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

[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 They admonish anyone offering criticism outside this system — if it is not peer reviewed and published in a science journal, it has no credibility and is likely corrupted by dubious outside influences.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

Ross Gelbspan & his seemingly larger Ozone Action connection

First, some elemental background info on this: folks might wonder why I focus so narrowly on the one set of supposedly ‘leaked fossil fuel industry memos’ which enviro-activists say are smoking gun evidence proving disinformation campaigns (and other alleged attacks against ‘settled global warming science’) operated under the widely adopted directive to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).”

My reason is elemental. It’s because the enviro-activists are so focused on that specific phrase and the worthless accusation surrounding it. It’s the most damaging weapon they have to use in their relentless effort to steer the world away seeing whether the science-based climate assessments from skeptic climate scientists are worthy of serious consideration.

If the sole excuse – ‘industry-paid skeptic scientists’ – implodes as the reason the public and policymakers and journalists have for ignoring skeptics’ climate assessments, then the ‘man-caused global warming’ issue is imperiled, perhaps to the point of imminent collapse. For influential investigators/prosecutors to begin to realize how vulnerable the egregiously false ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ accusation itself is to total collapse, they will need to fully comprehend why repetitions of accusations surrounding that memo set looks like an ongoing deliberate conspiracy, and they need to know exactly who the core people are in that situation, and how that core group apparently steered those memo phrases into the way that’s still exploited today. Continue reading

How Effective is the “Reposition Global Warming as Theory” Leaked Memos Line? Let me show the ways …

As I detailed before in my various blog posts, the supposedly leaked “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” memo strategy is worthless-as-evidence to prove Big Oil & Coal executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists to deceive the public about the certainty of man-caused global warming, quite simply because it was an unsolicited proposal to a tiny and very short-lived public relations campaign, and nothing in that proposal was ever implemented within that PR campaign. Or outside of it, for that matter; I have it directly from one of the administrators in that campaign that their copy of the proposal was literally thrown away. Yet somebody else in the circle of people in that campaign thought their own personal copy of the rejected proposal with its awkwardly worded strategy goal attributed to the never-used name proposed to the campaign and its basically illogical audience targeting goals was not only worth saving, but also worth leaking to enviro-activists in 1991, namely the Sierra Club (which otherwise never breathed a word of it to anyone), and to Senator Al Gore.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen individuals (described elsewhere less politely) unquestioningly repeat the “reposition global warming” accusation in religious devotional blog posts and vegetarian blog posts, or as a core part of PhD dissertations; and I’ve seen it casually slipped it into ‘the shipping news,’ and prominently featured on the U.S. Senate floor. The latest regurgitation of it popped up just a couple of weeks ago, Continue reading

What Does Nearly $5 $10 16* million Buy?

There’s another good question to ask corresponding to the one in my blog post title: how many times does a pattern have to be repeated before it stops looking like just a coincidence and instead looks like something resulting from a prepackaged set of talking points assembled as part of a larger coordinated propaganda effort? Continue reading

If nobody spots our fatal problem, we should be just fine.”

Enviro-activists put all their faith in the notion that their superficial, repetitive fear mongering narratives about man-caused catastrophic global warming will never be questioned by the greater public. A fun video from Anthony Watts’ WUWT blog marvelously shows how the folly of such blind faith surfaces after careful scrutiny of those collective narratives. “The Arctic is warming twice as rapidly as anywhere else …”? Oops. The ‘double-the-rate’ seems to be happening literally everywhere. Back in 2012, blogger Tom Nelson illustrated how the places hardest hit by global warming — ground zero, according to screaming headlines — is, well … literally everywhere. Oops. Over just the last year, headlines naming myriad different locations still scream the same way.

Same thing applies to fear mongering narratives implying energy company industry executives pay ‘shill scientists’ in a conspiracy to spread disinformation undercutting the supposedly settled science about CO2 pollution from burning fossil fuels. Continue reading

No matter where you go, there he is

He, being Ross Gelbspan, with regard to any prominent person regurgitating the accusation about skeptic climate scientists being paid by the fossil fuel industry to spread lies undercutting the so-called ‘settled science’ of human-induced global warming. In this case, I already covered a particular journalistic due diligence problem within Nathanial Rich’s promotion of his epic New York Times story “Losing Earth” in my August 9, 2018 blog post. Rich’s blunder there was to repeat a hugely troubling talking point from Naomi Oreskes, a person who’s plagued with a variety of credibility problems as it pertains to her alleged entry into the topic of ‘industry-corrupted skeptics’ and the stories she tells surrounding that situation.

I figured that would be the end of it regarding Nathanial Rich. I should know better about such things by now; Oreskes is never the end of the line in these kinds of situations. Continue reading

Prominent Global Warming Deniers are Funded by Fossil Fuel Companies.’ Spread This Line Widely; NEVER Check its Veracity.

And there’s really no necessity to tell anybody exactly what that accusation means. Al Gore and the top-most promulgators of the ‘climate scientist liars-for-hire’ accusation know what it means …. they simply haven’t proven that any such corruption actually exists anywhere. Continue reading

Holding Me Accountable

When Al Gore authoritatively statesExxon Mobil has funded 40 different front groups that have all been a part of a strategic persuasion campaign to, in their own words, ‘reposition global warming as theory rather than fact’“, why is he and others who hurl that accusation not met with a question something similar to “Reposition – what? Where do you get that statement from?” I have absolutely no problem with people asking me to back up what I say or show. Allow me to explain with the following: Continue reading

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