Pinned post-if you’re a long-ago reader returning here, please reacquaint yourself with my work via my “Background” posts. If you’re entirely new here…==> Continue reading
Watch this space: ‘Ya can’t charge people with crimes they didn’t commit’
First, assuming my daily visitor counter doesn’t have a glitch and is not double counting days of 150+ visitors as a single day, I appreciate seeing the upticks of visitors in recent months getting into the 300s more often, and sometimes the 400s. For those latest readers arriving to this blog, (the very latest who may be in a pair of groups which seem to have sent two CAGW propaganda outlets into freak-out mode), I periodically have short descriptions of upcoming material under the “Watch this space” title. Up next — the inept folks with the ludicrous “charge ’em with 2nd degree climate homicide” idea are back, but this time they’ve toned it down a notch to “reckless endangerment” . . . . while once again reinforcing who the core clique of people are who may be the ones conspiring [criminally?] to deceive the public about the credibility of skeptic climate scientists over the last 29 years.
Meanwhile, please do scroll down this page for my completed posts, and return soon to see how the next one coming up will fill in this space.
Multnomah v. Exxon, version 2.0: Oregon County Suing Exxon Now Suing Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project
On Oct 4, Multnomah County amended their filing to add a gas utility company as a defendant, along with Art Robinson’s Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM); more specifically, as I will detail below, his Oregon Petition Project. My response: Oh, brother. Redux. I already dissected the spectacular blunders surrounding the 2023 Multnomah v Exxon lawsuit; that bizarre filing effort looks like little more than a cloddish plagiarized copy of Puerto Rico v Exxon, which itself was so maladroitly cobbled together that I needed to do a two-part dissection of that one, plus I had to place an additional detail three months back at the end of part 2. I didn’t cover Puerto Rico‘s sections mentioning Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project because my two dissection posts were long enough already. I’ll admit error on failing to mention it now, it involves one more problem potentially tying their ineptness to that of the supposedly unassociated San Francisco Sher Edling law firm and their boilerplate-copy lawsuit filings. Since somebody within the Oregon law firms seems particularly bent on pointing an arrow the size of Texas at their inexplicable apparent plagiarism blunder … well, let’s now examine that angle and where it blows up in their faces, in four distinct ways. The full amended complaint is here. Continue reading
Pay the Man … Another $50 Grand
For the benefit of any new readers here unfamiliar with the people I cover, first and foremost — the man I’m referring to is the ex-head of Greenpeace USA, John Passacantando, who (with former subordinate Kert Davies, it turns out – *ahem* – his subordinate and him) was behind a false accusation seen in the New York Times and widely repeated elsewhere in early 2015 claiming skeptic climate scientist Dr Willie Soon was paid dark money to spread disinformation.
Passacantando left Greenpeace in January 2009 without ever fully explaining why or what his next venture was going to be. But after that time, within his mystery “Our Next Economy LLC” company, he’s amassed just short of $20,000,000. I just discovered I needed to ad another $50,000 to that tally, which is still incomplete without current year IRS 990 income disclosures. While this new added amount might look like chump change compared to his main growing pile, there are more onion layers to peel back around this event. Let’s start with how this might not be just a grave problem for Passacantando, it could be a “Lisa Graves” problem for him, the Sustainable Markets Foundation, and the Park Foundation, which only draws even more attention to the question: what is he up to, and was his odd name choice for his LLC actually an indicator of his plans, which he’s seemingly still treating like some kind of state secret? Continue reading
California v Exxon v.2 — the plastics waste/pollution crisis lawsuit’s “Chicken Little” problem
There’s some irony to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s 9/23/24 lawsuit speaking of “the plastic waste and pollution crisis” while only mentioning the other ‘crisis du jour’ “climate change” four times (the first instance is actually just a reference to a Canadian organization’s name). The lawsuit makes no comparison to alleged deception by the fossil fuel industry over their ‘knowledge’ of the harm of human-induced global warming. So, what possible connection(s) could there be to the efforts to smear skeptic climate scientists as ‘shills’ working for Exxon? Allow me to illustrate. Be sure to click on each link, the screencapture images will set up the big problem for AG Bonta. Continue reading
The prima facie Case for ‘Industry Disinfo Campaigns’ Implodes — AGAIN.
It’s a case study on how the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits can implode – no matter where and when you land in this accusation effort hurled by enviro-activists, it always traces back to the usual suspects.
