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

Tom Nelson Podcast, #39: “Russell Cook: On climate change, ‘the mainstream media has not done its job’”

Questions …….. I have questions. We all should have questions regarding the “Clima-Change™” issue, because the issue itself demands unquestioned belief in its orthodoxy. So, in Tom’s 53 minute interview of me, I describe the questions that landed me in the issue, starting out with just the simplest question I had as a little kid, and then the questions I have now of why the traditional news media is not asking questions they should pose as a matter of basic investigative journalism. The elemental point I wish to drive home in this interview is that the questions end up being larger than just the science, where the ultimate implication is that if we are pressured in any way not to ask questions on any controversial issue, that’s where democracy dies in darkness.

Here, let me add a few details about the visuals that accompanied my telephone interview, along with some other info bits. Continue reading

Desmog: “Ross-who??” (Bury the Inconvenient Truths)

First, hat-tip to Marcel Crok at Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) for bringing an 8/23/22 Inside Climate News article to my attention, “Experts Debunk Viral Post Claiming 1,100 Scientists Say ‘There’s No Climate Emergency’” which trashed CLINTEL’s 1100+ signatories World Climate Declaration. Mr Crok drew my particular attention to ICN’s labeling of the ol’ Desmogblog group as “an investigative climate research organization” and their supposed revelation of how CLINTEL “rehashes several well-known ‘climate denial’ tropes” and has “strong political, professional and financial connections to the fossil fuel industry.”

That’s rich, in more ways than one. As I noted in a GelbspanFiles blog post earlier this spring, one hallmark of enviro-activists is their phenomenon of psychologically projecting what they are as accusations of what skeptics of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) are. The only ‘rehashing of old tropes’ going on here is ICN’s rehash of an essentially 30 year-old accusation that any industry connections whatsoever completely taints what CAGW skeptics say. Their rehash was apparently fed to them by the disingenuously repackaged “Desmog” outfit, an organization self-described as a pure public relations people having no expertise in climate science, which was also self-described by one of its co-founders as being created entirely to expose CAGW skeptic scientists as industry-paid liars. Continue reading

Who Didn’t Pay the Internet Bill??

I’m talking about the lights going out at two websites, Ross Gelbspan’s beloved “The Heat is Online” and Greenpeace USA’s beloved “Greenpeace Investigations.”

Somebody forgot to pay the electric bill? Just askin.’ Continue reading

Naomi Oreskes’ Additional Oops on Gordon J.F. MacDonald Undercuts the “was no global cooling” Talking Point

Hat tip to Marc Morano / Patrick Moore for the alert about John Robson’s excellent Dec 21 video, “The 1970s Cooling Scare Was Real.” While I was already quite familiar with the existence of the global cooling craze of the 1970s (I mentioned my own personal experience with that craze in the 4th paragraph of my 2011 CEI guest post), I learned one very interesting new detail concerning the geophysicist Gordon James Fraser MacDonald, whose name comes up beginning at the 8:25 point. He was prominently quoted in a July 9, 1971 Washington Post article as saying he agreed with another scientist about the distinct possibility of the Earth cooling as much as six degrees. Since I’ve already knew that the name Gordon MacDonald was an integral part of one of “Merchants of Doubt” book author / documentary film star Naomi Oreskes’ tales of how she became involved in the global warming issue, I was prompted by what I just learned to look a little deeper into what Oreskes thought was so important about Dr MacDonald. Continue reading

BBC Radio 4 vs Rush Limbaugh: “How They Made Us Doubt Everything” Episode 6 “Reposition Global Warming as theory, not fact”

If I sound like a broken record endlessly repeating the faults of prominent accusers relying on those worthless “reposition global warming theory” ‘leaked memos’ to indict skeptic climate scientists of corruptly colluding with fossil fuel industry people in alleged disinformation campaigns, it’s because the Al Gore side of this issue continually relies on them as the cornerstone ‘smoking gun evidence’ supporting that accusation. For example: in Gore’s 2006 movie; in the latest global warming lawsuits; in the latest online ‘news’ articles; in recent college student ‘journalism’ reporting efforts that are reported about at left-wing organizations; in recent ‘journalism’ podcasts highly resembling this current BBC podcast that rely on the same source person; in recent tweets by people directly associated with those accusers (tweets / prominent accusers, plural); on and on and on. Don’t get me started on how far back this enslavement is seen to those worthless memos.

The latest regurgitation of the story is the podcast in my title above, where the BBC makes the blunder of trying to tie mega-famous conservative U.S. radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh into the story. Episode 6 is available online right now for listening while being scheduled for on-air radio broadcast this coming Monday, August 3, 2020. I submitted a formal complaint with the BBC to pull the podcast from its schedule because of four major factual errors within the presentation, namely two unfounded claims made about two sets of ‘leaked industry memos’, an unfounded insinuation about the reach of an infomercial read by Rush Limbaugh, and the egregious insertion of an ethnicity word into a quote from one of those never-used memos that is not actually in the memos. Continue reading

Pt 4: Greenpeace People, for their API Memos Scans before they were Against Them

A major indicator that authoritative narratives are in need of tough, objective scrutiny is when important details within the narratives start disappearing. Evert Wesker – to borrow a line made famous by U.S. Senator John Kerry – was ‘for Shell before he was against Shell,’ similar to the way Greenpeace people favored their links to their own scan copies of the notorious American Petroleum Institute’s (API’s) “Victory Will Be Achieved …” memos before they seemingly turned against them. Since my Part 3 in this series concerned Wesker’s role in linking to the API memos, let’s start with another problem I spotted with his specific narrative. Continue reading

Pt. 3: Victory Will Be Achieved when …

… narratives about ‘Big Coal & Oil paying skeptic climate scientist shills to spread disinformation’ are purged of all distracting details which prompts the public to take their eyes off the basic thrust of the accusation. If enviro-activists want to convince everyone that skeptic scientist villains have zero credibility after being caught working within ‘fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns,’ that’s the ultimate victory they must achieve, because they begin to look like sinister villains themselves if cancerous credibility holes are found in various parts of the accusation. Continue reading

Among the quality resources for a global warming essay include … National Geographic

What’s one way to spread outright propaganda on the climate issue? Offer a statement just like the title above to the larger public who may not be aware that a once-highly lauded magazine has been turned into a vehicle of biased information about global warming. And to make doubly sure a particular political angle of the issue is put out, place a person formerly associated with an environmental propagandist organization into that magazine as its “Chief of Content, Communications and Public Affairs.” Continue reading

“The Global Warming Show – how’s it going to end?”

My AmericanThinker piece today compares the ‘global warming reality show’ to the classic 1998 Jim Carrey “The Truman Show” movie, which itself was a dark satire about the fake world of lies, deceit, and manipulation surrounding a person unwittingly starring in his own reality TV show, who thought everything around him was real. The Truman Show viewers wondered how it would end, and ultimately, it was the truth about what was real that set Truman free from his imprisonment and ignorance.

Read the rest of it at AmericanThinker.