Naomi Oreskes has a Socci Problem

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The public loves a tale of personal heroism. What kills a person’s hero story is when someone interrupts the tale and asks a point-blank question, “How is it possible that the thing you just described happened the way it did? It doesn’t seem to be readily obvious.” The storyteller can either dig their way out of the hole they just opened up, or not, and if that killer problem is left dangling in mid air for everyone to see, it’s an open invite to see what else in the tale falls apart.

Naomi Oreskes’ tale of personal heroism is not a tightly-knit fabric, it has loose ends everywhere. It’s hard to tell what level of intellect she has, but if she has any smarts at all, she should be petrified that if various major Federal / legal system investigators pull on any one of her loose threads, they’ll end up pointing a virtual gun in her face to explain her collective role in the climate issue. One way for it to all unravel is for an investigator to ask – who’d already know the answer – “Who is Anthony Socci?” Continue reading →

Investigate the Origins of the “reposition global warming” Memos Disinformation; It Can Likely Kill the “ExxonKnew” Lawsuits

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It’s a propagandist’s dream when an utterly false accusation dating back to mid 1991 is the mainstay evidence in the ongoing series of “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, including the latest Nov 2024-filed Maine v BP one. How is the “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)” memo set utterly false, with its otherwise sinister-sounding directive telling skeptic climate scientist ‘shills’ what to do in a public relations campaign targeting gullible “older, less-educated men” and “young, low-income women”? Easy. It was a rejected proposal, never implemented in any form, tossed into the trash by the people it was proposed to. Its ludicrous idea for the genuine PR campaign to aim messaging at particular people was not only debunked in a congressional hearing at the time when questions about that first erupted in 1991, the namesake of my GelbspanFiles blog strangely corroborated that in one of his last acts of fair and balanced journalism …. albeit with the spin that the person he quoted wasn’t being truthful. Why did he continue on that line? Because this accusation is literally the absolute best the enviro-activists have in their arsenal to indict the skeptic scientists who have the potential to convince the public that the ‘climate crisis’ is not a crisis at all.

But as the old saying goes, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” Let me offer two examples of how this kind of propaganda works, and how an investigation of its origins can potentially torpedo the entire global warming issue. A very large part of the population has heard something to the effect that the fossil fuel industry ‘hid the truth about the harm of global warming.’ But the public is unaware of how that whole accusation implodes around the core clique of people who’ve promulgated it since the 1990s. Nobody, including the true believers in the environmentalist movement, likes being conned. Continue reading →

Has A.I. Gotten Smarter About the Namesake of my Blog?

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Short answer: no. Just short of a year ago, I described my experiment to see what Google’s new “Gemini.ai” system could put out on the man, having previously tried an experiment with the ChatGPT system. In those two experiments, give GeminiAI credit for not veering into the brick wall mistake that ChatGPT did, falsely attributing Ross Gelbspan with a Pulitzer Prize win that he never actually received in any form. As I showed in my just-prior blog post, there is a difference between dutifully regurgitating what people feed you, and doing the heavy lifting to find out if what they tell you is actually true.

There are new A.I. systems out there now that you can ask questions. So, let’s first see where GeminiAI is still not particularly bright, and then let’s see what two other systems can tell us about the late Ross Gelbspan, since his work and his words forms the basis of the accusations in the very current “ExxonKnew” lawsuits. Continue reading →

Committing Acts of Journalism

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My transcriptions of several segments of a TV interview makes this blog post a long one. They’re necessary to drive home a critical point: The ‘climate crisis’ is not an existential threat to the well-being of the country; journalism malfeasance on the part of the legacy news media is the actual threat. Bits in the old interview are a driving force in the climate issue today. Continue reading →

The Problems in the ExxonKnew Lawsuits Keep Getting Worse

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This happens – I’m in the midst of compiling a blog post, I look up something I remember in connection with another accusation angle, then I spot something that doesn’t line up right in the whole narrative. What I’d planned to describe concerning “Committing Acts of Journalism” (or the lack thereof by the reporters over the last two+ decades on the climate issue) will have to wait until the next blog post, (is in my next post as of 2/24/25) because I just spotted a new problem with the basically still-current (originally Matt Pawa-led) pair of 2017 Alameda County / San Francisco County lawsuits. I dissected that pair jointly in my October 6, 2017 People(s) of California v. BP, while also bringing up those two again in my November 30, 2024 Maine v BP dissection, since the Sher Edling law firm inexplicably decided to apparently plagiarize Matt Pawa’s old 2017 accusation paragraph to use in their filing for Maine. What I did not catch in my latest dissection there was the basic fault with Matt Pawa’s citation source for the bit about Dr S Fred Singer’s “launch[ing] repeated attacks on mainstream climate science,” namely the 2007 UCS report. Those words are not in that report that way. I can show where they are seen that way, and where the actual source is . . . . . . which does not help the credibility of the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits one bit. It reinforces the fatal fault in essentially every one of these. Continue reading →

