In my May 17, 2018 post on the King County v. BP lawsuit, I noted how I could have taken a shortcut to simply refer readers back to my earlier blog posts regarding identically worded lawsuits in different communities led by the same lawyer, Matt Pawa … but I instead offered additional troubling details about how he might be connected to dubious ‘evidence’ within that set of cases. Basically the same situation applies here with this latest City of Baltimore filing, regarding the eight global warming lawsuits under the Sher Edling law firm banner. My July 13, 2018 post on the Rhode Island variant noted the identical wording of them, and went into details of what I call “the fingerprints of Naomi Oreskes.” This Baltimore case suffers from the same affliction — it repeats the worthless set of supposedly Western Fuels “reposition global warming” memos on its PDF page 80 (printout’s pg 75), and Oreskes’ more than decade-old disingenuous portrayal of President Johnson’s speech is on its PDF page 56 (printout’s pg 51). But among my prior dissections of the Sher Edling cases, I haven’t mentioned anything about Vic Sher or Matt Edling. Continue reading
Category Archives: Global warming lawsuits
State of Rhode Island v. Chevron, et al.
This latest global warming lawsuit has two major problems. First, it’s essentially pure “boilerplate copy ’n paste” from six other current California global warming lawsuits being run by the same Sher Edling law firm. I already covered that problem – their enslavement to Ross Gelbspan’s worthless ‘leaked memos’ accusation about ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ – in my dissections of the Santa Cruz City/County / City of Richmond v. Chevron trio, and the San Mateo / Marin Counties / City of Imperial Beach v. Chevron trio. But I found another problem I’d overlooked in those filings. Call it “The Fingerprints of Naomi Oreskes,” a situation which only further opens a window into just how disingenuous the overall “evidence” is that’s used to indict skeptic climate scientists of industry-paid corruption. Continue reading
Defeated — but still Unscathed
The alternative title description here, as applied to the ‘brains’ behind the now-dismissed pair of Oakland and San Francisco global warming lawsuits, might just as well be “Bullet Dodged.” That’s Matt Pawa, and this isn’t the first time one of his global warming lawsuits was dismissed. Look back to his 2008 Kivalina v. Exxon case. Continue reading
“An Ingenious Feat of Investigative Reporting” … that was not.
Matt Pawa, a leading lawyer in four current global warming lawsuits aimed at fossil fuel companies, described elsewhere as the main motivator behind such action, has already been admonished for attempting to push ‘evidence’ in one of his lawsuits which wasn’t what it was insinuated to be. I also covered this problem in detail in my March 30, 2018 post, and briefly noted in my prior blog post how Pawa’s 2008 Kivalina v. Exxon global warming lawsuit indicated how he was apparently impressed enough with Ross Gelbspan’s work to cite a prominent article of his directly in the lawsuit which supported the idea of fossil fuel industry funding and orchestrating ‘shill scientist experts.’
Like so many other facets of the ‘corrupted skeptic climate scientists’ accusation which enviro-activists hope nobody explores in any depth, Pawa’s citation of Gelbspan’s article doesn’t lead to a tidy explanation of the ‘corruption,’ it prompts the question of whether Pawa has once again been caught citing ‘evidence’ that isn’t what it professes to be. Continue reading
Pawa’s pro-/anti-Gelbspan Weirdness
That’s Matt Pawa, who’s increasingly gaining fame as the leader of four current global warming lawsuits, and who was described in a December 2017 Huffington Post article as the main driver behind such legal action. “Wierdness”, because there is much about Pawa’s manner of establishing how ‘fossil fuel companies conspired with skeptic climate scientists to hide the harm of man-caused global warming’ in his landmark 2008 Kivalina v. Exxon lawsuit which makes no sense. And “Gelbspan” is the person who’s self-described as the first one to reveal that conspiracy.
What’s weird here is how Pawa can’t bring himself to give Gelbspan that direct accolade to this day, regarding Gelbspan’s evidence which appears plausible enough to nail fossil fuel companies to the wall for the whole world to see. Continue reading
King County v. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch and ConocoPhillips
Here we go again, with yet another lawsuit attempt to say ‘the science of global warming is settled, the fossil fuel industry knew this all along but paid skeptic climate scientists to say otherwise, thus victims can sue that industry to recover the costs associated of dealing with this settled science.’ The otherwise uninformed general public expects – rightly so – such lawsuit accusations to stand on their merits beyond any shadow of a doubt. They’re supposed to be open-and-shut cases, welcoming independent corroboration and never having the remotest appearance of hoping nobody checks the veracity of the accusation evidence, or look like they’re using shell game tricks to obscure the origins of a highly questionable solitary evidence source, or give any impression, however slight, that the so-called evidence is actually part of an orchestrated long-term effort to advance a political agenda by marginalizing critics through baseless character assassination.
This latest case not only fails on all those points ….. Continue reading
The Unending Finite Connections of the Skeptic-Trashing Enviro-Activist Clique
“Unending,” because it seems there’s no limit to repetitions of the idea that policymakers fail to act against catastrophic man-caused global warming because its settled science is undermined by the fossil fuel industry’s orchestrated efforts which use shill scientists to spread disinformation. “Finite,” because it seems whenever this accusation is heard, it’s always connected to a limited number of people who attained the first major media traction for the accusation. Continue reading
City of Boulder, Boulder County and San Miguel County v. Suncor Energy, ExxonMobil
Here we go again. This could be the point in time, though, when these lawsuits are one or two steps less directly connected* with the core clique of people who’ve long been pushing the ‘industry-paid skeptic climate scientists’ accusation, compared to the other recent lawsuits. [*9/10/23 author’s revision: Not quite – I’ve relabeled this one as a Sher Edling assistance filing, as explained here]. Continue reading
What’s Up with Chevron?
This post is outside of my standard dissection of the origins of the smear of skeptic climate scientists; the items I’ll be pointing out here today have no readily discernible connection with the ‘coal/oil corporate-paid lying shill scientists’ accusation. However, the question “What’s Up with Chevron?” as it pertains to that company’s action right before and during the recent ‘global warming tutorial courtroom hearing’ might still be worthwhile for objective reporters to ask, in light of the sheer worthlessness of the ‘coal/oil-paid lying shill scientists’ accusation, and the easily found abundance of science-based material questioning the ‘certainty’ of the idea about catastrophic man-caused global warming. 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.