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.

One thing to always keep in mind about the “reposition global warming” phrase accusation against skeptic climate scientists is how it is literally all that Al Gore and his followers have to prove skeptics are corrupt. None of them have ever proven a pay-for-performance arrangement exists between skeptics and industry funders, nobody mentions any in-depth details about the leak of the memo containing that strategy phrase, and no accuser ever attempted to show the collective ICE campaign memos to the public before my work appeared online. As can be seen below, one of the biggest problems is Al Gore’s 2006 claim that Gelbspan discovered the memo containing that phrase, but Gore himself quoted from that same memo set years before Gelbspan first said anything about it.

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(Words highlighted in red indicate later key repetitions. Boldface words indicate serious contradictions. [10/12/18 Author’s addition: To streamline reading of this list, my previous update time notations have been deleted, with one exception in purple below. This is a list that’ll need more additions as more prominent examples are found.] )

1. In early 1991, U.S. coal company associations created the Information Council for the Environment (ICE) pilot project public relations campaign to provide some balanced science assessments they thought were unfairly missing from Al Gore’s then-current narratives about the threat of global warming. The objective was to show how the debate was anything but settled, and one of the alleged internal memos for the PR planners had this as the #1 strategy: “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).” Further along in those alleged memos, the targeted audience for this campaign were “older, less-educated males” and “younger, lower-income women.” Considering how the rest of the memo and other papers* are worded, the strategy sentence could have read, “Show how the man-caused global warming theory is contradicted by theories of natural variability”. The sentence in context with the rest of the PR papers gives no indication it is a top-down industry directive for skeptic scientists to lie about the issue. [ *10/5/18 Author’s addition: if that Greenpeace Archives link stops functioning, as it briefly did around December 2017, my downloaded copy of their file is here. It also needs to be emphasized right here that it turns out the specific strategy/targeting memo set was never part of the ICE campaign. Author’s 10/24/24 update: The Internet Archive’s version of the original Greenpeace downloadable PDF file is functioning again, here. ]
   
