The First, Last, and Only Accusation Against Skeptics, Redux

I’m not kidding. Forget the #ExxonKnew effort to re-invigorate the otherwise 25 year-old accusation that skeptic climate scientists are paid corrupting money by fossil fuel companies to lie to the public about the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming. Revisit my first post on this and then look at what popped up only late last week, and the appearance that there’s only one bit of  supposedly “smoking gun” evidence supporting this accusation is impossible to miss. Continue reading

Writing Congressional Hearing Rebuttal vs Being Investigated at a Congressional Hearing

It’s one thing for book author / documentary movie star Naomi Oreskes to be tapped for quotations on the state of affairs in the global warming issue — last night’s appearance on the PBS NewsHour (2:49 point here), for example. It’s quite another problematic situation when she is tapped for work by Democrat politicians. 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

The Hertsgaard Error, pt II: Not a Case of Poor Wording

In a curiosity venture to see if the Union of Concerned Scientists regurgitation of the “reposition global warming” accusation narrative was getting any media traction, I instead stumbled across an unexpected example of outright either deliberate misinformation, or one of otherwise incompetent reporting from someone who is supposed to be an authority on the topic of ‘industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists’. Continue reading

Whenever There is Any Doubt, There is No Doubt

That’s a line from the 1998 movie “Ronin”, where the CIA agent character played by Robert De Niro explained the reasoning for his apprehension over a bungled situation which didn’t look right from its inception. This simple analysis lends itself perfectly to the accusation about skeptic climate scientists being paid industry money to lie and misinform. If there’s no doubt the accusation is irrefutable, it would be consistently repeated by all. Dig into any part of the accusation, however, and its inconsistencies pile up to the point where there’s no doubt something is seriously wrong with everything and everyone connected to the accusation. Continue reading

The illusion has become real.

For believers in the idea of catastrophic man-caused global warming, it remains as real as can be if critic scientists can be dismissed as industry-funded shills paid to lie to the public. But the belief in that accusation is merely a belief without evidence to support it. So, when they see statements and illustrations like this one Continue reading

Timeline History and Inconvenient Truths of Ross Gelbspan’s and Al Gore’s “reposition global warming” Phrase

The idea of man-caused global warming is especially effective because it can be pounded into practically everybody’s head via three easily memorized talking points. Global warming believers need only to counter dry recitations of skeptic science material with:

  1. assertions that the sheer numbers of ‘climate scientists’ on the IPCC side indicates this to be the overwhelming consensus opinion
  2. claims about leaked memo evidence proving skeptics are paid industry money to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” – dupe the public, in other words
  3. the obvious conclusion that reporters aren’t obligated to give fair balance to skeptics because of the previous two points.

In a nutshell, settled science, crooked skeptics, reporters may ignore skeptics — bam, bam, bam.

A timeline of where, how and when that “reposition global warming” phrase first appeared and where it prominently pops up afterward is something global warming believers would hate, since it might prompt a total loss of faith in the validity of that central accusation point. The loss could cascade into questions of whether the science actually is settled in the face of skeptics’ science-based criticisms, and people may also start to wonder about the ‘fair media balance’ idea, since they might not readily recall instances where skeptics actually received that from mainstream media reporters. Continue reading