Hat tip to Marc Morano / Patrick Moore for the alert about John Robson’s excellent Dec 21 video, “The 1970s Cooling Scare Was Real.” While I was already quite familiar with the existence of the global cooling craze of the 1970s (I mentioned my own personal experience with that craze in the 4th paragraph of my 2011 CEI guest post), I learned one very interesting new detail concerning the geophysicist Gordon James Fraser MacDonald, whose name comes up beginning at the 8:25 point. He was prominently quoted in a July 9, 1971 Washington Post article as saying he agreed with another scientist about the distinct possibility of the Earth cooling as much as six degrees. Since I’ve already knew that the name Gordon MacDonald was an integral part of one of “Merchants of Doubt” book author / documentary film star Naomi Oreskes’ tales of how she became involved in the global warming issue, I was prompted by what I just learned to look a little deeper into what Oreskes thought was so important about Dr MacDonald. Continue reading
Category Archives: Oreskes’ faulty narratives
The Real ICE ads, Part 2
I could have just as easily titled this post “The First, the Last, and the Only Accusation Against Global Warming Skeptics, redux” or “Put all your Eggs in the ‘Reposition Global Warming as Theory’ Memos Basket, redux,” since what’s going on lately is pretty much exactly that. Give Naomi Oreskes credit for her most recent co-authored effort at the UK Guardian to infuse the ‘fossil fuel industry-led disinformation campaigns’ accusation with a new shot of ye olde “reposition global warming” memos, complete with a pair of never-used ads with the unsolicited, never-used “Informed Citizens for the Environment” labels. Her credibility suffers just that much more every time she attempts to incorrectly glue that name over the actual “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) public relations campaign. Incrementally worse now, her Guardian article’s citation of Kert Davies’ Climate Files website as her source for the two never-used ads only ends up digging a deeper hole for herself and Davies, along with any others who keep making the mistake of drawing attention to those alleged ‘disinformation’ ICE ads as smoking gun evidence of fossil fuel deception efforts.
My latest screencapture links illustrate how these folks don’t provide tidy answer on whether the fossil fuel industry deceived the public about the ‘harm’ of man-caused global warming; their clumsy inconsistent narratives seem to point a giant arrow in the other direction on where all the disinformation is in the political accusation side of the issue.
The Day when Naomi Oreskes’ Luck Ultimately Runs Out
At the end of my June 10, 2021 blog post, I noted how there were more faults with a claim that science historian Naomi “Merchants of Doubt” Oreskes made within a February 10 interview published at Paul Thacker’s* ironically named “Disinformation Chronicle” website (*who is arguably not the standard journalist the public might expect him regarding particular people in global warming issue, but that’s a whole separate story).
Here’s part of what I can detail based on readily available online facts, Continue reading
Naomi Oreskes – the gift that keeps on giving, redux
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
Why Would Naomi Oreskes Be On Retainer With Any Law Firm?
Just askin’, another in my series of posts asking questions that not only the inquisitive public and unbiased reporters should be asking, but also the law firms working for the defendant energy companies in the current 25 “Exxon Knew”-style global warming damages cost recovery lawsuits. Hat tip to Charles Rotter at WUWT for alerting me to Energy in Depth’s 5/13/21 report, “Bombshell: Naomi Oreskes On Retainer With Plaintiffs’ Law Firm.” Charles further points out that a same-day paper authored by Oreskes and co-researcher Geoffrey Supran (that Supran) had the note at the bottom, “The authors have no other relevant financial ties and declare no competing interests.”
Being on retainer with a law firm handling no less than 15 major global warming lawsuits is not a relevant financial tie, or at least minimally a competing interest, a.k.a. a conflict of interest??
But the problems and the questions don’t end there for Oreskes, Continue reading
“Al — I’m on first name basis with him”
Regarding Naomi Oreskes’ “Merchants of Doubt” co-author also being on a similar first-name, or any-name basis with Gore ….. not so much, it seems.
I pointed to Oreskes’ little name-drop in only fleeting fashion in my June 17, 2020 blog post. Time now to explore it further as yet another example of a widespread problem with the entire ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ accusation: pull on even the smallest of loose threads in that accusation, and the fabric of the overall accusation starts to unravel in multiple directions instead of cinch together more tightly. Continue reading
Part 2: “So … Mr Gore … why doesn’t your statement about Naomi Oreskes match what she said in 2015?”
I began my February 17, 2021 blog post with the suggestion that the “industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists” accusation ‘fabric’ isn’t cinched up tight at all, it’s plagued with loose threads; pull on any number of them and the whole accusation can come apart. The Al Gore / Naomi “loose thread” Oreskes situation I detailed at the end of my previous Part 1 post is one more example of that — when she clearly said her survey that she undertook by herself was “no big deal / a kind of cross-check” to find out the extent of the consensus of a thousand science papers on the global warming topic, did Al Gore make a false, criminally punishable statement at a Senate hearing when he stated it was a University of California team effort she led?
No. He’s completely in the clear on that. Who would have said it that way for him to repeat? Oreskes, when she said it was she, in association with that university, and her assistants. Plural. Continue reading
“So … Mr Gore … can you explain why your statement here doesn’t match the statement over there?”
So far, ordinary citizens can get away with the response “just asking” when chastised for questioning the inconsistencies in narratives about man-caused global warming, but maybe not much longer if that starts falling into what ‘Big Tech’ vilifies as spreading misinformation. Regarding other controversial political issues in recent weeks, credit the collective far-left with cleverly concocting the propaganda notion that citizens questioning ‘established facts’ in the mainstream media about the U.S. presidential election or the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol might be dangerous radicals so hopelessly enslaved to conspiracy theories that they need to be re-educated. How long will it be until it’s insinuated that anyone who wonders why details in the global warming issue don’t line up right may be part of the unstable fanatic population posing a threat to democracy? Oh, wait, that’s already happened.
Maybe that kind of reasoning is meets with little opposition in the unreal world of news media / social media, but in the very real world of litigation (if the 20+ “Exxon Knew”-style global warming lawsuits resolve legal technicalities of whether they fall under Federal or state court jurisdiction), the law firms hired by energy company defendants will start questioning the often-repeated accusation from Al Gore that their clients colluded with skeptic climate scientists in disinformation campaigns designed to undercut the certainty of man-caused global warming. Perhaps enviro-activists may try to spin that as “Big Oil’s defense lawyers push right-wing conspiracy theories” for the biased news media to repeat, but that intimidation tactic to shut down questioning is not likely to work out well at all within the confines of any courtroom.
Did Naomi Oreskes formulate her ‘climate scientists corrupted by tobacco / fossil fuel industries’ idea before she was ‘told’ about those scientists’ existence?
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
Naomi Oreskes, the Golden Opportunity
Naomi Oreskes can do no wrong in the eyes of her supporters with her Merchants of Doubt book / documentary movie efforts that supposedly exposed the corporate-bought corruption of climate scientists skeptical about the idea of catastrophic man-caused global warming. In the eyes of people she accuses and people who see through her smear tactics and clumsy science pronouncements, she can’t seem to do anything right. Mere discussion of her antics accomplishes very little — she is emboldened to continue her accusations in the most reckless way because she’s met with practically no significant public opposition. The golden opportunity to hold her accountable, however, is arguably in the hands of the public hearing officials she faces, who might be able to do something about this problem. Making false statements in congressional hearings is actually a crime. Continue reading