Category Archives: Repeated talking points

The Problems in the ExxonKnew Lawsuits Keep Getting Worse

Posted on by

This happens – I’m in the midst of compiling a blog post, I look up something I remember in connection with another accusation angle, then I spot something that doesn’t line up right in the whole narrative. What I’d planned to describe concerning “Committing Acts of Journalism” (or the lack thereof by the reporters over the last two+ decades on the climate issue) will have to wait until the next blog post, (is in my next post as of 2/24/25) because I just spotted a new problem with the basically still-current (originally Matt Pawa-led) pair of 2017 Alameda County / San Francisco County lawsuits. I dissected that pair jointly in my October 6, 2017 People(s) of California v. BP, while also bringing up those two again in my November 30, 2024 Maine v BP dissection, since the Sher Edling law firm inexplicably decided to apparently plagiarize Matt Pawa’s old 2017 accusation paragraph to use in their filing for Maine. What I did not catch in my latest dissection there was the basic fault with Matt Pawa’s citation source for the bit about Dr S Fred Singer’s “launch[ing] repeated attacks on mainstream climate science,” namely the 2007 UCS report. Those words are not in that report that way. I can show where they are seen that way, and where the actual source is . . . . . . which does not help the credibility of the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits one bit. It reinforces the fatal fault in essentially every one of these. Continue reading →

Naomi Oreskes’ Embracing of the “Victory Will Be Achieved” memos

Posted on by

Like I said at the top of my prior blog post, it doesn’t matter where you drop into the accusation about fossil fuel industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns, nothing lines up right. The inspiration for this blog post comes from a result (utterly typical of many) in my daily email alert from Google of search results for articles containing the words “global warming” — a Jan 22, 2025 anti-President Trump piece at “The Conversation” website by Wrigley Institute Director for Environment and Sustainability Joe Árvai titled “How the oil industry and growing political divides turned climate change into a partisan issue.” The author is a psychology professor with exactly zero expertise in climate science who’d likely accuse me of being unqualified to speak on the issue … because I have exactly zero expertise in climate science. Psychological projection being a major hallmark of extremist enviro-activists, the title of his article needs to aim its accusation at enviro-activists for turning climate science into a partisan issue. When he speaks of ‘oil industry disinformation tactics,’ he needs to aim that 180° back at people on his own side. I could devote an entire blog post to all the elements of mis- disinformation in his piece. However, I’ll instead focus on a gem citation within his piece that’s something congressional investigators / law firms representing defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / genuinely objective journalists might want to look into:

Naomi Oreskes’ embracing of ye olde “victory will be achieved” memos. What does she know about them, and when did she know it? Continue reading →

The Supran Missed Opportunity

Posted on by

It wasn’t for a lack of trying on my part right before the May 1 “Denial, Disinfo & Doublespeak” U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing to warn staffers of the GOP committee members that their star witness, Geoffrey Supran, was massively vulnerable to withering questions about his alleged “expertise” on the existence of ‘fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns. I even went so far as to turn my emails to those staffers into an open letter to widen the chance of other Senate GOP staffers seeing my alert, where they might relay the opportunity to the proper people. Marc Morano of ClimateDepot retweeted my alert about my blog post, which enabled my Tweet to achieve nearly 700+ views, when my others usually only get tens of views.

Alas, to no avail. Even worse now, Geoffrey Supran actually walked into that hearing with his Prepared Written Testimony where he all but handed his head to the GOP Committee members on a silver platter. Or, in another visual analogy, he not only brought in the rope to hang himself, he dragged in the gallows behind him. Or all but handed the execution rifle to the GOP members with his written testimony and supplied the single bullet to kill his credibility.

The man is exactly that inept. Watch this:  Continue reading →

I Stand Corrected — and it doesn’t benefit the ‘corrupt skeptic climate scientists’ accusers at all

Posted on by

The setup here is elemental. In the movie companion book for Al Gore’s 2006 “An Inconvenient Truth,” he said outright that the namesake of my blog, Ross Gelbspan, had discovered the notorious ‘leaked fossil fuel industry memo’ “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact,” one page in an extended set attributed to a coal industry public relations campaign which allegedly had sinisterly targeted (Gelbspan’s words, in a 1997 radio show interview) their ‘disinformation’ very narrowly at “older, less-educated men” and “young, low-income women.” It turns out that the PR campaign never operated under a directive to ‘reposition’ anything, and in one obscure instance, Gelbspan himself revealed that an official of the PR campaign said their climate issue information was directed at everyone within their audience.

