A quick review of the \u2018boilerplate\u2019 problem: All seven of these Sher Edling lawsuits state no later than in the opening sentences<\/a> of their introductions – including this latest Rhode Island filing<\/a> – that fossil fuel companies \u2026<\/p>\n \u2026 have known for decades that those impacts could be catastrophic and that only a narrow window existed to take action before the consequences would be irreversible. They have nevertheless engaged in a coordinated, multi-front effort<\/strong> to conceal and deny their own knowledge of those threats, discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence, and persistently create doubt in the minds of customers, consumers, regulators, the media, journalists, teachers, and the public<\/span> about the reality and consequences of the impacts of their fossil fuel pollution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Engaged in a coordinated, multi-front effort<\/strong><\/em> to create doubt.<\/em><\/strong> As everyone knows, courts don’t accept idle accusations, the accusations must have supporting evidence. What is the most damaging evidence all seven Sher Edling lawsuits<\/a> have for this corruption accusation – including this latest Rhode Island filing<\/a>? ‘Orders from headquarters\u2019 to skeptic climate scientists and the alleged front-group people they work with to hoodwink uneducated poor people into believing global warming is still a theory and not a fact:<\/p>\n In 1991, for example, the Information Council for the Environment (“ICE”) … launched a national climate change science denial campaign with full-page newspaper ads, radio commercials, a public relations tour schedule, “mailers,” and research tools to measure campaign success. Included among the campaign strategies was to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)<\/span>.” Its target audience included older less-educated males<\/span> \u2026 as well as younger, lower-income women<\/span>*<\/strong> \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n *<\/strong>(The Rhode Island filing, like the County \/ City of Santa Cruz \/ City of Richmond trio, leaves out that latter memo phrase about women)<\/p>\n Smoking gun right there, right? No, it has a fatal problem: The Western Fuels Association ICE campaign neither operated under that strategy goal nor did it target such people. The \u2018orders from headquarters\u2019 memos supposedly leaked out of the campaign were never even seen by the person heading the campaign<\/a>. Making matters worse, the ICE campaign was not a nationwide denial campaign, it was a tiny pilot project effort<\/a> restricted to actual public relations efforts in only three small cities over the span of just a few weeks. This so-called \u2018evidence\u2019 within major lawsuits is disingenuous at best. The question to ask here: what did the preparers of these lawsuits know about the sheer worthlessness of the accusation surrounding these \u2018leaked memos\u2019 and when did they know it?<\/p>\n Then, there is this other major problem, which I previously overlooked:<\/p>\n It\u2019s seen in all seven lawsuits\u2019 \u201cFactual backgrounds\u201d sections<\/a>, about how not only fossil fuel companies (allegedly) knew<\/em> about the certainty of the harm of man-caused global warming for decades, but no less than the long-ago President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, supposedly knew it as well:<\/p>\n President Johnson announced in a special message to Congress that “[t]his generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through . . .<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There\u2019s three periods in the quote of President Johnson\u2019s assertion. I highlight it with a dark colored box in the screencapture of the Rhode Island lawsuit version and in red in my verbatim text from the lawsuit transcript. That\u2019s an ellipsis<\/a>, understood by well-educated readers as indicating missing words that aren\u2019t really necessary; the reader gets the point even in their absence. Often, entire paragraphs are missing, and that’s readily obvious when readers glance into the full context.<\/p>\n But what\u2019s missing from the full context of President Johnson\u2019s speech? Three words<\/a>: \u201cradioactive materials and<\/em><\/strong><\/span>.\u201d Read through the full speech \u2014 either the cumbersome non word-searchable photographed version via the link<\/a> the lawsuits provide**<\/strong>, or via a word-searchable archive version I found<\/a> \u2014 and you see it isn\u2019t about global warming in the least, it\u2019s about restoring what man\u2019s technology has wrecked<\/a>; highway beautification<\/a>; clean rivers<\/a>; the harm of air and water pollution<\/a>; and the overall need to remedy the problems<\/a>. What\u2019s plainly obvious is how the words \u201cradioactive materials<\/span>\u201d completely undercut the idea that the speech was a global warming warning clarion call.<\/p>\n **<\/strong>[<\/strong>12\/16\/22 Author’s addition:<\/span> Having found the word-searchable speech version at the time I wrote this dissection, I did not try to look deeply through the scanned pages of the speech at the lawsuit’s link. However, in writing my 12\/15\/22 blog post<\/a> I discovered the file for the lawsuit’s link is missing four pages, including the specific one with the \u201cthrough radioactive materials\u201d words. I found an even better searchable text page<\/a>, directly from the LBJ Library site, and it is definitely not missing those inconvenient words<\/a>.]<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n So, are the people who prepared and wrote the seven Sher Edling lawsuits guilty of trying to deliberately misconstrue what President Johnson said? I wouldn\u2019t put a big wager on it.<\/p>\n Because that \u2018ellipsis\u2019 stunt with President Johnson\u2019s speech was seen at the Washington Post<\/em> over a decade earlier \u2026 in Naomi Oreskes\u2019 February 1, 2007 \u201cThe Long Consensus On Climate Change<\/a>\u201d article. (click image to enlarge)<\/p>\n Astute searchers need only undertake a targeted internet search<\/a> to see just how often President Johnson\u2019s sentence, with the ellipsis, is seen connected to Naomi Oreskes. By the end of 2007, she was already featuring it in a prominent slide presentation.<\/p>\n That<\/em><\/strong> Naomi Oreskes:<\/p>\n Get the picture now?<\/p>\n The accusation about a sinister corporate conspiracy<\/a> to pay skeptic climate scientists to lie and spread misinformation is a hundred miles wide, more than 27 years old<\/a>, and paper-thin<\/em><\/strong>, with its enslavement to just one solitary \u2018plausible\u2019 source of evidence. If there is one thing these seven Sher Edling global warming lawsuits reinforce, it\u2019s the appearance that just a small clique of interconnected individuals are pushing the \u2018crooked skeptics\u2019 accusation with epic levels of disingenuous deception.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This latest global warming lawsuit has two major problems. First, it\u2019s essentially pure “boilerplate copy \u2019n paste” from six other current California global warming lawsuits being run by the same Sher Edling law firm. I already covered that problem – … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Sher-Edling-7AGW.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n