If you are going to mold a corruption allegation against a particular critic of ‘man-caused global warming’ into one of the central arguments for suing fossil fuel companies out of existence – ‘FOIA-released documents led to the revelation of this industry-paid corruption’ – wouldn’t it be advisable for you to be absolutely certain that the narratives about this ‘FOIA revelation’ line up right, and that there isn’t some other related angle that could land one of your associates in Federal prison over what appears to be his own potentially corrupt behavior? Whereupon – perhaps in exchange to reduce his prison sentence – he might offer prosecutors details on how the corruption allegation (which you have every appearance of concocting out of thin air) may end up imperiling the entire ‘climate crisis’ issue while also landing you in jail or facing monumental civil action penalties? 

Regarding the combination of a potential 18 U.S.C. 1512 “Tampering With Witnesses” violation (including those at U.S. Senate hearings) and potential epic-level libel/slander, I’ll suggest the enviro-activists promulgating the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation handed their heads on a silver platter to prosecutors. I’ve actually already covered both angles while thinking they were two separate ill-conceived situations happening under the auspices of one famous NGO group name.

I didn’t spot the connection until a few days ago.

Let’s start with the tampering with a Federal witness situation. Greenpeace USA was exceedingly proud of their “Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding” sting operation against skeptic climate scientist Dr Will Happer, which they trumpeted right before he was to appear as a witness at Senator Cruz’s 2015 “Data or Dogma” hearing featuring Dr Happer, Dr John Christy, Dr Judith Curry, and the guest host for Rush Limbaugh’s radio talk show, Mark Steyn. Apparently long-planned in this effort was an orchestrated ‘gotcha’ moment where a Greenpeace operative confronted Dr Happer right there in the Senate hearing room before the hearing began.

Two things about that situation, the first of which I wrote about in my December 22, 2015 blog post “Long Established Evidence Proving Skeptic Climate Scientists’ Guilt, Baked Fresh Today!” on the question of why there would be any need for Greenpeace to essentially fabricate a brand new situation of a scientist supposedly accepting bribery money to falsely mislead the public, when Greenpeace had already claimed to have ‘actual existing evidence’ for years of such unethical actions. It made no sense to me at the time. But second, outside of what I wrote in that blog post, I saw the basic problem of what certainly looks like a Federal witness tampering violation being committed by whoever that Greenpeace operative was. I tried to contact Senator Cruz’s office on that problem more than once, but never got a response.

At the time, however, I simply chalked up the situation as being a comically misguided, clumsy effort of the then-current Greenpeace organization, ‘built on the shoulder of giants’ when it came to the 13 years+ prior efforts by the two departed Greenpeace USA administrators, John Passacantando and Kert Davies. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, is it not? Actually, it would seem that 2015 ‘imitation effort’ was built more like on 15+ years, considering those two were the top two admins at the old Ozone Action group which Passacantando merged into Greenpeace USA – his prior group basically set aside their fixation on ozone depletion midway through their operation and turned into an attack dog against skeptic climate scientists – including one working at that time for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Dr Willie Soon.

What I had long thought was a separate situation involves Kert Davies’ multi-year effort to impugn the credibility of Dr Soon. The accusation was that he accepted $1.2 million in illicit fossil fuel industry cash, which I detail in the middle part of my “List of the Climate Lawsuits Falsely Accusing Dr Willie Soon of Taking Exxon Bribes.” Davies apparently began this particular effort in 2009 based on an assumption, which I posited was a fatal error on his part. According to this E&E News March 2015 article, it was the “ClimateGate Emails” situation that prompted him to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with Dr Soon’s employer, the Harvard-Smithsonian’s Smithsonian’s CfA. Davies – nobody else.

Honestly, I can’t say I’ve ever had an interest in whatever FOIA documents Greenpeace / Kert Davies turned up out of the CfA, the idea is patently ridiculous that a funding source alone fatally taints a person’s science assessments. If that were the case, then by default the IPCC’s work is out the window on credibility because its Vice Chair was commissioned by Greenpeace to write such an assessment. The merits of science assessments are judged by experts with the expertise to understand and debate them. Guys like Kert Davies have no science expertise whatsoever.

I don’t even remember where I saw the reference to the 131 page FOIA docs PDF file, it might have been when I was dissecting the 2018 Boulder v Suncor lawsuit where it regurgitated the accusation about Dr Soon labeling his work as ‘deliverable’ to Exxon in exchange for money, and I wanted to learn more about that specific angle of the accusation ( Boulder has that dead wrong – a quick search through the PDF file quickly revealed it was the Smithsonian itself which used that term). At that time, I did little more than copy the url address for that PDF file into my mega-notes file without noticing the name at the top right of the page, beyond its “Greenpeace” bit.

