While attending the 10th International Conference on Climate Change in Washington D.C. late last week, Dr S. Fred Singer asked me to send him material he could forward to New York Times reporter Justin Gillis, in response to Gillis contacting him about an article he was writing on Naomi Oreskes, ‘star’ of the “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie. Dr Singer was not only aware of my recent prominent review of the movie, I was one of the names seen in the leaked October 2014 email chain in which Dr Singer pondered suing Oreskes. Dr Singer values my work work because I do what reporters such as Justin Gillis do not do. Continue reading
“Skeptic Climate Scientists are Industry-Paid Shills” (sir, what is your source for that?)
What’s old is not new again, it is still old and literally unsupportable. Continue reading
Small Update
Loyal readers here might have noticed some drop-off of material here in the last couple of months, as I’ve otherwise tried to put in 3 or 4 blog posts per month over the last year. That stems largely from a hobby pursuit of my which ate up a good chunk of April, and I’ve been having some fun just recently outside of my standard examination of the history of the smear of skeptics. Please see “Climate Change Free Speech Prohibited at DailyKos“, “Merchants of Doubt: A Climate Change Dud”, and my additional review of Oreskes’ film at the Internet Movie Database site. Plus, some amount of my time goes toward dropping into hard-core global warming believers’ sites, ultimately to live rent-free in those bloggers (plural, I should note) / commenters’ minds. So much to do, so little time to get everything done.
Rest assured, my dissection of the events and people involved in the smear of skeptics goes on. Stay tuned, my long-held educated guess that Ross Gelbspan did no ‘investigative journalism’ research into his claims that Western Fuels was out to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” is now something I can say (via interview results conducted by a renowned politics researcher), with absolute certainty. The most basic of interviewing of key people surrounding the leaked memo page containing that infamous phrase would have told Gelbspan it was never part of the public relations campaign he claims it was.
Global warming believers across the board trust that the ‘industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists’ accusation has evidence to back it up, trusting in the notion that their leaders speak with authority about it being exposed by a ‘Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist.’ I’ve already shown the backpedaling surrounding Ross Gelbspan’s ‘Pulitzer winner’ label. I just wonder now what kind of spin will be applied to his ‘investigative journalist’ label.
Me as a Henchman or Murderer [new 8/15, 2/16 & 9/16 updates]
If folks are attaching those kinds of labels to me, it means they probably interpret what little they read of my work on dissecting the smear of skeptics as something to shout down, the ol’ fingers in ears “la-la-la-la…” bit.
All Paths Lead to Gelbspan
Over the weekend, the PBS NewsHour had a news discussion segment about how an Oregon-based environmental group, Our Children’s Trust, and its creator Julia Olson are using teenage students to ‘stop climate change’. Can you guess where the path leads? Continue reading
James Hoggan’s Pure Psychological Projection: “attacking the motives and character”
In my previous blog post, I showed a window into the world of far-left environmentalist reasoning, using the exact illustration of how Desmogblog co-founder James Hoggan immediately believed Ross Gelbspan’s “the science is settled / skeptic scientists are industry-corrupted shills” core talking point as literally true upon first reading it, never reading alternative science assessments or doing the most basic fact-checking to see if Gelbspan’s accusation was true. Now, let’s have a look at another window into the world of far-left environmentalist reasoning by seeing Hoggan’s analysis of anyone who disputes global warming as settled science. Continue reading
James Hoggan’s Monster Journalistic Due Diligence Lapse
Bad enough that Desmogblog co-founder James Hoggan makes one if not more monster errors of assumption, but he recently (and in an almost comical inadvertent way) showed the world what not to do when an alleged news item isn’t getting the attention people believe it deserves. His lapse was a classic example of beliefs overriding elemental due diligence. Continue reading
The Ongoing Embellishment Problem
My recent Twitter debate with John Stauber, co-author of the “Trust Us, We’re Experts” book, reminded me of a particularly embarrassing embellishment error that pops up elsewhere among efforts to portray experts on man-caused global warming as authoritarians above reproach. It’s like the proverbial fish story, the tendency to make things bigger than they actually are. Continue reading
Three Degrees of Separation or Less, Part VI: The ‘Conflicts of Interest’ Notification Idea
In the global warming issue, when it comes to the idea of skeptics being ‘corrupted by industry funding’, basically any variant of that notion inadvertently points to the core promoter of that accusation, Ross Gelbspan. Take the March 9 article in Energy & Environment’s ClimateWire by Evan Lehmann, for example (archived version here). Continue reading
Ron Arnold: “Naomi Oreskes Warps Climate Skeptic History”
First, the setup for Ron’s article: Back late 2009, in my efforts to figure out where the infamous “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” phrase came from – the line spelled out in Al Gore’s movie and in Ross Gelbspan’s book “The Heat is On”, which they portray as a sinister top-down industry directive that skeptic climate scientists are paid to follow – I ran across Naomi Oreskes’ widely repeated Powerpoint presentation from 2008 where she said the leaked memo set containing that phrase was in the archives of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Problem is, you may not view them there. Continue reading