What I find astounding regarding anyone prominent regurgitating the accusation about “crooked skeptic climate scientists” / “fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns” is how they expect no readers to ever question anything they say. It’s a reckless high wire act, potentially devastating to their credibility if any part of their narrative starts to unravel. Allow me to explain, using the example of the hapless “environmental / energy policy expert” Leah Stokes, who could not keep her mouth shut about the “peer-reviewed” paper she co-authored which hurled the accusation that the “fossil fuel industry ran a disinformation campaign to – her words – “reposition global warming as theory and not fact.” Continue reading
Summary for Policymakers: Naomi Oreskes
If you say another person is a liar and can’t keep their personal stories straight, no matter what the topic is, you can’t hurl this as a drive-by shot, you must extensively prove it, because your own reputation now depends on it. People might regret demanding proof if it then sends them into extensive reading, but that’s the price they pay to become fully informed. If they dismiss the mountain of evidence as “too deep into the weeds,” individuals like “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie star/book author Naomi Oreskes pray for this kind of dismissal — ceding the moral high ground to her.
So, first, a brief number lineup, followed by more details for each, with screencapture image links to back up my specific points, and blog post links which back up what I point out in deep detail:
1. Oreskes’ science consensus 2. Ties to Al Gore 3. False accusation about the “reposition global warming memos” 4. Fatal problems with her “Merchants of Doubt” documentary 5. Her two mutually exclusive ‘discovery’ of who the doubt merchants were 6. Oreskes – the communist .. or something 7. Why would lawyers hire her? 8. Her clumsy amici curiae efforts & global warming/cooling inconsistency 9. The Fred Singer email chain problem 10. The 3 little words she omitted from LBJ’s 1965 speech 11. RICO-Teering, Oreskes-Style Continue reading
“Merchant of Disinformation” – the movie. Part 4
I can’t emphasize this enough: Naomi Oreskes is presented at congressional hearings and elsewhere as an expert on so-called ‘fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns’ – her own biography introductions at the hearings imply as much. Investigators / objective reporters / law firms representing the defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / congressional staffers can either accept what she says or what is said about her work without question, essentially enabling her to continually to get away with what she’s been doing since 2003, or they can deeply cross examine her work for the first time ever, to find out if there’s any actual merit to the assertions she’s made over the last two decades, such as those contained within in her 2015 “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie. As I’ve shown in Parts 1, 2 and 3, her movie – supposedly exposing fossil fuel industry deception downplaying the harm of global warming – has every appearance itself of deceptively impugning the integrity of those criticizing the idea of catastrophic man-caused global warming. She and her associates fare no better in Part 4 here, the the overarching problem of the movie being her and her associates’ psychological projection hole they’ve dug for themselves that begins to resemble one the virtual size of an open pit mine.
It’s quite a slog to go through this movie. I’m doing it so objective reporters / energy company defendant law firms / potential prosecutors don’t have to. Continue reading
“Merchant of Disinformation” – the movie. Part 3
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.’
Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico v. Exxon
A.k.a. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Exxon. Bad enough that a johnny-come-lately law firm with no prior climate damages lawsuit issue experience blindly jumped onto the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits bandwagon in late 2022 representing multiple municipalities of Puerto Rico. It was one of the more ineptly done filings I’ve seen in this lawfare litigation effort, as I showed in my two-part dissection of that lawsuit. Bad enough that a literally redundant lawsuit was filed even more ineptly just over a year later solely for the Puerto Rico city of San Juan. Ineptly – because it was almost a literal copy ‘n paste of the first lawsuit by another law firm which had no climate issue experience whatsoever, as I showed in my dissection of that one. Redundant – because San Juan was already covered in the first lawsuit.
Now we have ‘redundant redux,’ in the form of no less than the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling attempting to get in on the act with this Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico July 15th, 2024 filing. Continue reading
POOF! ( … Ross – who?)
Just like that, a huge number of posts by the late Ross Gelbspan at his longtime Facebook page, gone. Vanished overnight quite recently, because a Google search for the account url still generated results as though the account existed on July 21 when I got this screencapture. A week later … Google says the account is definitely MIA. For congressional investigators / attorneys defending energy companies in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, the account is gone, but potentially not forgotten. As I’ve said before, to fully understand where we are in the climate issue – particularly lately with the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits ‘climate lawfare’ angle – it’s best if everyone understands how we got to where we are right now. The man may have become less useful in his advanced age in the past few years, but his Facebook page did minimally have one particular use, and investigators would be wise to recover it when the need arises. Continue reading