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: Kert Davies
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
Town of Carrboro, North Carolina v Duke Energy
This Dec 4, 2024 filing is a bit different. But not different enough to save it from potentially being wiped out the same way the other 34 current “ExxonKnew” lawsuits could fall. Continue reading
Summary for Policy Makers (SPM): the Sher Edling law firm
On Oct 7, 2024, news reports (e.g. Thomas Catenacci’s “Anti-Energy Lawfare“) described the same-day release of Senator Ted Cruz’s / Rep James Comer’s investigation analysis Sher Edling, the San Francisco law firm that is – by my current count – ‘boilerplate-copying’ 18 “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuits from one place to the next, and ‘assisting’ in 4 others.
Elections matter. At the time of the Oct 7 news reports, pre-general election, the U.S. Senate was in the minority. With the Senate now firmly set in the majority and with Senator Cruz having subpoena power, that changes the situation. While his and the joint investigation with Rep Comer focuses principally on the dark money funding of Sher Edling, that focus could broaden to cover what I consider a far bigger set of fatal faults surrounding that law firm. So, first is my brief number lineup, followed by more details below for each, which include screencapture image links and blog post links supporting the particular items at greater depth: 1) provably false accusations of industry-corruption behavior. 2) Hidden original citation source. 3) Subsequent text omissions. 4) deceptively cropped images. 5) The Naomi Oreskes Problem. 6) The Dr Willie Soon false accusation. 7) Matt Edling and Victor Sher. 8) (stay tuned, I’ll likely add more to this post at a later date) Continue reading
Multnomah v. Exxon, version 2.0: Oregon County Suing Exxon Now Suing Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project
On Oct 4, Multnomah County amended their filing to add a gas utility company as a defendant, along with Art Robinson’s Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM); more specifically, as I will detail below, his Oregon Petition Project. My response: Oh, brother. Redux. I already dissected the spectacular blunders surrounding the 2023 Multnomah v Exxon lawsuit; that bizarre filing effort looks like little more than a cloddish plagiarized copy of Puerto Rico v Exxon, which itself was so maladroitly cobbled together that I needed to do a two-part dissection of that one, plus I had to place an additional detail three months back at the end of part 2. I didn’t cover Puerto Rico‘s sections mentioning Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project because my two dissection posts were long enough already. I’ll admit error on failing to mention it now, it involves one more problem potentially tying their ineptness to that of the supposedly unassociated San Francisco Sher Edling law firm and their boilerplate-copy lawsuit filings. Since somebody within the Oregon law firms seems particularly bent on pointing an arrow the size of Texas at their inexplicable apparent plagiarism blunder … well, let’s now examine that angle and where it blows up in their faces, in four distinct ways. The full amended complaint is here. Continue reading
California v Exxon v.2 — the plastics waste/pollution crisis lawsuit’s “Chicken Little” problem
There’s some irony to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s 9/23/24 lawsuit speaking of “the plastic waste and pollution crisis” while only mentioning the other ‘crisis du jour’ “climate change” four times (the first instance is actually just a reference to a Canadian organization’s name). The lawsuit makes no comparison to alleged deception by the fossil fuel industry over their ‘knowledge’ of the harm of human-induced global warming. So, what possible connection(s) could there be to the efforts to smear skeptic climate scientists as ‘shills’ working for Exxon? Allow me to illustrate. Be sure to click on each link, the screencapture images will set up the big problem for AG Bonta. Continue reading
The prima facie Case for ‘Industry Disinfo Campaigns’ Implodes — AGAIN.
It’s a case study on how the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits can implode – no matter where and when you land in this accusation effort hurled by enviro-activists, it always traces back to the usual suspects.
What I find astounding regarding anyone prominent regurgitating the accusation about “crooked skeptic climate scientists” / “fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns” is how they expect no readers to ever question anything they say. It’s a reckless high wire act, potentially devastating to their credibility if any part of their narrative starts to unravel. Allow me to explain, using the example of the hapless “environmental / energy policy expert” Leah Stokes, who could not keep her mouth shut about the “peer-reviewed” paper she co-authored which hurled the accusation that the “fossil fuel industry ran a disinformation campaign to – her words – “reposition global warming as theory and not fact.” Continue reading
“Merchant of Disinformation” – the movie. Part 4
I can’t emphasize this enough: Naomi Oreskes is presented at congressional hearings and elsewhere as an expert on so-called ‘fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns’ – her own biography introductions at the hearings imply as much. Investigators / objective reporters / law firms representing the defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / congressional staffers can either accept what she says or what is said about her work without question, essentially enabling her to continually to get away with what she’s been doing since 2003, or they can deeply cross examine her work for the first time ever, to find out if there’s any actual merit to the assertions she’s made over the last two decades, such as those contained within in her 2015 “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie. As I’ve shown in Parts 1, 2 and 3, her movie – supposedly exposing fossil fuel industry deception downplaying the harm of global warming – has every appearance itself of deceptively impugning the integrity of those criticizing the idea of catastrophic man-caused global warming. She and her associates fare no better in Part 4 here, the the overarching problem of the movie being her and her associates’ psychological projection hole they’ve dug for themselves that begins to resemble one the virtual size of an open pit mine.
It’s quite a slog to go through this movie. I’m doing it so objective reporters / energy company defendant law firms / potential prosecutors don’t have to. Continue reading
“Merchant of Disinformation” – the movie. Part 3
Not only is Naomi Oreskes the author of the 2010 “Merchants of Doubt” book / star of the 2015 same-name documentary movie, she is also now apparently trying to make some kind of inroads into influencing SCOTUS clerks, if this August 15, 2024 “Interview: Science historian Naomi Oreskes schools the Supreme Court on climate change” article from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is to be believed. There’s no indication in the article that she’s ‘schooled’ anybody there yet, but she evidently has ‘schooled’ global warming lawfare lawyers – she’s on retainer with the law firm directly handling / assisting with 22 (at the time of this blog publication) of the current U.S. “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuits. She has apparently also had some kind of influence with no less than Pope Francis.
She’s been skating on thin ice ever since her foray into the issue, but via sheer blind luck of never facing anyone questioning a word she says, she hasn’t yet fallen right through. When major high-level discussions occur regarding how, where, and why the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits should proceed, her name as an ‘expert’ on the topic is certain to be mentioned in some form. This actually already happened once, where her “Merchants” movie was brought up within the 2015-era NY state Attorney General’s office. That’s why it’s crucial for any clerks for the ruling majority of the Supreme Court to be aware, along with any other people involved in the court system – law firms for the defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits especially – or people involved in the Republican side of the U.S. congress, of how massively vulnerable she is on her assertions about the climate issue and what she terms ‘industry-led disinformation campaigns.’
Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico v. Exxon
A.k.a. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Exxon. Bad enough that a johnny-come-lately law firm with no prior climate damages lawsuit issue experience blindly jumped onto the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits bandwagon in late 2022 representing multiple municipalities of Puerto Rico. It was one of the more ineptly done filings I’ve seen in this lawfare litigation effort, as I showed in my two-part dissection of that lawsuit. Bad enough that a literally redundant lawsuit was filed even more ineptly just over a year later solely for the Puerto Rico city of San Juan. Ineptly – because it was almost a literal copy ‘n paste of the first lawsuit by another law firm which had no climate issue experience whatsoever, as I showed in my dissection of that one. Redundant – because San Juan was already covered in the first lawsuit.
Now we have ‘redundant redux,’ in the form of no less than the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling attempting to get in on the act with this Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico July 15th, 2024 filing. Continue reading