Category Archives: What $5 mill might buy

How Effective is the “Reposition Global Warming as Theory” Leaked Memos Line? Let me show the ways …

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As I detailed before in my various blog posts, the supposedly leaked “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” memo strategy is worthless-as-evidence to prove Big Oil & Coal executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists to deceive the public about the certainty of man-caused global warming, quite simply because it was an unsolicited proposal to a tiny and very short-lived public relations campaign, and nothing in that proposal was ever implemented within that PR campaign. Or outside of it, for that matter; I have it directly from one of the administrators in that campaign that their copy of the proposal was literally thrown away. Yet somebody else in the circle of people in that campaign thought their own personal copy of the rejected proposal with its awkwardly worded strategy goal attributed to the never-used name proposed to the campaign and its basically illogical audience targeting goals was not only worth saving, but also worth leaking to enviro-activists in 1991, namely the Sierra Club (which otherwise never breathed a word of it to anyone), and to Senator Al Gore.

Meanwhile, I’ve seen individuals (described elsewhere less politely) unquestioningly repeat the “reposition global warming” accusation in religious devotional blog posts and vegetarian blog posts, or as a core part of PhD dissertations; and I’ve seen it casually slipped it into ‘the shipping news,’ and prominently featured on the U.S. Senate floor. The latest regurgitation of it popped up just a couple of weeks ago, Continue reading →

BBC Radio 4 vs Rush Limbaugh: “How They Made Us Doubt Everything” Episode 6 “Reposition Global Warming as theory, not fact”

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If I sound like a broken record endlessly repeating the faults of prominent accusers relying on those worthless “reposition global warming theory” ‘leaked memos’ to indict skeptic climate scientists of corruptly colluding with fossil fuel industry people in alleged disinformation campaigns, it’s because the Al Gore side of this issue continually relies on them as the cornerstone ‘smoking gun evidence’ supporting that accusation. For example: in Gore’s 2006 movie; in the latest global warming lawsuits; in the latest online ‘news’ articles; in recent college student ‘journalism’ reporting efforts that are reported about at left-wing organizations; in recent ‘journalism’ podcasts highly resembling this current BBC podcast that rely on the same source person; in recent tweets by people directly associated with those accusers (tweets / prominent accusers, plural); on and on and on. Don’t get me started on how far back this enslavement is seen to those worthless memos.

The latest regurgitation of the story is the podcast in my title above, where the BBC makes the blunder of trying to tie mega-famous conservative U.S. radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh into the story. Episode 6 is available online right now for listening while being scheduled for on-air radio broadcast this coming Monday, August 3, 2020. I submitted a formal complaint with the BBC to pull the podcast from its schedule because of four major factual errors within the presentation, namely two unfounded claims made about two sets of ‘leaked industry memos’, an unfounded insinuation about the reach of an infomercial read by Rush Limbaugh, and the egregious insertion of an ethnicity word into a quote from one of those never-used memos that is not actually in the memos. Continue reading →

D.C. v ExxonMobil, et. al Pt 2: the “17,000 Scientists” Source Problem

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It doesn’t take more than a few seconds of internet searching to discover how the Oregon Petition Project had over 31,000 signers, corroborated not only at the Home Page of the website for the petition itself, but also at sites highly biased against it such as Wikipedia and Desmogblog (that Desmog). But as I showed in my Part 1 dissection of that lawsuit, the District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine’s lawsuit only placed the number at 17,000, with no citation source for that number.

Where could that hugely outdated figure originate?  Continue reading →

District of Columbia v ExxonMobil Corp, BP Plc, Chevron Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc (10/17/20 update)

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[10/17/20 Author’s update: see red asterisked items below near the end]

Unlike Minnesota vs. API, et al. which I dissected only days ago in my prior blog post, this DC v Exxon et. al lawsuit only crashes half as badly concerning worthless ‘leaked memos’ it relies on for its claim that the fossil fuel industry hired shill skeptic climate scientists to engage in disinformation campaigns. It still completely crashes on that angle nevertheless. Here’s how. Continue reading →

State of Minnesota v American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil Corp, Koch Industries, Flint Hills Resources

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The more frequently these global warming lawsuits appear claiming fossil fuel industry executives paid skeptic climate scientists to participate in sinister disinformation campaign efforts to undercut the ‘settled science,’ the easier it is to show how the ‘evidence’ for that accusation implodes. This Minnesota vs. API, et al. lawsuit, filed on 6/24/20, ends up being a case study on how to commit political suicide, first via its enslavement to the same two sets of worthless ‘leaked industry memos’ which have been floated ever since the 1990s as proof of that corporate / skeptic conspiracy, and second, via its links for copies of those memos from one of the central members of the small clique of enviro-activists who’ve been promulgating them that whole time.

If the Minnesota AG’s office had undertaken the most basic kind of due diligence to find out if the ‘leaked memos evidence’ actually proves the existence of disinformation campaigns, it might not have wasted any taxpayer money filing the lawsuit. Without that ‘evidence,’ the lawsuit would struggle to disprove hugely detailed assessments from skeptic climate scientists, while also trying to prove API and the other defendants ever actually accepted the ‘science’ of the IPCC / Al Gore side of the issue. Continue reading →

When ‘Reporting’ looks more like Propagandizing

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“Ok, student reporters — here’s everything you need to know about the fossil fuel industry’s sinister disinformation campaign to spread lies undercutting the certainty of man-caused global warming which employed shill skeptic scientists, and here’s the professional researcher who can assist you with writing a report about that very conspiracy.”

Anybody spot the main problem there? Yes, we might wonder about the fate of the student reporters/researchers or the postdoctoral researchers/faculty members if they dared to question anything presented to them, but a bigger question remains at the end of this excise concerning the ‘professional researcher,’ and the nature of his involvement in the work these reporters/researchers undertook. Continue reading →

When the ‘Aim to Disrupt Fossil Fuel-Funded Misinformation’ looks more like Propagandizing

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In an amusing bit of irony, Dave Anderson, the policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute — the place claiming its aim is to “disrupt fossil fuel-funded misinformation” — has decided follow my GelbspanFiles Twitter account. Probably not for long; believers of catastrophic man-caused global warming like him tend to vanish immediately when they discover the material I tweet about undercuts everything they believe. There’s a backstory to this particular situation and how I’m prompted to create a new post category here, “What $5 mill might buy.” Continue reading →

What Does Nearly $5 million Buy?

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There’s another good question to ask corresponding to the one in my blog post title: how many times does a pattern have to be repeated before it stops looking like just a coincidence and instead looks like something resulting from a prepackaged set of talking points assembled as part of a larger coordinated propaganda effort? Continue reading →