In my August 20, 2013 blog piece, I briefly mentioned the role Minnesota assistant Attorney General Barbara Freese had in the May 1995 Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearings where skeptic climate scientists were called to testify, and I detailed her subsequent association problems with Ross Gelbspan. She had asked the skeptics at the hearing about their ‘industry funding’, which led me to ponder who could have prompted her to consider pursuing an otherwise irrelevant non-science tangent. Up until finding what I detail in this blog piece, I thought someone resentful of skeptic scientists might have done so while also alerting Gelbspan that one of the hearings’ top questioners was going to grill the skeptics. Well, it turns out I gave Gelbspan too much benefit of the doubt there………. Continue reading
Author Archives: Russell Cook
Three Degrees of Separation or Less, Part IV: Robert ‘dark money’ Brulle & Other ‘Skeptic-Trashing Environmental Sociologists’
Skeptic climate scientists and organizations associating with them point straight to highly detailed science-based assessments when they criticize the idea of man-caused global warming, an action that saints and axe murderers can do. ‘Skeptic-trashing environmental sociologists’ devoid of any climate science expertise want you to accept the idea of man-caused global warming without question, and they dismiss skeptics out-of-hand by saying such skeptics are documented to be corrupted by illicit money. These are the only two bullets they have ever had in their arsenal – settled consensus-based science and corrupt skeptics – neither of which they have any hope of proving. Is it possible for such sociologists to have a more anti-science, anti-intellectual position than that? Continue reading
Holiday Wishes, and a suggestion
The holidays and a medical complication with a relative of mine are probably going to slow up my process of putting out blog pieces over the next two or three weeks, so I’ll take this brief time to sincerely wish those who read this a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, Happy Winter Solstice and other applicable celebrations. And in the spirit of good will toward our fellow citizens that the holiday season inspires, …… Continue reading
Which is it? 1995? Or 1994?
As I detailed in my 8/16 blog piece here, there are problems with the way Ross Gelbspan describes what prompted him to look into the funding of skeptic climate scientists. But there is no ambiguity about when he says that particular event happened. It all took place after the publication of a March 19, 1995 article he co-authored. One interviewer said Gelbspan’s eye-opening experience began just a few days afterward. (full text here). But we also have two big contradictions about that date. Continue reading
The Need to Screencapture Global Warming Promoters’ Words (because what’s seen on the internet cannot be unseen)
Just over two weeks ago, my blog piece here explained how Ross Gelbspan’s claim about industry intimidation of a top television editor seemed faulty. My 7th paragraph had a screencapture photo link showing a quote from Gelbspan’s web site media tirade, where he described the person more specifically as a CNN editor. As courtesy to anyone wanting to see the full context of his web page, I also provided a direct link to it. Sometime between November 18th and yesterday, his paragraph about the CNN editor disappeared from that page… along with other important material there. Continue reading
The ‘television editor told me “We did. Once.”’ Problem, Part II: Which Editor?
My 11/18 blog dealt with Ross Gelbspan’s claim that ‘a top CNN editor’ was scolded by a supposedly powerful industry group for attempting to connect weather events to global warming, where the threat was made that advertising would be pulled if CNN’s reporting did not meet the approval of that group. His claim appears to fall far short of being infallible, and from that, maybe it is not out-of-bounds to speculate on just who the CNN person might be. Continue reading
The ‘television editor told me “We did. Once.”’ Problem
My 11/8 blog piece recapped six problems seen with a single paragraph written by Ross Gelbspan in a 2005 Mother Jones article, and went on to tell about another of his major narrative derailments. But I mentioned there was one more big problem that needed a separate blog piece to examine it. That’s what this piece will cover. Continue reading
‘Industry PR Campaign sways US Opinion’; except practically nobody saw it
Ross Gelbspan’s “Snowed” article in the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones magazine described how a ‘misguided application of journalistic balance’ and ‘a decade-long campaign of deception, disinformation, and, at times, intimidation by the fossil fuel lobby’ was causing the media not to properly warn us about the perils of global warming. Accept his narrative without question, and it’s a rallying cry to solve the problem. But notice the errors in his article’s 5th & 6th paragraphs, and it makes you wonder how much more he gets wrong.
Is it Reporting Incompetence? Or Deliberate Misinformation?
One more bit on the Ross Gelbspan / James McCarthy situation, to drive home a larger point concerning the problem of critical information missing from mainstream media news discussions of the global warming issue. Continue reading
On James Hoggan / James McCarthy, et al. There’s More, Always More.
At my 10/18/13 piece at JunkScience, I detailed how Desmogblog’s James Hoggan essentially named IPCC scientist James J. McCarthy as the person who prompted Ross Gelbspan into an ‘investigation’ of the funding of skeptic climate scientists, and I concluded by questioning why a trained scientist like McCarthy would focus on a funding point that is irrelevant to scientific inquiry. But his problems on that don’t end there. Continue reading