Tag Archives: David Arkush

The Political Suicide of Pushing “Reckless Climate Endangerment”

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It’s a 100% certain bet that none of the folks at the Public Citizen ‘consumer advocacy organization’ read my GelbspanFiles blog about the 100% certain inevitable crash of their prior ‘prosecute for Clima-Homicide™’ proposal (my post got even wider worldwide viewing as a guest post at WUWT, complete with a handy ‘you people that stupid?’ meme image at the top). Otherwise, they would not have come up with this announcement on October 15, (er … hold that thought until the very end of this post) October 17, 2024 regarding their latest proposal idea to prosecutors:

“We’re building the case for criminal prosecution of Big Oil brick by brick. Here is the first “prosecution memo” that lays out the case for filing, and winning, criminal charges for “reckless endangerment.” The law is clear. Barriers are only political.”

What the law is actually fundamentally clear about is that when presenting a case to a judge, the evidence you present must actually support your accusation. If it does not . . . the case is dismissed. If you’ve got no alternative evidence, that’s the end of the line on your effort.  Period.  What these people at the Public Citizen group are either oblivious to – or actually know but hope nobody notices – is that their ‘evidence’ for the claim that the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns in collusion with skeptic scientist ‘shills’ is literally worthless.

Public Citizen is not building a case ‘brick-by-brick,’ either, they appear to be doing nothing more than copying line-by-line from what already serves as ‘cornerstone evidence’ in one form or another about ‘industry-led disinformation campaigns’ in basically all of the currently filed “ExxonKnew” U.S. lawsuits, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico and points in between. I’m not exaggerating. What Public Citizen is doing is committing political suicide by again emphasizing the fatal fault plaguing the collective effort to accuse Big Oil of running disinformation campaigns to deceive the public. 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), 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.

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Retract the “Climate Homicide” paper

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Did I mention that I don’t merely write about what’s wrong with the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation, I do something about it? Oh, yeah, in my previous blog post about the opportunity for congressional investigators to expose one of the ‘weak link’ people promulgating that accusation.

I haven’t stopped there – my latest concerns an action I initiated over a year ago, and updated just days ago. Continue reading →

The Be-All / End-All “Chicken Little” Advertorial: When It’s All You Got, You. Still. Have. Nothing.

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1) If you were going to adamantly suggest that ‘fossil fuel company executives and the shill experts they hired to spread disinformation’ should be charged with climate homicide; and/or 2) if you were going to advocate that regulatory bodies / organizations have the power to enforce laws against the spread of fossil fuel industry disinformation and persecute those who break them; and/or 3) if you tout yourself as an expert on such industry disinformation while making yourself available for law firms currently suing fossil fuel for global warming damages — it would be political suicide to put all your eggs in the one basket of a so-called newspaper disinformation advertorial titled “Who told you the earth was warming, Chicken Little?” if you never bothered to find out if the advertorial was ever published anywhere . . . . wouldn’t it? When it never was, you’d be in huge trouble if you recklessly continued to promulgate an accusation devoid of evidence to support it, wouldn’t you?

No joke, the collective enviro-activist lobby is completely enslaved to that “Chicken Little” ‘disinformation ad’ accusation as they try to dupe the public into believing an advertorial having that headline is smoking gun evidence of sinister fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns. There might just be a new development about this – the question is whether somebody within that mob has tipped their hand in the last few weeks to reveal they now know the “Chicken Little” ad is worthless.

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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 →

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

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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.”)

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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 →