Tag Archives: Kert Davies

Summary for Policy Makers (SPM): the Sher Edling law firm

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On Oct 7, 2024, news reports (e.g. Thomas Catenacci’s “Anti-Energy Lawfare“) described the same-day release of Senator Ted Cruz’s / Rep James Comer’s investigation analysis Sher Edling, the San Francisco law firm that is – by my current count – ‘boilerplate-copying’ 18 “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuits from one place to the next, and ‘assisting’ in 4 others.

Elections matter. At the time of the Oct 7 news reports, pre-general election, the U.S. Senate was in the minority. With the Senate now firmly set in the majority and with Senator Cruz having subpoena power, that changes the situation. While his and the joint investigation with Rep Comer focuses principally on the dark money funding of Sher Edling, that focus could broaden to cover what I consider a far bigger set of fatal faults surrounding that law firm. So, first is my brief number lineup, followed by more details below for each, which include screencapture image links and blog post links supporting the particular items at greater depth: 1) provably false accusations of industry-corruption behavior. 2) Hidden original citation source. 3) Subsequent text omissions. 4) deceptively cropped images. 5) The Naomi Oreskes Problem. 6) The Dr Willie Soon false accusation. 7) Matt Edling and Victor Sher. 8) (stay tuned, I’ll likely add more to this post at a later date) Continue reading →

Multnomah v. Exxon, version 2.0: Oregon County Suing Exxon Now Suing Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project

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On Oct 4, Multnomah County amended their filing to add a gas utility company as a defendant, along with Art Robinson’s Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM); more specifically, as I will detail below, his Oregon Petition Project. My response: Oh, brother. Redux. I already dissected the spectacular blunders surrounding the 2023 Multnomah v Exxon lawsuit; that bizarre filing effort looks like little more than a cloddish plagiarized copy of Puerto Rico v Exxon, which itself was so maladroitly cobbled together that I needed to do a two-part dissection of that one, plus I had to place an additional detail three months back at the end of part 2. I didn’t cover Puerto Rico‘s sections mentioning Art Robinson’s Oregon Petition Project because my two dissection posts were long enough already. I’ll admit error on failing to mention it now, it involves one more problem potentially tying their ineptness to that of the supposedly unassociated San Francisco Sher Edling law firm and their boilerplate-copy lawsuit filings. Since somebody within the Oregon law firms seems particularly bent on pointing an arrow the size of Texas at their inexplicable apparent plagiarism blunder … well, let’s now examine that angle and where it blows up in their faces, in four distinct ways. The full amended complaint is here.      Continue reading →

California v Exxon v.2 — the plastics waste/pollution crisis lawsuit’s “Chicken Little” problem

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There’s some irony to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s 9/23/24 lawsuit speaking of “the plastic waste and pollution crisis” while only mentioning the other ‘crisis du jour’ “climate change” four times (the first instance is actually just a reference to a Canadian organization’s name). The lawsuit makes no comparison to alleged deception by the fossil fuel industry over their ‘knowledge’ of the harm of human-induced global warming. So, what possible connection(s) could there be to the efforts to smear skeptic climate scientists as ‘shills’ working for Exxon? Allow me to illustrate. Be sure to click on each link, the screencapture images will set up the big problem for AG Bonta.  Continue reading →

The prima facie Case for ‘Industry Disinfo Campaigns’ Implodes — AGAIN.

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It’s a case study on how the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits can implode – no matter where and when you land in this accusation effort hurled by enviro-activists, it always traces back to the usual suspects.

What I find astounding regarding anyone prominent regurgitating the accusation about “crooked skeptic climate scientists” / “fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns” is how they expect no readers to ever question anything they say. It’s a reckless high wire act, potentially devastating to their credibility if any part of their narrative starts to unravel. Allow me to explain, using the example of the hapless “environmental / energy policy expert” Leah Stokes, who could not keep her mouth shut about the “peer-reviewed” paper she co-authored which hurled the accusation that the “fossil fuel industry ran a disinformation campaign to – her words – “reposition global warming as theory and not fact.”  Continue reading →

“Merchant of Disinformation” – the movie. Part 4

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I can’t emphasize this enough: Naomi Oreskes is presented at congressional hearings and elsewhere as an expert on so-called ‘fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns’ – her own biography introductions at the hearings imply as much. Investigators / objective reporters / law firms representing the defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits / congressional staffers can either accept what she says or what is said about her work without question, essentially enabling her to continually to get away with what she’s been doing since 2003, or they can deeply cross examine her work for the first time ever, to find out if there’s any actual merit to the assertions she’s made over the last two decades, such as those contained within in her 2015 “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie. As I’ve shown in Parts 1, 2 and 3, her movie – supposedly exposing fossil fuel industry deception downplaying the harm of global warming – has every appearance itself of deceptively impugning the integrity of those criticizing the idea of catastrophic man-caused global warming. She and her associates fare no better in Part 4 here, the the overarching problem of the movie being her and her associates’ psychological projection hole they’ve dug for themselves that begins to resemble one the virtual size of an open pit mine.

