Category Archives: scholarly papers

“Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths” (a.k.a. “we still only have worthless evidence and suspect sources backing this.”)

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The breaking ‘political climate news’ last week concerned the Harvard Law Review’s draft version of a scholarly paper (not due to be actually published until 2024) posing the idea that oil companies could be criminally charged with committing ‘climate homicide resulting from deceiving the public about the harm of burning fossil fuels.’ Particularly ludicrous to me was the statement in one of those news reports by one of the paper’s authors concerning the pitch of this idea to plaintiffs:

We have some indication they’re at least listening and curious,” said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. “To someone who knows the criminal law, there’s a moment of ‘What!?’ and then, ‘It’s OK. It’s not crazy.’

Not only is this notion crazy, it would be an act of political suicide. Continue reading →

Belief in The Supran Being (Big Mistake if He Believes in His Own Publicity)

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I was alerted by a prominent climate scientist to an embargoed “New Harvard study puts a number on what ‘Exxon knew’ decades ago about climate science” news release out of Harvard University the day before it was released on January 12th, concerning Geoffrey Supran’s then-upcoming January 13 Science magazine publication of his “Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections” paper. The news release mentioned Geoffrey Supran’s name but not Naomi Oreskes – she, of worldwide “Merchants of Doubt” book author / documentary movie star fame. That struck me as being a bit odd since Supran owes his rising fame entirely to Oreskes, he’s not the least bit subtle about pointing his inclusion within her aura. So, I added the words “Supran’s mistake is believing in his own publicity!” to the email subject line of my reply back to the person and others included regarding the embargoed news release.

I underestimated just how much bigger his ego might be inflated. However, the more a person believes in their own publicity, the more susceptible they are to crippling deflation of their ego. For those unaware of it, Geoffrey Supran is a very weak link among the accusers who are desperately trying to keep the “industry-paid skeptic climate scientists liars-for-hire” accusation alive. Continue reading →

“We’re researching mis- and disinformation!!” Says a Research Group Unquestioningly Regurgitating Mis- and Disinformation

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Just sayin’ – anytime a person or group with a significant amount of prominence in the climate issue regurgitates ye olde “reposition global warming” memo set as ‘smoking gun’ evidence to supposedly prove the existence of industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns, it’s an instance that should trigger other prominent people with a significant amount of investigative authority to look deeply into the instance and what or who prompted it. Why? Because those supposedly ‘leaked industry memos’ were actually an unsolicited subset proposal comprised of operations goals and alternative names that were never used – I’ll reiterate that a little farther down in this blog post. The memo subset is literally worthless as evidence of energy company disinformation campaigns.

By this late date in the history of pro-global warming people citing those memos, this specific accusation tactic looks like nothing more than a one-trick pony that’s perhaps made available somewhere in a prepackaged template for influential accusers to hurl.

Witness the latest two separate examples of really clumsy regurgitations of that memo set within just this current month of September, falsely said to be the operating instructions for the 1991 “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) public relations campaign.

Continue reading →

“The first peer-reviewed publication to survey the industry’s messaging specifically” … showcases the worthlessness of “peer review”

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[Author’s note: Unlike prior instances where WUWT reproduced some of my blog posts here as guest posts there, this one is the opposite – I submitted it straight to them first, and it now appears there as “Peer Reviewed Science Journal Report: ‘Electric Utility Industry’s Role in Promoting Climate Denial, Doubt, And Delay.’” I reproduce it here from WUWT.]

Enviro-activists who claim human-induced catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is happening, is harmful, and should be stopped, also say evidence to support their claim is found in peer reviewed, recognized science journals. It’s their gold standard for validating the credibility of scholarly papers on the topic. They admonish anyone offering criticism outside this system — if it is not peer reviewed and published in a science journal, it has no credibility and is likely corrupted by dubious outside influences.

They would say that another term for peer reviewers is “fact checkers,” outside experts not associated with the paper’s author(s) who ascertain whether there are errors in the paper prior to publication in a climate science journal, on any area related to the issue. Peer reviewed approval = no errors. Continue reading →

The Roll Call of a Single Source Wipeout, Part 2

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In the middle of the summer of 2016, Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse participated with his comrades in a U.S. Senate floor speech stunt decrying the hazards of man-caused global warming. His speech contained a roll call of people who supposedly exposed the complicity of skeptic climate scientists in a fossil fuel industry-funded disinformation campaign. I’ll note why this older event is still relevant today at the end of this post, and for the newer readers arriving here, please do click on my links, as many are quick-glance screencaptures of text details I refer to, or are fuller context posts about my references. Continue reading →

Three Degrees of Separation or Less, Part IV: Robert ‘dark money’ Brulle & Other ‘Skeptic-Trashing Environmental Sociologists’

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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 →