{"id":5852,"date":"2017-10-27T16:50:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T23:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=5852"},"modified":"2022-05-19T18:22:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T01:22:45","slug":"introducing-climatefiles-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=5852","title":{"rendered":"Introducing ClimateFiles.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your new*<\/strong> go-to source for secret memos exposing the fossil fuel industry’s conspiracy of hiring shill ‘scientists’ to sow doubt about the certainty of man-caused global warming.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong>Or, you could say Climate Files<\/a> compares to a new deceptive fiberglass body\u00a0decorated with a logo design too similar to WikiLeaks<\/a>, hiding a very tired old VW Beetle frame.<\/p>\n

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It was apparently serving the purpose of supporting the overall situation surrounding New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s efforts to sue Exxon<\/a>, but since Schneiderman’s actions raise troubling questions<\/a>, (fun screencapture from that piece here<\/a> of the ‘usual suspects<\/a>\u2019) and since his prosecution efforts are plagued with unending problems<\/a>, it appears Climate Files has now been re-purposed to support the more recent efforts of a different set of global warming lawsuits, namely the San Mateo \/ Marin \/ Imperial Beach v. Chevron<\/em> trio I detailed in my previous post<\/a>. The overall problem is, of course, that all of the collective notions about a fossil fuel industry deception campaign are enslaved to a solitary source of evidence that has been re-purposed almost to death over the last two decades.<\/p>\n

To understand where we are now, we have to know where we’ve been. The setup is as follows:<\/p>\n

ClimateFiles.com in its current iteration didn’t exist before its first early January 2016 post<\/a>, and when a Google Search is configured to search for the site address’ earliest online appearance<\/a>, the results are for May 4 and 6, 2016, for its “How to use” and About” pages<\/a>, respectively. Kert Davies (there’s that name again) first mentioned its existence<\/a> at his Climate Investigations Center site on May 23, 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These documents all live at ClimateFiles.com, an archive built on the Document Cloud platform familiar to journalists, created with a grant by the Knight Foundation<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Aside, for a ‘3 degrees of separation example’:<\/em><\/strong> The Knight Foundation notes that Jim Detjen is “the Knight Chair for Environmental Journalism<\/a>.” In turn, Detjen said within a 2007 Knight Digital Media Center powerpoint presentation<\/a> that “Journalists must deal with powerful disinformation campaigns … Goal is to “reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact,” according to author Ross Gelbspan<\/a>.<\/em> That’s the same so-called “evidence” appearing in<\/a> the San Mateo \/ Marin \/ Imperial Beach v. Chevron<\/em> cases that’s supposed to prove a conspiracy exists between fossil fuel industry people and skeptic climate scientists to lie to the public.)<\/p>\n

Davies’ creation and introduction dates for Climate Files fall within two months on either side of NY AG Eric Schneiderman’s March 29 2016 press conference announcement<\/a> of his prosecution of Exxon, and there is no way to miss how the site focuses on Exxon<\/a>. Regarding this focus, however, it begs the question, why not simply add to the already existing Greenpeace “ExxonSecrets” document collection<\/a>? Kert Davies is proud to say at his current Climate Investigations Center site that he was the chief architect<\/a> of ExxonSecrets, but oddly makes little mention of it at CIC<\/a> and doesn’t mention it in any direct form<\/a> within his Climate Files site.<\/p>\n

But as I said, NY AG Schneiderman’s anti-Exxon efforts was looking ever more doomed to collapse toward the end of 2016<\/a>. How do you re-purpose a document collections site to be a little more broadly used in major global warming nuisance\/damages lawsuits? You add in the mainstay<\/a> of the ‘industry-paid skeptics’ accusation, the supposedly leaked Western Fuels “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) campaign, with its smoking gun industry-adopted “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact<\/em>” strategy phrase and its smoking gun targeting goals (click images to enlarge)<\/p>\n

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For any new readers arriving at this post without reading any of my other material, that’s the same strategy memo that Al Gore said<\/a> Ross Gelbspan discovered, which Gelbspan quoted along with the targeting memo phrases<\/a> in his 1997 book, and those are the same targeting phrases which Gore featured<\/a> in his 1992 “Earth in the Balance” book years<\/em><\/strong> before Gelbspan ever mentioned them, and all<\/em><\/strong> of these specific memos were rejected proposals<\/a> that never<\/em><\/strong> made it into the ICE campaign and thus cannot<\/em><\/strong> have subsequently become part of an industry-wide sinister campaign as Gelbspan<\/a> and Gore<\/a> portray it to be.<\/p>\n

Scholar that I’ve become on all the accusations which are enslaved to those supposedly ‘Western Fuels Association ICE public relations campaign’ memos — which they are not — the new wrinkle to this situation is how Kert Davies’ Climate Files does not<\/em><\/strong> attribute them to Western Fuels in any way<\/a>. This leads me to wonder if Davies and his associates are now aware through my work that they literally can’t tie those memos to Western Fuels, or if it is a tactic which allows them to imply a wider industry conspiracy is out there, such as what’s seen in this recent article<\/a>? Click on the link for the “reposition” phrase at the article<\/a> and it takes you straight to Climate Files’ ICE page.<\/p>\n

Interesting how the San Mateo \/ Marin \/ Imperial Beach v. Chevron<\/em> lawsuits essentially paints the same picture of an industry-wide conspiracy when they regurgitated<\/a> the “reposition global warming” phrase. While the lawsuits at least got the “Information Council FOR<\/span> the Environment” wording correct as opposed to Kert Davies’ incorrect automatic assumption<\/a>, they do oddly dance around directly attributing<\/a> ICE to Western Fuels. But the blunder by the plaintiffs’ lawyers was to cite Kert Davies’ Climate Files<\/a> as one of the sources for the ICE “Chicken Little” advertisement. This only draws attention to how Davies not only requotes the ‘strategy\/targeting memo phrases’ which were never used in the ICE campaign, but also to his attempt to spin the never-used<\/em><\/strong> “Informed Citizens on the Environment<\/a>” as little more than an alternative name. Way back in 1991, the New York Times<\/em><\/a> quoted an official with the ICE campaign as saying it was never used<\/a>. This is independently corroborated<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The San Mateo \/ Marin \/ Imperial Beach v. Chevron<\/em> lawsuit transcripts also cite Kert Davies’ Climate Files directly, not once<\/a>, not twice<\/a>, but three times<\/a>. If this was the only the only indication of an association problem, people might just dismiss it as coincidence.<\/p>\n

But wait, there’s more.<\/p>\n

With bad news continually bedeviling NY AG Schneiderman’s efforts<\/a> to prosecute Exxon, wouldn’t it be a good idea to draw attention to the next alternative to that, namely the San Mateo \/ Marin \/ Imperial Beach v. Chevron<\/em> lawsuits? What’s one way to solve that problem? Create a new website called “ClimateLiabilityNews.org” which could trumpet the news of those lawsuits<\/a> no later than four days after the lawsuits were filed<\/a>, and continue to do so<\/a> afterward.<\/p>\n