It’s quite a slog to go through this movie. I’m doing it so objective reporters / energy company defendant law firms / potential prosecutors don’t have to. Continue reading →

“Merchant of Disinformation” – the movie. Part 3

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Not only is Naomi Oreskes the author of the 2010 “Merchants of Doubt” book / star of the 2015 same-name documentary movie, she is also now apparently trying to make some kind of inroads into influencing SCOTUS clerks, if this August 15, 2024 “Interview: Science historian Naomi Oreskes schools the Supreme Court on climate change” article from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is to be believed. There’s no indication in the article that she’s ‘schooled’ anybody there yet, but she evidently has ‘schooled’ global warming lawfare lawyers – she’s on retainer with the law firm directly handling / assisting with 22 (at the time of this blog publication) of the current U.S. “ExxonKnew”-style lawsuits. She has apparently also had some kind of influence with no less than Pope Francis.

She’s been skating on thin ice ever since her foray into the issue, but via sheer blind luck of never facing anyone questioning a word she says, she hasn’t yet fallen right through. When major high-level discussions occur regarding how, where, and why the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits should proceed, her name as an ‘expert’ on the topic is certain to be mentioned in some form. This actually already happened once, where her “Merchants” movie was brought up within the 2015-era NY state Attorney General’s office. That’s why it’s crucial for any clerks for the ruling majority of the Supreme Court to be aware, along with any other people involved in the court system – law firms for the defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits especially – or people involved in the Republican side of the U.S. congress, of how massively vulnerable she is on her assertions about the climate issue and what she terms ‘industry-led disinformation campaigns.’

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Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico v. Exxon

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A.k.a. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Exxon. Bad enough that a johnny-come-lately law firm with no prior climate damages lawsuit issue experience blindly jumped onto the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits bandwagon in late 2022 representing multiple municipalities of Puerto Rico. It was one of the more ineptly done filings I’ve seen in this lawfare litigation effort, as I showed in my two-part dissection of that lawsuit. Bad enough that a literally redundant lawsuit was filed even more ineptly just over a year later solely for the Puerto Rico city of San Juan. Ineptly – because it was almost a literal copy ‘n paste of the first lawsuit by another law firm which had no climate issue experience whatsoever, as I showed in my dissection of that one. Redundant – because San Juan was already covered in the first lawsuit.

Now we have ‘redundant redux,’ in the form of no less than the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling attempting to get in on the act with this Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico July 15th, 2024 filing. Continue reading →

POOF! ( … Ross – who?)

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Just like that, a huge number of posts by the late Ross Gelbspan at his longtime Facebook page, gone. Vanished overnight quite recently, because a Google search for the account url still generated results as though the account existed on July 21 when I got this screencapture. A week later … Google says the account is definitely MIA. For congressional investigators / attorneys defending energy companies in “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, the account is gone, but potentially not forgotten. As I’ve said before, to fully understand where we are in the climate issue – particularly lately with the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits ‘climate lawfare’ angle – it’s best if everyone understands how we got to where we are right now. The man may have become less useful in his advanced age in the past few years, but his Facebook page did minimally have one particular use, and investigators would be wise to recover it when the need arises. Continue reading →

The Supran Missed Opportunity

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It wasn’t for a lack of trying on my part right before the May 1 “Denial, Disinfo & Doublespeak” U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing to warn staffers of the GOP committee members that their star witness, Geoffrey Supran, was massively vulnerable to withering questions about his alleged “expertise” on the existence of ‘fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns. I even went so far as to turn my emails to those staffers into an open letter to widen the chance of other Senate GOP staffers seeing my alert, where they might relay the opportunity to the proper people. Marc Morano of ClimateDepot retweeted my alert about my blog post, which enabled my Tweet to achieve nearly 700+ views, when my others usually only get tens of views.

Alas, to no avail. Even worse now, Geoffrey Supran actually walked into that hearing with his Prepared Written Testimony where he all but handed his head to the GOP Committee members on a silver platter. Or, in another visual analogy, he not only brought in the rope to hang himself, he dragged in the gallows behind him. Or all but handed the execution rifle to the GOP members with his written testimony and supplied the single bullet to kill his credibility.

The man is exactly that inept. Watch this:  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.

Continue reading →