Headline: “U.S. House Panel Commits Political Suicide; Expands Inquiry into Climate Disinformation by ‘Big Oil’”

That was the widespread news headline, in one form or another (minus the ‘political suicide’ bit, of course) on Thursday, September 16th, 2021. The main news item was that Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, and sophomore-term House member Ro Khanna, D-Ca, sent letters hours earlier to four major fossil fuel companies and two lobbying groups, demanding that they appear in front of the Oversight Committee on October 28, and that they bring documents with them showing how they were engaged in — no joke! — “in a long-running, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming.” Those were the actual words in the nearly identical letters, which can be viewed in their entirety at the links within the Oversight Committees website page’s press release.

How could this House Oversight Committee stunt be revealed to be act of political suicide? If the ‘defense witnesses’ at the October 28 hearing decide to seize the leadership opportunity on this, they could show how the ‘industry executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists in disinformation campaigns‘ accusation only points a huge arrow at where the real disinformation efforts are apparently seen in this issue, a core clique of enviro-activists who’ve pushed a pair of never-implemented, ‘leaked industry memo sets’ that are worthless to prove any “industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation” exists anywhere. Plus, the sheer lack of viable evidence behind the accusation points an even bigger arrow at the basic journalistic malfeasance on the part of mainstream media news reporters, when it comes to their decades-long failure to ask probing questions about the basic accusation, which dates back to the 1990s. Continue reading

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

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

Reposition Graduate Degrees as Theory rather than Fact

Want to see something troubling? In today’s post I offer a pile of screencaptures which collectively prompt two basic questions: How many masters and doctorate degrees should be revoked out there because the degree recipients presented faulty, unsupported evidence for the idea that the fossil fuel industry orchestrated sinister disinformation campaigns to undercut the certainty of man-caused global warming in collusion with skeptic climate scientists? How much wider is this overall problem within the university system, where thesis writers and thesis evaluators fail to do elemental due diligence on authoritative assertions and accusations within those papers? Continue reading

The Big Erik Conway Problem, Pt 2

What’s particularly maddening about this problem is the simplicity of its flip side, a crystal-clear snapshot of the way Naomi Oreskes, with her Merchants of Doubt co-author Erik Conway, supposedly exposed how public confusion over climate science results from organized campaigns designed to create confusion and delay political action, a tactic previously employed in efforts to deny the reality of acid rain, ozone depletion, and the link between tobacco and cancer, tactics now used in some cases by the same people who deny the reality of global warming. But in my November 18, 2017 blog post, I used Conway’s own words to show how the timeline of Oreskes’ so-called discovery of her ‘tobacco industry-connected’ critics fell apart, and the problems don’t stop there. Conway’s account of his collaboration with Oreskes on this ‘tobacco industry-connected climate scientists’ matter doesn’t offer a clearer picture of why atmospheric physicist Dr S Fred Singer was seemingly “the most dangerous man on the planet”, it begs for deeper investigation of why and how this portrayal of him coalesced in the first place. Continue reading

Spreading the ‘Crooked Skeptic Climate Scientists’ Accusation within the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

I detailed how Ross Gelbspan is found directly in IPCC climate scientist Dr Michael Mann’s emails in my August 7, 2013 post. In two of my other posts here, I showed how IPCC Vice Chair Jean-Pascal van Ypersele had prominently accused a particular skeptic scientist of industry corruption, and how Ypersele cited Naomi Oreskes for his insinuation that the ClimateGate email leaks were the result of an effort “‘organized’ to undermine efforts to tackle global warming.” I can additionally add that the then-Chairman of the IPCC also suggested in regard to the ClimateGate email scandal, “it was entirely possible that ‘corporate interests’ had had a hand in the leak.” (full text here).

Now, let’s briefly examine one more time where the ‘crooked skeptics’ accusation was passed around. Continue reading

The Connolley Problem, pt 6: Lahsen’s Spice Girls

Even though this series of blog posts concerns a prominent complaint filed in 2007 against the UK Channel Four Television Corporation video “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” my objective is to show how a thorough analysis of any given accusation about skeptic climate scientists being ‘paid industry money to lie’ shatters the accusation to bits no matter where the hammer strikes. Meaning, current efforts to use racketeering laws as a means to prosecute “climate change deniers.”

Today, an examination of a single-sentence claim within the complaint about fabricated names in the Oregon Petition Project (a claim widely repeated to this day, including a minor ‘supporting actor role’ in Naomi Oreskes’ documentary movie). The sentence should be devastating proof of how the petition is discredited …… Continue reading

The Repeaters vs the Pushers

I’ve said it many times, the entire global warming crisis can be boiled down to a three point mantra, “the science is settled” / “skeptics are industry-corrupted” / “everyone may ignore skeptic material because of points 1 & 2.” With the latest fixation on using racketeering laws to persecute companies and organization siding with skeptic climate scientists, a fourth talking point could be added, “when deniers persist with their industry-bought and orchestrated lies, they should be charged with crimes against humanity.” But the entire notion hinges on the insinuation that scientists who had even the most tenuous financial tie to industry donations were corrupted – paid to lie in a manner no different than shill ‘experts’ working for the tobacco industry who said smoking didn’t cause lung cancer. An insinuation so memorably compelling that ordinary citizen enviro-activists can regurgitate it with ease. Continue reading