Naomi Oreskes’ appearance at a 10/23/19 House hearing on the topic of “the oil industry’s climate denial campaign” wasn’t a one-time event. She reappeared six days later at a Senate “hearing,” where her Prepared Written Testimony contained the identical blunders I detailed in Part 1 of this two-part blog post. Unlike the House hearing, she and the others at this “hearing” offered truly bizarre and comically self-damaging statements without fear of anyone questioning them. Continue reading
Author Archives: Russell Cook
Naomi Oreskes – the gift that keeps on giving, Pt 1
Harvard science history professor Naomi Oreskes was one of the witnesses appearing under oath at the 10/23/19 House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s “Examining the Oil Industry’s Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change” hearing. A pair of missteps while responding to questions didn’t bolster her appearance as a detached, objective, expert witness on the complicated topic of alleged fossil fuel industry disinformation efforts. She also offered written testimony, … and in doing so about a couple of details, she once again reinforced how she’s not particularly adept about keeping her mouth shut on items that have the potential of opening up a Pandora’s Box about the history of the tactics used by enviro-activists to accuse skeptic climate scientists of being ‘industry-paid shills spreading disinformation.’ Continue reading
See Something? Then Say Something — 10 years on, as of this October
I can’t pin an exact date on this, but it was sometime this month ten years ago when I spotted an irreconcilable difference within the accusation narrative about skeptic climate scientists being paid by ‘Big Oil’ to hoodwink the public into thinking the science is not settled. I saw two claims about who first reported on this ‘conspiracy,’ and there was no way either of them would line up right. But to make the situation exponentially worse, the evidence supposedly proving the conspiracy existed within each separate accusation could not actually be readily found anywhere on the internet in its full context. This combination, I thought, was highly troubling, and was something reporters might have missed and ought to know about. It’s turned out to be a much bigger struggle to get the story out than the slam dunk tip effort I assumed it would be. Continue reading
“If nobody spots our fatal problem, we should be just fine.”
Enviro-activists put all their faith in the notion that their superficial, repetitive fear mongering narratives about man-caused catastrophic global warming will never be questioned by the greater public. A fun video from Anthony Watts’ WUWT blog marvelously shows how the folly of such blind faith surfaces after careful scrutiny of those collective narratives. “The Arctic is warming twice as rapidly as anywhere else …”? Oops. The ‘double-the-rate’ seems to be happening literally everywhere. Back in 2012, blogger Tom Nelson illustrated how the places hardest hit by global warming — ground zero, according to screaming headlines — is, well … literally everywhere. Oops. Over just the last year, headlines naming myriad different locations still scream the same way.
Same thing applies to fear mongering narratives implying energy company industry executives pay ‘shill scientists’ in a conspiracy to spread disinformation undercutting the supposedly settled science about CO2 pollution from burning fossil fuels. Continue reading
#GreenpeaceKnew
Two things: First, in order to fully understand where we are in the issue of man-caused global warming, it’s best if everyone understands how we got here. Second, one of the hallmarks of the extreme far-left is their propensity for psychological projection; doing, saying or believing what they accuse their opponents of doing, saying or believing.
So, when far-left extreme enviro-activists say now that “Exxon Knew” years ago about the true reality of the the overall global warming science situation but later used disinformation campaigns to steer the public in the opposite direction, are they inadvertently admitting that ……. Continue reading
What was #Greta Thunberg Taught, and Who Taught Her about It?
