Tag Archives: Kert Davies

Reposition Graduate Degrees as Theory rather than Fact — the Climate Homicide Litigation version

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In David Arkush’s March 10, 2024 The New Republic article “The Case for Prosecuting Fossil Fuel Companies for Homicide,” he stated,

Fossil fuel companies have long understood—with shocking accuracy—that their fossil fuel products would cause, in their own words, “globally catastrophic” climate change. Instead of shifting their business model or at least alerting the public to this threat, the companies concealed what they knew and executed a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign to spread doubt about climate science.

I’ve covered ‘scholarly homicide paper’ article author Arkush twice before, here and here, concerning his one-trick pony sources for his accusation. His paper should be yanked from publication due to being devoid of evidence proving fossil fuel company executives committed climate homicide by carrying out disinformation campaigns. No different – I suggested here – than how Masters / PhD degrees should be yanked when they are devoid of the same basic evidence for the same basic accusation. Arkush is back again, and this time he inadvertently handed one more major gift on a silver platter to congressional investigators and/or the law firms representing the defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits. Continue reading →

City of Chicago v. BP PLC

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Nice of the 2/20/24 Chicago Sun-Times “Chicago sues five giant oil companies” article to inadvertently point directly to what the potentially lawsuit-killing combined problem is with this latest “ExxonKnew” lawfare effort: the apparent need to bring in the California law firm Sher Edling for assistance, and the collective idea that fossil fuel companies knew of the harm of “climate change” fifty years ago but hid that from the public. Same story at the Chicago Tribune. The same Tribune which reported fifty years ago (2024-50=1974) that the changes in the climate caused by the burning of fossil fuels was global cooling.

A climate changing to a cooler one in 1974. A climate changing to a hotter one in 2024. You can’t have it both ways. So much for elemental fact-checking / investigative journalism in 2024. And of course, neither newspaper could be bothered to check the veracity of accusations presented in this – yes it is – latest boilerplate copy filing straight out of Sher Edling’s San Francisco offices. How do I know it’s another boilerplate copy where Chicago’s own city lawyers very likely had little or no input to offer? Let’s dive into Chicago v BP PLC et al.: (my own PDF download file here, if that link ceases to function) Continue reading →

Ross Gelbspan, June 1, 1939 – January 27, 2024

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I am truly sad abut the death of the namesake for my GelbspanFiles blog, and I must first explain why, when some – critics especially – might guess I’d be dancing on his grave. That’s not the way I view life. I don’t just simply want to have a nice day myself, I want everyone to have a nice day, to be happy, and to do good not only for personal betterment but also for the benefit of everyone. If we make very unwise decisions which harm or mislead others, we all should be held accountable, myself included, and be allowed opportunities to atone for our mistakes. We all learn from these teachable moments and become better when forgiveness is sincerely asked. It makes us all better as a result.

Death is final. When ordinary people lived a life filled with dishonest choices apparently for no other reason than personal gain and did nothing to atone for this, they’re now a permanent embarrassment to family members, “someone never to be named” among former associates and former admirers. If they were duped into making supremely unwise choices, well, it’s sad that they were such a dunce. If they deliberately chose to be dishonest, their legacy is far worse. When this involves prominent public figures, their legacies become little more than teachable lessons: “you don’t want the public to learn about you this way.”

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Makah Indian Tribe v. Exxon / Shoalwater Indian Tribe v. Exxon

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No rest for the weary. Back on December 21st, I thought the little-publicized news of the fisherman’s trade association plaintiffs’ self-withdrawal of their PCFFA v Chevron global warming lawsuit was a Christmas gift to the skeptic side of the climate issue. Maybe the plaintiffs fully comprehended the futility of their lawsuit while also finding out how their choice of lawsuit handlers, the San Francisco Sher Edling law firm, was perhaps not qualified to handle the case. However, the situation is instead one step forward and two steps back when, it comes to being done with this climate lawfare litigation war. It turns out Sher Edling had filed a pair of brand-new lawsuits on Dec 20 for two Native American communities in Washington state, Makah Tribe v. Exxon and Shoalwater Tribe v. Exxon.

The news of this latest pair of filings was also oddly little-publicized in minor news outlets, compared to widespread news of the prior-most-recent one, the ‘watershed moment’ California v Exxon sensation ( ahem – keep an eye on the apparent grand unifying theme). But these two lawsuits might be also be considered a ‘Christmas gift’ that’ll keep on giving, not only to the defendants’ law firms, but also to objective journalists and potentially GOP House investigators. Continue reading →

Why Would the NY AG Office Care about a Particular Movie Trailer Video?

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The Nov 29, 2023 “Amicus Brief Details Climate Litigation Campaign’s Political Origins” at the Climate Litigation Watch website described the situation surrounding the most recent release of docs out of the New York Attorney General’s office that were demanded by the Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) watchdog group. The docs – 129 pages of emails – surround Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF)’s Lee Wasserman lobbying the NY AG office to launch basically an “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuit holding fossil fuel producers accountable for causing global warming, where among other efforts, Wasserman arranged a meeting at the AG office for ex-Ozone Action / ex-Greenpeacers John Passacantando and Roland “Kert” Davies. The teaser from Wasserman to the attorneys was that the duo were about to launch a supposedly devastating news event in which skeptic climate scientist Dr Willie Soon would be portrayed as an oil industry shill.

