Background: The WORTHLESS 1998 American Petroleum Institute “Victory Will Be Achieved when …” leaked memo

Among the five major ‘leaked memo’ situations which enviro-activists try to say are proof of sinister fossil fuel industry collusion efforts with skeptic climate scientists to spread doubt about the certainty of man-caused global warming, only two stand out at least on a superficial level as being particularly damaging. The one with seemingly the most devastating appearance is the so-called “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) public relations memos of 1991, supposedly detailing Western Fuels Association (WFA) efforts to push misinformation that would achieve the goal to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” among a nationwide audience of gullible “older less-educated men and young low-income women.” Problem is, those memos are worthless as evidence of that conspiracy because they were never part of the short-lived, small three-city-only pilot project ICE PR campaign.

The second most damaging, laughably so when its actual content is taken into consideration in an objective manner, is the 1998 American Petroleum Institute (API) “Victory Will Be Achieved when …” leaked memo. Continue reading

The ‘television editor told me “We did. Once.”’ Problem, Part II: Which Editor?

My 11/18 blog dealt with Ross Gelbspan’s claim that ‘a top CNN editor’ was scolded by a supposedly powerful industry group for attempting to connect weather events to global warming, where the threat was made that advertising would be pulled if CNN’s reporting did not meet the approval of that group. His claim appears to fall far short of being infallible, and from that, maybe it is not out-of-bounds to speculate on just who the CNN person might be. Continue reading