Nice that someone big finally noticed the plagiarism problem going on. It just was’t an individual I was expecting. Continue reading
Category Archives: Global warming lawsuits
The ‘Reposition Global Warming’ / ‘Victory’ Memos, ‘Chicken Little’ & Willie Soon go to the Supreme Court
As I noted in my April 2nd & 3rd 2025 Tweets/Xs, I had only just learned about the 45 page Aug 21, 2024 “Brief in Opposition” (BiO) that NJ AG Matt Platkin, CA AG Rob Bonta, MN AG Keith Ellison, Connecticut AG William Tong, and Rhode Island AG Peter Neronha had filed against Alabama et al. v California et al — Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and four other state AGs complaint arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court should prevent states from filing such global warming damages lawsuits. My intention was to dissect the massive accusation faults in the “Appendix Volume One” attached to the Platkin et al. BiO, while mistakenly thinking that the Appendix itself was newly written in August 2024 especially for SCOTUS review. I was technically headed down an incorrect path – sorta – and was nearly done with my intended blog post before spotting my small error of assumption. The bulk of what I’d written still serves the purpose I’d intended, which is to point out the incalculably huge error these five Platkin et al. Attorneys General made in following the path that ‘Exxon knew about their products causing global warming, but chose instead to deceive the public through disinformation campaigns where they paid and directed skeptic climate scientist shills to repostition global warming as theory rather than fact.’
Allow me to explain my small error first. Continue reading
Oops, a detail I missed in my 2020 dissection of D.C. v ExxonMobil
What I missed doesn’t help the folks pushing these “ExxonKnew” lawsuits right now at all. I did not miss this same detail in my Nov 2024 dissection of Maine v BP. The problem in D.C. v Exxon compounds the apparent law firm ‘plagiarizing’ situation I detailed in that dissection. Continue reading
List of the Climate Lawsuits Falsely Accusing Dr Willie Soon of Taking Exxon Bribes
This list will be an ongoing compilation, with updates noted in red, similar to my list of global warming lawsuits. Additions to this list will be ref’d in this top paragraph – 4/1/25, D.C. v. ExxonMobil added; additional small correction added to Vermont v Exxon – its accusation is essentially identical to D.C. v Exxon’s paragraph, including its lack of naming Dr Soon, but Vermont has never been identified as associated in any way with the Sher Edling law firm, unlike how the firm claims D.C. as their own.
In a bit of wishful thinking, the hugely suspect Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) gloated in its December 19, 2024 ‘News & Analysis’ piece that more than “one in four Americans now live in a community suing Big Oil, underscoring the rapidly growing wave of calls to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for its decades-long climate deception…”
The reality of the situation is that CCI itself is noted by both the Climate Litigation Watch website and the Energy in Depth website as apparently one of the main drivers pushing any gullible state / city / municipality leader in America to consider filing an “ExxonKnew” lawsuit. I’ve shown here at GelbspanFiles that CCI trumpeted their mid summer 2023 hiring of Roland C “Kert” Davies as their Director of Special Investigations, and within my tag category of major mentions of him, that he has direct associations with the four main elements of the central accusations in nearly all of these lawsuits. I’ve further suggested that since every one of the 35 current “ExxonKnew” lawsuits is enslaved to at least one if not all four elements, that we do not actually have any such “growing wave” of lawsuits, we instead have the same basic template — call it the “John Passacantando, Kert Davies, et al. [dba Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action / Our Next Economy / CIC ] v. Exxon & any other applicable energy companies” template, for lack of a better description — being repeated ad nauseam.
The main law firm pushing these lawsuits is already under investigation by the U.S. House and Senate. With new Senate GOP majority rule and the power to subpoena witnesses and demand they produce particular documents, these investigations are going to need bulletproof backup material to proceed. Since the entire accusation surrounding Dr Soon as it pertains to accusations in these lawsuits has every appearance of originating from just two individuals – Passacantando and Davies, who both also appear to be participants in efforts to portray Exxon as a corrupt organization – it would be handy to have a list of how far and wide their accusations have been spread into the main law firm’s filings, and into the filings by others who’ve apparently plagiarized the accusations. Continue reading
State of Maine v BP P.L.C.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey was probably crossing his fingers that during his office’s likely weeks- if not months-long preparation of this filing before the November 5th general election, that the joint Senate/House investigation into the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling would become toothless as the result of the U.S. Senate remaining Democrat majority-run and the U.S. House switching to Democrat majority. AG Frey was probably also counting on a VP Harris winning the White House, swept in with her lightly questioned claim about suing Exxon but still having the zeal to do so someday. No such luck. Instead, with this newest Nov 26, 2024 “ExxonKnew” lawsuit being yet another outright Sher Edling boilerplate copy filing, AG Frey provided even more fodder for Senator Cruz and Rep Comer to investigate. The Maine AG office’s press release only had a download-to-read PDF file of this lawsuit at the bottom instead of a regular internet link, so I downloaded it and created a direct-read link to it here.