Among the (redundantly copied in some cases) Wasserman/ AG office email exchanges were several in which the correspondents were trying to locate a person named David Brown, who somehow factored into all the efforts. RFF Director Lee Wasserman thought this was a great idea. It turns out he was formerly the head of prior-NY AG Elliot Spitzer’s Investment Protection Bureau office, and ultimately, he was located and had a phone conversation with at least one of the attorneys. The potential problem here is how he later chimed in via email with a seemingly out-of-the-blue reference to a “movie trailer” link, which he must have mentioned in the phone conversation. Why mention that among efforts to nail ‘Big Oil’ to the wall? Well, click on the link the fellow provided, and you’ll see a hint of how that factors in:

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ii9zGFDtc”

There’s more, of course. There always is. Continue reading →

Al Gore: “You Always Hurt the One You Love”

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The whole accusation about the fossil fuel industry running disinformation campaigns employing skeptic scientist ‘shills’ to deceive the public about the certainty of man-caused catastrophic global warming is enslaved to a pair of literally worthless, never-implemented ‘industry memo sets.’ It’s been the best the enviro-activists have ever had in their accusation arsenal, going all the way back to the 1990s. The accusation is unsustainable, it will ultimately sink. It’s a mathematical certainty.

Choose any one of myriad questionable situations surrounding the apparently interconnected people who promulgated the narratives about the memos, and you have the tip of the proverbial iceberg that can sink this whole thing. Investigators with more power and influence that I have will be seeking answers about those questionable situations. For quite some time, I wondered if there was no connection at all between Naomi Oreskes and Kert Davies, but as I briefly showed in my May 21, 2020 blog post, there certainly is a questionable situation involving those to together.

Investigators will be asking why Davies was lurking in the doorway of Oreskes’ appearance at a pretend House hearing.

They’ll be asking about Al Gore’s connection to the others. Why would Oreskes say she’s on a first-name basis with Gore, when all he did was cite a single ‘100% science consensus’ figure of hers in his 2006 movie? Why would Gore say Ross Gelbspan discovered the “reposition global warming” memos – the set that gained their first ongoing media traction via Gelbspan and John Passacantando’s Ozone Action publicity about them, when Gore quoted from the set years before Gelbspan ever mentioned them?

And what did Gore mean, in the situation reported by the LA Times, where …..  Continue reading →

Background: Was It All One Big ‘Oopsy’?

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Call this blog post a combo ‘editorial’ / ‘backgrounder’ on the overarching inevitable problem the accusers of “industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists” will face. It’s simply a matter of time before any one of the 29 current “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits finally does go in front of a judge or jury to decide on its merits. This blog post concerns what the deciders need to know about the political accusation angles within these cases. I doubt that the people behind the “growing tide” of ExxonKnew-style / “growing pool” of lawsuits actually have any intention of winning via jury decisions; the objective quite likely is to intimidate the smaller of the defendant companies into thinking if they just cry “uncle” and pay out what they believe is a settlement fee they can somehow afford in order to keep their company alive for the foreseeable future. This was an effective tactic to force the tobacco industry into submission, an inevitable conclusion since tobacco smoke is harmful and Big Tobacco knew it, and the people filing lawsuits against Big Tobacco knew Big Tobacco knew it. Everybody knew it. A person would have to be spectacularly stupid to believe inhaling nothing bad could result from inhaling burning particulates big enough to see.

What the fossil fuel industry knew and what they did is an entirely different and uncomparable situation. Therein lies the problem for the pushers of the “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits and the core clique of enviro-activists who’ve promulgated the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation for decades, which is one of the two pillars these lawsuits stand on, and on which arguably the entire ‘climate crisis’ issue stands on. The core clique of enviro-activists may sincerely believe with all their heart in the soundness of the other pillar, namely the notion that “the climate science of man-caused global warming is settled.” None of them are climate scientists or have any expertise in the field, but as true believers, it’s fair to say their innocent ignorance about the full science is forgivable. The democratic right speech to free speech includes the right to be incorrect about a matter. The potentially fatal problem for them, and the key to comprehending why the whole tobacco industry settlements tactic will ultimately backfire in epic fashion is what’s seen in the truism statement below, as it pertains to the accusation that ‘fossil fuel executives employed skeptic climate scientist shills who spewed falsehoods in disinformation campaigns just like the tobacco industry did.’

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“For YOUR viewing only …” / “unlisted and not to be shared”

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Just one more thing (because there’s always one more thing) regarding what I illustrated in my dissection of the two weeks-old California v Exxon lawsuit, about the intellectually dishonest way the mainstream media was implying it was some kind of new and wondrous situation. Continue reading →

People of the State of California v. Exxon Mobil Corporation

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Throw another one onto the “growing number” (growing number!) of “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits which insinuate that ‘Big Oil’ knew the burning of fossil fuels harmed the environment but deceived the public by employing ‘shill’ climate scientists in ‘disinformation campaigns’ to say there was no harm. This latest Sept 15, 2023 filing appears to be no different than the 31 other “Exxon Knew” lawsuits I’ve dissected where it fits a pattern of repeating (plagiarizing?) material out of the others, from dubious ‘science certainty’ assertions to corruption accusations worded carelessly enough that they potentially stray into reckless disregard territory. I’ll get into how this latest one fits that pattern, but first, let me illustrate how the ‘news reports’ about it reinforce the problem that we no longer have an objective news reporting media, we have a propaganda media telling the public – working at the most basic of intellectually dishonest levels – about these lawsuits. Continue reading →