Emphasizing for the benefit of congressional investigators / law firms representing defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / genuinely objective journalists: It does not matter where you drop into the collective accusation about the fossil fuel industry employing skeptic climate shills to spread disinformation — you’ll never find tidy answers tying up situations, you’ll find problems that only lead you onto a path of finding endless related problems. It never ends, no matter where you start. The example in this blog post concerns an item within Roland C “Kert” Davies’ 2011 version of his false accusation that Harvard Center for Astrophysics’ Dr Willie Soon was supposedly paid by Exxon to lie. I showed in my prior blog post the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits in which Davies 2015 rehashed accusation is their source – but while compiling that list and the brief timeline of prior accusations leading to the 2015 rehash, I spotted how Davies tangentially said something in his announcement of the 2011 version which essentially undermines one of the other of the four central accusation elements at the heart of most of these lawsuits. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Dr Willie Soon
List of the Climate Lawsuits Falsely Accusing Dr Willie Soon of Taking Exxon Bribes
This list will be an ongoing compilation, with updates noted in red, similar to my list of global warming lawsuits. Additions to this list will be ref’d in this top paragraph..
In a bit of wishful thinking, the hugely suspect Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) gloated in its December 19, 2024 ‘News & Analysis’ piece that more than “one in four Americans now live in a community suing Big Oil, underscoring the rapidly growing wave of calls to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for its decades-long climate deception…”
The reality of the situation is that CCI itself is noted by both the Climate Litigation Watch website and the Energy in Depth website as apparently one of the main drivers pushing any gullible state / city / municipality leader in America to consider filing an “ExxonKnew” lawsuit. I’ve shown here at GelbspanFiles that CCI trumpeted their mid summer 2023 hiring of Roland C “Kert” Davies as their Director of Special Investigations, and within my tag category of major mentions of him, that he has direct associations with the four main elements of the central accusations in nearly all of these lawsuits. I’ve further suggested that since every one of the 35 current “ExxonKnew” lawsuits is enslaved to at least one if not all four elements, that we do not actually have any such “growing wave” of lawsuits, we instead have the same basic template — call it the “John Passacantando, Kert Davies, et al. [dba Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action / Our Next Economy / CIC ] v. Exxon & any other applicable energy companies” template, for lack of a better description — being repeated ad nauseam.
The main law firm pushing these lawsuits is already under investigation by the U.S. House and Senate. With new Senate GOP majority rule and the power to subpoena witnesses and demand they produce particular documents, these investigations are going to need bulletproof backup material to proceed. Since the entire accusation surrounding Dr Soon as it pertains to accusations in these lawsuits has every appearance of originating from just two individuals – Passacantando and Davies, who both also appear to be participants in efforts to portray Exxon as a corrupt organization – it would be handy to have a list of how far and wide their accusations have been spread into the main law firm’s filings, and into the filings by others who’ve apparently plagiarized the accusations. Continue reading
State of Maine v BP P.L.C.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey was probably crossing his fingers that during his office’s likely weeks- if not months-long preparation of this filing before the November 5th general election, that the joint Senate/House investigation into the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling would become toothless as the result of the U.S. Senate remaining Democrat majority-run and the U.S. House switching to Democrat majority. AG Frey was probably also counting on a VP Harris winning the White House, swept in with her lightly questioned claim about suing Exxon but still having the zeal to do so someday. No such luck. Instead, with this newest Nov 26, 2024 “ExxonKnew” lawsuit being yet another outright Sher Edling boilerplate copy filing, AG Frey provided even more fodder for Senator Cruz and Rep Comer to investigate. The Maine AG office’s press release only had a download-to-read PDF file of this lawsuit at the bottom instead of a regular internet link, so I downloaded it and created a direct-read link to it here.
I”ll first go through the main items in my checklist ‘certifying’ this one as a boilerplate copy … but then I’ll show its new utterly unwise copy ‘n paste bit out of another supposedly ‘unconnected’ seven year-old+ “ExxonKnew” lawsuit. This newest apparent plagiarism maneuver on their part is an open invitation for Senator Cruz / Rep Comer to dig into how these lawsuits are assembled and who it is doing the actual assembling. Continue reading
The Political Suicide of Pushing “Climate Homicide” … & muscling in on someone else’s “ExxonKnew” lawsuits territory?
