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[Temporary place-holder while site is under construction]Global Climate CoalitionSUMMARY ONLY The Global Climate Coalition was set up specifically to coordinate American and European propaganda activities (funded by large industrial companies and trade associations) which were attempting to diffuse the messages being presented at the United Nations 1992 Earth Summit. This was held at Rio de Janiero, and attended by many of the world's top scientists and political leaders. The GCC had a couple of years in which to prepare its counter-measures and it was funded geneously. It became the primary organizer of the various media events held before the summit, and it issued a flood of press-releases during the actual conference in an attempt to confuse the issues under discussion. The president of the organisation was William O'Keefe, ex head of the American Petroleum Institute and an associate of Fred Seitz at the George C Marshall Institute, a gung-ho conservative think-tank which was itself funded by the nuclear industry and those space-related companies promoting Ronald Reagan's Star-Wars concepts. Candace Crandall was a key member of the GCC's publicity team. She was the wife of S. Fred Singer and also president of the Science & Environmental Public Policy (SEPP) organisation which had been funded by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution and Phillip Morris (by way of its private PR company, APCO & Associates). SEPP attracted money from the same industrial groups that were funding the GCC, and Fred Seitz of the George C Marshall Institute was an active member of all three organisations ... and also a consultant to RJ Reynolds Tobacco company. It was all a very cosy little circle. Singer and Crandall, via SEPP, also organised the Heidelberg Appeal for the asbestos and tobacco industries through an Paris-based organisation which became known as the International Center for Scientific Ecology (ICSE). The Appeal was presented to the media at the Rio Summit as if it were a rejection of global warming claims by a large and prestigious group of scientists. It was actually a scam. This misinformation project was run by another SEPP-fellow, Michel Salomon. The Heidelberg Appeal was a highly successful lobbying operation, and its initial success at promoting global-warming as 'junk-science' led eventually to Philip Morris creating both The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) and the European Science & Environmental Forum (ESEF). TASSC, with its later director, Steven Milloy, went on to play the same spoiler role as the GCC at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at Kyoto, Japan in 1997. At least some of the spleen by these climate-denier seems to have been directed at the leadership role played by the Democrat Vice President, Al Gore, in the lead up to the presidential elections. After many years it gradually emerged that the GCC was nothing more than a front-organisation for the coalition of energy companies, and the media ceased paying any attention to its pronouncements. The Coalition was finally disbanned in 2002.  | |