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
Category Archives: Western Fuels Association
Ross Gelbspan jumps onto the “Chicken Little” Newspaper Ad Evidence Bandwagon
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
Part 3: Can You Argue with Outright Fiction ….
…. within a presentation that’s clearly titled “You Can Argue with the Facts,” and get away with it indefinitely, without ever being held accountable for all the harm coming out of such a presentation? When you are Naomi Oreskes, and you’ve built your second career is built on that presentation in such a way that it leads you onto becoming a documentary movie star, a go-to source for the news media (or not) and a star congressional witness for the Democrats while putting you on a first-name basis with luminaries such as Al Gore, you can cross your fingers that this whole situation will never sink.
Myself, I wouldn’t advise her to hold her breath on that or bet the ranch on it, in the face of the looming November U.S. House mid-term elections, where a complete reversal of the controlling majority might lead to a wave of congressional oversight investigations in the next two years that may quite likely include deep examinations of where the real disinformation is apparently found in abundance within the global warming issue. Continue reading
The Real ICE ads, Part 4: what the public actually saw in Flagstaff Arizona & Bowling Green, Kentucky
And now, the actual publicly seen Western Fuels Association “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) newspaper ads that were printed in the Flagstaff Arizona and Bowling Green, Kentucky newspapers, which I suggested at the end of my October 8, 2021 Part 1 blog post that I needed to find. As usual, what I actually found within this latest exercise does not resolve and solidify widespread accusations that these newspaper ads are definitive proof of coal/oil industry-led disinformation campaigns, what I’ve found instead raises significantly more questions about the core clique of enviro-activists who’ve long promulgated the accusations. Continue reading
BBC Radio 4 vs Rush Limbaugh: “How They Made Us Doubt Everything” Episode 6 “Reposition Global Warming as theory, not fact”
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
“Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse”, Part 3: ‘Leaked by Industry Executives?’
In Parts 1 and 2 here and here, I detailed how the re-emergence of the old Greenwire news brief really doesn’t help the long-term talking point about ‘industry-paid skeptic climate scientists,’ despite being apparently the initial seed for that ongoing accusation which centers around a particular set of memos supposedly leaked out of the Western Fuels Association’s “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) campaign. Now, let’s briefly examine how its re-emergence undermines the credibility of one of the current figures who pushes that accusation. Continue reading
“Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse”, Part 2: troubling connections
Part 1 described how Phil Shabecoff’s June 1991 Greenwire electronic news brief was the first news item to directly quote a set of worthless ‘leaked memos’ which supposedly revealed how the fossil fuel industry aimed faulty climate science assessments at ignorant people in order to spread misinformation about the issue. The old Greenwire brief also quoted a spokesperson for an electric utility trade organization who categorically stated his organization was not participating in a public relations campaign of which those memos were supposedly guided by, which undercuts current accusations about that organization spearheading the PR campaign. But wait, there’s more. Continue reading
“Inside Track: Sowing Seeds of Doubt in the Greenhouse”, Part 1
Greenwire’s old dawn-of-the-internet age June 20, 1991 electronically shared news brief, which could not be easily found by the general public …. has been found. Now, let’s see what’s in it. Continue reading
Background: The WORTHLESS “reposition global warming as theory” ‘leaked memos’
Al Gore and the people supporting and following him all but plead with the public to have total trust in this: the only opposition to the idea of harmful man-caused global warming is a handful of shill ‘experts’ who receive fossil fuel money in exchange for lies downplaying that harm. The industry corruption accusation sounds plausible enough all by itself, but if anyone innocently asks what evidence exists proving it true, they are often met with sweeping generalized references to reports of ‘Exxon knowing’ about the harm, or to books such as Naomi Oreskes’ “Merchants of Doubt.” But when inquisitive people point out that no such evidence of pay-for-performance arrangements are seen in those writings, Gore & crew might go one step further to say “journalists and academics” show how a deliberate sinister misinformation effort was exposed in leaked memos, where the strategy goal was to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact,” which targeted “older less-educated men and young low-income women”. For the benefit of newly arriving readers here, and for those who haven’t yet comprehended just how damaging those worthless memos are to Al Gore and others who push them, allow me to explain: Continue reading
State of Rhode Island v. Chevron, et al.
This latest global warming lawsuit has two major problems. First, it’s essentially pure “boilerplate copy ’n paste” from six other current California global warming lawsuits being run by the same Sher Edling law firm. I already covered that problem – their enslavement to Ross Gelbspan’s worthless ‘leaked memos’ accusation about ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ – in my dissections of the Santa Cruz City/County / City of Richmond v. Chevron trio, and the San Mateo / Marin Counties / City of Imperial Beach v. Chevron trio. But I found another problem I’d overlooked in those filings. Call it “The Fingerprints of Naomi Oreskes,” a situation which only further opens a window into just how disingenuous the overall “evidence” is that’s used to indict skeptic climate scientists of industry-paid corruption. Continue reading