As I implied in my just-prior blog post here, the worthless, never-implemented “victory will be achieved” memos aren’t just an accusation used under basically false pretenses around a decade ago, they are very much an ongoing current bit of ‘evidence’ used to support the stupid idea that ‘Exxon and other energy companies deceived the public on how they knew their products caused harmful global warming.’ Ben Franta, as I’ve suggested before, is quite a weak link in that whole false accusation chain, and just over 90 days ago – at this time of writing – he reinforced how it shouldn’t be the energy companies in the crosshairs for spreading disinformation, it should instead be guys exactly like him. He gets away with what he does because nobody of major prominence has questioned him about his accusations. Continue reading
Tying Me to the “Victory will be achieved” memos – the irony of it all
My just-prior blog post basically concerned the problem when folks display little in any intellectual curiosity on whether material presented to them is above reproach. Place blind trust in some authoritative assertion about a controversial matter, and the path forward might go right off a cliff. Notice in that screencapture, the controversial matter was the accusation surrounding the notorious “victory will be achieved” fossil fuel industry memo (never implemented, by the way, but yet still beloved by political luminaries). While this post covers a nine year-old accusation about that memo set which actually names me while making an accusation about the memo, this situation is every bit relevant right now today. When hurling an accusation, as the folks did in 2016, it’s wise to first make sure the accusation is not fatally undercut in a manner that opponents can use against it. Continue reading
Google’s “Artificial Intelligence Overview” – on ‘Industry Disinfo Evidence,’ trust its info as far as you can throw it
Much ado these days with people thinking “A.I.” is some kind of all-encompassing savior to make life easier. Just do a generic Google search of “A.I. can help with” and watch the system fill in the last words with a whole range of situations … with Google A.I.’s own automatically generated input right at the very top, where its handy helpful little links in its “Show More” section to expand what it offers. All as though “A.I.” is benign, soulless and without political bias.
Speaking of Google searches, I’ve been using its basic system almost exclusively for over a decade, since that system clearly head & shoulders above any other search engine – you just have to know how to circumvent its biased results by doing boolean searches to prompt results it might not want the public to know about. It’s how I discovered exactly what the Ozone Action environmental group was, and who its staff were. But in May 2024, Google began adding its ‘AI option’ to its search methods menu. I’ve avoided it like the plague, knowing and proving already just months earlier that at least some forms of A.I. had no intelligence whatsoever. For this blog post, however, I’ll actually look into Google’s “A.I. Overview” for the very first time. Watch this —
“Who discovered the fossil fuel industry memos with the phrase Reposition Global Warming as Theory (Not Fact)? What is their importance?” Continue reading
The Racial Component of the Urban Heat Island Effect (good thing PBS was defunded)
This particular situation illustrates how the climate science issue is way bigger than the science. We do indeed have a crisis happening, but it doesn’t concern the climate. It’s a crisis involving the legacy news media’s journalism malfeasance, which includes the now defunded PBS NewsHour (… and there’s a rather direct tie-in to what I do right here at this GelbspanFiles blog). Continue reading
So Close, Yet So Far – Charleston v Brabham Oil dismissal’s lost opportunity
While it was great news from the Energy in Depth website on August 7th that South Carolina circuit court Judge Roger Young dismissed Charleston v Brabham Oil on jurisdictional / statute of limitations / and other angles, the opportunity to knock this one down on its core – and very false – central 4-element accusation which is present in all such Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuits was missed again. Allow me to show two instances within the judge’s court ruling where he figuratively sideswiped gently against them, unaware how he could have sent then crashing into the ditch, and thus turn onto the path for that version of ‘failure to state a claim‘ dismissal. Continue reading
Oreskes’ Embrace of the “Victory Will Be Achieved” Memos, Redux, in Honolulu v Sunoco – Big, big mistake.
The widely shared Associated Press news on July 28th was that a hearing in Hawaii was scheduled to take place the next day on whether the Honolulu v Sunoco global warming damages lawsuit should be tossed out because the ‘statute of limitations’ on the case had somehow run out. The defendants’ law firms legal technicality minutiae maneuvers from all their prior 8+ months of effort to get it out of state court and into Federal court didn’t work, so it appears they are trying a different maneuver … but in ABC News’ July 28 regurgitation of the AP story, which I fortuitously screencaptured on July 29th, showed how Naomi Oreskes’ name just could not stay out of the overall situation. I say “fortuitous” because one day later when I reopened both the ABC “Honolulu’s lawsuit against fossil fuel companies leads climate change legal fight” story and the AP original version to copy words out of them – poof – Oreskes has vanished from both. But what’s seen in the internet cannot be unseen. What’s going on right there with that erasure? Luckily, someone smarter than me preserved an Internet Archive version of the original AP story, with the two Oreskes paragraphs intact.
