It’s a case study on how the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits can implode – no matter where and when you land in this accusation effort hurled by enviro-activists, it always traces back to the usual suspects.

What I find astounding regarding anyone prominent regurgitating the accusation about “crooked skeptic climate scientists” / “fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns” is how they expect no readers to ever question anything they say. It’s a reckless high wire act, potentially devastating to their credibility if any part of their narrative starts to unravel. Allow me to explain, using the example of the hapless “environmental / energy policy expert” Leah Stokes, who could not keep her mouth shut about the “peer-reviewed” paper she co-authored which hurled the accusation that the “fossil fuel industry ran a disinformation campaign to – her words – “reposition global warming as theory and not fact.” 

I’d previous only noted her name a single time directly at GelbspanFiles, in my September 26, 2022 blog post “‘The first peer-reviewed publication to survey the industry’s messaging specifically’ … showcases the worthlessness of ‘peer review’.” The ‘publication’ in question inadvertently demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that “peer review” is worthless for validating the merit of a ‘science journal-published’ paper, since no ‘peers’ apparently made any effort to validate the central ‘leaked memos evidence’ for the accusations in the paper. Since Leah Stokes got dead last fourth billing for that paper, I guessed she had minimal importance in it. I knew of her, however, from my ongoing effort to quantify the climate issue bias of the PBS NewsHour; she’s been a broadcast segment guest on the program at least 6 times between September 2020 and August 2023, plus their website has at least 3 reproductions of Associated Press articles specifically quoting her.

While compiling info for my prior blog post, I ran across something I wasn’t aware of back in the fall of 2022 — Leah Stokes’ UC Santa Barbara November 9, 2022 article “Defiant Energy: How the American electric utility industry pushed climate denial, doubt, and delay,” in which she felt compelled to tell the backstory of the “peer-reviewed” science journal paper I dissected in my Sept 2022 blog post. Watch this, where just four paragraphs into her 23 paragraph backstory article, she veers straight into her own self-made credibility brick wall – screencapture links for posterity, for paragraphs 4 and 6 through 9’s sections; I’ll explain the faults in just those, one-by-one afterward:

… Several years ago, before I started researching electric utilities’ role in promoting climate denial, I came across a memorable advertisement from 1991. It showed a cartoon chicken running around with the caption: “Who told you the earth was warming…Chicken Little?” The ad was funded by a climate denial campaign called “Informed Citizens for the Environment.” Utilities spearheaded this work, including the private utilities such as Southern Company and Arizona Public Service, as well as the utility association, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI). Even though climate science was well established by the early 1990s, the ad argued there was “no hard evidence” for global warming. …

These ads made me curious. I knew oil and gas companies were well known for promoting climate denial, but it wasn’t clear what role electric utilities played in spreading misinformation. … In 2017, … Energy and Policy Institute, published a report that traced utilities’ early knowledge of climate change as far back as the 1960s. … Inspired by their work, I wrote about utilities’ role in promoting climate denial in my 2020 book, Short Circuiting Policy. But when I completed that project, I knew there were still more stones left to overturn.

I decided to undertake a systematic academic study examining the role utilities played in promoting climate denial, doubt, and delay. I recruited a star doctoral student to the project, Emily Williams. .. We modeled our work after Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes’ landmark 2017 paper on ExxonMobil …

… We aimed to find all the publicly available documents in which electric utilities promoted climate denial and doubt. Thankfully, Kert Davies at the Climate Investigations Center had set up an online archive with hundreds of historical documents. Since the 1990s, Davies has collected whatever information he could find on the main climate denial groups .. Initially it was scraps of paper here and there, but eventually he scanned entire boxes of documents and put them up online. His archive is now the go-to source to understand climate denial, and it includes dozens of documents linked to the electric utility industry …

Sounds like sincere, amazingly impressive research work, doesn’t it? How fortuitous, too, finding no less than a 1990s-to-present-day ‘climate investigator’ with boxes of scanned documents to top off the tale.

