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

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

“Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil For Climate Deaths” Part 2

I wrote about the main fault with the ludicrous draft paper submitted to the Harvard Law Review in Part 1, namely the paper authors’ enslavement to a particular set of literally worthless ‘leaked industry memos’, and the funding association of one of the authors, David Arkush. But as usual, there’s more. Arkush apparently has quite a basic problem with making authoritative statements — hold that thought for just a bit. First, let me say I don’t simply write about these collective situations, I try to get something done about them. Continue reading

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

The breaking ‘political climate news’ last week concerned the Harvard 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