It’s one thing for book author / documentary movie star Naomi Oreskes to be tapped for quotations on the state of affairs in the global warming issue — last night’s appearance on the PBS NewsHour (2:49 point here), for example. It’s quite another problematic situation when she is tapped for work by Democrat politicians.
Consider how one particular US Congressman couldn’t keep his mouth shut on who was helping to draft a fact-checking rebuttal to the recent House Science, Space, and Technology Committee testimony of Drs Judith Curry, John Christy and Roger Pielke Jr.
Citing a flurry of inaccuracies and misleading statements at a recent hearing on climate science, Vice Ranking Member on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) this week submitted a collection of scientific rebuttals to false or misleading statements made in that hearing. The rebuttals were written by scientists and experts who observed the hearing, including Harvard professor and “Merchants of Doubt” author Naomi Oreskes …
As loyal readers of my blog and other writings already know, Oreskes herself has a fact-check target on her the size of Texas on practically everything she says. Let’s recount, for the benefit of newly-arriving readers here:
- her claim that Senator Inhofe labeled her as a communist is actually a composite series of different situations
- her specific tale of learning who the attackers of her December 2004 Science paper literally could not have occurred the way she tells it
- her claim that she didn’t intend to become a “climate-change warrior” seems to be contradicted by a pre-2004 article and presentation of hers
- her 2012 La Jolla workshop is said to be the catalyst which led to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s persecution of Exxon – she admitted she met with his staff long before his efforts began. At her workshop, she admitted to still having old Western Fuels Association material to use as a possible weapon in such actions
- she claimed the Western Fuels material was archived at AMS’ D.C. archives, but an inquiry with the archivist proved it was never there
- the leaked Western Fuels material she speaks of either ‘in her possession’ or ‘at AMS‘ are very likely sourced from Gore Senate-era staffer Anthony Socci – she said as much in a chapter she wrote for the 2011 “How Well do Facts Travel?” book. Twice, actually. Socci was present at a 1992 Senate hearing when Gore used Western Fuels material to grill skeptic scientist Sherwood Idso. The same Dr Idso who Ross Gelbspan implied was part of an industry directive from Western Fuels to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” … when he wasn’t accusing Dr S Fred Singer instead.
- at the end of the day, she cites Ross Gelbspan as the source of the “reposition global warming” leaked memo phrase. But she does so in a strangely indirect way – page 51-52 of Gelbspan’s 2004 “Boiling Point” book, which itself cites page 34 of his 1997 book, which contains not only the “reposition global warming” leaked strategy phrase that Gore said Gelbspan discovered, but also the leaked memo PR campaign targeting phrases of “older, less-educated men” / “young, low-income women.” However, when Oreskes herself quotes the words the “older, less-educated males” / “younger, lower-income women” phrases in her “How Well do Facts Travel?” chapter, her #23 footnote citation is directly to the leaked memos themselves. The memos she says are in AMS archives which are not there. And her targeting phrase labels are identical to what Al Gore quoted in his 1992 book …. which was written years before Gelbspan first mentioned the memos. Let’s not also forget that over a year prior to Gelbspan’s first mention of them, Gore was trying to sway ABC News’ Ted Koppel with information about ‘coal funded skeptic climate scientists.’
- The leaked Western Fuels material which Oreskes, Gelbspan and Gore claim are core evidence of skeptic climate scientists’ industry-funded corruption actually are clearly not what they portray them to be. If these three knew this but maliciously pushed the memos as evidence that skeptics are paid industry money to lie, this could be one of the biggest acts of libel/slander in history.
Rep. Don Beyer could have kept his mouth shut on who is writing rebuttals to use against skeptic climate scientists. Naomi Oreskes could have remained silent on where supposedly damaging leaked memos are stashed. Al Gore could have kept it to himself about who supposedly discovered those memos, and he could have skipped quoting directly from them in 1992, and Oreskes could have done the same concerning what could be literally the same set of memos.
But they did no such thing, and this collective set of missteps on their part absolutely begs for investigation about why none of it lines up right, and why skeptic scientists stand accused of being ‘industry-funded crooks’ in the first place. Could it have something to do with the soundness of the IPCC / Al Gore version of global warming science which Oreskes is now tasked with defending?
Could it be that the initial promoters of the catastrophic man-caused global warming narrative perceived their position was so vulnerable in the face of skeptic science-based criticism that they felt a need to distract the public away from skeptics by concocting the idea that those skeptics were paid coal & oil money to lie about the issue being ‘mere theory and not settled fact,’ just like tobacco industry shills did about the harm of cigarette smoking?