2. The first news outlet to mention the ICE campaign in any manner was the May 24, 1991 article in the Flagstaff Arizona Daily Sun, “Global warming ad campaign termed irresponsible.” It did not, however quote anything from strategy/targeting memo set because the reporter was quite likely unaware that it was falsely attributed to the ICE campaign.
3. Phil Shabecoff’s Greenwire electronic news brief sharing service was the first media outlet to quote that memo set, specifically the targeting phrases in its June 19, 1991 “Inside Track: Sowing the Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse” brief. More on that situation here.
4. A June 24, 1991 Energy Daily article had specific ICE memo phrases in its title “Greenhouse ads target ‘low income’ women, ‘less educated’ men” and within its content.
5. The June 25, 1991 Eco Geneva newsletter quoted the strategy/targeting memo phrases while additionally reproducing extracts from the above Energy Daily article.
6. The June 28, 1991 issue of Science had a short news item about the ICE campaign but it made no mention of the strategy/targeting memo set.
7. The July 8, 1991 NY Times article about ICE, specifically repeated the “reposition global warming” phrase, saying it had received copies of the ICE memos from the Sierra Club.
8. Al Gore’s January 1, 1992 “Earth in the Balance” book quotes directly from the ICE memos on page 360, “… some self-interested cynics are seeking to cloud the underlying issue of the environment…Documents leaked from the National Coal Association to my office reveal…as follows: “People who respond most favorably to such statements are older, less-educated males from larger households, who are not typically active information-seekers… another possible target is younger, lower-income women…”
9. What little that can be seen at a Google books search of the June 1992 “The Greenhouse effect”, Volume 64, edited by Matthew A. Kraljic, shows the identical wording of the July 8, 1991 NY Times article.
10.  In the 1993 updated version of “Gaia, An Atlas of Planet Management”, a sidebar paragraph slightly alters the strategy phrase by adding “ing” to the first word and an extra “a” near the end, but otherwise keeps the parentheses around the last bit, like the original ICE memo did. However, this book incorrectly names the ICE PR campaign as being the “Informed Citizens for the Environment“, a problem I detail at longer length here. Regrettably, this book offers not source for any material in it.
11. Curtis Moore’s and Alan Miller’s August 1994 book “Green Gold” cites the “reposition global warming” phrase from the July 8, 1991 NY Times article. However, Moore and Miller also must have seen the other ICE papers firsthand, as they mention an interview with a person cited in an ICE memo who is not named in the NYT article.
12. Ross Gelbspan’s first mention (that I’ve found so far) of the “reposition global warming” phrase happened during a November 16, 1995 C-SPAN phone-in interview, where he also immediately falsely attributed the “older, less educated men“ and “younger, low-income women” words to the Western Fuels Association’s Information Council for the Environment PR campaign, nearly identical words seen in Gore’s 1992 “Earth in the Balance” book. Additional details here.
13. Gelbspan’s second mention of the “reposition global warming” phrase occured during a December 15, 1995 Living on Earth National Public Radio interview, where he also mentioned the audience targeting phrases.
14. On January 25, 1996, The Phoenix New Times repeated the second half of the “reposition global warming” phrase along with the “older, less educated men and young, low-income women” words, and additionally provided other ICE memo phrases not found in Gelbspan’s radio interview…. months before the next entry below.
15. An April 1996 “Ties That Blind: Case Studies of Corporate Influence on Climate Change Policy” report by the enviro-activist group Ozone Action stated it and Ross Gelbspan “obtained” the ICE documents.
16. Andrew Rowell’s October 22, 1996 “Green backlash” book repeats the “reposition global warming” phrase, but his endnote #106 says nothing more than “ICE internal packet, Strategies, p. 3“
17. David Helvarg’s December 16, 1996 “Energy Companies Try the ‘Tobacco Approach’ to Evidence of Global Warming” article in The Nation (pages 3-4 here), like Rowell’s book above, quotes the “reposition global warming” phrase, but does not say where it came from. The unusual thing about Helvarg’s article is that he mentions the name of ICE’s PR director, something that only two other publications (that I’ve been able to find) do – one was an obscure November 1991 Oregon free enterprise newsletter, the other was the Flagstaff Arizona Daily Sun paper I noted in item #2 above.
18. Gelbspan’s April 1997 The Heat is On book cites the “reposition global warming” phrase without saying where he got it, his end notes simply stating, “ICE documents in author’s possession, Mission Statement, Strategy Statement, and Test Market proposal, February 1991”
19. Mark Hertsgaard’s August 3, 1997 NY Times review of Gelbspan’s book stated, “…the fossil fuel lobby has achieved the goal stated in a 1991 planning memo unearthed by Gelbspan: to ‘reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.’  …No other reporter has told this story as comprehensively or explored its implications for human welfare as searchingly as Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.” As seen in items 2 though 5, Gelbspan’s mention of the “reposition global warming” phrase occurred after those, and he is not a Pulitzer winner.
20. Repetition of the “reposition global warming” phrase basically increases exponentially after 1997
21. Gelbspan’s “Boiling Point” book was published in 2004 (it cites his 1997 book for the “reposition global warming” phrase), and Al Gore’s NY Times review of it said Gelbspan’s first book is “the best, and virtually only, study of how the coal and oil industry’ corrupts skeptic scientists.” One paragraph later, Gore said Gelbspan documented, “the largely successful efforts of companies like ExxonMobil to paralyze the policy process, confuse the American people and cynically ‘reposition global warming as theory rather than fact…’”.
22. In a PBS Now April 22, 2005 broadcast, Gelbspan said, “This is some of the documents I gathered along the way that document this very, very cynical campaign of deception and disinformation….we got a copy of the strategy papers for that campaign. And it said that the purpose of the campaign was to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact”.
23. The Comer v. Murphy Oil (Third Amended Class Action Complaint February 23 2006 global warming nuisance court case cited the “reposition” phrase – more details about that situation here.
24. Gore’s 2006 “An Inconvenient Truth” movie spells out the “reposition global warming” phrase full screen in red letters just before its 1 hour 13 minute point. The companion book for the movie says Gelbspan was the discoverer of the phrase.
25. In his May 28, 2006 review of Gore’s movie, the late Chicago Sun Times movie reviewer Roger Ebert quoted Gore directly: “… the energy industry has paralyzed America for 20 years with disinformation like that. They’re using exactly the same strategy the tobacco industry used. … We found an internal memo from an energy industry group from 1998, written by their disinformation specialists, saying their objective was: ‘Reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.’“
