George C. Marshall Institute Becomes Central Node in Fossil Fuel-Funded Climate Denial

By 1991, the George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) had evolved into a central node in the fossil fuel industry’s climate denial infrastructure, receiving funding from ExxonMobil and other energy companies to attack climate science. Founded in 1984 by physicists Frederick Seitz (former President of the National Academy of Sciences), Robert Jastrow (founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies), and William Nierenberg (former director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography), the institute pivoted from Cold War defense advocacy to climate denial in the late 1980s. Historians of climate change politics identify GMI’s 1989 publications as marking the commencement of organized disinformation about global warming.

Prestigious Scientists Manufacturing Climate Doubt

GMI’s strategy was sophisticated: deploy scientists with prestigious credentials in physics to challenge climate science, creating false impression of scientific debate among experts. Frederick Seitz, who had led tobacco industry efforts to manufacture doubt about cancer research, brought those tactics to climate denial. The institute recruited Fred Singer, another physicist who became a prolific climate denier, to author reports questioning climate science. By employing scientists with impressive but irrelevant credentials (Cold War physicists, not climate scientists), GMI created the appearance of legitimate scientific controversy where none existed among actual climate researchers.

Fossil Fuel Industry Coordination Hub

GMI’s executive director Jeffrey Salmon played a key role in coordinating industry strategy. In 1998, Salmon helped develop the American Petroleum Institute’s strategy of stressing the uncertainty of climate science—the infamous memo that outlined systematic campaigns to manufacture doubt. Sharon Begley described GMI in a 2007 Newsweek cover story as a “central cog in the denial machine.” ExxonMobil funded GMI until 2008, when negative publicity about climate denial funding forced the company to publicly cut ties with the most obvious front groups. The institute’s funding from fossil fuel companies created conflicts of interest its “research” never disclosed, presenting industry-paid advocacy as independent science.

Strategy of False Equivalence

In the 1990s, GMI pioneered the strategy of positioning “contrarian scientists” as experts whose opinions on climate change should be considered equal and opposite to climate scientists’ consensus. This false equivalence proved devastatingly effective in media coverage, with journalists feeling obligated to present “both sides” even when one side represented 97% of climate scientists and the other represented fossil fuel-funded contrarians. GMI provided reporters with quotable skeptics, creating the illusion of legitimate scientific debate that delayed climate action for decades.

Tobacco Tactics Applied to Climate

GMI’s approach directly paralleled tobacco industry strategies for manufacturing doubt about cancer research. Frederick Seitz had previously worked for R.J. Reynolds tobacco company, overseeing a program that funded medical research designed to distract from smoking’s health effects. The same tactics—fund sympathetic scientists, stress uncertainty, demand more research before action, question mainstream scientists’ motives—proved equally effective for climate denial. The institute demonstrated that corporate-funded doubt could undermine scientific consensus on any politically inconvenient topic, creating a replicable playbook for industries facing regulation based on scientific evidence.

Significance

The George C. Marshall Institute’s evolution into fossil fuel-funded climate denial infrastructure represents a critical moment in corporate war on science—the deployment of prestigious scientists to manufacture doubt about research threatening industry profits. GMI’s strategy of false equivalence, presenting fossil fuel-funded contrarians as equal authorities to climate scientists, proved devastatingly effective in delaying climate action by creating media impression of scientific debate where none existed. The institute’s connection to tobacco industry doubt-manufacturing, through Frederick Seitz, revealed the fungibility of these tactics across industries. GMI demonstrated that scientific credentials could be weaponized against science itself, with physicists challenging climate research despite lacking climate expertise, lending false credibility to fossil fuel industry talking points through impressive-sounding but irrelevant qualifications.