In just the span of barely the first three weeks of September, four lawsuits suing energy companies for the costs of man-caused global warming were filed, City of Hoboken v. ExxonMobil, et al. (9/2/20), City of Charleston v Brabham Oil Company, et al. (9/9/20), Delaware v. BP America Inc, et al. (9/10/20), and Connecticut v. ExxonMobil Corp. (9/14/20). These allege the companies knew their products caused harm from global warming while orchestrating disinformation campaigns with ‘shill’ experts to deceive the public about the harm. Politico summarized these in a September 16 podcast report as part of a “new wave of climate change lawsuits” against fossil fuel companies “racking up nationwide.” While no comparison was offered in that report to the way the tobacco industry began to crumble under the weight of lawsuits against it in the 1990s, a same-day report from E&E News was not the least bit subtle about prompting readers to consider how this “growing body of climate misinformation suits” compares to the tobacco industry’s situation over its knowledge of the harm of cigarette smoking. No mention was made in either report, of course, regarding dubious claims about the allegedly ‘settled science’ of man-caused global warming. Continue reading
Tag Archives: John Passacantando
City of Hoboken v. ExxonMobil, et al.
These lawsuits suing energy companies ‘to recover the costs’ of damages from global warming are really stacking up now. In addition to Imperial Beach, San Mateo, Richmond, Santa Cruz, Rhode Island, Baltimore, Honolulu, the District of Columbia — just to name a few — Hoboken, New Jersey is among the very latest communities to unwisely join this collection with their with their September 2 filing, Why is this unwise? If the industry defendants’ lawyers decide to prominently challenge the veracity of the core accusation within the lawsuit, namely that fossil fuel industry executives employed ‘shill’ skeptic climate scientists in disinformation campaigns to deliberately deceive the public about the harm of global warming, it could not only expose how Hoboken officials didn’t undertake basic due diligence to check the basic veracity of the accusation, it could also torpedo all the rest of the lawsuits across the country in a similar manner, while further exposing how the mainstream media completely overlooked the obvious faults in these lawsuits and in the 25 year+ history of the basic accusation and the core clique of people who’ve promulgated it. Continue reading
D.C. v ExxonMobil, et. al Pt 2: the “17,000 Scientists” Source Problem
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
State of Minnesota v American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil Corp, Koch Industries, Flint Hills Resources
Note: See my Dec 29, 2020 update on how this filing became a “Sher Edling assistance” one.
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
When ‘Reporting’ looks more like Propagandizing
“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
What Does Nearly $5 $10 16* million Buy?
There’s another good question to ask corresponding to the one in my blog post title: how many times does a pattern have to be repeated before it stops looking like just a coincidence and instead looks like something resulting from a prepackaged set of talking points assembled as part of a larger coordinated propaganda effort? Continue reading
City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco LP, et al.
Politicians in Hawaii were threatening to sue Big Energy companies last November for damages from the effects of man-caused global warming. As seen in their press release last week, March 9th, they finally delivered on it. Poor timing for those City/County officials, since the Coronavirus news is overrunning all other news now, but far more important is their poor judgement and lack of due diligence regarding their politically suicidal decision to jump on the bandwagon of the nine other boilerplate global warming lawsuits, which are being handled by the Sher Edling law firm. Continue reading
Joke: “Why did the Greenpeace USA Executive Director cross the Road?”
To get more cash for his agenda. No joke, actually. Continue reading
#GreenpeaceKnew
Two things: First, in order to fully understand where we are in the issue of man-caused global warming, it’s best if everyone understands how we got here. Second, one of the hallmarks of the extreme far-left is their propensity for psychological projection; doing, saying or believing what they accuse their opponents of doing, saying or believing.
So, when far-left extreme enviro-activists say now that “Exxon Knew” years ago about the true reality of the the overall global warming science situation but later used disinformation campaigns to steer the public in the opposite direction, are they inadvertently admitting that ……. Continue reading
‘Prominent Global Warming Deniers are Funded by Fossil Fuel Companies.’ Spread This Line Widely; NEVER Check its Veracity.
And there’s really no necessity to tell anybody exactly what that accusation means. Al Gore and the top-most promulgators of the ‘climate scientist liars-for-hire’ accusation know what it means …. they simply haven’t proven that any such corruption actually exists anywhere. Continue reading