Not an especially bright idea for the AP to say Oreskes had submitted an Opposition filing against the defendants’ ‘statute of limitations’ maneuver; dumber yet is to bury that fact like it never happened. However, that’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg in this particular new situation. Continue reading
BBC Buries a False 2020 Climate Issue Report Title, Part 2 – my new complaint file
8/15/25 update added, see near the end of this post, BBC responds.
At my little GelbspanFiles blog here, I have limited reach to reading audiences, not many people across the United States and around the world are aware of my efforts showing how the ‘industry-corrupted, liars-for-hire skeptic climate scientists‘ accusation falls apart around the core clique of enviro-activists promulgating it. Thus, I’m always indebted to any outlet that can reproduce my blog posts or mention my work in some way to much wider audiences. In this situation, I’m indebted to Roger “Tallbloke” Tattersall – most famous for being one of a few recipients of the notorious second batch of “ClimateGate emails” – for reproducing my July 14 blog post about the BBC for his UK readers. As I wrote in my piece, it’s suspect that the BBC removed the specific phrase which was the central focus of my 2020-2021 official complaint 2+ years after my complaint was deemed to have no grounds to support it.
But I don’t just write about these things, I try to get something done. I refiled my complaint with the BBC. Continue reading
Inconvenient Truth: The BBC Buries a False 2020 Climate Issue Report Title
Chris Morrison’s July 2 blog post at The Daily Sceptic, “BBC Complaints Director Takes Six-Month Sabbatical to Learn How to Promote ‘Climate Crisis’,” was reproduced at Anthony Watts’ WUWT site as a guest post the next day. After reading it at WUWT, I simply wanted to put in a comment reply saying I’d had my own encounter with that BBC Complaints Director, Colin Tregear, back in 2021, after I filed a complaint about BBC’s Radio 4 broadcast titled, “‘Reposition Global Warming as theory, not fact.” My BBC complaint detailed how there was no truth to that memo directive was evidence of the fossil fuel industry operating disinformation campaigns, so for my July 3 WUWT comment, I wanted to link straight to the BBC’s page with that false accusation phrase as its title of the broadcast episode within their series of “How They Made Us Doubt Everything” reports, and then mention how BBC concluded that my complaint was meritless . . . . but that title wasn’t there at the BBC’s otherwise unchanged program page.
It’s possible – just potentially possible – that as the result of my complaint, I managed to live rent-free long enough in someone’s mind at the BBC that they ultimately felt compelled to bury their fatal mistake of failing to check the veracity of the accusations supplied to them (plural!) by their guest in that episode, ex-Greenpeace Research Director Kert Davies. Continue reading
The ‘Climate Crisis’ vs the REAL Crisis Facing Americans: News Media Journalism Malfeasance
From all the news of ‘raging wildfires’ / ‘melting glaciers / ‘increasingly extreme weather’ / ‘hottest month ever recorded,’ it’s no surprise how that morphs into news of ‘climate anxiety’ affecting youths ranging from children to young college students. Supposedly well-intentioned journalists then add articles to their repertoire about ‘coping with the climate crisis.’ On top of that, the Christian community is implored to act on the ‘religious moral imperative to save the planet’ from an evil, profit-seeking. planet-destroying fossil fuel industry.
Legacy news media reporters never question any of this, including clarion calls from environmentalists that the public must be educated about fossil fuel usage perilously heating the planet. That call is in the demands of the latest “ExxonKnew” lawsuit, where Big Oil is being sued for causing the heat wave which supposedly killed a woman. The woman’s daughter not only demands a damages award, but also for “a public education campaign to rectify Defendants’ decades of misinformation.”
Regarding the need for public education, I agree completely . . . but entirely in the opposite direction. Continue reading at –> https://cornwallalliance.org/the-climate-crisis-vs-the-real-crisis-facing-americans-news-media-journalism-malfeasance/
(Also subsequently reproduced at WattsUpWithThat on July 5th, for which I am grateful on reaching an even larger reading audience)
“We Decry Disinfo!!” sez International Group citing Disinfo
Hat tip to Marc Morano’s ClimateDepot website for news of the otherwise ridiculous International Panel on the Information Environment’s (IPIE)’s June 2025 report “Information Integrity about Climate Science.” The report itself is 120+ pages long, but let’s cut to the chase to show how this one, like so many others which accuse the fossil fuel industry of spewing disinformation, are instead psychologically projecting how they are the ones spewing disinformation. Just like the others, this report and its key players are separated by three degrees or less from Ross Gelbspan’s utterly false “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” accusation about supposedly ‘leaked industry documents.’ Just like the others, all it takes is one errant citation in this report to shoot itself in the foot with a cannon about the whole idea of ‘industry-orchestrated’ disinformation. Just like the majority of the ExxonKnew” lawsuits, pin your collective premise on material that turns out to be disinformation promulgated by disinformers, and your credibility is out the window no matter what else you say. Continue reading