Tag Archives: Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearings

I Stand More Informed, Part 2 — and it doesn’t help Ross Gelbspan’s climate issue legacy at all

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I’ve implied it on several occasions relating to several people; it bears repeating in this situation — when a person tells the tale of a particular significantly noteworthy personal history event which is consistent in every retelling, notwithstanding minor errors about minor details, it’s a good indicator the event actually happened. When significant details are noticeably inconsistent from one telling to the next, we’re left to wonder if the event never actually happened at all the way the person describes it. Was the narrative instead just a script handed to the person to read, where he or she is ineptly acting out the tale?

My Part 1 post was a look into Ross Gelbspan’s earliest mentions of ye olde “reposition global warming” memos – the memos that, from late 1995 to just over a week ago (stay tuned here for more about that latest blunder) – are the literal best that enviro-activists have in their arsenal to accuse skeptic climate scientists of being paid fossil fuel industry money to spread ‘disinformation which causes the public to doubt the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming.’ No. Joke.

I’ve already written how Gelbspan is seemingly unable to keep his narratives straight about his discovery odyssey of ‘industry-paid skeptic climate scientists.’ What he additionally said in the November 1995 C-SPAN interview I covered in Part 1 didn’t clarify any of the problems in his subsequent retellings of his discovery story. It added one more major angle of inconsistency to them all. Continue reading →

Dr. Patrick J. Michaels and the Ordinary Citizen

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In my April 17, 2020 blog post about the death of Dr S. Fred Singer and my experiences with him, I began by noting how readily accessible he was to even ordinary citizens like me who genuinely expressed uncritical interest in the overall global warming issue. Dr Michaels, whose death unfortunately was just last week, (more memorials here, here, here, and here), was no different that way. Regarding Dr Singer, I first began emailing with him simply because I wanted to let him know that I was exchanging emails with the Seattle mayor’s office on the global warming issue, but I also wanted to know if I had it right about my Viking ancestors being able to farm in Greenland. With Dr Michaels, my first inquiry to him was at the beginning of my efforts to undertake a due diligence job which the mainstream media should have done, concerning the troubling accusation that he, Dr Singer, and others were paid and directed by fossil fuel executives to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.” Back in 2009-2010, that accusation was all over the internet, but not a single person or group on the Al Gore side of the issue had the guts to show the full context of the ‘leaked industry memos’ containing that awkwardly-worded ‘directive.’

Dr. Michaels ultimately ended up providing some specific bits about that, under a broader examination, which look quite damaging to his accusers. Continue reading →

The Big Ben Santer Problem, Pt 2: The Gelbspan Connection

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Near the middle of my June 17, 2020 Part 1 blog post about the Oreskes / Santer problem, I showed a screencapture of Ross Gelbspan’s connection with the tale concerning atmospheric scientist Ben Santer’s questionable alterations of an IPCC report, and then showed featured another screencapture of a different tale in a major in a major national magazine article which had Gelbspan’s favorite ‘leaked memos’ accusation separated only sentences away from the ‘Santer attack.’

That wasn’t the only major article written at that time in that particular manner. Continue reading →

Dr. Patrick J. Michaels Guest Comments on his 1995 Encounter with Ross Gelbspan: “An Amusing Scene”

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I’ve already detailed critical problems with Gelbspan’s narratives about his ‘discovery of skeptic corruption odyssey’ in my January 22, 2014 and May 9, 2014 blog posts, regarding the way he supposedly found out that skeptic climate scientists were ‘paid industry money to lie’, and regarding the questionably short time frame in which this took place. In a nutshell, his narratives about the situation surrounding his attendance at the 1995 Minnesota Public Utilities hearings where skeptic scientists testified are crippled with unexplained contradictions. Now, in a pair of guest comments intended for GelbspanFiles.com courtesy of Dr Michaels’ recollection of his encounter with Gelbspan at those hearings, we have a new major problem. Continue reading →

Wait. She said What? (Gelbspan may have dug his hole deeper)

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It’s bad enough that Columbia Journalism Review article writer Robert S. Eshelman made the mistake of labeling Ross Gelbspan as a Pulitzer winner (which the CJR later deleted initially without explanation) in his May 1, 2014 piece, but when Eshelman dutifully recited an oft-repeated narrative of how Gelbspan dived into an investigation of ‘corrupt funding of skeptic climate scientists’ – the narrative itself being one plagued with highly questionable contradictions – he basically handed Gelbspan a shovel to dig a deeper credibility hole. Continue reading →

Five Major Problems in Four Paragraphs, prompting Eight Questions that beg to be Answered

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Listen to or read a single version by itself of Ross Gelbspan’s various narratives about what led him to look into the ‘corruption’ of skeptic climate scientists, and it sounds quite compelling. Know some background information on what he’s talking about, and you wonder why he can’t keep his stories straight. Continue reading →

Orchestrate News of Skeptic Climate Scientists’ Corruption; Claim this News is news to You; Fail to Prove Any Corruption.

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In my  August 20, 2013 blog piece, I briefly mentioned the role Minnesota assistant Attorney General Barbara Freese had in the May 1995 Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearings where skeptic climate scientists were called to testify, and I detailed her subsequent association problems with Ross Gelbspan. She had asked the skeptics at the hearing about their ‘industry funding’, which led me to ponder who could have prompted her to consider pursuing an otherwise irrelevant non-science tangent. Up until finding what I detail in this blog piece, I thought someone resentful of skeptic scientists might have done so while also alerting Gelbspan that one of the hearings’ top questioners was going to grill the skeptics. Well, it turns out I gave Gelbspan too much benefit of the doubt there………. Continue reading →

James Hoggan’s Desmogblog has Inexplicable Problems with Ross Gelbspan. Why?

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Weird. Ross Gelbspan founded the global warming anti-skeptic web site Desmogblog, he said so directly just eight seconds into this audio interview. James Hoggan credits Gelbspan as “a big part of the inspiration for starting the DeSmogBlog” (4th paragraph here). Gelbspan was a frequent blogger there, 50 pages’ worth of 10 pieces per page, from January 2006 to November 2010. So, from that level of familiarity, why would Hoggan go flying off a cliff over a central detail about Gelbspan? Continue reading →

Three Degrees of Separation or Less, Part II

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At the end of my August 7th blog piece, I mentioned how any prominent person insinuating that industry money corrupts skeptic climate scientists seems to be separated from Ross Gelbspan by three degrees or less. If we see that small separation between him and someone involved in the event that supposedly confirmed his suspicions about ‘corrupt scientists’, what might turn that into a problem? Continue reading →