Tag Archives: John Passacantando

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 →

Where is Ross Gelbspan these days? 2023 Edition

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Back on November 30, 2022, I wrote a blog post about Ross Gelbspan’s most visible recent activity at his Facebook page, which concerned a couple of less-than-well-ought-out Facebook comments on his part. For the purposes of this blog post as it concerns his activities that may interest investigators sometime in the near future, I created a new blog category tag just for these specific posts. All part of a larger pattern on his part, you see. Time for another update, albeit on a different angle: money. 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.’

Continue reading →

Bernie wuvs Kert – and shows why any Federal prosecution of Big Oil should be aimed 180° the other way

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The climate issue only has two legs to stand on, the claim that the science is settled, and the accusation that fossil fuel company executives colluded with skeptic climate scientists via disinformation campaigns to undercut the ‘settled science.’ Give a round of applause to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and three of his closer Senate friends whose attempt to shore up that second leg on July 31st demonstrated that no matter who you are as a prominent public figure hurling the accusation, there you are: enslaved to either both or just one set of literally worthless ‘leaked industry memos’ as proof for your accusation, basically traceable back to a fellow named Kert Davies who currently runs the Climate Files website, and who dates back in his highly suspect long-term promulgation of the two ‘memos’ sets to the 1990s. But this dicey enslavement situation doesn’t stop there. Via recently released Freedom of Information Law (“FOIL”) documents out of the New York State Attorney General’s office, that ‘love affair’ apparently applied to AG Eric Schneiderman’s office back in 2015 while further corroborating the interconnectedness of Kert Davies with other suspicious character assassination efforts against Exxon and scientists who are skeptical about catastrophic man-caused global warming.

Allow me, at the end of this post, to throw in a zinger about Hunter Biden’s connection to the Clima-Change™ issue as a counterpoint to the Senator Sanders situation. First, though, watch this: 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 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 →

Covering Climate Now, 3/2/23: ‘Fox News Lies About Elections & Repositions Global Warming as Theory (Not Fact).’

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For any of the folks at last week’s Heartland Institute climate conference (and any others I’ve contacted recently) who heard me say the worthless “reposition global warming” ‘leaked industry memos’ is the literal best ammunition that enviro-activist accusers have in their arsenal as evidence that the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns, that was no exaggeration. And as we all know, the primary hallmark of far leftists is the way they project their mindset onto the people they accuse of treachery, so when we see the Covering Climate Now group, a supplier of biased, one-sided climate info to 500+ news media outlets, publish a March 2 “FOX Doesn’t Just Lie About Elections” hit piece castigating the Fox News network with a subheadline that reads ….

The network is part of a climate disinformation ecosystem that journalism has to confront.

…. it is an arrow the size of Texas pointing to who it actually is who spews disinformation and who should be exposed for exactly what they are doing. Especially when Covering Climate Now feels totally compelled to support their accusation with ye olde “reposition global warming” memos that date all the way back to when the co-founder of CCNow first used them in a pure disinformation effort back in 1997. That’s how old this pathetic effort is, and why I put the comical “ye olde” modifying noun in front of those memos’ notorious name.

Continue reading →

“I really wanted in.”

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What does it look like if a person says, “I want in to the world of ecological protection”? What does that even mean?

I know of someone who had that exact generic wish. As usual with any problem surrounding anyone involved in the promulgation of the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation …… there’s always more problems. Continue reading →

Who Didn’t Pay the Internet Bill??

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I’m talking about the lights going out at two websites, Ross Gelbspan’s beloved “The Heat is Online” and Greenpeace USA’s beloved “Greenpeace Investigations.”

Somebody forgot to pay the electric bill? Just askin.’ Continue reading →