So, by chance a few days ago when I was wondering if Kert Davies’ name was shown in FOIA request forms to the Smithsonian, I looked into the link I saved, which automatically defaults to a different variant, and the name up at the top right is not Kert Davies. It is Jesse Coleman. Circa as early as Feb 26, 2015.

Jesse – who?

It wasn’t a name I remember from the 2000-2008 tenure of John Passacantando / 2000-2013 tenure of Kert Davies at Greenpeace USA, so I dropped his name into an internet search and one of the results was this 2018 Youtube video interview labeling him as a former Greenpeace researcher. His face simply looked familiar for some reason. So just on a hunch, I went back to my link of the Greenpeace operative who accosted Dr Will Happer at Senator Cruz’s 2015 climate issue hearing.

It’s the same Jesse Coleman – he introduces himself by name to Dr Happer right at the start and there’s his name in the video description …. and there’s that face near the end where Mark Steyn challenges him to repeat his accusation.

As is my habit whenever I see any new variety of claims about the fossil fuel industry paying ‘shill skeptic climate scientists to lie,’ I try to apply my checklist of names to these situations. What happens when you combine “Jesse Coleman” with “Kert Davies”? One of the results that comes up is Muckrock – not Muckrack, the place to find actual journalists – but Muckrock, where its entry for the Climate Investigations Center has ex-Greenpeacer Connor Gibson (that Connor Gibson, who I advised back in 2016 of the folly of unquestioningly accepting the ‘Dr Soon accusation’) and Davies and the lady who apparently had some kind of hand in sending an extra $50,000 into John Passacantando’s mystery LLC company ……. and Jesse Coleman.

Aside: Interesting how Muckrock ‘got bigger’ in June 2016 and how Kert Davies’ ClimateFiles platform was established in late May of 2016 (funded by the Knight Foundation), and how piles of his docs are stashed at DocumentCloud – an outfit that merged into Muckrock – despite how those very same docs were residing just fine within Greenpeace USA’s docs scans collection. Plus how one other entity acquired by Muckrock in 2016 which facilitates FOIA requests … was also funded by the Knight Foundation. Sheer coincidence? Just askin.’ I’m talking about that Knight Foundation, by the way.

Meanwhile — with all that setup about the work of Kert Davies launching FOIA requests into what ultimately turned into his big 2015 media splash about those docs supposedly proving the industry-funded guilt of Dr Willie Soon …. what happens when an internet search is undertaken for just the name “Jesse Coleman” and “Willie Soon”?

This pops up: Feb 27, 2015, Buzzfeed, “Greenpeace Probe Of Climate Naysayer Implicates Exxon Mobil”

… [Dr Willie] Soon is now under investigation by his employer after Greenpeace released funding records that suggest he received more than $1 million in fossil fuel industry support … according to Greenpeace’s Jesse Coleman, who started the Soon records search using public records laws.

There’s no mention of Kert Davies whatsoever in that Buzzfeed piece, which came out just 6 days after the big news splash where major news outlets like the NY Times / Boston Globe / Washington Post basically lavished more praise on Davies and his Climate Investigations Center for the docs but less on Greenpeace. The NYT said his CIC was “allied” with Greenpeace and both groups shared the FOIA docs with several media outlets. The Boston Globe was a little more dodgy by saying Greenpeace obtained the docs but Davies gave them to the Globe. WashPo simply said Greenpeace and Davies’ CIC published the docs.

Back in 2015, it was enough of a surprise to me to me to see the sudden reappearance of Davies that I wrote a blog post about it, “Kert Davies is Back. Again,” noting those outlets’ failure to disclose how he just previously worked at Greenpeace. The UK Guardian – I noticed later – was the only news outlet ID’ing Davies on being formerly with Greenpeace … but notice how the report specifically says Davies was the person who originally filed the FOIA request.

Not Jesse Coleman.

See the way nothing lines up right here? On top of all of that, the accusation itself has no merit. Dr Soon can readily explain how the Smithsonian was in charge of whatever donations he got toward his work, and not a single one of these critics has the science expertise to dispute his climate assessments.

When it comes to people like Jesse Coleman here and the assortment of ‘lesser name’ figures who are the main assistants to the long-term promulgators of the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation, I posit that if Federal investigators were place those people under oath and/or file charges against them, they would roll on whoever their supervisors were in order to not be punished as severely.
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There’s always more: It’s a less important aspect of this situation, but I’ll have to do a Part 2 on how even Jesse Coleman in that Buzzfeed article has a narrative inconsistency problem, as did Kert Davies previously, when it comes to what they claim was some kind of smoking gun detail within the FOIA docs. It’s as though the didn’t read what they got carefully enough.