Remember the classic “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” TV special, where the little girl Sally decided to stay with Linus in his pumpkin patch to await the imminent arrival of The Great Pumpkin, rather than participate in the Trick or Treating fun all children enjoy when they celebrated Halloween? “I was robbed!! … I’ll sue!” she exclaimed, upon realizing Linus’ prophetic vision failed to happen. It was a whimsical illustration; everyone understands Sally’s frustration about losing the chance to enjoy an event which happens only once a year, and we all see how Linus is sincere but is comically misguided. But this same personal situation befalling “climate warrior” #GretaThunberg could personally harm her in a far more serious and damaging way. Continue reading
“Brief Of Amici Curiae, Robert Brulle .. Oreskes .. & Geoffrey Supran” Redux — the Baltimore version
Friend of the Court participant Geoffrey Supran trumpeted this Baltimore filing event last week as though it was some marvelous new development in the area of global warming lawsuits. It isn’t. It’s essentially a boilerplate regurgitation of the amici curiae Supran and his associates filed back in early January in California, all the way down to the conclusions which Supran quoted in his Tweet about this one. He inadvertently reinforces this copycat problem by noting how the file can be downloaded from the Sher Edling law firm — the same firm with 9 boilerplate global warming lawsuits against energy companies which I’ve detailed in my Sher Edling-tagged posts as being enslaved to a solitary piece of worthless evidence used to indict skeptic climate scientists as peddlers of industry-orchestrated disinformation. What Supran does here is reinforce a particularly damaging fatal flaw within those lawsuits. Continue reading
‘Skeptic Climate Scientists Do Not Deserve Fair Media Balance.’ Redux, part 2
You’d think the main people behind the effort to keep the idea of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) alive would have figured out by now that it’s a waste of time to float the notion that skeptic climate scientists receive too much undeserved attention from journalists. The danger is that rather than anyone, CAGW skeptic or outright believer, being able to point to any CAGW skeptic scientist/speaker given fair coverage any time in the just last decade at a mainstream media broadcast or newspaper outlet, the counter-opposite might be revealed, such as what’s been seen over the last two decades at the PBS NewsHour. “But – but -but – Pat Michaels and Willie Soon have been on CNN and in the New York Times!”, CAGW believers might exclaim. Right. Each castigated as shills of the fossil fuel industry. When has anyone ever seen CAGW scientists like Michael Oppenheimer* insinuated as shills of Big Green operatives by mainstream media reporters?
Yet, only two weeks ago, a supposedly peer-reviewed paper titled “Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians” published at Nature Communications attempted to float that exact ‘too much media balance’ notion. One of the paper’s blunders was to attempt to compare 386 ‘pro-CAGW’ people to an equal number of opposite “prominent contrarians.” Willis Eschenbach at WUWT goes into much deeper detail on how the comparison’s methodology is suspect, as does Larry Kummer at Fabius Maximus. I think I showed fairly well in item #2 of my Part 1 blog post how the “prominent” bit collapses when the list includes people like me.
The far bigger error in the paper, however, was to classify their other data source, the Desmogblog organization, as a benign-sounding ‘project’ objectively documenting known promulgators of CAGW disinformation. Intentional, or inadvertent due to sheer ignorance, that portrayal itself is disinformation. Continue reading
[Update: 8/20/19] Open Letter to Nature Communications (the ‘Skeptic Climate Scientists Do Not Deserve Fair Media Balance’ Problem, part 1)
[ Author’s 8/20/19 update appears at the bottom of this page] The entertaining news item last week was reports about the publication of a paper in Nature Communications titled “Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians,” which fundamentally suggested that “professional journalists and editors should adjust the disproportionate attention given to contrarians.” Climate scientist Dr Judith Curry describes it as a travesty, “the worst paper I have ever seen published in a reputable journal,” with regard to its highly questionable attempt to juxtapose 386 prominent contrarians with 386 expert scientists in a way to conclude critics of the IPCC side of the issue don’t deserve equal media attention. I’m one of the so-called “contrarians.” Continue reading
“Among the quality resources for a global warming essay include … National Geographic”
What’s one way to spread outright propaganda on the climate issue? Offer a statement just like the title above to the larger public who may not be aware that a once-highly lauded magazine has been turned into a vehicle of biased information about global warming. And to make doubly sure a particular political angle of the issue is put out, place a person formerly associated with an environmental propagandist organization into that magazine as its “Chief of Content, Communications and Public Affairs.” Continue reading