26. Mark Hertsgaard’s May 2006 “While Washington Slept” Vanity Fair article is published, with what appears to be an unequivocal statement that the “reposition global warming” phrase originates from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a mistake that is repeated at Wikipedia from 2006 to 2008, thus prompting other mistaken repetitions of that association worldwide. Wikipedia removed it when a critic forcefully pointed out how unsupportable the association was.
27. One particularly widespread citation of the phrase is a quote in the August 5, 2007 Newsweek magazine article “Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine”. Reporter Sharon Begley did not say who was the source for her assertion that a “game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to ‘reposition global warming as theory rather than fact,’ and to sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research.”
28. At the Davos 2008 conference, Gore says (off camera), “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.’”
29. The Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., et al. (February 26, 2008) global warming nuisance court case cited the strategy/targeting memo phrases – more details about that situation here.
30. Naomi Oreskes 2008 Powerpoint presentation quoted the strategy/targeting phrases, noting they were archived at place where, it turns out, they never were.
31. Gore’s 7000+ word June 22, 2011 Rolling Stone article bypassed Gelbspan and his own “Earth in the Balance” book note and said the following: “… the script for this show was leaked to The New York Times as early as 1991. In an internal document, a consortium of the largest global-warming polluters spelled out their principal strategy: “Reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact.”
32. In 2013, a presenter for Gore’s Climate Reality Project said this: “A lavishly sponsored campaign, started twenty years ago, to distract us from the problem. In a memo that was leaked to the press several years ago revealed their strategy in their own words, which is to ‘reposition global warming as a theory rather than a fact.’” Western Fuels’ PR campaign started and ended over 22 years ago, it was not ‘lavishly funded’, and the leak of its memos in 1991 most certainly was more than ‘several years ago’. The presenter’s PowerPoint slide shows this statement: “We’ve seen this before… Their cynical objective, outlined in a secret memo by a consortium of the largest carbon polluters, that was leaked to the press, is–in their own words–to: “Reposition Global Warming as Theory Rather than Fact.””
33. The Union of Concerned Scientists “The Climate Deception Dossiers” web page features a handy infographic of the “reposition global warming” phrase, and a link to their downloadable PDF file of old Western Fuels ICE campaign memo scans, which is 100% identical to Greenpeace’s scan collection (which I linked to in item #1), after, of course, the deletion of the page 1 Ozone Action summary. As I noted in my June 10, 2013 blog post, nobody else (with one oddball exception) could bring themselves to point directly to Greenpeace’s “ICE memo collection” over the last two decades, and UCS only adds to this streak in a really strange way.
34. A Greenpeace page prominently features its Koch Brothers Youtube video which attempts to portray the “reposition global warming” phrase as a sinister plot hatched by “industries” to hoodwink the public, which I detailed in this blog post.
35. The trio of “San Mateo / Marin / Imperial Beach v. Chevron Corp., et al.” court cases filed in California in July 2017 cited the ‘strategy/targeting memo phrases,’ which I detailed at further length here.
36. The trio of “Santa Cruz County/City / Richmond v. Chevron Corp., et al.” court cases filed in California in December 2017/January 2018 cited the ‘strategy and (partial) targeting memo phrases,’ which I detailed at further length here.
37. Two additional court cases filed in July 2018, “State of Rhode Island” and “City of Baltimore” continue the trend of quoting the strategy/targeting phrases.
38. Twin January / September 2019 Friends of the Court briefs (prominently featuring Naomi Oreskes) for the California / Baltimore global warming lawsuits feature the “reposition global warming” phrase on printout pages 26 and 28, respectively. More on those filings here, and here.
39. The November 14, 2018 Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Inc. v. Chevron lawsuit quotes the strategy/targeting phrases as does the boilerplate identical March 9, 2020 City / County of Honolulu v. Sunoco lawsuit, with its quoting of those. More details of course on those two, here and here.
40. The Minnesota v American Petroleum Institute lawsuit, filed on 6/24/20, quotes the strategy / targeting phrases. More here.
41. The Hoboken v. ExxonMobil (9/2/20) lawsuit quotes the strategy / targeting phrases, as does the 9/9/20 Charleston v Brabham Oil one, along with the 9/10/20 Delaware v. BP one, and the 10/12/20 Maui v. Sunoco one. There are so many of these now, I found it necessary to create a list of all my dissections of these lawsuits where links to each are in my Global Warming Lawsuits page.
42. Naomi Oreskes’ November 2021 article in the UK Guardian, where she attributed the never-used acronym name to the PR campaign that never operated under the strategy directive, nor did that campaign ever publish the two newspaper ads she shows.
43. Covering Climate Now’s March 2, 2023 “FOX Doesn’t Just Lie About Elections” diatribe, in which the piece got no further than its 4th paragraph before feeling compelled to dredge up the “reposition global warming” phrase — because the co-founder of CCN has been enslaved to that same phrase all the way back to 1997 — see item #18 above. More here.
44. Obituaries for Ross Gelbspan Feb 16 / Feb 17, 2024 in the New York Times / Washington Post each credit him with digging up / citing, respectively, the “reposition global warming” memos. Dissection of the massive journalism malfeasance faults in each obituary here.
45. “Reposition global warming” phrase spelled out in an April 10, 2024 Newsweek article as evidence that people should be charged with climate homicide – more about that in the first six paragraphs here.
46. “Reposition global warming” phrase submitted into the U.S. Senate Committees records on May 1, 2024 by “expert” witness about fossil fuel industry ‘disinformation,’ Geoffrey Supran. More here.
47. A June 26, 2024 proposal for Arizona state prosecutors to pursue charges of 2nd-degree murder against fossil fuel companies featured the strategy memo phrase along with one of the targeting  phrases and references to never-published ‘advertorials’ as its core evidence to support the charges. Details here.

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The “reposition global warming” phrase can only be evidence of a cynical quid pro quo arrangement when it is accompanied by proof that skeptic climate scientists were paid industry money in exchange for lies intended to downplay the harm of man-caused global warming. When it is seen to be filled with irreconcilable faults and strangely shared talking points, it’s worthy of a much deeper look into why those problems are there.

(This blog piece is largely an update of my original 2010 timeline here, with many of the ‘hazy’ details cleared up.)