Author Archives: Russell Cook

About Russell Cook

Russell Cook is a semi-retired graphic artist. His collection of articles and blogs about the Gelbspan/Gore/Ozone Action/Greenpeace accusation can be seen here: http://gelbspanfiles.com/?page_id=86

Indoctrinate the Children Well (via one, and only ONE, highly dubious source)

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Examine the climate issue at a miles wide / quarter inch deep superficial level – its so-called ‘settled science’ and its accusation that scientists who express doubt about the idea of catastrophic man-caused global warming are paid handsomely to push their skeptic disinformation by the fossil fuel industry – and the issue stays alive in zombie-like fashion.

The top-end pushers of the agenda count on the public doing exactly that.

When unbiased, objective examiners focus on the ‘corruption’ accusation and start digging into it at a much deeper levels, it begins to unravel at exponential rates around the core clique of people promulgating the accusation. Allow me to offer the following of just one faulty angle. Continue reading →

DailyKos didn’t like my 9/26/22 WUWT guest post — and only possibly further aided in my intended goal

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Filed under my “Can’t make this stuff up” category. First, the setup behind all of this:

I was alerted to the allegedly peer reviewed “Electric Utility Industry’s Role in Promoting Climate Denial, Doubt, And Delay” paper at the Environmental Research Letters science journal by a prominent scientist on the skeptic side of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) issue. When I immediately spotted big errors in the paper and suggested it was ripe for retraction, the scientist told me the effort would be difficult if not impossible to accomplish considering the apparent bias of the ERL editor. At that point, I could have simply tossed the paper into my giant notes file as the latest example to unquestioningly regurgitate ye olde “reposition global warming” memo set as [false] ‘evidence’ of fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns. However, I reasoned that if enough people were to see my dissection of the paper at WattsUpWithThat (the world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change) such that some of them would afterward decide to contact ERL or the authors on their own, the pressure might then prompt voluntary removal of the paper from publication, self–censorship in other words, out of sheer embarrassment about the errors. Arguably a long shot goal to accomplish, but still worth a try, nevertheless.

In a brilliant bit of not thinking their action all the way through, the leftist DailyKos website made my goal one more increment possible of achieving. It’s one of those instances where if there are any DailyKos readers who harbor even just small amounts of doubt about the “crooked skeptics” accusation, the readers might react to that piece with, “Dude, you didn’t actually dispute the guy’s main argument that there is a fatal fault with the ‘smoking gun’ leaked memos. What’s up with that?” Continue reading →

“We’re researching mis- and disinformation!!” Says a Research Group Unquestioningly Regurgitating Mis- and Disinformation

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Just sayin’ – anytime a person or group with a significant amount of prominence in the climate issue regurgitates ye olde “reposition global warming” memo set as ‘smoking gun’ evidence to supposedly prove the existence of industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns, it’s an instance that should trigger other prominent people with a significant amount of investigative authority to look deeply into the instance and what or who prompted it. Why? Because those supposedly ‘leaked industry memos’ were actually an unsolicited subset proposal comprised of operations goals and alternative names that were never used – I’ll reiterate that a little farther down in this blog post. The memo subset is literally worthless as evidence of energy company disinformation campaigns.

By this late date in the history of pro-global warming people citing those memos, this specific accusation tactic looks like nothing more than a one-trick pony that’s perhaps made available somewhere in a prepackaged template for influential accusers to hurl.

Witness the latest two separate examples of really clumsy regurgitations of that memo set within just this current month of September, falsely said to be the operating instructions for the 1991 “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) public relations campaign.

Continue reading →

“The first peer-reviewed publication to survey the industry’s messaging specifically” … showcases the worthlessness of “peer review”

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[Author’s note: Unlike prior instances where WUWT reproduced some of my blog posts here as guest posts there, this one is the opposite – I submitted it straight to them first, and it now appears there as “Peer Reviewed Science Journal Report: ‘Electric Utility Industry’s Role in Promoting Climate Denial, Doubt, And Delay.’” I reproduce it here from WUWT.]

Enviro-activists who claim human-induced catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) is happening, is harmful, and should be stopped, also say evidence to support their claim is found in peer reviewed, recognized science journals. It’s their gold standard for validating the credibility of scholarly papers on the topic. They admonish anyone offering criticism outside this system — if it is not peer reviewed and published in a science journal, it has no credibility and is likely corrupted by dubious outside influences.

They would say that another term for peer reviewers is “fact checkers,” outside experts not associated with the paper’s author(s) who ascertain whether there are errors in the paper prior to publication in a climate science journal, on any area related to the issue. Peer reviewed approval = no errors. Continue reading →

The Religious Moral Dilemma that Drives the “Moral Imperative to Stop Global Warming” into a Brick Wall

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Once again, the “Religious Moral Imperative to Stop Global Warming” popped up last week and achieved another 15 minutes of fame via multi-repeats of the news story of the National Association of Evangelicals putting out a major report detailing the “Biblical Basis for Christian Engagement” to stop man-caused global warming. Continue reading →

“I really wanted in.”

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What does it look like if a person says, “I want in to the world of ecological protection”? What does that even mean?

I know of someone who had that exact generic wish. As usual with any problem surrounding anyone involved in the promulgation of the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation …… there’s always more problems. Continue reading →

Desmog: “Ross-who??” (Bury the Inconvenient Truths)

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First, hat-tip to Marcel Crok at Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) for bringing an 8/23/22 Inside Climate News article to my attention, “Experts Debunk Viral Post Claiming 1,100 Scientists Say ‘There’s No Climate Emergency’” which trashed CLINTEL’s 1100+ signatories World Climate Declaration. Mr Crok drew my particular attention to ICN’s labeling of the ol’ Desmogblog group as “an investigative climate research organization” and their supposed revelation of how CLINTEL “rehashes several well-known ‘climate denial’ tropes” and has “strong political, professional and financial connections to the fossil fuel industry.”

That’s rich, in more ways than one. As I noted in a GelbspanFiles blog post earlier this spring, one hallmark of enviro-activists is their phenomenon of psychologically projecting what they are as accusations of what skeptics of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) are. The only ‘rehashing of old tropes’ going on here is ICN’s rehash of an essentially 30 year-old accusation that any industry connections whatsoever completely taints what CAGW skeptics say. Their rehash was apparently fed to them by the disingenuously repackaged “Desmog” outfit, an organization self-described as a pure public relations people having no expertise in climate science, which was also self-described by one of its co-founders as being created entirely to expose CAGW skeptic scientists as industry-paid liars. Continue reading →

“Data showed that the Minneapolis area had warmed 1.0–1.5 degrees in the twentieth century.” Oops.

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This is probably something we all can agree on: when a person tells a story or explains a particular situation that he or she is very familiar with, the narrative should always be consistent and never look like it is somebody else’s narrative which the storyteller is now claiming as their own. And no matter what the narrative is, it should answer questions or resolve any ambiguities, period, end of discussion. The narrative is the end-all thing, it should not ever prompt the audience to say, “how do you know this, where did you get that specific claim from?” Continue reading →

Just sayin’.

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The line of defense that “well, the evidence I have looks valid enough to use as a means to ensure nobody takes skeptic climate scientists’ reports and viewpoints seriously” is one that may not actually convince judges to let you off the defamation hook.

Who Didn’t Pay the Internet Bill??

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I’m talking about the lights going out at two websites, Ross Gelbspan’s beloved “The Heat is Online” and Greenpeace USA’s beloved “Greenpeace Investigations.”

Somebody forgot to pay the electric bill? Just askin.’ Continue reading →