As ever, one of the hallmarks of far-left enviro-activists is their psychological projection, where they ought to just wear a huge sign saying “what I accuse others of doing is exactly what I do myself.” I’ve covered Mark Hertsgaard here at GelbspanFiles before, so I shouldn’t be surprised that he and his Covering Climate Now (CCN) efforts continue to be a one-trick pony show where he is enslaved to repeating “Pulitzer-Winning journalist” Ross Gelbspan’s decades-old attack about skeptic climate scientists being paid fossil fuel industry money to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” – Hertsgaard began his current career track doing exactly that back in 1997. It was a myth back then that Gelbspan had won a Pulitzer and was an even bigger myth concerning Gelbspan’s outright false accusation that skeptic climate scientists were paid and/or instructed to reposition anything. But Hertsgaard persists in keeping the glory of Gelbspan’s fake news alive to this day. Witness the following Continue reading
Author Archives: Russell Cook
Al Gore: “You Always Hurt the One You Love”
The whole accusation about the fossil fuel industry running disinformation campaigns employing skeptic scientist ‘shills’ to deceive the public about the certainty of man-caused catastrophic global warming is enslaved to a pair of literally worthless, never-implemented ‘industry memo sets.’ It’s been the best the enviro-activists have ever had in their accusation arsenal, going all the way back to the 1990s. The accusation is unsustainable, it will ultimately sink. It’s a mathematical certainty.
Choose any one of myriad questionable situations surrounding the apparently interconnected people who promulgated the narratives about the memos, and you have the tip of the proverbial iceberg that can sink this whole thing. Investigators with more power and influence that I have will be seeking answers about those questionable situations. For quite some time, I wondered if there was no connection at all between Naomi Oreskes and Kert Davies, but as I briefly showed in my May 21, 2020 blog post, there certainly is a questionable situation involving those to together.
Investigators will be asking why Davies was lurking in the doorway of Oreskes’ appearance at a pretend House hearing.
They’ll be asking about Al Gore’s connection to the others. Why would Oreskes say she’s on a first-name basis with Gore, when all he did was cite a single ‘100% science consensus’ figure of hers in his 2006 movie? Why would Gore say Ross Gelbspan discovered the “reposition global warming” memos – the set that gained their first ongoing media traction via Gelbspan and John Passacantando’s Ozone Action publicity about them, when Gore quoted from the set years before Gelbspan ever mentioned them?
And what did Gore mean, in the situation reported by the LA Times, where ….. Continue reading
“Skeptical Look at Laudate Deum” — Plus The Other ‘Moral Dilemma’ Pope Francis Faces: Bearing False Witness Against Skeptic Climate Scientists
The Heartland Institute’s Linnea Luken wrote a great piece at AmericanThinker on October 14th, “A Skeptical Look at Laudate Deum,” but one angle not addressed there is how Pope Francis is the most vulnerable in his concern about the Clima-Change™ issue — not on his ‘science,’ but instead regarding any implication he might make out of his sentence seen in paragraph 13 of his October 4, 2023 Laudate Deum regarding his prior paragraphs’ assertions about ‘rising temperatures, ocean acidification, receding glaciers, diminishing snow cover and rising sea levels.’
“It is not possible to conceal the correlation of these global climate phenomena and the accelerated increase in greenhouse gas emissions, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. The overwhelming majority of scientists specializing in the climate support this correlation, and only a very small percentage of them seek to deny the evidence.” Continue reading
Background: Was It All One Big ‘Oopsy’?
Call this blog post a combo ‘editorial’ / ‘backgrounder’ on the overarching inevitable problem the accusers of “industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists” will face. It’s simply a matter of time before any one of the 29 current “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits finally does go in front of a judge or jury to decide on its merits. This blog post concerns what the deciders need to know about the political accusation angles within these cases. I doubt that the people behind the “growing tide” of ExxonKnew-style / “growing pool” of lawsuits actually have any intention of winning via jury decisions; the objective quite likely is to intimidate the smaller of the defendant companies into thinking if they just cry “uncle” and pay out what they believe is a settlement fee they can somehow afford in order to keep their company alive for the foreseeable future. This was an effective tactic to force the tobacco industry into submission, an inevitable conclusion since tobacco smoke is harmful and Big Tobacco knew it, and the people filing lawsuits against Big Tobacco knew Big Tobacco knew it. Everybody knew it. A person would have to be spectacularly stupid to believe inhaling nothing bad could result from inhaling burning particulates big enough to see.
What the fossil fuel industry knew and what they did is an entirely different and uncomparable situation. Therein lies the problem for the pushers of the “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits and the core clique of enviro-activists who’ve promulgated the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation for decades, which is one of the two pillars these lawsuits stand on, and on which arguably the entire ‘climate crisis’ issue stands on. The core clique of enviro-activists may sincerely believe with all their heart in the soundness of the other pillar, namely the notion that “the climate science of man-caused global warming is settled.” None of them are climate scientists or have any expertise in the field, but as true believers, it’s fair to say their innocent ignorance about the full science is forgivable. The democratic right speech to free speech includes the right to be incorrect about a matter. The potentially fatal problem for them, and the key to comprehending why the whole tobacco industry settlements tactic will ultimately backfire in epic fashion is what’s seen in the truism statement below, as it pertains to the accusation that ‘fossil fuel executives employed skeptic climate scientist shills who spewed falsehoods in disinformation campaigns just like the tobacco industry did.’
