Bad enough that Desmogblog co-founder James Hoggan makes one if not more monster errors of assumption, but he recently (and in an almost comical inadvertent way) showed the world what not to do when an alleged news item isn’t getting the attention people believe it deserves. His lapse was a classic example of beliefs overriding elemental due diligence. Continue reading
Author Archives: Russell Cook
The Ongoing Embellishment Problem
My recent Twitter debate with John Stauber, co-author of the “Trust Us, We’re Experts” book, reminded me of a particularly embarrassing embellishment error that pops up elsewhere among efforts to portray experts on man-caused global warming as authoritarians above reproach. It’s like the proverbial fish story, the tendency to make things bigger than they actually are. Continue reading
Three Degrees of Separation or Less, Part VI: The ‘Conflicts of Interest’ Notification Idea
In the global warming issue, when it comes to the idea of skeptics being ‘corrupted by industry funding’, basically any variant of that notion inadvertently points to the core promoter of that accusation, Ross Gelbspan. Take the March 9 article in Energy & Environment’s ClimateWire by Evan Lehmann, for example (archived version here). Continue reading
Ron Arnold: “Naomi Oreskes Warps Climate Skeptic History”
First, the setup for Ron’s article: Back late 2009, in my efforts to figure out where the infamous “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” phrase came from – the line spelled out in Al Gore’s movie and in Ross Gelbspan’s book “The Heat is On”, which they portray as a sinister top-down industry directive that skeptic climate scientists are paid to follow – I ran across Naomi Oreskes’ widely repeated Powerpoint presentation from 2008 where she said the leaked memo set containing that phrase was in the archives of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Problem is, you may not view them there. Continue reading
“Regurgitate Unsupportable Accusations, We Much?” Kert Davies is Back. Again.
A brief word of explanation about the first part of that title, it’s a variation of the “Resist, we much” teleprompter reading gaffe by the Reverend Al Sharpton, where he meant to say “Resist, we must” on his TV show. It lends itself to a variety of other overblown political situations which beg for a “Sharptonism” parody. The latest instances where Boston Globe, New York Times, and Washington Post articles cited Kert Davies’ supposedly damaging documents (screencaptures here, here and here), in an effort to trash skeptic climate scientist Dr Willie Soon, invites exactly that kind of parody. Continue reading
“Whenever There is Any Doubt, There is No Doubt”
That’s a line from the 1998 movie “Ronin”, where the CIA agent character played by Robert De Niro explained the reasoning for his apprehension over a bungled situation which didn’t look right from its inception. This simple analysis lends itself perfectly to the accusation about skeptic climate scientists being paid industry money to lie and misinform. If there’s no doubt the accusation is irrefutable, it would be consistently repeated by all. Dig into any part of the accusation, however, and its inconsistencies pile up to the point where there’s no doubt something is seriously wrong with everything and everyone connected to the accusation. Continue reading
Three Degrees of Separation or Less, Part V: Ross Gelbspan and Global Warming Nuisance Lawsuits
Not long ago, lawsuits were filed against cigarette companies for all the suffering caused by smoking, saying tobacco executives fully knew their product was a killer when they hired shill experts to testify and report that there wasn’t a clear connection between smoking and lung cancer. A leaked tobacco company memo pushing “Doubt is our Product” was a key bit of evidence in those complaints, but industry efforts to hoodwink the general public were arguably ineffective since a slang term for cigarettes had been “coffin nails” for multiple decades. Meanwhile, someone in the enviro-activist community decided to apply that same kind of complaint to high-level global warming nuisance lawsuits. Guess who and what is connected in a questionable manner to those cases? Continue reading
Personal Update: I am Funded for Another Year
When my critics say I am only further corrupted by this …. well …… Continue reading
Pivotal “Corruption Revelations” should not have Conflicting Discovery Dates (or Insufficient Evidence!)
It’s a major problem that the ‘industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists are paid to lie‘ accusation has no evidence to support it, but now it appears the person widely credited with ‘discovering/exposing’ that corruption is seen with significantly conflicting dates of when he actually started examining skeptic scientists. Continue reading
Worried about Global Warming or Ozone Depletion? Then Destroy Critics Who Say Those aren’t Problems.
Think about that line of reasoning for a moment. If you are fearful of climate catastrophe, wouldn’t you welcome the critics’ good news? Enviro-activists don’t, and I don’t try to analyze why. What I can do is tell how particular people reveal a one-and-the-same character assassination effort against critics of global warming and ozone depletion. Continue reading