Category Archives: Edison Electric Institute

The prima facie Case for ‘Industry Disinfo Campaigns’ Implodes — AGAIN.

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It’s a case study on how the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits can implode – no matter where and when you land in this accusation effort hurled by enviro-activists, it always traces back to the usual suspects.

What I find astounding regarding anyone prominent regurgitating the accusation about “crooked skeptic climate scientists” / “fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns” is how they expect no readers to ever question anything they say. It’s a reckless high wire act, potentially devastating to their credibility if any part of their narrative starts to unravel. Allow me to explain, using the example of the hapless “environmental / energy policy expert” Leah Stokes, who could not keep her mouth shut about the “peer-reviewed” paper she co-authored which hurled the accusation that the “fossil fuel industry ran a disinformation campaign to – her words – “reposition global warming as theory and not fact.”  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 →

“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 →

Ross Gelbspan jumps onto the “Chicken Little” Newspaper Ad Evidence Bandwagon

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The namesake of my blog is still alive and kicking. But just like other promulgators of the “fossil fuel execs colluded with skeptic climate scientists to spread disinformation” accusation, he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut about some of the accusation’s contradictory details. Continue reading →

When you display no intellectual curiosity about glitches in the items you report about …..

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…. you end up mindlessly regurgitating propaganda talking points about long-dead false news items while claiming it is “original reporting + analysis on the climate crisis.”

And, I should add, astute observers could use that wipeout to illustrate what is entirely wrong with the notion of ‘industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns,’ where the ultimate result is that it appears to be the enviro-activists who’ve been spoon-feeding disinformation on the global warming issue to gullible ‘reporters’ and others who also never questioned it for them to regurgitate at a later date. 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 →