In the middle of the summer of 2016, Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse participated with his comrades in a U.S. Senate floor speech stunt decrying the hazards of man-caused global warming. His speech contained a roll call of people who supposedly exposed the complicity of skeptic climate scientists in a fossil fuel industry-funded disinformation campaign. I’ll note why this older event is still relevant today at the end of this post, and for the newer readers arriving here, please do click on my links, as many are quick-glance screencaptures of text details I refer to, or are fuller context posts about my references. Continue reading
Author Archives: Russell Cook
The Mythological Hydra: Many Heads, Same Beast. Part 1
The prominent people promulgating the notion of catastrophic man-caused global warming seem to be oblivious to how some of their statements are totally unfettered psychological projection of what their side is actually enslaved to, when it comes to protecting their position with multi-pronged attacks against their ‘fossil fuel industry-paid corrupt critics.’ Continue reading
And the Award for Climate Change Propagandism Goes to…
Old-school, hard-nosed, traditional reporters don’t merely accept superficial information without question, they spot inconsistencies in the material and go digging in order to find out why the details don’t line up right. Three weeks ago, The Weather Channel website featured a hit piece against the Heartland Institute authored by Pam Wright, which Heartland’s Jim Lakely dissected yesterday here. As ever with such dissections, there’s always more. From my own unique bit of expertise on the political side of the global warming issue, let my politely suggest that Pam Wright should not quit her day job as a propagandist to become an old-school reporter. Continue reading
(4/19/19 small update) A short blogging break
For loyal readers following along here, and for new arrivals: a medical situation with a family member is interrupting my blogging right at the present time. Those of you who’ve had relatives or friends that must be placed in assisted living homes know how cumbersome these changes can be. I see an end in sight, probably around the first week of May. Rest assured, I’ll be right back here where I left off, in my dissections of the smear of skeptic climate scientists.
4/19/19 small update: A brief window of available time allows me to put out a post here.
4/11/19 small update: Had to revise the tally of the NewsHour global warming reporting bias once again.
4/8/19 small update: From receiving an alert on this Reuters article about a European global warming lawsuit action filed by Greenpeace, it looks like one of my tasks will be to see if the lawsuit isn’t enslaved to the same worthless ‘leaked memo evidence’ that the U.S. global warming lawsuits are.
The Dead Global Warming Issue exemplifies the Mainstream Media Journalistic Malfeasance Problem
A recent news item about a journalism school dean praising the ‘deep analysis’ presentation of PBS NewsHour reports, in conjunction with the NewsHour opening a bureau right at his school, prompts cause for concern about whether journalism schools have stopped teaching old-school hard-nosed reporter tactics in favor of spreading ‘save-the-world propaganda’ under the guise of it being outright “news.” Continue reading
The Bill Problem for Al Gore
Enviro-activists across the board have every appearance in the world of being petrified of engaging in pure science data debate over whether it is established fact that human-induced carbon dioxide is the main driver of global warming. Who can forget the spectacle of Dr Gavin Schmidt refusing to debate face-to-face with Dr Roy Spencer, or Dr Katharine Hayhoe channeling Dr Schmidt while demanding an outrageous 49-to-1 ratio of debaters on each side? What possibly drives this fear? Ross Gelbspan encapsulated it best when he said the public would never take action to solve global warming if they perceived the need for that wasn’t proven. How do you convince the public there’s no need for debate? Label skeptic climate scientists as ‘shills who are paid to lie by the fossil fuel industry.’ Dr Hayhoe encapsulated this solution when she offered exactly that accusation in a Q & A session, while citing a pair of books by James Hoggan and Naomi Oreskes. Each, in turn, encapsulated the citation cascade problem, where every major accusation about ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ always funnels right back to Gelbspan.
As I detailed in my February 8, 2019 blog post, Naomi Oreskes and her close associates only amplified this faulty source problem in their weeks-old ‘friend of the court’ brief for the six current California global warming lawsuits, which themselves, are enslaved to Gelbspan’s worthless ‘leaked memos’ accusation evidence. The critical thing to never forget here is that these lawsuits offer no science debate, they state it as a forgone conclusion and demand judgment against evil Big Energy companies for colluding with ‘shill scientists’ to spread lies. The otherwise disinterested public would only be perplexed by a dismissal of the cases via hugely complicated and inconclusive arguments about science details.
If it was revealed that very prominent people knew all along that their science was no good and that the only way to win was to destroy their critics through character assassination, the public might become livid as to why this wasn’t revealed much earlier than now. That’s where Al Gore’s “Bill” problem becomes part of a larger concern worthy of deep investigation. Continue reading
Flying off a Cliff with the Same Old Worthless Talking Points & how Entire Legacies may be Lost
I’ve posed a tough question to ‘global warming true believers’ for years ….
….. and it always turns out embarrassingly bad for people attempting to answer the question. So, regarding this particular hapless anonymous commenter, let’s peel back the layers and see where the wipeouts occur. But after that exercise, consider this: what happens when this same basic inquiry is put to luminaries such as former Vice President Al Gore, or to “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie star/book author Naomi Oreskes, or to the plaintiffs in the assortment of global warming lawsuits, all of whom claim the fossil fuel industry hid the harm of its product causing global warming by hiring shill scientists to spread misinformation? Continue reading
Amicus brief, Brule, CCI, Farrell, Franta, Lewandowsky, Oreskes, Supran
Here we go again. When I said in my December 14, 2018 blog post (and its Part 2), that enviro-activists only have a one-trick pony to use in their character assassination efforts against skeptic climate scientists, that’s no exaggeration. Their lack of diversity isn’t restricted to only minor league ‘reporters’ lately, it’s the only thing the most famous accusers have in their arsenal as evidence of a ‘skeptics / fossil fuel industry executives disinformation’ conspiracy. Look no farther for that than the 1/29/19 “Brief Of Amici Curiae, Robert Brule, Center For Climate Integrity, Justin Farrell, Benjamin Franta, Stephan Lewandowsky, Naomi Oreskes, and Geoffrey Supran” for the San Mateo / Imperial Beach / Marin / Santa Cruz v Chevron, California global warming lawsuits. Instead of presenting a more convincing argument for repeated use of the same old ‘leaked memo evidence,’ this little amici curiae group only amplifies how much of a problem it creates. Continue reading
Background: The WORTHLESS 1998 American Petroleum Institute “Victory Will Be Achieved when …” leaked memo
Among the five major ‘leaked memo’ situations which enviro-activists try to say are proof of sinister fossil fuel industry collusion efforts with skeptic climate scientists to spread doubt about the certainty of man-caused global warming, only two stand out at least on a superficial level as being particularly damaging. The one with seemingly the most devastating appearance is the so-called “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) public relations memos of 1991, supposedly detailing Western Fuels Association (WFA) efforts to push misinformation that would achieve the goal to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” among a nationwide audience of gullible “older less-educated men and young low-income women.” Problem is, those memos are worthless as evidence of that conspiracy because they were never part of the short-lived, small three-city-only pilot project ICE PR campaign.
The second most damaging, laughably so when its actual content is taken into consideration in an objective manner, is the 1998 American Petroleum Institute (API) “Victory Will Be Achieved when …” leaked memo. Continue reading
Pt. 2: Victory Will Be Achieved when …
… we can keep the inconvenient truths buried. In digging further into this situation, I see an entertaining irony concerning one of the latest global warming lawsuits and the old worthless 1998 American Petroleum Institute (API) “Victory will be achieved …” leaked memo, and I now see something in my work that needed to be corrected (sort of – it isn’t helpful to the people’s actions I dissect). Continue reading