Now, watch how her narrative implodes:

I came across a memorable advertisement from 1991… with the caption: “Who told you the earth was warming…Chicken Little? …”

Really? How? Where? Stokes does not disclose that. She absolutely did not see it in any print publication because it was never published in any commercial print media – newspapers/magazines – for general public reading, as I detailed starting in my “Real ICE ads” quintet of posts. When you zoom in on the one-and-only copy of the ad on the internet, say, for example in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, you see it is cropped (or cropped worse) at the bottom. If you dig deeper, you’ll find the same degraded multi-generation photocopy which is less cropped, revealing – problematic for Stokes – a specific name for the public relations campaign it’s alleged to go with, and it has a literally non-existent toll-free phone number.

The ad was funded by a climate denial campaign called “Informed Citizens for the Environment.”

No, it wasn’t. That assertion is actually disinformation, on two counts: first, a July 1991 New York Times report quoted an official for the campaign who said that name was unsolicited and never used. Second, no part of the actual campaign ‘denied climate’ in any sense of the word, their goal was to suggest to the public that there was a science-based skeptic side to the issue, which the mainstream news media was largely ignoring.

“Utilities spearheaded this work, including … the utility association, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) …”

No, they didn’t. The Western Fuels Association non-profit cooperative – or more accurately its CEO Fred Palmer, spearheaded the effort. Stokes’ “EEI spearheaded” assertion comes from a 2017 report by Dave Anderson’s Energy and Policy Institute – complete with the never-published cropped “Chicken Little” ad. I covered Anderson’s odd new effort to switch pinning the “reposition global warming memos” from the Western Fuels Association to the Edison Electric Institute (“#UtilitiesKnew” instead of ‘Western Fuels Knew’) in my April 2020 blog post. Back in October 2018, I detailed how I’d finally found a particular 1991 Greenwire fax news report, in which a key detail was that EEI had nothing to do with the ICE PR campaign after they’d provided some polling figures, and after they’d inexplicably sent an unsolicited memo set to the PR campaign which the officials running it had no idea what to do with it.

In my “Real ICE ads Part 5,” I showed how another 1991 newspaper news report, while noting it saw some proposed ads, corroborated EEI’s non-involvement. You cannot spearhead something you are not involved with. Period.

“Energy and Policy Institute, published a report that traced utilities’ early knowledge of climate change as far back as the 1960s …”

What knowledge?? Every industry person with an appreciation of science back then knew the climate changes. Every reasonably educated citizen actually knows that. What Stokes euphemistically means is global warming, an impossibility for any member of the fossil fuel industry back then to know that burning fossil fuels exclusively results in catastrophic warming, in the face of all the reports of potential runaway global cooling. Cooling!

“Inspired by their [Energy and Policy Institute] work, I wrote about utilities’ role in promoting climate denial in my 2020 book, Short Circuiting Policy …”

Here’s where Stokes’ assertion about the specific “Informed Citizens” ICE name comes back to haunt her. I’d never heard of her “Short Circuiting Policy” book, but after a bit of a chore to find a GoogleBooks online scan version that would permit me to do good searches for regurgitations about ‘leaked industry memos’, I found what she said about ye olde “reposition global warming” memos. She mentions those twice, on pages 71 and 97. In the first instance, her source – the 1991 NYT report (same one which said the “Informed Citizens” variant was never used, don’t forget) almost gets the official ICE name right, but not quite: “Information Council on the Environment.” When folks do this, over and over, no matter who they are, it’s a tell-tale sign that they don’t actually know with any certainty what the ICE letters officially, unequivocally stood for: Information Council FOR the Environment. For, not on.

Meanwhile, her “Short Circuiting Policy” page 97 repeats the “reposition global warming’ phrase, but she goes one step farther by mentioning the “Chicken Little” ad. Who’s her source for it? The Climate Files website. Hold that thought for a few moments.

“I recruited a star doctoral student to the project, Emily Williams …”

Right. The alleged lead author of the “peer reviewed” paper co-authored with Leah Stokes … which never mentioned the “Informed Citizens” name variant, and which could not figure out if it was IC on E or IC for E … where its IC for E citation refers to the Climate Files page which spelled it out as IC for E there, while elsewhere as … both at the same time. A real “star” doctoral student should have stopped right there to nail down what the actual name was.

