The First, Last, and Only Accusation Against Skeptics, Redux

I’m not kidding. Forget the #ExxonKnew effort to re-invigorate the otherwise 25 year-old accusation that skeptic climate scientists are paid corrupting money by fossil fuel companies to lie to the public about the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming. Revisit my first post on this and then look at what popped up only late last week, and the appearance that there’s only one bit of  supposedly “smoking gun” evidence supporting this accusation is impossible to miss. Continue reading

Corroborated vs. Uncorroborated Claims

Back in 2008-’09, I was perplexed that efforts to mitigate runaway global warming were occurring despite detailed opposition offered by skeptic climate scientists. Before my initial searches to find out why skeptic assessments were being ignored, I was unaware of how widespread the accusations were about skeptic scientists being paid industry money to lie to the public. Afterward, rather than finding multiple corroborations revealing massively damaging evidence of when, where and how the skeptics were paid to lie, all I found was one uncorroborated source for the accusation. Continue reading

An Accusation Built on a Foundation of Sand

The collective enviro-activist movement wants the public to believe global warming science is settled and that opponents may be dismissed out-of-hand due to ‘extensive documentation’ of skeptic climate scientists’ industry corruption. I’ve already pointed out, here and here, how there is no independent corroboration for the accusation. Worse, the so-called smoking gun core evidence for the accusation, leaked memos attributed to the obscure Western Fuels Association’s 1991 “Information Council for the Environment” (ICE) public relations campaign are not what Naomi Oreskes, Al Gore, Ross Gelbspan and others say they are. Continue reading

Summary for Policymakers: The Connolley Problem

The latest news about efforts of Attorneys General using racketeering laws to prosecute “climate change deniers” is that their subpoena list of people and entities corresponding with Exxon matches a list of people and entities found at Greenpeace’s ExxonSecrets web site. Since I’ve spent the last 6+ years digging into the smear of skeptic climate scientists and who is behind the smear, I’m not surprised at all. Today I offer this post as a “Summary for Policymakers” regarding my series of seven prior blog posts about a smear effort which took place back in 2007 that is a case study for examining other prior and current industry corruption accusations against skeptic climate scientists. Continue reading

Flipping Gore’s RICO-style Prosecution of Global Warming Skeptics

For new readers arriving at this blog, you probably already have a passing familiarity with the current news item about state-level Attorneys General efforts to prosecute “climate change deniers.” What you may not know is that, while this latest legal tactic is relatively new, the core accusation behind it is more than 20 years old. My article at American Thinker today will hopefully serve as a primer on that problem, and will hopefully also prompt many to go back through my blog here and my other online articles in order to see just how much more there is to this problem.

Those who push using RICO laws against “corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change” (‘other organizations’ meaning conservative think tanks and any skeptic climate scientist having any association with such entities) are likely emboldened because they’ve never before encountered push-back on the very core of their accusation. But when increasing numbers of the public become aware of how NY state AG Schneiderman and Al Gore handed their heads on a silver platter two weeks ago to investigators, journalists, and wavering global warming believers, the more likely this entire witch hunt collapses.

Continue reading at American Thinker, “Gore’s RICO-style Prosecution of Global Warming Skeptics” ——->

The Repeaters vs the Pushers

I’ve said it many times, the entire global warming crisis can be boiled down to a three point mantra, “the science is settled” / “skeptics are industry-corrupted” / “everyone may ignore skeptic material because of points 1 & 2.” With the latest fixation on using racketeering laws to persecute companies and organization siding with skeptic climate scientists, a fourth talking point could be added, “when deniers persist with their industry-bought and orchestrated lies, they should be charged with crimes against humanity.” But the entire notion hinges on the insinuation that scientists who had even the most tenuous financial tie to industry donations were corrupted – paid to lie in a manner no different than shill ‘experts’ working for the tobacco industry who said smoking didn’t cause lung cancer. An insinuation so memorably compelling that ordinary citizen enviro-activists can regurgitate it with ease. Continue reading

Three Degrees of Separation or Less, Part VI: The ‘Conflicts of Interest’ Notification Idea

In the global warming issue, when it comes to the idea of skeptics being ‘corrupted by industry funding’, basically any variant of that notion inadvertently points to the core promoter of that accusation, Ross Gelbspan. Take the March 9 article in Energy & Environment’s ClimateWire by Evan Lehmann, for example (archived version here). Continue reading