Tag Archives: Ozone Action

The Problems in the ExxonKnew Lawsuits Keep Getting Worse

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This happens – I’m in the midst of compiling a blog post, I look up something I remember in connection with another accusation angle, then I spot something that doesn’t line up right in the whole narrative. What I’d planned to describe concerning “Committing Acts of Journalism” (or the lack thereof by the reporters over the last two+ decades on the climate issue) will have to wait until the next blog post, (is in my next post as of 2/24/25) because I just spotted a new problem with the basically still-current (originally Matt Pawa-led) pair of 2017 Alameda County / San Francisco County lawsuits. I dissected that pair jointly in my October 6, 2017 People(s) of California v. BP, while also bringing up those two again in my November 30, 2024 Maine v BP dissection, since the Sher Edling law firm inexplicably decided to apparently plagiarize Matt Pawa’s old 2017 accusation paragraph to use in their filing for Maine. What I did not catch in my latest dissection there was the basic fault with Matt Pawa’s citation source for the bit about Dr S Fred Singer’s “launch[ing] repeated attacks on mainstream climate science,” namely the 2007 UCS report. Those words are not in that report that way. I can show where they are seen that way, and where the actual source is . . . . . . which does not help the credibility of the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits one bit. It reinforces the fatal fault in essentially every one of these. Continue reading →

The Al Gore Problem just got one increment larger: “The Climate According to A.I. Al Gore.”

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If you are a nationally or internationally recognized hero / heroine who’s exposing a crisis situation caused by bad operators that not enough of the public is aware of, and you decide to tel the story of what specific event led you onto your current heroic path, that event had better not be something which somebody will say, “wait a minute, that is not the way it actually happened.” Because if someone does, and presents compelling enough evidence which totally undermines your oft-repeated narratives about what inspired you to do what you do, increasing amounts of people who trusted you are going to wonder what else you’ve said are embellishments or outright fabrications designed to make you look heroic.

Such is the major problem presented in Joel Gilbert’s ‘unauthorized bio-pic “The Climate According to A.I. Al Gore.” (available now for DVD or live streaming purchase). The setup is elemental: Al Gore himself does not like questions from anyone he suspects is an unfriendly interviewer, so filmmaker director Gilbert’s opted to ask an A.I. version of Gore to tell his life story and then to answer some tough questions about the climate issue angle of his saga. But that’s not all —this film reveals a huge legacy-crippling problem in Gore’s longtime ‘hero’ story he tells concerning what exactly propelled him into the climate issue. At GelbspanFiles, I’ve detailed the legacy-crippling problems of the others who’ve told heroic tales of how they got into the issue, along with briefly mentioning a key problem with Gore’s outrage against industry entities that allegedly sought to “reposition global warming as theory.” What follows below is how these ‘hero/heroine’ stories all seem to dovetail together in a much more troubling manner now. Continue reading →

“Merchant of Disinformation” – the movie. Part 3

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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.’

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Ross Gelbspan, June 1, 1939 – January 27, 2024

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I am truly sad abut the death of the namesake for my GelbspanFiles blog, and I must first explain why, when some – critics especially – might guess I’d be dancing on his grave. That’s not the way I view life. I don’t just simply want to have a nice day myself, I want everyone to have a nice day, to be happy, and to do good not only for personal betterment but also for the benefit of everyone. If we make very unwise decisions which harm or mislead others, we all should be held accountable, myself included, and be allowed opportunities to atone for our mistakes. We all learn from these teachable moments and become better when forgiveness is sincerely asked. It makes us all better as a result.

Death is final. When ordinary people lived a life filled with dishonest choices apparently for no other reason than personal gain and did nothing to atone for this, they’re now a permanent embarrassment to family members, “someone never to be named” among former associates and former admirers. If they were duped into making supremely unwise choices, well, it’s sad that they were such a dunce. If they deliberately chose to be dishonest, their legacy is far worse. When this involves prominent public figures, their legacies become little more than teachable lessons: “you don’t want the public to learn about you this way.”

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I Stand Corrected — and it doesn’t benefit the ‘corrupt skeptic climate scientists’ accusers at all

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The setup here is elemental. In the movie companion book for Al Gore’s 2006 “An Inconvenient Truth,” he said outright that the namesake of my blog, Ross Gelbspan, had discovered the notorious ‘leaked fossil fuel industry memo’ “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact,” one page in an extended set attributed to a coal industry public relations campaign which allegedly had sinisterly targeted (Gelbspan’s words, in a 1997 radio show interview) their ‘disinformation’ very narrowly at “older, less-educated men” and “young, low-income women.” It turns out that the PR campaign never operated under a directive to ‘reposition’ anything, and in one obscure instance, Gelbspan himself revealed that an official of the PR campaign said their climate issue information was directed at everyone within their audience.

On many occasions here at GelbspanFiles when I’ve said Al Gore’s story doesn’t line up right (e.g. the screencapture example below) about Gelbspan’s ‘discovery,’ I’ve pointed out that Gelbpsan’s earliest-seen quotes of those memo set phrases trace back as early as his December 5th, 1995 National Public Radio interview.

I’m not wrong at all about Gore quoting the never-implemented audience targeting phrases from that memo set years before Gelbspan ever said a word about them. The unanswered problem remains: how could Gelbspan discover memos which Gore already had? What I need to correct is when Gelbspan’s earliest mention of those phrases happened. Continue reading →

Where is Ross Gelbspan these days? 2023 Edition

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Back on November 30, 2022, I wrote a blog post about Ross Gelbspan’s most visible recent activity at his Facebook page, which concerned a couple of less-than-well-ought-out Facebook comments on his part. For the purposes of this blog post as it concerns his activities that may interest investigators sometime in the near future, I created a new blog category tag just for these specific posts. All part of a larger pattern on his part, you see. Time for another update, albeit on a different angle: money. Continue reading →

The Real ICE ads, Part 4: what the public actually saw in Flagstaff Arizona & Bowling Green, Kentucky

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And now, the actual publicly seen Western Fuels Association “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) newspaper ads that were printed in the Flagstaff Arizona and Bowling Green, Kentucky newspapers, which I suggested at the end of my October 8, 2021 Part 1 blog post that I needed to find. As usual, what I actually found within this latest exercise does not resolve and solidify widespread accusations that these newspaper ads are definitive proof of coal/oil industry-led disinformation campaigns, what I’ve found instead raises significantly more questions about the core clique of enviro-activists who’ve long promulgated the accusations. Continue reading →

The Real ICE newspaper ads

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Information Council FOR the Environment. For, not on.

What does it tell you when the most prominent promulgators of the accusation about ‘fossil fuel industry executives colluding with skeptic climate scientists in disinformation campaigns’ — either people supposedly closest to very specific details of it, or entities which need to be above reproach when they repeat its specific details — proclaim that one glaring example of industry-orchestrated disinformation was the ‘misleading newspaper ads’ in the Western Fuels Association’s “Information Council on the Environment” public relations campaign? Continue reading →

City of Charleston v. Brabham Oil Company, et al.

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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 →

City of Hoboken v. ExxonMobil, et al.

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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 →