Tag Archives: Ben Franta

List of ‘Weak Links’ Accusers for the “Crooked Skeptic Climate Scientists” Accusation — Summary for Policymakers

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This list will be an ongoing compilation, with updates noted in red, similar to my list of global warming lawsuits. Additions to this list will be ref’d in this top paragraph.

These are the chain of people one increment back from the main promulgators who’ve pushed the false accusation about ‘shill skeptic scientist on Big Oil’s payroll who were directed to reposition global warming as theory‘ ever since the 1990s. I’ve mentioned their names on many occasions in prior blog posts on the way these individuals could fold like cheap suits while under oath at investigative hearings, when hit with any inquiries on how they support their accusations and who exactly their sources are for the specific accusations they were taught to dutifully regurgitate. I’ve even made a humorous meme image to convey how lame they are and how willing they might be to turn ‘states evidence’ under tough prosecutorial proceedings simply to reduce the jail time or civil court penalties they’d be facing.

It’s likely that U.S. Senate and House congressional investigators / Department of Justice investigators / energy company defendants’ law firms / objective news reporters may not recognize many of the names below and thus would not be aware of the benefits of hitting these weak links people with the toughest possible questions, in order to get to the absolute bottom of where the utterly false accusation originates about ‘skeptic climate scientists being paid to lie in disinformation campaigns.’ The whole accusation, 1991 to the present day, is a house of cards, a Jenga tower on the edge of total collapse. The top-most promulgators of the accusation may likely plead the 5th, and thus forestall the collapse. All it will take to bring it all down is for any one of the weak links to cave into pressure on what they actually know.  Continue reading →

Casquejo et al. v Shell PLC Part 1 – Potential problems in the [M.I.A.] lawsuit document

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My list of “ExxonKnew” lawsuits I’ve dissected mentions at the top how it excludes American filings which never bring up the accusation about ‘liars-for-hire scientists on the payroll of Big Oil.’ Same actually applies to lawsuits filed outside of the U.S., such as the Peruvian Farmer’s one against a German energy company and Greenpeace’s one against an Italian energy company. Regarding this one filed in the UK on Dec 9th, a.k.a. “Casquejo and others v Shell plc” I cannot yet find the actual document that was filed. When I do, I will either amend this post to say there’s no “crooked skeptic scientists” accusation within it … or else I’ll dissect it as Part 2. What I have spotted – almost immediately in news reports after being alerted to it – are tell-tale indicators which prompts me to wager it will mimic the U.S. ones. Observe the following: Continue reading →

Ben Franta All But Declares ‘Victory will be achieved,’ concerning Multnomah v Exxon

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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 →

The Political Suicide of Pushing “Climate Homicide” … & muscling in on someone else’s “ExxonKnew” lawsuits territory?

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On June 26th just a little over a week ago, David “climate homicide” Arkush and co-authors at his Public Citizen group put out a press release titled “New Memo Details Legal Case for Prosecuting Big Oil for Extreme Heat Deaths,” containing a link to a 51 page proposal for prosecutors in the state of Arizona (Democrat ones, of course including the state’s Attorney General), specifically noting:

Though this memo asks a particular question — how officials in Maricopa County could pursue reckless manslaughter or second degree murder prosecutions for deaths caused by the July 2023 heat wave — its analysis is relevant in most jurisdictions where prosecutors might seek justice for climate victims.

I already had a tag category at GelbspanFiles dating back over a year concerning Arkush’s ludicrous ultra-lawfare fixation. He’s now taken that fixation likely beyond its breaking point. It’s one thing to push the bizarre “charge fossil fuel companies with climate homicide” idea in ‘scholarly papers,’ but it’s quite another to propose the idea straight to state prosecutors. That’s what he’s presenting in the above press release. Forgive the rather morbid visual analogy here – the man virtually points a loaded revolver at his head and the heads of his co-authors and practically asks law firms defending energy companies in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits to pull the triggers for him.