On June 26th just a little over a week ago, David “climate homicide” Arkush and co-authors at his Public Citizen group put out a press release titled “New Memo Details Legal Case for Prosecuting Big Oil for Extreme Heat Deaths,” containing a link to a 51 page proposal for prosecutors in the state of Arizona (Democrat ones, of course including the state’s Attorney General), noting:
Though this memo asks a particular question — how officials in Maricopa County could pursue reckless manslaughter or second degree murder prosecutions for deaths caused by the July 2023 heat wave — its analysis is relevant in most jurisdictions where prosecutors might seek justice for climate victims.
I already had a tag category at GelbspanFiles dating back over a year concerning Arkush’s ludicrous ultra-lawfare fixation. He’s now taken that fixation likely beyond its breaking point. It’s one thing to push the bizarre “charge fossil fuel companies with climate homicide” idea in ‘scholarly papers,’ but it’s quite another to propose the idea straight to state prosecutors. That’s what he’s presenting in the above press release. Forgive the rather morbid visual analogy here – the man virtually points a loaded revolver at his head and the heads of his co-authors and practically asks law firms defending energy companies in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits to pull the triggers for him.
People of the State of California v. Exxon Mobil Corporation
Throw another one onto the “growing number” (growing number!) of “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits which insinuate that ‘Big Oil’ knew the burning of fossil fuels harmed the environment but deceived the public by employing ‘shill’ climate scientists in ‘disinformation campaigns’ to say there was no harm. This latest Sept 15, 2023 filing appears to be no different than the 31 other “Exxon Knew” lawsuits I’ve dissected where it fits a pattern of repeating (plagiarizing?) material out of the others, from dubious ‘science certainty’ assertions to corruption accusations worded carelessly enough that they potentially stray into reckless disregard territory. I’ll get into how this latest one fits that pattern, but first, let me illustrate how the ‘news reports’ about it reinforce the problem that we no longer have an objective news reporting media, we have a propaganda media telling the public – working at the most basic of intellectually dishonest levels – about these lawsuits. Continue reading
Brief Of Amici Curiae, Brulle .. Oreskes .. & Supran Redux 4 — the Washington DC version
Seems Oreskes et al. are not figuring out what the lesson is to be learned here. They continue to file Friends of the Court blunders in boilerplate copy fashion supporting various “Exxon Knew”-style cases, repeating their same blunders they had in their first one, e.g., what I term ye olde “reposition global warming” leaked industry memos evidence, which are the same worthless, never implemented memos the lawsuits themselves are enslaved to – in boilerplate copy fashion, e.g. the Hawaiian pair – as cornerstone evidence of “fossil fuel industry-led public disinformation campaigns. So, I’ve created a new tag category just for these situations, “Oreskes et al. amici filings.” Continue reading
Background: Key Word / Names Checklist – what to look when prominent accusers yell “Big Oil disinformation” / “crooked skeptic scientists”
[Updated, added items 9/25/24] 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
State of Delaware v. BP America Inc, et al.
The Washington Free Beacon has an ongoing series of “I forced a bot to …” parodies making fun of predictable robot-like reactions from biased journalists or far-left activists to particular hot topics. Seriously, however, it might be worthy of genuine speculation as to whether the Sher Edling law firm has a bot writer program to punch out boilerplate-similar global warming lawsuits. I actually speculated about that back when I wrote my dissection of their second round of simultaneously-filed lawsuits, where I detailed the fatal fault of their lawsuits’ enslavement to the worthless “reposition global warming” memos. The repeats galore continue in their latest Delaware v. BP filing.
In this post, I’ll detail the major fault with a repeated item that I haven’t shown before, but first ……… Continue reading
Scientist Falsely Accused
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
“Regurgitate Unsupportable Accusations, We Much?” Kert Davies is Back. Again.
A brief word of explanation about the first part of that title, it’s a variation of the “Resist, we much” teleprompter reading gaffe by the Reverend Al Sharpton, where he meant to say “Resist, we must” on his TV show. It lends itself to a variety of other overblown political situations which beg for a “Sharptonism” parody. The latest instances where Boston Globe, New York Times, and Washington Post articles cited Kert Davies’ supposedly damaging documents (screencaptures here, here and here), in an effort to trash skeptic climate scientist Dr Willie Soon, invites exactly that kind of parody. Continue reading