New York Times 2/16/24: ‘Ross Gelbspan, Who Exposed Roots of Climate Change Deniers, Dies at 84’

The NYT obituary for Ross Gelbspan is here here (full text archive link here in case the main article ends up behind partial preview login wall). The Washington Post obituary is here: “Ross Gelbspan, author who probed roots of climate change denial, dies at 84.” (also archived here). If you want a window into the world of how mainstream media news in the United States now operates, look no further than these obituaries – on what they told and what they omitted. Continue reading

Ross Gelbspan, June 1, 1939 – January 27, 2024

I am truly sad abut the death of the namesake for my GelbspanFiles blog, and I must first explain why, when some – critics especially – might guess I’d be dancing on his grave. That’s not the way I view life. I don’t just simply want to have a nice day myself, I want everyone to have a nice day, to be happy, and to do good not only for personal betterment but also for the benefit of everyone. If we make very unwise decisions which harm or mislead others, we all should be held accountable, myself included, and be allowed opportunities to atone for our mistakes. We all learn from these teachable moments and become better when forgiveness is sincerely asked. It makes us all better as a result.

Death is final. When ordinary people lived a life filled with dishonest choices apparently for no other reason than personal gain and did nothing to atone for this, they’re now a permanent embarrassment to family members, “someone never to be named” among former associates and former admirers. If they were duped into making supremely unwise choices, well, it’s sad that they were such a dunce. If they deliberately chose to be dishonest, their legacy is far worse. When this involves prominent public figures, their legacies become little more than teachable lessons: “you don’t want the public to learn about you this way.”

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Bad idea — Ross Gelbspan popped out of the woodwork with a ‘legacy affirming’ video

He was probably counting on the Democrats holding their majority in the U.S. House. So, piling on to the basic theme of my November 16 blog post – and now asking on behalf of 220 Republican friends – how’s it going to work out when you have to defend your accusation that the “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” ‘leaked memo’ directive is smoking gun proof that skeptic climate scientists were paid under the table by fossil fuel industry executives, when the fellow who first gained the most fame hurling that accusation in direct connection with that phrase can’t keep his stories straight about his role in the matter?

Again, no exaggeration there about that worthless-as-evidence memo directive phrase (it was never implemented anywhere) being the only thing enviro-activists have in their arsenal to support their accusation about the fossil fuel industry bankrolling disinformation campaigns, and I’m not kidding about the namesake of my GelbspanFiles blog telling one inconsistent story after another when it comes to what prompted him to “expose” the “industry corruption” of skeptic climate scientists. He threw one more of those onto his pile with his September 24 ‘reporter legacy’ Youtube video appearance.

Investigators can’t fully know how faulty the accusation about skeptic scientists sinisterly “repositioning global warming” if they don’t know how faulty the stories about it are from one of the most prominent faces of that accusation. Continue reading

Pay No Attention to those Words Behind the Curtain

The title of today’s blog is a paraphrase of the famous quote out of the 1938 film, The Wizard of Oz. Watch the global warming issue zooming by in a superficial manner and all the horrific claims – increasingly extreme weather events, imperiled polar bear populations, skeptics who are paid to lie about the truth of all of this – sound like they are true. But turn any variety of those claims sideways by examining them carefully, and an edge digs in, and it soon becomes apparent that the number of disingenuous situations in the global warming issue is breathtaking. Today, a wipeout from an older version of Ross Gelbspan’s own website that’ll make anyone cringe. Continue reading

ABC News’ Bill Blakemore: “The only thing I am an activist for is rigorous journalism

Former ABC News reporter, I should add. But I’ll get to that small problem later. First, in regard to Ross Gelbspan, it appears Blakemore has a backpedal situation that most people would agree a reporter should never be caught doing, then there is a problem with a particular line in Blakemore’s ABC News bio, and finally there is the larger problem of how the global warming issue seems to owe its life to the sheer lack of rigorous journalism about it. Continue reading

Pulitzer Label Problem? Journalists Will Fix that For You. Pt II: Bud Ward

Honestly, when I said in my previous post that one of the founders of Society of Environmental Journalists’ (SEJ) walked back Ross Gelbspan’s “Pulitzer-winner” label at the same time the SEJ itself was calling Gelbspan a “Pulitzer-winner”, I gave SEJ co-founder Bud Ward too much credit. If anything, Ward inadvertently dug a bigger hole for Gelbspan by dancing around the application of the label. Continue reading

Pulitzer Label Problem? Journalists Will Fix that For You. Pt I

Not long after the release of Ross Gelbspan’s 1997 “The Heat is On” book, words in its book jacket sleeve about him being a ‘Pulitzer-winning journalist exposing industry efforts to confuse the public about global warming’ drew a response from skeptic climate scientist Dr S. Fred Singer, who categorically denied any quid pro quo arrangement with ‘big coal & oil’, while also directly saying Gelbspan was not a Pulitzer winner. In my June 19, 2013 blog post, I noted Gelbspan’s subsequent odd reliance on wording about being a “co-recipient“, particularly when the Pulitzer label problem resurfaced later in 2004.  But let’s have a look at a 1997 journalist’s effort to prop up Gelbspan’s Pulitzer label. Continue reading

When is a “Climate Change Expert” not an Expert? (a question Al Gore can use to salvage his legacy)

Embellishing credentials is an exceptionally bad idea, whether it’s done in self-promotion, or or done deliberately to hoodwink the public, or done mistakenly because someone didn’t do elemental fact-checking. Yet in the global warming issue, we see instances where a major organization promoted the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a Nobel laureate when he is not, and another organization similarly promoting a prominent IPCC scientist as a Nobel laureate when he is not, and the long-term promotion of book author Ross Gelbspan as a Pulitzer winner when he is not, a problem first revealed long ago by Steve Milloy and expanded upon at this blog. But now, let’s examine Gelbspan’s other small problem, the “Climate Change Expert” label. Continue reading