Open letter to LynnJohnson.News, re “ye olde” Reposition Global Warming as Theory ‘leaked memos’
Can’t emphasize this enough, a particular set of literally worthless, unsolicited, never implemented (never implemented!) set of ‘leaked industry memos’ is so pervasive among enviro-activists that it came up as recently as two weeks ago as a false premise setup at a so-called ‘news’ post about sustainable biodiversity.
What follows is my comment suggestion I sent to the alleged ‘reporter’ at that site.
“For YOUR viewing only …” / “unlisted and not to be shared”
Just one more thing (because there’s always one more thing) regarding what I illustrated in my dissection of the two weeks-old California v Exxon lawsuit, about the intellectually dishonest way the mainstream media was implying it was some kind of new and wondrous situation. Continue reading
People of the State of California v. Exxon Mobil Corporation
Throw another one onto the “growing number” (growing number!) of “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits which insinuate that ‘Big Oil’ knew the burning of fossil fuels harmed the environment but deceived the public by employing ‘shill’ climate scientists in ‘disinformation campaigns’ to say there was no harm. This latest Sept 15, 2023 filing appears to be no different than the 31 other “Exxon Knew” lawsuits I’ve dissected where it fits a pattern of repeating (plagiarizing?) material out of the others, from dubious ‘science certainty’ assertions to corruption accusations worded carelessly enough that they potentially stray into reckless disregard territory. I’ll get into how this latest one fits that pattern, but first, let me illustrate how the ‘news reports’ about it reinforce the problem that we no longer have an objective news reporting media, we have a propaganda media telling the public – working at the most basic of intellectually dishonest levels – about these lawsuits. Continue reading
City of Boulder, Boulder County and San Miguel County v. Suncor Energy, ExxonMobil — the Sher Edling connection
Whenever I tell reporters, politicians/staffers and others about the way the “Exxon Knew”-style global warming lawsuits’ accusations are enslaved to one or the other or both of ye olde notorious ‘leaked industry documents’ known as the “reposition global warming” memos and the “victory will be achieved” memos for the claim that ‘industry-led disinformation campaigns’ existed, I always use the factually correct detail to say “nearly all” of the 28 lawsuits I list suffer from that fatal enslavement. The implication is that those with that enslavement could be thrown out, since the directives and objectives of each memo set were never carried out by any fossil fuel industry entity. In my April 26, 2018 dissection of Boulder v Suncor I felt a little uncomfortable with it being more of a ‘stretch of association’ in my list of 28, I admit, because the filing doesn’t refer at all to either memo set. King County v. BP also didn’t refer to either memo set, but since its lead lawyer was the same one leading the (subsequently dismissed) 2008 Kivalina v. Exxon lawsuit with its unmistakable enslavement to both memo sets, I include King County in my “Exxon Knew” lawsuits list. A little tenuous, perhaps, but the attorney connection between the two cases begs for much deeper investigation.
Regarding Boulder v Suncor, my dissection showed how the filing shared too many passages in a suspect way with other lawsuits that were enslaved to those memo sets, and how there were connections of the handlers of the lawsuit, EarthRights International (ERI), to other notorious accusers who are enslaved to regurgitating the “reposition global warming” memos as evidence of industry disinformation campaigns.
Now, I’m much more comfortable with my placement of Boulder in my list of 28, as the title of this blog post implies. Watch this:
County of Multnomah v. Exxon Mobil, et al.
When the news of this Oregon County lawsuit, filed on June 22, 2023 happened, I was in the midst of a complicated, distracting, time-consuming switch of residences. In my rapid first screensearch into the filing for ye olde “reposition global warming” memos ‘evidence,’ which is the cornerstone ‘evidence’ hallmark (worthless as that memo set is) of these mindlessly repetitive “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits, I initially thought a dissection of this latest lawsuit would be just a quick checklist comparison to my Puerto Rico v Exxon lawsuit dissection — they both contained identical wording and identical errors concerning the “reposition global warming” memos.
It would be a simply matter to then point out that this identical lawsuit blunder was committed by a law firm 3700 miles away from Puerto Rico, thus the plain overarching question implied by deep examination and comparison of all these lawsuits is elemental: who actually are the dummies writing this “Global Warming / #ExxonKnew Show”?
However, when I finally had time to sift deeper through this Oregon filing, it turns out the same question obviously applies, but the blunders within this one pointing to the Puerto Rico filing and other lawsuits in a key way are … well … not quite that simple. Continue reading
Brief Of Amici Curiae, Brulle .. Oreskes .. & Supran Redux 4 — the Washington DC version
Seems Oreskes et al. are not figuring out what the lesson is to be learned here. They continue to file Friends of the Court blunders in boilerplate copy fashion supporting various “Exxon Knew”-style cases, repeating their same blunders they had in their first one, e.g., what I term ye olde “reposition global warming” leaked industry memos evidence, which are the same worthless, never implemented memos the lawsuits themselves are enslaved to – in boilerplate copy fashion, e.g. the Hawaiian pair – as cornerstone evidence of “fossil fuel industry-led public disinformation campaigns. So, I’ve created a new tag category just for these situations, “Oreskes et al. amici filings.” Continue reading