), where they identified
324-615: Is government intervention in the private market in an attempt to implement policy and produce outcomes which might not otherwise occur, ranging from consumer protection to faster growth or technological advancement. The regulations may prescribe or proscribe conduct ("command-and-control" regulation), calibrate incentives ("incentive" regulation), or change preferences ("preferences shaping" regulation). Common examples of regulation include limits on environmental pollution , laws against child labor or other employment regulations, minimum wages laws, regulations requiring truthful labelling of
360-598: Is merely government opinion by the International Panel for Climate Change [ sic ] (IPCC) and the U.S. Global Climate Research Program [ sic ] (USGCRP), which is not science and cannot be used as the scientific basis for any CFTC or other government action." In 2023 a CO 2 Coalition booth was ejected from the National Science Teaching Association annual convention. The Coalition distributed
396-546: Is no climate emergency and there are no climate-related financial or other risks caused by fossil fuels and CO 2 ." The comment criticized the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports and U.S. National Climate Assessments , the authoritative consensus summaries of climate science that inform public policy: Frankly, the "science" cited to support of the CFTC inquiry and possible action
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#1732775262184432-557: Is no evidence that there will be one," and further "Carbon dioxide, the gas purported to be the cause of catastrophic warming, is not toxic and does no harm." Both assertions are at odds with the scientific consensus on climate change . In 2022 the Coalition submitted a public comment on climate-related risks to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission , concluding "Real science demonstrates there
468-687: Is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory , these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society , but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For example: Regulation in the social, political, psychological, and economic domains can take many forms: legal restrictions promulgated by a government authority, contractual obligations (for example, contracts between insurers and their insureds ), self-regulation in psychology, social regulation (e.g. norms ), co-regulation, third-party regulation, certification, accreditation or market regulation. State -mandated regulation
504-587: The American Petroleum Institute , continued as CEO of the CO 2 Coalition. William Happer , an emeritus professor of physics known for disagreeing with the consensus on climate change, was another CO 2 Coalition founder from the Marshall Institute. Happer said the association with climate contrarianism had negatively affected Marshall Institute funding, viz: "Many foundations that would normally have supported defense would not do it because of
540-510: The National Academy of Sciences from 1962 to 1969) served on its board of directors. Patrick Michaels was a visiting scientist and Stephen McIntyre , Willie Soon and Ross McKitrick were contributing writers. Richard Lindzen served on the institute's Science Advisory Board. In February 2005 GMI co-sponsored a congressional briefing at which Senator James Inhofe praised Michael Crichton 's novel State of Fear and attacked
576-566: The Scripps Institution of Oceanography ). The institute's primary aim, initially, was to play a role in defense policy debates, defending Ronald Reagan 's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or "Star Wars"). In particular, it sought to defend SDI "from attack by the Union of Concerned Scientists , and in particular by the equally prominent physicists Hans Bethe , Richard Garwin , and astronomer Carl Sagan ." The institute argued that
612-646: The Soviet Union was a military threat. A 1987 article by Jastrow argued that in five years the Soviet Union would be so powerful that it would be able to achieve world domination without firing a shot. When the Cold War instead ended in the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the institute shifted from an emphasis on defense to a focus on environmental skepticism , including global warming denial . The institute's shift to environmental skepticism began with
648-402: The regulation in situations where the underlying science is tentative. Starting in 1989 GMI was involved in what it terms "a critical examination of the scientific basis for global climate change policy." This was described by Sharon Begley as a "central cog in the denial machine" in a 2007 Newsweek cover story on climate change denial . In Requiem for a Species , Clive Hamilton
684-439: The " hockey stick graph ". William O'Keefe, chief executive officer of the Marshall Institute, questioned 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." Matthew B. Crawford
720-596: The American people of missile threats, thereby encouraging the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system . Since the closure of the institute, the Missilethreat.com website has been maintained by the Center for Strategic and International Studies . Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking is a book by the George C. Marshall Institute, edited by Michael Gough. The book, published in 2003, encourages
756-558: The Marshall name being associated with climate". The defense activities of the Marshall Institute were moved to the Center for Strategic and International Studies . In its first four years, the CO 2 Coalition received over $ 1 million in contributions from foundations that support conservative causes and from energy industry officials. In 2023, John Clauser joined the board of the CO2 Coalition. The CO 2 Coalition
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#1732775262184792-606: The ancient world, and gold may have operated to some degree as an international currency. In China, a national currency system existed and paper currency was invented. Sophisticated law existed in Ancient Rome . In the European Early Middle Ages , law and standardization declined with the Roman Empire, but regulation existed in the form of norms, customs, and privileges; this regulation was aided by