Continue reading →

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 →

Background: Key Word / Names Checklist – what to look when prominent accusers yell “Big Oil disinformation” / “crooked skeptic scientists”

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[Updated, added items 9/25/24] What follows in this post is a sort of work-in-progress, the “Background info” collection I referred to in my March 31, 2023 post. If I may suggest it for those who might end up investigating the clique of enviro-activists who’ve long accused skeptic climate scientists of industry corruption, bookmark it as a growing reference to utilize when the prosecution direction does eventually turn 180° against these accusers. Like I’ve implied more than once here at GelbspanFiles, the central promulgators of the false accusation about the fossil fuel industry employing shill scientists have been extraordinarily lucky so far, but what they recklessly push is simply unsustainable. It will sink. It is a mathematical certainty. Continue reading →

“Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths” (a.k.a. “we still only have worthless evidence and suspect sources backing this.”)

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The breaking ‘political climate news’ last week concerned the Harvard Environmental Law Review’s draft version of a scholarly paper (not due to be actually published until 2024) posing the idea that oil companies could be criminally charged with committing ‘climate homicide resulting from deceiving the public about the harm of burning fossil fuels.’ Particularly ludicrous to me was the statement in one of those news reports by one of the paper’s authors concerning the pitch of this idea to plaintiffs:

We have some indication they’re at least listening and curious,” said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. “To someone who knows the criminal law, there’s a moment of ‘What!?’ and then, ‘It’s OK. It’s not crazy.’

Not only is this notion crazy, it would be an act of political suicide. Continue reading →

It’s Cute, How Hard They Try.

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One of the things the political far-left does, including enviro-activists, is seemingly make assertions that they have no hopes of supporting while crossing their fingers that nobody ever questions them about those assertions (which seems to be backfiring of late in an epic way on a non-environmental topic). Additionally, with regard to global warming activists, they seem to have literally no self awareness of how ironic their clamoring is about guilt-by-association tainting the credibility of the people they criticize, compared to their own hugely troublesome associations. It’s almost endearing, the way they valiantly attempt to keep their beloved issue alive in the face of potentially deep investigations which could expose their fatally crippled thought processes and their troubling associations.

I have my fun with using famous movie lines to illustrate my analysis points. One from Annette Benning’s character in the 2019 “Captain Marvel” movie applies to an article topic a prominent climate figure alerted me to. Continue reading →

The Power of the Li’l Green Group in PBS Frontline’s “The Power of Big Oil”

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On Easter Sunday, CBS News spectacularly reinforced how the collective enviro-activist community has only one primary go-to source of viable-looking evidence to indict the fossil fuel industry of running disinformation campaigns designed to undercut the ‘certainty’ of catastrophic man-caused global warming. With Frontline’s “The Power of Big Oil” broadcast on Tuesday April 19, the Public Broadcasting Service began its spectacular reinforcement of exactly where the tiny source is for that unsupportable accusation, and how it dates all the way back to the mid-, late-1990s with two key promulgators. But before anyone examines the faults in this latest mainstream media journalism malfeasance, they should never lose sight of what the two central hallmarks are for extreme political leftists:

Frontline’s “The Power of Big Oil” is a case study on how this all comes together in one presentation, Continue reading →

Amicus brief, Brule, CCI, Farrell, Franta, Lewandowsky, Oreskes, Supran

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Here we go again. When I said in my December 14, 2018 blog post (and its Part 2), that enviro-activists only have a one-trick pony to use in their character assassination efforts against skeptic climate scientists, that’s no exaggeration. Their lack of diversity isn’t restricted to only minor league ‘reporters’ lately, it’s the only thing the most famous accusers have in their arsenal as evidence of a ‘skeptics / fossil fuel industry executives disinformation’ conspiracy. Look no farther for that than the 1/29/19 “Brief Of Amici Curiae, Robert Brule, Center For Climate Integrity, Justin Farrell, Benjamin Franta, Stephan Lewandowsky, Naomi Oreskes, and Geoffrey Supran“* for the San Mateo / Imperial Beach / Marin / Santa Cruz v Chevron, California global warming lawsuits. Instead of presenting a more convincing argument for repeated use of the same old ‘leaked memo evidence,’ this little amici curiae group only amplifies how much of a problem it creates. Continue reading →