Category Archives: Timeline inconsistencies

Bad idea — Ross Gelbspan popped out of the woodwork with a ‘legacy affirming’ video

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He was probably counting on the Democrats holding their majority in the U.S. House. So, piling on to the basic theme of my November 16 blog post – and now asking on behalf of 220 Republican friends – how’s it going to work out when you have to defend your accusation that the “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” ‘leaked memo’ directive is smoking gun proof that skeptic climate scientists were paid under the table by fossil fuel industry executives, when the fellow who first gained the most fame hurling that accusation in direct connection with that phrase can’t keep his stories straight about his role in the matter?

Again, no exaggeration there about that worthless-as-evidence memo directive phrase (it was never implemented anywhere) being the only thing enviro-activists have in their arsenal to support their accusation about the fossil fuel industry bankrolling disinformation campaigns, and I’m not kidding about the namesake of my GelbspanFiles blog telling one inconsistent story after another when it comes to what prompted him to “expose” the “industry corruption” of skeptic climate scientists. He threw one more of those onto his pile with his September 24 ‘reporter legacy’ Youtube video appearance.

Investigators can’t fully know how faulty the accusation about skeptic scientists sinisterly “repositioning global warming” if they don’t know how faulty the stories about it are from one of the most prominent faces of that accusation. Continue reading →

Passacantando’s co-founding of Ozone Action ….. or not

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When prominent people tell and retell the details of what led them to heroically fight the forces of evil, we’re dazzled every time. It’s inspirational. I’ve suggested this before; when audience members spot significant changes in the details, they wonder about that, particularly when more details start to unravel. A once praiseworthy story suddenly begins to look more like it’s filled with lines designed as mind control, in support of a larger and rather suspect agenda to spread self-serving propaganda.

When it comes to the overall tales of heroism from the folks on the Al Gore political side of the global warming issue, I’ll paraphrase from a famous Avengers movie line:

I’ve seen the inconsistent narratives. Not a fan. Continue reading →

Naomi Oreskes – the gift that keeps on giving, redux

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When historians specialize in researching and reporting about a particular range of history events, they are universally expected, as a basic tenet of their profession, to always be able to place specific events with considerable accuracy on a timeline. If they are praised as heroes from their reporting of otherwise ‘hidden’ situations, they should never put themselves in the awkward position of appearing to embellish their ‘heroic status’ via superficial, self-serving analysis of criticism of their work, and they should certainly never display hypocritical positions about their analysis of criticisms, relative to their own personal actions. Continue reading →

Did Naomi Oreskes formulate her ‘climate scientists corrupted by tobacco / fossil fuel industries’ idea before she was ‘told’ about those scientists’ existence?

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Global warming issue. 3 talking points. It’s just this simple:

  • the science is settled
  • the fossil fuel industry pays ‘skeptic climate scientist shills’ to lie that it isn’t settled
  • ignore those skeptics because of the two above points

Regardless of which angles of the ‘crooked skeptics’ accusation that objective investigators choose to examine, the moment they start pulling on loose threads in those angles, that’s when the bigger fabric starts coming apart, to the point where it looks like it will never be stitched back together neatly. One really big loose thread is “Merchants of Doubt” book author / documentary movie star Naomi Oreskes’ alleged happenstance foray into the global warming issue which supposedly led to her ‘discovery odyssey’ concerning the ‘corruption of skeptic scientists,’ and she supplies many more loose threads to pull in her apparently faulty narratives about her role in the issue. This post details one more problem to throw onto Oreskes’ latter threadbare pile. Continue reading →

Where is Ross Gelbspan these days? 2018 Edition

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A little over two years ago on November 21, 2015, I wrote a blog post about Ross Gelbspan’s most visible recent activity, which concerned a couple of less-than-well-ought-out Facebook comments on his part. Time for an update about this same ‘most visible’ public efforts of his, where it serves as one more example of how people always need to do more digging into the things he says. Continue reading →

The Big Erik Conway Problem, Pt 2

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What’s particularly maddening about this problem is the simplicity of its flip side, a crystal-clear snapshot of the way Naomi Oreskes, with her Merchants of Doubt co-author Erik Conway, supposedly exposed how public confusion over climate science results from organized campaigns designed to create confusion and delay political action, a tactic previously employed in efforts to deny the reality of acid rain, ozone depletion, and the link between tobacco and cancer, tactics now used in some cases by the same people who deny the reality of global warming. But in my November 18, 2017 blog post, I used Conway’s own words to show how the timeline of Oreskes’ so-called discovery of her ‘tobacco industry-connected’ critics fell apart, and the problems don’t stop there. Conway’s account of his collaboration with Oreskes on this ‘tobacco industry-connected climate scientists’ matter doesn’t offer a clearer picture of why atmospheric physicist Dr S Fred Singer was seemingly “the most dangerous man on the planet”, it begs for deeper investigation of why and how this portrayal of him coalesced in the first place. Continue reading →

Oreskes’ Inability to Keep Her Mouth Shut & the Big Erik Conway Problem

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In telling the tale of inadvertently discovering how skeptic climate scientists are corrupted, a person might be viewed as a hero or heroine, and it is understandably forgivable if the hero/heroine has a memory lapse about exactly when this event happened, or about minor narrative details surrounding it. But when the tale takes on an increasing appearance of being a fabrication designed to make the person look like a hero/heroine, unbiased objective thinkers will start to wonder why there would be any necessity for that kind of embellishment, and they might also wonder if there is something inherently wrong with the core of the tale. Continue reading →

To be Credible, you must Keep Your Story Straight, Pt 2: “Oreskes’ timeline problem”

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I’ll repeat with what I concluded in Part 1, but more succinctly: for an authoritative storyteller to mesmerize an audience, the story must never contain an element where the audience blurts out, “wait a minute, what you just said can’t be right,” otherwise whatever point there was to the story disappears at the exact same moment when the storyteller’s credibility implodes.

If the storyteller’s credibility implodes, it will not matter how good the story is. As a storyteller, one might have written a good manuscript; maybe the person would have even hired proofreading services in London or at their place to get the manuscript ready; talked to publishing houses or even contacted editors. But all this might just go in vain if the credibility of the storyteller implodes. It will just have a negative impact on the story and the one who is writing it to mesmerize the audience.

Now, see how Harvard History of Science professor Naomi Oreskes‘ inadvertently elicits that exact response from her audience, via her tale of the events which led her to explore the notion that skeptic climate scientists operate in a manner parallel to what ‘expert shills’ did for the tobacco industry. Continue reading →