D.C. v ExxonMobil, et. al Pt 2: the “17,000 Scientists” Source Problem

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It doesn’t take more than a few seconds of internet searching to discover how the Oregon Petition Project had over 31,000 signers, corroborated not only at the Home Page of the website for the petition itself, but also at sites highly biased against it such as Wikipedia and Desmogblog (that Desmog). But as I showed in my Part 1 dissection of that lawsuit, the District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine’s lawsuit only placed the number at 17,000, with no citation source for that number.

Where could that hugely outdated figure originate?  Continue reading →

District of Columbia v ExxonMobil Corp, BP Plc, Chevron Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc (10/17/20 update)

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[10/17/20 Author’s update: see red asterisked items below near the end]

Unlike Minnesota vs. API, et al. which I dissected only days ago in my prior blog post, this DC v Exxon et. al lawsuit only crashes half as badly concerning worthless ‘leaked memos’ it relies on for its claim that the fossil fuel industry hired shill skeptic climate scientists to engage in disinformation campaigns. It still completely crashes on that angle nevertheless. Here’s how. Continue reading →

State of Minnesota v American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil Corp, Koch Industries, Flint Hills Resources

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The more frequently these global warming lawsuits appear claiming fossil fuel industry executives paid skeptic climate scientists to participate in sinister disinformation campaign efforts to undercut the ‘settled science,’ the easier it is to show how the ‘evidence’ for that accusation implodes. This Minnesota vs. API, et al. lawsuit, filed on 6/24/20, ends up being a case study on how to commit political suicide, first via its enslavement to the same two sets of worthless ‘leaked industry memos’ which have been floated ever since the 1990s as proof of that corporate / skeptic conspiracy, and second, via its links for copies of those memos from one of the central members of the small clique of enviro-activists who’ve been promulgating them that whole time.

If the Minnesota AG’s office had undertaken the most basic kind of due diligence to find out if the ‘leaked memos evidence’ actually proves the existence of disinformation campaigns, it might not have wasted any taxpayer money filing the lawsuit. Without that ‘evidence,’ the lawsuit would struggle to disprove hugely detailed assessments from skeptic climate scientists, while also trying to prove API and the other defendants ever actually accepted the ‘science’ of the IPCC / Al Gore side of the issue. Continue reading →

Oreskes’ Inability to Keep Her Mouth Shut & the Big Ben Santer Problem

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Naomi Oreskes seems to increasingly take on the appearance of the kind of braggadocio we encounter in grade school or high school, where everyone who socializes with this person is awed by their really impressive-sounding feats for the first several times …. until finally somebody exclaims, “wait a minute, that isn’t what you told us last time,” which then prompts someone else to say, “that’s right, plus that other claim you made earlier isn’t the same as what you said just now.”

In one of her barely weeks-old retellings of her tale about what brought her into the global warming issue, she made her problem incrementally worse. Continue reading →

Naomi Oreskes, the Golden Opportunity

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Naomi Oreskes can do no wrong in the eyes of her supporters with her Merchants of Doubt book / documentary movie efforts that supposedly exposed the corporate-bought corruption of climate scientists skeptical about the idea of catastrophic man-caused global warming. In the eyes of people she accuses and people who see through her smear tactics and clumsy science pronouncements, she can’t seem to do anything right. Mere discussion of her antics accomplishes very little — she is emboldened to continue her accusations in the most reckless way because she’s met with practically no significant public opposition. The golden opportunity to hold her accountable, however, is arguably in the hands of the public hearing officials she faces, who might be able to do something about this problem. Making false statements in congressional hearings is actually a crime. Continue reading →

Scientist Falsely Accused

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Do an internet search for nothing simpler than the name “Willie Soon,” or the variant of “Wei-hock Soon,” and uncountable numbers of results pop up repeating some form of the accusation or insinuation that Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysicist Dr Soon was paid industry-sourced money in exchange for falsehoods designed to undercut the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming. The following video by Dr Terry Gannon addresses aspects of Dr Soon’s actual funding, which the spectrum of accusers out there never tell their audiences about, and it mentions a name of one of the most prominent accusers that loyal readers of GelbspanFiles will readily recognize, Kert Davies:

We first see Davies at the 1:45 point as a guest on the Democracy Now program …

…. with a few more details spoken about him after the three minute point, and again in a bit more depth a minute later. However, much like any other aspect of the ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ accusation, I’m compelled to say, “but wait, there’s more …..” Continue reading →

When ‘Reporting’ looks more like Propagandizing

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“Ok, student reporters — here’s everything you need to know about the fossil fuel industry’s sinister disinformation campaign to spread lies undercutting the certainty of man-caused global warming which employed shill skeptic scientists, and here’s the professional researcher who can assist you with writing a report about that very conspiracy.”

Anybody spot the main problem there? Yes, we might wonder about the fate of the student reporters/researchers or the postdoctoral researchers/faculty members if they dared to question anything presented to them, but a bigger question remains at the end of this excise concerning the ‘professional researcher,’ and the nature of his involvement in the work these reporters/researchers undertook. Continue reading →

Dr S. Fred Singer and the Ordinary Citizen

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The ‘ordinary citizen’ isn’t merely me, but is likely many other people who met and/or had the opportunity to correspond with the late atmospheric physicist Dr S Fred Singer. He died at 95 years old on April 6th, and many tributes to him are collected at his SEPP organization’s April 11 newsletter, while others are seen at AmericanThinker by Marc Sheppard and Michael Widlanski, and elsewhere such as at The Reference Frame and the American Council on Science and Health – my apologies for fine tributes I omit. In a technical sense, I owe a good part of my current situation to Dr Singer, since it was his initial kind response back in 2005 that corroborated what I thought was a fatal problem in the notion of man-caused global warming. I have little doubt that he offered the same kind of kind interaction with countless other common citizens – and that’s why the global warming issue is about more than just science.

The integrity of any given authoritative statement can be measured by how well it stands up in debate about it, and how open to discussion the person is who made the statement. Dr Singer readily made himself available for such discussions, even with ordinary citizens, and he set the standard for how people receiving his inquiries and challenges should react. A standard, I soon discovered, that was not held by people I posed questions to on the IPCC/Al Gore side of the issue.

Continue reading →

When the ‘Aim to Disrupt Fossil Fuel-Funded Misinformation’ looks more like Propagandizing

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In an amusing bit of irony, Dave Anderson, the policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute — the place claiming its aim is to “disrupt fossil fuel-funded misinformation” — has decided follow my GelbspanFiles Twitter account. Probably not for long; believers of catastrophic man-caused global warming like him tend to vanish immediately when they discover the material I tweet about undercuts everything they believe. There’s a backstory to this particular situation and how I’m prompted to create a new post category here, “What $5 mill might buy.” Continue reading →