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

Put all your Eggs in the “Reposition Global Warming as Theory Rather than Fact” Memos Basket

Accusers who push the idea that fossil fuel industry executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists to spread lies undermining public belief in man-caused global warming repeatedly reveal they only have one bit of so-called ‘viable evidence’ in their arsenal — a particular set of supposedly leaked internal fossil fuel industry memos. Their latest effort to keep the accusation afloat contains an unforced error where they felt compelled to repeat a specific line about the ‘discovery’ of the memos which they haven’t spoken of since 1996.

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Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse”, Part 3: ‘Leaked by Industry Executives?’

In Parts 1 and 2 here and here, I detailed how the re-emergence of the old Greenwire news brief really doesn’t help the long-term talking point about ‘industry-paid skeptic climate scientists,’ despite being apparently the initial seed for that ongoing accusation which centers around a particular set of memos supposedly leaked out of the Western Fuels Association’s “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) campaign. Now, let’s briefly examine how its re-emergence undermines the credibility of one of the current figures who pushes that accusation. Continue reading

Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse”, Part 2: troubling connections

Part 1 described how Phil Shabecoff’s June 1991 Greenwire electronic news brief was the first news item to directly quote a set of worthless ‘leaked memos’ which supposedly revealed how the fossil fuel industry aimed faulty climate science assessments at ignorant people in order to spread misinformation about the issue. The old Greenwire brief also quoted a spokesperson for an electric utility trade organization who categorically stated his organization was not participating in a public relations campaign of which those memos were supposedly guided by, which undercuts current accusations about that organization spearheading the PR campaign. But wait, there’s more. Continue reading

FreeBeacon: “Calif. Cities Suing Exxon Forced to Walk Back Key Claim”

From Todd Shepherd’s April 5, 2018 Washington Free Beacon article:

California cities suing Exxon and four other oil companies have reworded a portion of their original complaint after being rebuked by the presiding judge. …

… The cities had initially pointed to a 1996 internal memo from an industry group, the Global Climate Coalition (funded by the America Petroleum Institute), which said that, “a doubling of carbon dioxide levels over pre-industrial concentrations would occur by 2100 and cause ‘an average rate of warming [that] would probably be greater than any seen in the past 10,000 years.'”

… However, the memo was referencing an assessment by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and was not the independent findings of the GCC’s work.

The Free Beacon shows the backpedal rewording in their own photo link above, and I reproduce it here for good measure (click image to enlarge):

That specific paragraph section’s wording in its original form is what prompted the title of my prior March 30, 2018 blog post, “If California v. BP Implodes via Insufficient Evidence, so can New York City v. BP.” Read all the way through my blog post, and you’ll see how this ‘lack of evidence to prove a fossil fuel industry conspiracy’ problem with the twin California global warming lawsuits and the NYC one doesn’t end there, it ultimately points a giant red flashing arrow at the clique of people who have tried for 20+ years to say there is ‘a fossil fuel industry misinformation conspiracy to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.’

The California lawsuits’ reworded paragraph section loses all its teeth as “smoking gun” evidence proving oil companies knew man-caused global warming was settled science. It shouldn’t be reworded, it should be stripped entirely out of the lawsuits, and the main lawyer behind the use of it in both the California and New York lawsuits – Matt Pawa – should be compelled to explain why he didn’t know the evidence was totally worthless ….. or whether he knew it was worthless the entire time. But as I showed in my prior blog post, that same paragraph section appears in Matt Pawa’s 2008 Kivalina v. Exxon lawsuit, as does the supposedly leaked memo subset insinuating skeptic climate scientist shills were paid and instructed under an industry strategy directive to “reposition global warming” which targeted “older, less-educated males” and “younger, lower-income women.”

No such targets or strategy was ever used by anybody anywhere.

The effort to prove the fossil fuel industry conspired to misinform the public about the certainty of man-caused global warming is demonstrably beginning to fall apart. The focus on where the real conspiracy is to be found should be turned 180 degrees in the opposite direction, to a particular small group people who’ve apparently conspired for years to misinform the public about the certainty of corporate-corrupted skeptic climate scientists.

Corroborated vs. Uncorroborated Claims

Back in 2008-’09, I was perplexed that efforts to mitigate runaway global warming were occurring despite detailed opposition offered by skeptic climate scientists. Before my initial searches to find out why skeptic assessments were being ignored, I was unaware of how widespread the accusations were about skeptic scientists being paid industry money to lie to the public. Afterward, rather than finding multiple corroborations revealing massively damaging evidence of when, where and how the skeptics were paid to lie, all I found was one uncorroborated source for the accusation. Continue reading

An Accusation Built on a Foundation of Sand

The collective enviro-activist movement wants the public to believe global warming science is settled and that opponents may be dismissed out-of-hand due to ‘extensive documentation’ of skeptic climate scientists’ industry corruption. I’ve already pointed out, here and here, how there is no independent corroboration for the accusation. Worse, the so-called smoking gun core evidence for the accusation, leaked memos attributed to the obscure Western Fuels Association’s 1991 “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) public relations campaign are not what Naomi Oreskes, Al Gore, Ross Gelbspan and others say they are. Continue reading

Everybody loves Greenpeace Evidence … except Greenpeace

You need only place the first three words of the Union of Concerned Scientists organization name within quote marks followed by the word “dossiers” into a Google search to see just how widely mentioned the UCS’ “Climate Deception Dossiers” are mentioned across the internet. A particularly prominent one is Dossier #5, where the UCS clearly loves (as I pointed out in my July 9 blog post) a document scan out of Greenpeace’s old collection (click image below, to enlarge) of the Western Fuels Association’s “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) documents – the ones with the so-called ‘leaked strategy memo to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact’. But why has Greenpeace itself not loved this same scanned memo evidence ever since 2007? Continue reading

“This is Damaging!” (trust us, its full context exists somewhere)

Today, yet another illustration of what happens when efforts are made to dig below the surface of any given facet of the ‘industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists’ accusation, part three of my dissection of Australian professor/lecturer Sharon Beder’s assertions about the old 1991 Western Fuels Association “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) pilot project PR campaign. Continue reading