Background: Key Word / Names Checklist – what to look when prominent accusers yell “Big Oil disinformation” / “crooked skeptic scientists

[Updated 5/22/23] What follows in this post is a sort of work-in-progress, the “Background info” collection I referred to in my March 31, 2023 post. If I may suggest it for those who might end up investigating the clique of enviro-activists who’ve long accused skeptic climate scientists of industry corruption, bookmark it as a growing reference to utilize when the prosecution direction does eventually turn 180° against these accusers. Like I’ve implied more than once here at GelbspanFiles, the central promulgators of the false accusation about the fossil fuel industry employing shill scientists have been extraordinarily lucky so far, but what they recklessly push is simply unsustainable. It will sink. It is a mathematical certainty. Continue reading

“Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths” (a.k.a. “we still only have worthless evidence and suspect sources backing this.”)

The breaking ‘political climate news’ last week concerned the Harvard Law Review’s draft version of a scholarly paper (not due to be actually published until 2024) posing the idea that oil companies could be criminally charged with committing ‘climate homicide resulting from deceiving the public about the harm of burning fossil fuels.’ Particularly ludicrous to me was the statement in one of those news reports by one of the paper’s authors concerning the pitch of this idea to plaintiffs:

We have some indication they’re at least listening and curious,” said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. “To someone who knows the criminal law, there’s a moment of ‘What!?’ and then, ‘It’s OK. It’s not crazy.’

Not only is this notion crazy, it would be an act of political suicide. Continue reading

The Big Erik Conway Problem, Pt 2

What’s particularly maddening about this problem is the simplicity of its flip side, a crystal-clear snapshot of the way Naomi Oreskes, with her Merchants of Doubt co-author Erik Conway, supposedly exposed how public confusion over climate science results from organized campaigns designed to create confusion and delay political action, a tactic previously employed in efforts to deny the reality of acid rain, ozone depletion, and the link between tobacco and cancer, tactics now used in some cases by the same people who deny the reality of global warming. But in my November 18, 2017 blog post, I used Conway’s own words to show how the timeline of Oreskes’ so-called discovery of her ‘tobacco industry-connected’ critics fell apart, and the problems don’t stop there. Conway’s account of his collaboration with Oreskes on this ‘tobacco industry-connected climate scientists’ matter doesn’t offer a clearer picture of why atmospheric physicist Dr S Fred Singer was seemingly “the most dangerous man on the planet”, it begs for deeper investigation of why and how this portrayal of him coalesced in the first place. Continue reading

Oreskes’ Inability to Keep Her Mouth Shut & the Big Erik Conway Problem

In telling the tale of inadvertently discovering how skeptic climate scientists are corrupted, a person might be viewed as a hero or heroine, and it is understandably forgivable if the hero/heroine has a memory lapse about exactly when this event happened, or about minor narrative details surrounding it. But when the tale takes on an increasing appearance of being a fabrication designed to make the person look like a hero/heroine, unbiased objective thinkers will start to wonder why there would be any necessity for that kind of embellishment, and they might also wonder if there is something inherently wrong with the core of the tale. Continue reading