Category Archives: Narrative derailment

Merchant of Disinformation – the movie. Part 2

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Continuing from Part 1 on my line-by-climate-issue-line analysis of Naomi Oreskes’ “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie. She’s on retainer with the Sher Edling law firm handling 17 of the current U.S. “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuits and ‘assisting’ in 5 others. In the 2023 European lawsuit, Greenpeace Italy et al. v. ENI S.p.A., et al. against the Italian energy company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, Greenpeace implies “Merchants of Doubt” book author Oreskes is an ‘expert’ on fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns. The accusation seen in that lawsuit about fossil fuel companies running disinformation campaigns is not supported by any evidence in her book. But these assertions arising from her work or coming straight from her continue unabated because nobody challenges them.

To challenge her, you must know where her narratives fall apart. Continue reading →

Merchant of Disinformation – the movie. Part 1

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This 3-part series is for the congressional investigators / attorneys defending energy companies in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / objective, unbiased reporters: — when a person appearing before you has been portrayed as an ‘expert’ while only facing softball questions designed to exalt that person’s ‘expertise,’ you need to have absolute hardball questions at the ready, like a pile driver, so that you can show the public what they’ve never been told: where this person’s credibility implodes.

I’ve slogged through Naomi Oreskes’ “Merchants of Doubt” movie …… so you don’t have to. Continue reading →

I Stand More Informed, Part 2 — and it doesn’t help Ross Gelbspan’s climate issue legacy at all

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I’ve implied it on several occasions relating to several people; it bears repeating in this situation — when a person tells the tale of a particular significantly noteworthy personal history event which is consistent in every retelling, notwithstanding minor errors about minor details, it’s a good indicator the event actually happened. When significant details are noticeably inconsistent from one telling to the next, we’re left to wonder if the event never actually happened at all the way the person describes it. Was the narrative instead just a script handed to the person to read, where he or she is ineptly acting out the tale?

My Part 1 post was a look into Ross Gelbspan’s earliest mentions of ye olde “reposition global warming” memos – the memos that, from late 1995 to just over a week ago (stay tuned here for more about that latest blunder) – are the literal best that enviro-activists have in their arsenal to accuse skeptic climate scientists of being paid fossil fuel industry money to spread ‘disinformation which causes the public to doubt the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming.’ No. Joke.

I’ve already written how Gelbspan is seemingly unable to keep his narratives straight about his discovery odyssey of ‘industry-paid skeptic climate scientists.’ What he additionally said in the November 1995 C-SPAN interview I covered in Part 1 didn’t clarify any of the problems in his subsequent retellings of his discovery story. It added one more major angle of inconsistency to them all. Continue reading →

Covering Climate Now, 3/2/23: ‘Fox News Lies About Elections & Repositions Global Warming as Theory (Not Fact).’

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For any of the folks at last week’s Heartland Institute climate conference (and any others I’ve contacted recently) who heard me say the worthless “reposition global warming” ‘leaked industry memos’ is the literal best ammunition that enviro-activist accusers have in their arsenal as evidence that the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns, that was no exaggeration. And as we all know, the primary hallmark of far leftists is the way they project their mindset onto the people they accuse of treachery, so when we see the Covering Climate Now group, a supplier of biased, one-sided climate info to 500+ news media outlets, publish a March 2 “FOX Doesn’t Just Lie About Elections” hit piece castigating the Fox News network with a subheadline that reads ….

The network is part of a climate disinformation ecosystem that journalism has to confront.

…. it is an arrow the size of Texas pointing to who it actually is who spews disinformation and who should be exposed for exactly what they are doing. Especially when Covering Climate Now feels totally compelled to support their accusation with ye olde “reposition global warming” memos that date all the way back to when the co-founder of CCNow first used them in a pure disinformation effort back in 1997. That’s how old this pathetic effort is, and why I put the comical “ye olde” modifying noun in front of those memos’ notorious name.

Continue reading →

Mistakes. These Guys Make Mistakes. Big Ones.

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The critical thing that people must never lose sight of when examining the Clima-Change™ issue is how enviros wage their war on two fronts, namely that the science of man-caused catastrophic global warming is settled, and that skeptic climate scientists are “liars-for-hire on the payroll of Big Oil.” The science is fatally weak, skeptic climate scientists and other experts detail that at levels that’ll give you migraine headaches from trying to absorb it all. Not that the mainstream media will tell the public about any of this.

But the false accusations about industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists are much more faulty, promulgated by just a core clique of enviro-activists and their weak link helpers. They hand the massive mistakes they make on a silver platter to the law firms defending energy companies in all of the current “Exxon Knew” lawsuits, and they hand these same mistakes over the same way to U.S. House investigators, who now have the opportunity to mirror flip the prior Democrat-led hearings which egregiously sought to vilify fossil fuel company executives.

Continue reading →

It’s Cute, How Hard They Try.

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One of the things the political far-left does, including enviro-activists, is seemingly make assertions that they have no hopes of supporting while crossing their fingers that nobody ever questions them about those assertions (which seems to be backfiring of late in an epic way on a non-environmental topic). Additionally, with regard to global warming activists, they seem to have literally no self awareness of how ironic their clamoring is about guilt-by-association tainting the credibility of the people they criticize, compared to their own hugely troublesome associations. It’s almost endearing, the way they valiantly attempt to keep their beloved issue alive in the face of potentially deep investigations which could expose their fatally crippled thought processes and their troubling associations.

I have my fun with using famous movie lines to illustrate my analysis points. One from Annette Benning’s character in the 2019 “Captain Marvel” movie applies to an article topic a prominent climate figure alerted me to. 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 →

“I really wanted in.”

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What does it look like if a person says, “I want in to the world of ecological protection”? What does that even mean?

I know of someone who had that exact generic wish. As usual with any problem surrounding anyone involved in the promulgation of the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation …… there’s always more problems. Continue reading →

“Data showed that the Minneapolis area had warmed 1.0–1.5 degrees in the twentieth century.” Oops.

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This is probably something we all can agree on: when a person tells a story or explains a particular situation that he or she is very familiar with, the narrative should always be consistent and never look like it is somebody else’s narrative which the storyteller is now claiming as their own. And no matter what the narrative is, it should answer questions or resolve any ambiguities, period, end of discussion. The narrative is the end-all thing, it should not ever prompt the audience to say, “how do you know this, where did you get that specific claim from?” Continue reading →