“Brief Of Amici Curiae, Brulle .. Oreskes .. & Supran” Redux 2 — the Minnesota version

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Just askin’ — if it can be argued that …

  • the overall issue of catastrophic man-caused global warming is a case study of how far-left enviro-activists would rather resort to character assassination (which the mainstream media never questions) of their critics rather than support their declarations about the ‘settled science’ with superior science-based evidence, …
  • and if the outright majority of the 25+ “Exxon Knew”-style / boilerplate-repeated lawsuits are a case study of how the character assassination efforts are enslaved to only two sets of never-implemented ‘leaked memos’ evidence to support the accusation that crooked industry executives and crooked skeptic climate scientist ‘shills’ colluded to deceive the public that the ‘settled science’ wasn’t settled, …
  • then is a Friend of the Court brief intended to support one of those lawsuits, apparently ineptly copied from two nearly identical prior briefs which repeated that worthless ‘memo sets’ evidence, a case study on how hand all of those potentially fatal problems to the energy company defendant lawyers on a silver platter?

No joke, on this third-time-is-the-charm effort that looks like it does more harm than good to the “Exxon Knew” lawsuits. To recap, there was the January 2019 Oreskes California version, which I dissected in my February 8, 2019 blog post regarding the brief’s enslavement to those worthless, never-implemented memo sets – the “reposition global warming” set and the “victory will be achieved” set – and how Oreskes’ friends in the brief are all separated by just a few degrees from the person who gained the most fame from ‘exposing’ the “reposition” memo set, Ross Gelbspan. Then in September 2019, this group basically repeated themselves in their Baltimore copy, as I detailed here.

Now we have a Minnesota copy, filed on 8/25/21. However, for this newest repetition, Naomi “Merchants of Doubt” Oreskes et al. and her one group of law firm handlers (she’s also associated with another firm that’s filing most of the “Exxon Knew” lawsuits) have strangely gotten one increment more careless. The basic question is, why is this latest brief lacking a cornerstone repetition item seen in the previous pair?

First, to dispel any doubt about my assertion concerning the sheer “copy-and-paste” repetition in all three briefs, look no farther than the briefs’ accusation hurled at Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr Willie Soon: California, PDF file pgs 43-44; Baltimore, PDF file pg 41; Minnesota, PDF file pages 40-41. Toward the end of my dissection of the Delaware v. BP lawsuit, I showed how its accusation against Dr Soon was egregiously false and showed how it was also repeated in boilerplate copy fashion in the six California lawsuits and others, including Baltimore. It’s in the Minnesota v API lawsuit, too. I wasn’t the only person who noticed the specific “copy-and-paste” problem with Oreskes’ & friends’ briefs, William “wikipropaganda” Connolley also spotted it in a strange “enviro-activists eating their own” situation … but he’s a whole other story.

When people decide to take the shortcut of copying and pasting entire blocks of text from one document to the next, where the next document might contain small bits of additional added material, it’s a good idea to make sure any references to details within the blocks that are copied have new page numbers for the references, if needed. Within the CA and Minnesota amicus briefs, Oreskes et al. provides a “Table of Authorities” page numbers reference section having a subcategory of “Other Authorities,” but in Baltimore, it skips the court cases references and thus doesn’t have an “Other Authorities” subheading. Regarding the accusation against Dr Soon, the “Authority” reference, “Kathy Mulvey and Seth Shulman, The Climate Deception Dossiers … Union of Concerned Scientists” is copied from one brief to the next. In the CA brief, the reference is to print page 31. In Baltimore, the “Mulvey” reference is to print page 32.

To establish that there is no doubt about the “Authority” page number references, the page 28 “Mulvey” reference in the CA brief is to specific “identify, recruit and train” wording seen on page 28, where the wording itself sources from the notorious, never implemented American Petroleum Institute “victory will be achieved” memo set. In the Baltimore one, it’s on page 30. CA’s “Mulvey” page 26 reference is to the Information Council for the Environment bit on page 26. Baltimore’s “Mulvey” page 28 reference is to ICE on page 28.

Again, no doubt about the page number references and the actual page numbers in Oreskes’ & friends court California / Baltimore briefs.  Q.E.D.

Then there’s this latest Minnesota one. In it, the wording citing the “Mulvey” page 31 reference to Dr Soon …….. is … on page 32.

Oops.

So, did somebody forget to alter the page numbers copy from the California version? No, it all gets more complicated than that.

The page 28 “Mulvey” reference in this Minnesota brief …. is left hanging out in mid air. The wording out of the API “victory will be achieved” memo set is nowhere to be seen on page 28 or any other page. The Id.s at the bottom of page 28 for footnotes #49 & #50 refer to page 27’s footnote #48 for Kert Davies’ ClimateFiles page of the “victory will be achieved” memo set.

What’s up with that omission? Oreskes et al.’s Friend of the Court brief is here entirely to support the Minnesota v American Petroleum Institute lawsuit. Was it sheer ineptitude in the copying process that the ammo against API from Kathy Mulvey /Seth Shulman / Union of Concerned Scientists was left out?

Meanwhile, ditto for the page 26 “Mulvey” reference in this Minnesota brief to the ICE campaign. It’s completely missing. The name Mulvey is only found in two places within the Minnesota brief — in the Table of Authorities and in the page accusing Dr Soon of corruption.

Want to see that again, but in more troubling fashion?

What’s up with that omission? The “reposition global warming” memo set is a cornerstone of Minnesota v API’s accusation about corrupt industry executives paying skeptic climate scientist ‘shills’ to deceive the public.

Questions abound: Should Oreskes and her court brief friends fire their Keller Rohrback LLC law firm handlers? Should the people handling the California, Baltimore and Minnesota lawsuits fire Oreskes and her court brief friends? Do the so-called ‘news outlets’ which report about the new ‘sting operation’ evidence within this latest Minnesota brief have journalists on their staff who wonder why it would be necessary to concoct new evidence to prove fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns exist, and do those reporters have any curiosity about how the complete text of the brief compares to other Friend of the Court briefs that this group filed?

What happens to journalists at those kinds of ‘news outlets’ if they start to ask traditional, “hard-nosed reporter”-style questions about these lawsuits overall? What happens if the energy company defendants’ law firms start to ask even tougher questions? What happens if one or more of Oreskes’ ‘less-than-fully-committed’ friends start to waver regarding the wisdom behind tactics in these briefs and in the lawsuits the briefs are supposed to help?

Just askin’.
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[Author’s 11/17/22 addition: I’d forgotten to note this here, Oreskes et al. did not stop with this brief here. See: Redux 3 — the Hawaii version ]