“We modeled our work after Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes’ landmark 2017 paper …”

Right. The two experts on ‘industry disinformation campaigns’ who told the world that the evidence for such things is … a memo directive that was never implemented, a PR campaign name that was never used, and a pair of ‘advertorials’ that were never published. Not exactly a wise maneuver to model anything on what these two did.

“Thankfully, Kert Davies at the Climate Investigations Center had set up an online archive with hundreds of historical documents. Since the 1990s, Davies has collected …”

Notice several unseen problems right there: Kert – who? Just some guy doing investigations all the way back to the 1990s … except what would prompt anyone to do that for so long? Stokes doesn’t elaborate, and maybe hopes nobody compels her to say. As regular readers at my GelbspanFiles already know, and as new readers should know, he not just some benign guy who’s above reproach. He’s that Kert Davies, operator of the Climate Investigations Center (CIC) with its “Climate Files” offshoot of fossil fuel industry docs. But just right there, was CIC/Climate Files simply created out-of-the-blue?

No, what it may actually be is a mega copy ’n paste document transfer out of the 2000s-era “Greenpeace Investigations” mega-docs website. He used to work at Greenpeace USA, heading a website wing of theirs that had every appearance of having a vendetta against Exxon. But were all those docs (which Greenpeace took offline in 2022) actually a Greenpeace stand-alone effort?

No, it might be one of several reasons why Greenpeace wiped out that site. Those docs were no more than a carryover out of the old forgotten Ozone Action environmental group, where its Executive Director, John Passacantando merged it into Greenpeace USA in 2000. Davies worked at Ozone Action with him, it was the place were the meritless “reposition global warming” memo set along with the never-published “Chicken Little” ad starting picking up exponentially larger media traction from their efforts. I’ve got massively more on both, each have their own category tag at my blog, and none of what I’ve found about them is flattering to them.

Doesn’t matter how many volumes of other material is put out by Leah Stokes, when she leads with a memo set and a ‘newspaper advertorial’ which are literally worthless as evidence to prove anyone associated with the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns, her credibility is out the window. Same applies to the Energy and Policy Institute’s Dave Anderson, and Naomi (memos / Chicken) Oreskes, and the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits’ Vic Sher.

See the pattern there?

This just keeps popping up — only three months ago, in a 70 page report published by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), they couldn’t even get past page 14 without regurgitating ye olde “reposition global warming memos” plus the “Chicken Little” ad – and who’s their sources? Leah Stokes for the memo phrase, and Dave Anderson’s 2017 EPI report for the ad. ILSR put all their faith in her and Anderson; she put all her faith in Kert Davies’ Climate Files, and in a 1991 NYT report she didn’t apparently read at any depth, if even at all. Anderson put all his faith in Kert Davies’ Climate Files. The law firm handling 18 “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, Sher Edling, puts all their faith in Kert Davies and in Naomi Oreskes. Oreskes put all her faith for the collective Western Fuels alleged docs – again, memos and ads – in a nonexistent archive managed by a former Al Gore associate.

Faith – in worthless material from people who could not show real evidence that fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns occurred if their reputations depended on it. As I showed in my Part 3 analysis of her 2015 documentary movie, Naomi Oreskes seems to have far too many instances of being too close to Davies and Passacantando for those to be just mere coincidences. Plus, she’s on a first-name basis with Al Gore — who basically said Ross Gelbspan ‘discovered’ a memo set which included phrases that Gore himself quoted years before Gelbspan ever mentioned them, connected with a ‘cynical advertising campaign.’

See the problem there?

The question I implied way back in late 2016 cuts to the heart of the main problem surrounding the smear of skeptic climate scientists: Is there just one single effort to use the “reposition global warming memos” and ancillary trash surrounding them to impugn the credibility of skeptic climate scientists by saying they were liars-for-hire working in Big Coal / Big Oil disinformation campaigns?