On many occasions here at GelbspanFiles when I’ve said Al Gore’s story doesn’t line up right (e.g. the screencapture example below) about Gelbspan’s ‘discovery,’ I’ve pointed out that Gelbpsan’s earliest-seen quotes of those memo set phrases trace back as early as his December 5th, 1995 National Public Radio interview.

I’m not wrong at all about Gore quoting the never-implemented audience targeting phrases from that memo set years before Gelbspan ever said a word about them. The unanswered problem remains: how could Gelbspan discover memos which Gore already had? What I need to correct is when Gelbspan’s earliest mention of those phrases happened. Continue reading →

Open letter to LynnJohnson.News, re “ye olde” Reposition Global Warming as Theory ‘leaked memos’

Posted on by

Can’t emphasize this enough, a particular set of literally worthless, unsolicited, never implemented (never implemented!) set of ‘leaked industry memos’ is so pervasive among enviro-activists that it came up as recently as two weeks ago as a false premise setup at a so-called ‘news’ post about sustainable biodiversity.

What follows is my comment suggestion I sent to the alleged ‘reporter’ at that site.

Continue reading →

Ask One Tough Question, and Particular Accusation-pushers Flee in Terror ….

Posted on by

… which is a hint for energy company defendant lawyers and objective news reporters to deeply consider. If “li’l ol’ private citizen me” can apparently prompt such a response, imagine what official investigators with far more influence or subpoena power can accomplish. Continue reading →

What’s old is not new again, no matter what direction you try to spin it

Posted on by

Another way of putting today’s blog post topic is to say that if global warming believers demonstrate how they only have one or two sets of leaked industry memos from the 1990s to support their assertions about the ‘inherent racism of the fossil fuel industry‘ or that ‘the industry’s publicity is a complete lie’ …. well, then that’s all they got. One of these days their enslavement to those memo sets — the “reposition global warming” set and the “victory will be achieved” set — will experience a ‘jumped the shark’ event that will be reported by more prominent people than me, but in the meantime, this blog will have to suffice for reporting on such things.

No joke, two separate spin efforts just within the last 35 days: the underlying racism of the fossil fuel industry, and the effort to smear that industry as complete liars. Continue reading →

“YPCCC Helps Facebook Debunk Climate Change Myths”

Posted on by

The situation concerning the cavalry-style arrival of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) to save us all from global warming disinformation on Facebook begs for a comparison to a comical scene from a famous old movie, where the man held at gunpoint dejectedly notes the unexpected arrival of the totally corrupt police commissioner.

The highlights from the February 24, 2021 announcement are as follows ……………….. Continue reading →

The Interchangeable Hood Ornaments of the leaked “Victory will be achieved …” / “Reposition global warming” Memos

Posted on by

It’s a propagandist’s dream to see reporters repeat blatantly false stories about supposedly devastating leaked industry documents revealing hidden corruption, even when the reporters get basic details of the docs wrong — so long as neither the reporters nor anybody else questions those basic details. It’s a propagandist’s nightmare when too many storytellers describing the revelations can’t keep the overall story straight, whereupon the revelations cease to resemble a bombshell story and instead increasingly look like an orchestrated propaganda disinformation effort. Continue reading →

No matter where you go, there he is

Posted on by

He, being Ross Gelbspan, with regard to any prominent person regurgitating the accusation about skeptic climate scientists being paid by the fossil fuel industry to spread lies undercutting the so-called ‘settled science’ of human-induced global warming. In this case, I already covered a particular journalistic due diligence problem within Nathanial Rich’s promotion of his epic New York Times story “Losing Earth” in my August 9, 2018 blog post. Rich’s blunder there was to repeat a hugely troubling talking point from Naomi Oreskes, a person who’s plagued with a variety of credibility problems as it pertains to her alleged entry into the topic of ‘industry-corrupted skeptics’ and the stories she tells surrounding that situation.

I figured that would be the end of it regarding Nathanial Rich. I should know better about such things by now; Oreskes is never the end of the line in these kinds of situations. Continue reading →