Dr Mann placed himself in a world of hurt on February 2 when he rather thoughtlessly hurled a very thinly veiled accusation on Twitter that a sitting U.S. Senator is an outright racist (hat tip to Tony Heller for that situation). Just that blunder alone might be a crippling credibility problem for Dr Mann to explain when he appears as a witness before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on February 8, if the GOP Committee members are aware of it. But that’s not the only recent declaration that Dr Mann couldn’t prove to be true if his reputation depended on it. He might try deleting his Tweet and hope nobody notices, but his other declaration would require quite a large book burning effort …. of his own 2021 “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet” book.
As many loyal readers of my GelbspanFiles blog have already seen, I’ve meticulously detailed how the notorious “reposition global warming” phrase and related memo documents are falsely attributed to the Western Fuels Association’s “Information Council for the Environment”; they were instead contained within a public relations campaign proposal submitted by the Edison Electric Institute in 1991 to the WFA and were rejected, were never used, and thus are worthless as evidence to prove fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns exist.
In his “The New Climate War” book, Dr Mann featured a passage about the suggestions within the notorious 2002 “Luntz Memo” that supposedly directed Republican politicians on how they could manage the global warming issue. Then Dr Mann unequivocally stated:
Luntz also suggested that Republicans “reposition global warming as theory [rather than fact].
Frank Luntz never said any such thing.
No need to trust me on this, people may examine a direct photocopy of the 2002 “The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America” memo and they can additionally borrow this conversion to a word-searchable html file to see if any remotely similar wording and/or attributable ‘suggestion to Republicans’ is found in that memo matching Dr Mann’s claim.
If probed at the upcoming Feb 8 House Oversight Committee hearing on how he digs his way out if that self-created credibility hole, it would be best for Dr Mann to keep his mouth tightly shut and just shrug his shoulders. If he opens his mouth to say the accusation about the “reposition global warming” memos is well-told and well-documented …. uh, no, he couldn’t prove that true if his reputation depended on it. If he said he already detailed where those memos and the accusation surrounding them source from in his “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” book …. uh, no, James Hoggan’s “Climate Cover-Up” book traces the memo set to Naomi Oreskes, who traces them, including the set’s audience targeting phrases, to Ross Gelbspan, who somehow ‘obtained’ them alongside whoever Ozone Action was ….. while Oreskes additionally traces the set and other WFA documents to Tony Socci (at an archive they were never placed in), a fellow with an uncomfortably close association with Al Gore …………… who pins the memo set’s strategy phrase on Exxon, and the audience targeting phrases on the National Coal Association, depending on which year he talked about the memo set overall.
It’s a no-win situation no matter what he says about it, no answers from him would resolve his self-created blunder, they would only make things worse for everyone else – including the Democrat leaders of the Committee.
At an absolute bare minimum regarding his pure non-science political views about a Senator he doesn’t like, he ‘s in deep trouble in a matter of days — and the trouble goes deeper and wider from there, so long as objective, unbiased members of the House Oversight Committee know what to ask him.
The Committee provides a list of its members, and the House.gov website enables people who are represented by those member to contact the members directly via their individual House contact forms. I’ve contacted mine already, and left phone messages for additional good measure on the matter.