Regretfully, I only became aware late yesterday (hat tip to Kyle Kohli at Energy in Depth for that news) of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing today about ‘dark money influence’ into the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits. But I was able to fire off an immediate email to GOP witness Scott Walker at the Capital Research Center with tips about all my blog post references on the Democrat’s invited witness, Public Citizen’s David Arkush. Mr Walter replied early this morning thanking me for the tips. Perhaps he can relay my work to Committee majority Chairman Ted Cruz. The Committee’s link for the written testimony submitted by Arkush seems to be nonfunctional, but the copy uploaded by Climate Litigation Watch works fine … and proves once again that it is not the fossil fuel industry that should be investigated about pushing disinformation, it’s the enviro-activists who should be hit with that. Watch this:

From the last paragraph on Arkush’s PDF file page 3 continuing onto page 4:

Starting in the late 1980s, the oil industry began developing and orchestrating a multi-decade, coordinated campaign to, in its words, “reposition global warming as theory (not fact),” all for the purpose of maintaining or increasing fossil fuel sales, market share, and profits.

Arkush provides no footnote reference for that accusation. That’s a little weird, and/or careless of him (maybe he got it from Committee minority Chairman Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – but hold onto my use of the word “careless” for a few moments). It doesn’t matter what citation source he would provide, no part of the fossil fuel industry, oil or coal or otherwise, ever directed anybody to reposition anything.

Meanwhile in his paragraph immediately following, he says:

Over the ensuing years, the industry engaged in a range of deceptive strategies, which it laid out clearly in 1998 document. That year, a group of twelve people, including representatives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other fossil fuel-related groups, met at API headquarters and drafted the Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan, a document that accurately describes exactly the fraud conspiracy the industry executed. The document specified that their scheme was to get both “average citizens” and the media to recognize that there was not a scientific consensus on climate change—which, according to their own internal assessments was a fraudulent claim—and then to make this fraudulent claim a new “conventional wisdom.

Same situation — the industry did no such thing. While he does not use the specific “victory will be achieved” words, his reference is to that exact 1998 never implemented (never implemented!) memo set, the actual memo set was hardly more than a set of truisms on how the industry would react if the public was better educated about the climate issue. His footnote #13 citation source for that accusation is a shell-game ruse; Inside Climate News’ copy of the notorious “victory will be achieved” memos is identical to Kert Davies’ 2013-era Greenpeace copies — same degraded photocopy smudges.

At the risk of sounding repetitive for regular readers, I’ll repeat it for new readers arriving here: that Kert Davies, the man whose header photo at his Climate Investigations Center (CIC) “Climate Watchdog” Twitter / X account is the horribly degraded “victory will be achieved” photocopy scan, the same Kert Davies whose workplace prior to Greenpeace was Ozone Action, the group that was the first to provide lasting, ongoing media traction to the “reposition global warming” memos.

Those two memo sets are the literal best – in that order of effectiveness – that the enviro-activists have in their arsenal to prove industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns happened. It’s all they have.

Now, back to what I said about Arkush being “careless” — right after his accusation about the non-named “victory will be achieved” memos, he said:

The industry chose this strategy because its polling showed that introducing the fraudulent specter of scientific doubt was the most effective way to make Americans oppose climate action.14 The core of the Action Plan was a scheme to communicate the fossil fuel industry’s claims of denial and uncertainty to the media, the public, government officials, and teachers and students.

Sounds like he’s referring only to the strategy choice of what was in the “victory” memos, doesn’t it? Except where does his footnote #14 go to? The Union of Concerned Scientists’ dossier for the PR campaign they claim operated under the “reposition global warming” directive. It could be Arkush meant instead to refer to UCS’ dossier on the “victory” memos … where their 9-page scans of the actual memos are identical to Kert Davies’ 2013 Greenpeace scans copies. Whether intentional or accidental, Arkush’s reference to UCS’ “reposition global warming” memos dossier doesn’t help him at all. Who does UCS cite as their source for the “reposition global warming” memos? Greenpeace’s Ozone Action scans … from the time when Kert Davies worked at Ozone action.

Meanwhile, want more proof that the worthless “reposition global warming” memos are the best the enviro-activists have?

The Australian website “Nature Needs More,” which focuses on raising awareness about the problems of legal and illegal wildlife trade, has had a “Desire to Supply” page dating back to at least July 2020 according to the Internet Archive website’s crawls of the page. However, according to Google, they added a paragraph to their page on June 4, 2025 – just 22 days ago as of today – titled “It Is Time To Take The ‘SUS’ Out Of SUStainability” where they said,

The effects of climate change where not as obvious to the general public in the 1980s. This meant the fossil fuel industry PR could “reposition global warming as theory, not a fact”, with “advertorials” – advertisements disguised as editorials – with broken record messaging of “weak” evidence, “non-existent” proof, inaccurate climate models.

Thankfully, conservation organisations and academia have been monitoring the decline of species for decades. This meant that industries who rely on overextraction of wild species to manufacturing their products couldn’t “reposition biodiversity loss as a theory, not a fact”, based on “weak evidence” and “nonexistent” proof. All the evidence and proof of species decline was readily available.

Notice in their own clickable link for their “fossil fuel industry PR” bit is alleged industry disinformation ‘expert’ Naomi Oreskes, whose UK Guardian article points to a strategy directive that was never implemented, a spelled out name that was never used for an actual public relations campaign, and a pair of advertorials that were never published anywhere.

One of these days – it is a mathematical certainty – that whole unsustainable accusation effort about industry disinfo campaigns is going to sink.