Tag Archives: Geoffrey Supran

Headline: “U.S. House Panel Commits Political Suicide; Expands Inquiry into Climate Disinformation by ‘Big Oil’”

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That was the widespread news headline, in one form or another (minus the ‘political suicide’ bit, of course) on Thursday, September 16th, 2021. The main news item was that Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, and sophomore-term House member Ro Khanna, D-Ca, sent letters hours earlier to four major fossil fuel companies and two lobbying groups, demanding that they appear in front of the Oversight Committee on October 28, and that they bring documents with them showing how they were engaged in — no joke! — “in a long-running, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming.” Those were the actual words in the nearly identical letters, which can be viewed in their entirety at the links within the Oversight Committees website page’s press release.

How could this House Oversight Committee stunt be revealed to be act of political suicide? If the ‘defense witnesses’ at the October 28 hearing decide to seize the leadership opportunity on this, they could show how the ‘industry executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists in disinformation campaigns‘ accusation only points a huge arrow at where the real disinformation efforts are apparently seen in this issue, a core clique of enviro-activists who’ve pushed a pair of never-implemented, ‘leaked industry memo sets’ that are worthless to prove any “industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation” exists anywhere. Plus, the sheer lack of viable evidence behind the accusation points an even bigger arrow at the basic journalistic malfeasance on the part of mainstream media news reporters, when it comes to their decades-long failure to ask probing questions about the basic accusation, which dates back to the 1990s. Continue reading →

Naomi Oreskes – the gift that keeps on giving, Pt 1

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Harvard science history professor Naomi Oreskes was one of the witnesses appearing under oath at the 10/23/19 House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s “Examining the Oil Industry’s Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change” hearing. A pair of missteps while responding to questions didn’t bolster her appearance as a detached, objective, expert witness on the complicated topic of alleged fossil fuel industry disinformation efforts. She also offered written testimony, … and in doing so about a couple of details, she once again reinforced how she’s not particularly adept about keeping her mouth shut on items that have the potential of opening up a Pandora’s Box about the history of the tactics used by enviro-activists to accuse skeptic climate scientists of being ‘industry-paid shills spreading disinformation.’ Continue reading →

“Brief Of Amici Curiae, Robert Brulle .. Oreskes .. & Geoffrey Supran” Redux — the Baltimore version

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Friend of the Court participant Geoffrey Supran trumpeted this Baltimore filing event last week as though it was some marvelous new development in the area of global warming lawsuits. It isn’t. It’s essentially a boilerplate regurgitation of the amici curiae Supran and his associates filed back in early January in California, all the way down to the conclusions which Supran quoted in his Tweet about this one. He inadvertently reinforces this copycat problem by noting how the file can be downloaded from the Sher Edling law firm — the same firm with 9 boilerplate global warming lawsuits against energy companies which I’ve detailed in my Sher Edling “boilerplate”-tagged posts as being enslaved to a solitary piece of worthless evidence used to indict skeptic climate scientists as peddlers of industry-orchestrated disinformation. What Supran does here is reinforce a particularly damaging fatal flaw within those lawsuits. Continue reading →

Reposition Global Warming as Theory Rather than Fact Redux, 22 Apr 2019

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A strange pair of same-day appearances barely over a month ago of that supposedly ‘leaked industry strategy memo phrase’ are an indicator of how people who can’t stop repeating it seem blissfully ignorant regarding the way its less-than-three-degree separation from Ross Gelbspan — and all the related fatal problems surrounding that — could potentially torpedo the legacies of the prominent people who’ve long promulgated it as evidence of the fossil fuel industry conspiring with skeptic climate scientists to undercut the alleged ‘certainty’ of man-caused global warming. Watch this. 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 →

Timeline History and Inconvenient Truths of Ross Gelbspan’s and Al Gore’s “reposition global warming” Phrase

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The idea of man-caused global warming is especially effective because it can be pounded into practically everybody’s head via three easily memorized talking points. Global warming believers need only to counter dry recitations of skeptic science material with:

  1. assertions that the sheer numbers of ‘climate scientists’ on the IPCC side indicates this to be the overwhelming consensus opinion
  2. claims about leaked memo evidence proving skeptics are paid industry money to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” – dupe the public, in other words
  3. the obvious conclusion that reporters aren’t obligated to give fair balance to skeptics because of the previous two points.

In a nutshell, settled science, crooked skeptics, reporters may ignore skeptics — bam, bam, bam.

A timeline of where, how and when that “reposition global warming” phrase first appeared and where it prominently pops up afterward is something global warming believers would hate, since it might prompt a total loss of faith in the validity of that central accusation point. The loss could cascade into questions of whether the science actually is settled in the face of skeptics’ science-based criticisms, and people may also start to wonder about the ‘fair media balance’ idea, since they might not readily recall instances where skeptics actually received that from mainstream media reporters. Continue reading →