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
Author Archives: Russell Cook
“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
Wait … what?
It’s a small thing — I’ve already suggested (e.g. here and here) the inconsistencies between Ross Gelbspan and other people regarding the exact start date for his so-called ‘revelation of corporate-corrupted skeptic climate scientists’ are worthy of deeper questioning.
Throw another gasoline-soaked problem into that dumpster fire. Continue reading
“The Global Warming Show – how’s it going to end?”
My AmericanThinker piece today compares the ‘global warming reality show’ to the classic 1998 Jim Carrey “The Truman Show” movie, which itself was a dark satire about the fake world of lies, deceit, and manipulation surrounding a person unwittingly starring in his own reality TV show, who thought everything around him was real. The Truman Show viewers wondered how it would end, and ultimately, it was the truth about what was real that set Truman free from his imprisonment and ignorance.
Read the rest of it at AmericanThinker.
No matter where you go, there he is
He, being Ross Gelbspan, with regard to any prominent person regurgitating the accusation about skeptic climate scientists being paid by the fossil fuel industry to spread lies undercutting the so-called ‘settled science’ of human-induced global warming. In this case, I already covered a particular journalistic due diligence problem within Nathanial Rich’s promotion of his epic New York Times story “Losing Earth” in my August 9, 2018 blog post. Rich’s blunder there was to repeat a hugely troubling talking point from Naomi Oreskes, a person who’s plagued with a variety of credibility problems as it pertains to her alleged entry into the topic of ‘industry-corrupted skeptics’ and the stories she tells surrounding that situation.
I figured that would be the end of it regarding Nathanial Rich. I should know better about such things by now; Oreskes is never the end of the line in these kinds of situations. Continue reading
NOT exactly something you want to draw attention to
Loyal readers here know I have said on more than one occasion that Naomi Oreskes has an inability to keep her mouth shut regarding ancillary details (plural) surrounding the accusation about skeptic climate scientists being ‘liars for hire’ on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry.
She’s done it again.
‘Prominent Global Warming Deniers are Funded by Fossil Fuel Companies.’ Spread This Line Widely; NEVER Check its Veracity.
And there’s really no necessity to tell anybody exactly what that accusation means. Al Gore and the top-most promulgators of the ‘climate scientist liars-for-hire’ accusation know what it means …. they simply haven’t proven that any such corruption actually exists anywhere. Continue reading