I”ll first go through the main items in my checklist ‘certifying’ this one as a boilerplate copy … but then I’ll show its new utterly unwise copy ‘n paste bit out of another supposedly ‘unconnected’ seven year-old+ “ExxonKnew” lawsuit. This newest apparent plagiarism maneuver on their part is an open invitation for Senator Cruz / Rep Comer to dig into how these lawsuits are assembled and who it is doing the actual assembling. Continue reading
The Political Suicide of Pushing “Reckless Climate Endangerment”
It’s a 100% certain bet that none of the folks at the Public Citizen ‘consumer advocacy organization’ read my GelbspanFiles blog about the 100% certain inevitable crash of their prior ‘prosecute for Clima-Homicide™’ proposal (my post got even wider worldwide viewing as a guest post at WUWT, complete with a handy ‘you people that stupid?’ meme image at the top). Otherwise, they would not have come up with this announcement on October 15, (er … hold that thought until the very end of this post) October 17, 2024 regarding their latest proposal idea to prosecutors:
“We’re building the case for criminal prosecution of Big Oil brick by brick. Here is the first “prosecution memo” that lays out the case for filing, and winning, criminal charges for “reckless endangerment.” The law is clear. Barriers are only political.”
What the law is actually fundamentally clear about is that when presenting a case to a judge, the evidence you present must actually support your accusation. If it does not . . . the case is dismissed. If you’ve got no alternative evidence, that’s the end of the line on your effort. Period. What these people at the Public Citizen group are either oblivious to – or actually know but hope nobody notices – is that their ‘evidence’ for the claim that the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns in collusion with skeptic scientist ‘shills’ is literally worthless.
Public Citizen is not building a case ‘brick-by-brick,’ either, they appear to be doing nothing more than copying line-by-line from what already serves as ‘cornerstone evidence’ in one form or another about ‘industry-led disinformation campaigns’ in basically all of the currently filed “ExxonKnew” U.S. lawsuits, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico and points in between. I’m not exaggerating. What Public Citizen is doing is committing political suicide by again emphasizing the fatal fault plaguing the collective effort to accuse Big Oil of running disinformation campaigns to deceive the public. Continue reading
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
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
The Political Suicide of Pushing “Climate Homicide” … & muscling in on someone else’s “ExxonKnew” lawsuits territory?
On June 26th just a little over a week ago, David “climate homicide” Arkush and co-authors at his Public Citizen group put out a press release titled “New Memo Details Legal Case for Prosecuting Big Oil for Extreme Heat Deaths,” containing a link to a 51 page proposal for prosecutors in the state of Arizona (Democrat ones, of course including the state’s Attorney General), noting:
Though this memo asks a particular question — how officials in Maricopa County could pursue reckless manslaughter or second degree murder prosecutions for deaths caused by the July 2023 heat wave — its analysis is relevant in most jurisdictions where prosecutors might seek justice for climate victims.
I already had a tag category at GelbspanFiles dating back over a year concerning Arkush’s ludicrous ultra-lawfare fixation. He’s now taken that fixation likely beyond its breaking point. It’s one thing to push the bizarre “charge fossil fuel companies with climate homicide” idea in ‘scholarly papers,’ but it’s quite another to propose the idea straight to state prosecutors. That’s what he’s presenting in the above press release. Forgive the rather morbid visual analogy here – the man virtually points a loaded revolver at his head and the heads of his co-authors and practically asks law firms defending energy companies in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits to pull the triggers for him.
[Update 10/10/24] Michigan Attorney General Solicits Bids from Law Firms to Help File an “ExxonKnew” Lawsuit
[ Author’s update 10/10/24: Per the day-earlier news from Nick Pope at The Daily Caller, AG Nessel’s “… office reached agreements in late September with three law firms to assist, including, including a San Francisco-based firm called Sher Edling, two documents reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation show. … The other two firms named in the agreements are DiCello Levitt and Hausfeld …” As suggested in my original blog post entry below, and now confirmed, AG Nessel has chosen …poorly, particularly in light of the days-old report out of the joint U.S. Senate / House investigation concerning the dark money funding situation surrounding Sher Edling’s climate litigation lawfare efforts. ]
Why bother doing that? Why not take the easier route and plagiarize material straight out of other “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuits? Other attorneys and law firms are already doing exactly that. Continue reading