Naomi Oreskes’ Embracing of the “Victory Will Be Achieved” memos

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Like I said at the top of my prior blog post, it doesn’t matter where you drop into the accusation about fossil fuel industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns, nothing lines up right. The inspiration for this blog post comes from a result (utterly typical of many) in my daily email alert from Google of search results for articles containing the words “global warming” — a Jan 22, 2025 anti-President Trump piece at “The Conversation” website by Wrigley Institute Director for Environment and Sustainability Joe Árvai titled “How the oil industry and growing political divides turned climate change into a partisan issue.” The author is a psychology professor with exactly zero expertise in climate science who’d likely accuse me of being unqualified to speak on the issue … because I have exactly zero expertise in climate science. Psychological projection being a major hallmark of extremist enviro-activists, the title of his article needs to aim its accusation at enviro-activists for turning climate science into a partisan issue. When he speaks of ‘oil industry disinformation tactics,’ he needs to aim that 180° back at people on his own side. I could devote an entire blog post to all the elements of mis- disinformation in his piece. However, I’ll instead focus on a gem citation within his piece that’s something congressional investigators / law firms representing defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / genuinely objective journalists might want to look into:

Naomi Oreskes’ embracing of ye olde “victory will be achieved” memos. What does she know about them, and when did she know it? Continue reading →

The Fossil Fuel Industry Ran Disinfo Campaigns – ‘our ASSUMPTION is they did’

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Emphasizing for the benefit of congressional investigators / law firms representing defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / genuinely objective journalists: It does not matter where you drop into the collective accusation about the fossil fuel industry employing skeptic climate shills to spread disinformation — you’ll never find tidy answers tying up situations, you’ll find problems that only lead you onto a path of finding endless related problems. It never ends, no matter where you start. The example in this blog post concerns an item within Roland C “Kert” Davies’ 2011 version of his false accusation that Harvard Center for Astrophysics’ Dr Willie Soon was supposedly paid by Exxon to lie. I showed in my prior blog post the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits in which Davies 2015 rehashed accusation is their source – but while compiling that list and the brief timeline of prior accusations leading to the 2015 rehash, I spotted how Davies tangentially said something in his announcement of the 2011 version which essentially undermines one of the other of the four central accusation elements at the heart of most of these lawsuits. Continue reading →

List of the Climate Lawsuits Falsely Accusing Dr Willie Soon of Taking Exxon Bribes

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This list will be an ongoing compilation, with updates noted in red, similar to my list of global warming lawsuits. Additions to this list will be ref’d in this top paragraph..

In a bit of wishful thinking, the hugely suspect Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) gloated in its December 19, 2024 ‘News & Analysis’ piece that more than “one in four Americans now live in a community suing Big Oil, underscoring the rapidly growing wave of calls to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for its decades-long climate deception…”

The reality of the situation is that CCI itself is noted by both the Climate Litigation Watch website and the Energy in Depth website as apparently one of the main drivers pushing any gullible state / city / municipality leader in America to consider filing an “ExxonKnew” lawsuit. I’ve shown here at GelbspanFiles that CCI trumpeted their mid summer 2023 hiring of Roland C “Kert” Davies as their Director of Special Investigations, and within my tag category of major mentions of him, that he has direct associations with the four main elements of the central accusations in nearly all of these lawsuits. I’ve further suggested that since every one of the 35 current “ExxonKnew” lawsuits is enslaved to at least one if not all four elements, that we do not actually have any such “growing wave” of lawsuits, we instead have the same basic template — call it the “John Passacantando, Kert Davies, et al. [dba Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action / Our Next Economy / CIC ] v. Exxon & any other applicable energy companies” template, for lack of a better description — being repeated ad nauseam.

The main law firm pushing these lawsuits is already under investigation by the U.S. House and Senate. With new Senate GOP majority rule and the power to subpoena witnesses and demand they produce particular documents, these investigations are going to need bulletproof backup material to proceed. Since the entire accusation surrounding Dr Soon as it pertains to accusations in these lawsuits has every appearance of originating from just two individuals – Passacantando and Davies, who both also appear to be participants in efforts to portray Exxon as a corrupt organization – it would be handy to have a list of how far and wide their accusations have been spread into the main law firm’s filings, and into the filings by others who’ve apparently plagiarized the accusations.  Continue reading →