828-680: The authority of statutes. Legislators created these agencies to require experts in the industry to focus their attention on the issue. At the federal level, one of the earliest institutions was the Interstate Commerce Commission which had its roots in earlier state-based regulatory commissions and agencies. Later agencies include the Federal Trade Commission , Securities and Exchange Commission , Civil Aeronautics Board , and various other institutions. These institutions vary from industry to industry and at
864-604: The contract for appearing at the convention, the organization had agreed its materials would be consistent with the NSTA position on climate change. As of February 2023 the CO 2 Coalition had published twelve white papers, six 'climate issues in-depth', eight science policy briefs, coalition member testimonies, and coalition member publications. The group continues to speak publicly and issue press releases on issues relating to energy production , climate change, and advocating for fossil fuels . Regulation Regulation
900-440: The federal and state level. Individual agencies do not necessarily have clear life-cycles or patterns of behavior, and they are influenced heavily by their leadership and staff as well as the organic law creating the agency. In the 1930s, lawmakers believed that unregulated business often led to injustice and inefficiency; in the 1960s and 1970s, concern shifted to regulatory capture , which led to extremely detailed laws creating
936-467: The hypothesis of anthropogenic warming and proposed mitigation policies ... stressing the free-market and the dangers of government regulation, which they said would hurt the US economy." GMI was one of only a few conservative environmental-policy think tanks to have natural scientists on staff. Noted climate change deniers Sallie Baliunas and (until his death in 2008) Frederick Seitz (a past president of
972-581: The ingredients in food and drugs, and food and drug safety regulations establishing minimum standards of testing and quality for what can be sold, and zoning and development approvals regulation. Much less common are controls on market entry, or price regulation. One critical question in regulation is whether the regulator or government has sufficient information to make ex-ante regulation more efficient than ex-post liability for harm and whether industry self-regulation might be preferable. The economics of imposing or removing regulations relating to markets
1008-595: The institute's founders (Jastrow, Nierenberg and Seitz) published a book on climate change. The appointment of David Allan Bromley as presidential science advisor, however, saw Bush sign the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, despite some opposition from within his administration. In 1994, the institute published a paper by its then chairman, Frederick Seitz, titled Global warming and ozone hole controversies: A challenge to scientific judgment. Seitz questioned
1044-487: The negative effects of second-hand smoke , the carcinogenic nature of tobacco smoking, the existence of acid rain , and on the evidence connecting CFCs and ozone depletion. Exxon-Mobil was a funder of the GMI until it pulled funding from it and several similar organizations in 2008. From 1998 to 2008, the institute received a total of $ 715,000 in funding from Exxon-Mobil. CO2 Coalition The CO 2 Coalition
1080-412: The positions taken by the oil companies that funded the think tank." In 1998 Jeffrey Salmon, then executive director of GMI, helped develop the American Petroleum Institute 's strategy of stressing the uncertainty of climate science. Naomi Oreskes states that the institute, in order to resist and delay regulation, lobbied politically to create a false public perception of scientific uncertainty over
1116-467: The publication of a report on global warming by William Nierenberg. During the 1988 United States presidential election , George H. W. Bush had pledged to meet the "greenhouse effect with the White House effect." Nierenberg's report, which blamed global warming on solar activity, had a large impact on the incoming Bush presidency, strengthening those in it opposed to environmental regulation. In 1990
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1152-549: The unified Christian identity and a sense of honor regarding contracts . Modern industrial regulation can be traced to the Railway Regulation Act 1844 in the United Kingdom, and succeeding Acts. Beginning in the late 19th and 20th centuries, much of regulation in the United States was administered and enforced by regulatory agencies which produced their own administrative law and procedures under
1188-529: The use of regulatory impact assessments and the access to enacted laws on a scale from 0 to 5. The V-Dem Democracy indices include the regulatory quality indicator. The QuantGov project at the Mercatus Center tracks the count of regulations by topic for United States, Canada, and Australia. Regulation of businesses existed in the ancient early Egyptian, Indian, Greek, and Roman civilizations. Standardized weights and measures existed to an extent in
1224-511: The view that CFCs "are the greatest threat to the ozone layer ". In the same paper, commenting on the dangers of secondary inhalation of tobacco smoke, he concluded "there is no good scientific evidence that passive inhalation is truly dangerous under normal circumstances." In 2012, the institute took over the responsibility for running the Missilethreat.com website from the Claremont Institute . Missilethreat.com aims to inform
1260-643: Was appointed executive director of GMI in September 2001. He left the GMI after five months, saying that the institute was "fonder of some facts than others". He contended a conflict of interest existed in the funding of the institute. In Shop Class as Soulcraft, he wrote about the institute that "the trappings of scholarship were used to put a scientific cover on positions arrived at otherwise. These positions served various interests, ideological or material. For example, part of my job consisted of making arguments about global warming that just happened to coincide with
1296-493: Was one of over 40 organizations to sign a letter dated May 8, 2017, to President Donald Trump thanking him for his campaign promise to withdraw from the Paris Agreement , which Trump announced on June 1, 2017. In 2021 the CO 2 Coalition submitted a public comment opposing climate change disclosure rules by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission . The Coalition asserted "There is no 'climate crisis' and there
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