So far, ordinary citizens can get away with the response “just asking” when chastised for questioning the inconsistencies in narratives about man-caused global warming, but maybe not much longer if that starts falling into what ‘Big Tech’ vilifies as spreading misinformation. Regarding other controversial political issues in recent weeks, credit the collective far-left with cleverly concocting the propaganda notion that citizens questioning ‘established facts’ in the mainstream media about the U.S. presidential election or the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol might be dangerous radicals so hopelessly enslaved to conspiracy theories that they need to be re-educated. How long will it be until it’s insinuated that anyone who wonders why details in the global warming issue don’t line up right may be part of the unstable fanatic population posing a threat to democracy? Oh, wait, that’s already happened.

Maybe that kind of reasoning is meets with little opposition in the unreal world of news media / social media, but in the very real world of litigation (if the 20+ “Exxon Knew”-style global warming lawsuits resolve legal technicalities of whether they fall under Federal or state court jurisdiction), the law firms hired by energy company defendants will start questioning the often-repeated accusation from Al Gore that their clients colluded with skeptic climate scientists in disinformation campaigns designed to undercut the certainty of man-caused global warming. Perhaps enviro-activists may try to spin that as “Big Oil’s defense lawyers push right-wing conspiracy theories” for the biased news media to repeat, but that intimidation tactic to shut down questioning is not likely to work out well at all within the confines of any courtroom.

Imagine what happens if Gore is ever subpoenaed, but if he dodges that bullet, the contradictory things surrounding his role in the “Exxon Knew” accusation might still have to be explained:

• At the 2008 Davos conference, Al Gore categorically said that “Exxon 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.’” He spelled out that supposedly leaked strategy phrase full screen in his 2006 documentary movie in comparison to a sinister leaked memo strategy from the tobacco industry. His movie companion book categorically says Ross Gelbspan discovered that memo phrase, and Gelbspan’s 1997 “The Heat is On” book not only featured that same leaked strategy memo phrase, it also included audience targeting specifics of “older, less-educated males” and “younger, lower-income women” out of that memo set. But Al Gore categorically stated way back in 1992 that the memos were leaked to his Senate office by the National Coal Association.

Well, which is it, an effort created by Exxon, or one created in the coal industry?

• As I just noted above, Gore said Gelbspan discovered the memo, Gelbspan quoted the relevant phrases that appear even today within the current Hoboken v Exxon lawsuit …. but Gore’s 1992 book featured those same memo targeting phrases years before Gelbspan first mentioned them.

Who had the memos first, then?

• Immediately before Gore compared the “reposition global warming” leaked memo to the tobacco industry memo in his 2006 movie, he featured a prominent graphic — 928 science papers “agreeing with the global consensus that greenhouse gases cause global warming,” zero against — that is attributed to Naomi Oreskes’ 2004 study published in the December 2004 issue of Science. Oreskes categorically described her study as “no big deal,” little more than a personal exercise of curiosity, a single “cross check” illustration that she could use in a presentation of 100+ other slides on another matter, and how the reaction to this prompted her to elaborate a bit more on it for her paper she submitted to Science magazine. But Al Gore, at a March 2007 U.S. Senate hearing, described the study as, “The University of California did a very well respected, well picked-over peer-reviewed study. The team was led by Professor Naomi Oreskes. They took a very large sample of almost 10 percent of them, 928 … of those that dealt with the main consensus, the number that disagreed with the consensus was zero.“

Which was it? An informal tally done on a whim, or a serious research effort done at a major academic level, undertaken by a team of accredited researchers. Did Al Gore commit a ‘Roger Stone-like’ crime of making a false statement to Congress, or was Naomi Oreskes vastly understating what it took to carry out her study?

Just askin’.
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Part 2: Al Gore said what he said there about “The team was led by Professor Naomi Oreskes” for a specific reason.