For all practical purposes, the collective Greenpeace organization committed outright political suicide two weeks ago, essentially telegraphing to the entire world that they never had the evidence they claimed they had, proving skeptic climate scientists lie to the public under a pay-for-performance arrangement with fossil fuel industry people just like the way shill experts lied for the tobacco industry. Their December 8 ambush blunder of skeptic climate scientist Dr Will Happer at Ted Cruz’s Senate hearing is best illustrated with a famous movie courtroom scene question, but let me set the stage with the following points:
First and foremost, for all the effort behind the promotion of catastrophic man-caused global warming, the collective issue can be boiled down to just three talking points: “The science is settled” / “skeptics are industry-corrupted” / “reporters may ignore skeptic material because of points 1 & 2.”
• Dive into that central point, and in no time at all, the tobacco industry parallel is seen viral across the internet. Try this internet search variation and others to see just how often the comparison is spread.
• Vice President Al Gore pointed out the tobacco parallel in early 1995 (full text here).
• Gore’s insinuations about the tobacco industry conspiring to lie to the public and the fossil fuel industry doing the same are impossible to miss in his comparisons of leaked memos from each group in his 2006 “An Inconvenient Truth” movie, around the one hour 13 minute point. From an unofficial transcript (full text here),
The misconception that there is disagreement about the science has been deliberately created by a relatively small number of people. One of their internal memos leaked and here is what it said according to the press. Their objective is to reposition global warming as a theory rather than fact. This has happened before. after the Surgeon General’s report. One of their memos leaked 4 years ago. They said, “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of creating a controversy in the public’s mind.”
• Gore used the identical “Doubt is Our Product” / “Reposition Global Warming As Theory Rather Than Fact” memo phrases in his 2010 “Our Choice” book, pages 356-357, offering details about both situations on pages 355 and 358, including one about the “reposition global warming” memo being “uncovered by investigative journalist Ross Gelbspan.” Not seen on page 358 but seen on page 411 is the incorrect label of Gelbspan as a Pulitzer winner.
• In 2006, Greenpeace USA Executive Director John Passacantando participated in a Washington Post-arranged live online question and answer session, and in response to a person asking about ‘experts suspiciously aligned with industry’, offered the following:
… the only “scientists” I have ever heard deny global warming have been in the pay of the energy industry, much like the old “doctors” of the tobacco companies.
• In the summer of 2015, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a collection of seven “Climate Deception Dossiers” containing material which supposedly backed up their claim that – well, in UCS’ own words – “The fossil fuel industry—like the tobacco industry before it—is noteworthy for its use of active, intentional disinformation and deception to support its political aims and maintain its lucrative profits.” But among all those, the only thing resembling a parallel to tobacco industry tactics of spreading disinformation was ….. wait for it …. Dossier #5 with its “reposition global warming” memo phrase. However, the UCS doesn’t say up front that its 49 pages of leaked industry memos is a literal copy ‘n paste of Greenpeace’s 50 page scan collection of the 1991 Western Fuels Association “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) public relations campaign – minus Greenpeace’s Ozone Action cover page. I covered that giant problem in my November 13, 2015 blog post “Everybody loves Greenpeace Evidence … except Greenpeace”.
• The above-mentioned document scans UCS copied out of Greenpeace aren’t even Greenpeace’s work. They came from the Ozone Action environmental group, which was founded by John Passacantando, which he merged into Greenpeace USA in 2000, taking over as Greenpeace USA’s new Executive Director. The key thing to this whole deal is a statement out of Ozone Action’s 1996 exposé about the ‘industry corruption’ of skeptic climate scientists, stating “According to documents obtained by Ozone Action and by Ross Gelbspan, several ICE strategies were laid out including: the repositioning of global warming as theory, not fact.”
• There is no doubt about Ozone Action’s position on the tobacco industry parallel (click image to enlarge)….
… and there is no doubt about the insinuation: pay a person enough money, and he or she becomes a shill expert who will say anything – including lies – at the behest of the people behind the paycheck.
However, there is an epic-sized hole in this tobacco parallel. It’s common knowledge that the tobacco industry knew smoking was harmful and paid shill experts to say otherwise, as was so damagingly revealed in lawsuits against them. The revelations, among them being the “Doubt is Our Product” memo, led to lawsuit settlement actions which included creating the The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library to house that memo and others proving the industry intentionally misled the public. When it comes to so-called evidence indicting skeptic climate scientists of the same thing – knowing the truth but paid to push industry lies – there is not a shred of evidence to prove it, not even in the legendary claim that the Western Fuels Association ICE campaign instructed shill scientists to falsely portray catastrophic man-caused global warming as a theory rather than settled fact.
Which brings us to the current problem with Greenpeace’s month-old effort to entrap skeptic climate scientists (“Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding”) with a ruse about a fake Beirut-based oil and gas exploration company seeking to fund “research that sows doubt about climate science”, culminating in their Senate hearing room ambush of Dr Will Happer. Rummage through Greenpeace’s entire report with its ‘email correspondence’ evidence, and a key ingredient for any corruption case is obviously missing: where are the instructions for the skeptics to state conclusions which they know are false? That oversight is a huge problem, but there is a far bigger one. To illustrate the enormity of it, allow me to use abridged lines from the famous Tom Cruise / Jack Nicholson courtroom drama movie “A Few Good Men”, starting where Cruise’s character Kaffee establishes that Nicholson’s Colonel Jessup gave a pair of orders, and Marine orders are never disobeyed):
KAFFEE
… Colonel, at the time of this meeting, you gave Lt. Kendrick an order, is that right?JESSEP
I told Kendrick to tell his men that Santiago wasn’t to be touched.KAFFEE
And did you give an order to Captain Markinson as well?JESSEP
I ordered Markinson to have Santiago transferred off the base immediately.KAFFEE
Why?JESSEP
I felt that his life might be in danger once word of the letter got out. [a letter from the Santiago character which violated Marine codes of conduct] ……….……….
KAFFEE
When Kendrick spoke to the platoon and ordered them not to touch Santiago, any chance they ignored him?JESSEP
Have you ever spent time in an infantry unit, son?KAFFEE
No sir. ……….……….JESSEP
We follow orders, son. We follow orders or people die. It’s that simple. Are we clear?KAFFEE
Colonel, I have just one more question … If you gave an order that Santiago wasn’t to be touched, and your orders are always followed, then why would he be in danger, why would it be necessary to transfer him off the base?
If Greenpeace has a plethora of long-established ironclad evidence dating back over a decade+ proving skeptic climate scientists were paid industry money to lie to the public ……… why would there be any need to entrap one within the last month in order to back up that accusation?
Enviro-activists can keep right on claiming the public can’t handle the truth about the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming, that they have neither the time nor the inclination to explain themselves to ignoramuses who rise and sleep under the blanket of protection they provide from the evil fossil fuel industry and then question they way it’s provided; the public should instead just say “thank you” and send them on their way. But the more they clamor about using racketeering laws to persecute people who disagree with them, the more probable it is that their top leaders will be forced to admit that they pushed orders to manufacture doubt about the credibility of skeptic climate scientists.