My December 14, 2018 blog post illustrated how ‘journalist’ Amy Westervelt’s narrative about fossil fuel companies orchestrating disinformation campaigns to undercut public belief in man-caused global warming is a one-trick pony, enslaved to a particular set of worthless ‘leaked memo’ evidence for the notion that fossil fuel industry executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists in this conspiracy. But let’s not stop there. Westervelt also exposed how she is enslaved to one other set of worthless talking points for her narrative, which only ultimately points yet another giant arrow back to the origins of the smear of skeptic climate scientists. Continue reading
Al Gore Channels Ross Gelbspan
What’s new is still old again, over at the PBS NewsHour. Continue reading
Put all your Eggs in the “Reposition Global Warming as Theory Rather than Fact” Memos Basket
Accusers who push the idea that fossil fuel industry executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists to spread lies undermining public belief in man-caused global warming repeatedly reveal they only have one bit of so-called ‘viable evidence’ in their arsenal — a particular set of supposedly leaked internal fossil fuel industry memos. Their latest effort to keep the accusation afloat contains an unforced error where they felt compelled to repeat a specific line about the ‘discovery’ of the memos which they haven’t spoken of since 1996.
Where is Ross Gelbspan these days? 2018 Edition
A little over two years ago on November 21, 2015, I wrote a blog post about Ross Gelbspan’s most visible recent activity, which concerned a couple of less-than-well-ought-out Facebook comments on his part. Time for an update about this same ‘most visible’ public efforts of his, where it serves as one more example of how people always need to do more digging into the things he says. Continue reading
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Inc. v. Chevron Corp. et al.
News of this PCFFA lawsuit filing came up two weeks ago at Energy in Depth: “Latest Sher Edling Climate Lawsuit Further Exposes Anti-Energy Activist Network.” Others, such as Climate Liability News (CLN: “Commercial Fishermen Sue Fossil Fuel Industry for Climate Impacts“) covered it differently without mentioning any questionable items about the situation. What are the problems with this particular boilerplate lawsuit? Let me count the ways: Continue reading
Why am I Here?
Stepping outside of my usual blog posts to offer a bit of history which some of my readers may not know much about. It was ten years ago today that my first-ever online article appeared, and it had nothing to do with the false accusation about ‘Big Coal & Oil’ paying skeptic climate scientists to spread lies undercutting Al Gore’s ‘settled global warming science.’ Continue reading
“Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse”, Part 3: ‘Leaked by Industry Executives?’
In Parts 1 and 2 here and here, I detailed how the re-emergence of the old Greenwire news brief really doesn’t help the long-term talking point about ‘industry-paid skeptic climate scientists,’ despite being apparently the initial seed for that ongoing accusation which centers around a particular set of memos supposedly leaked out of the Western Fuels Association’s “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) campaign. Now, let’s briefly examine how its re-emergence undermines the credibility of one of the current figures who pushes that accusation. Continue reading
“Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse”, Part 2: troubling connections
Part 1 described how Phil Shabecoff’s June 1991 Greenwire electronic news brief was the first news item to directly quote a set of worthless ‘leaked memos’ which supposedly revealed how the fossil fuel industry aimed faulty climate science assessments at ignorant people in order to spread misinformation about the issue. The old Greenwire brief also quoted a spokesperson for an electric utility trade organization who categorically stated his organization was not participating in a public relations campaign of which those memos were supposedly guided by, which undercuts current accusations about that organization spearheading the PR campaign. But wait, there’s more. Continue reading
“Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse”, Part 1
Greenwire’s old dawn-of-the-internet age June 20, 1991 electronically shared news brief, which could not be easily found by the general public …. has been found. Now, let’s see what’s in it. Continue reading
The Citation Cascade Fatal Problem
You can either accept what reporters say without question, or you can look more deeply into what they say to see if it all lines up in a nice straight problem-free line, or if it ultimately takes on the unavoidable appearance of being an agenda-driven narrative based on disingenuous false premises. The following illustrates how this kind of examination works, on an article which purports to be a criticism of another article but actually turns out to be complementary to it in a rather suspicious way. Continue reading