Follow the [Oreskes et al.] money / hypocrisy

I was alerted to this particular “The Mann” / Naomi Oreskes Twitter situation in the screencapture below back in late April right at the beginning of my home residence upheaval, and only just today have a window of opportunity to offer some observations. Dr Michael Mann was quote-retweeting Oreskes’ tweet about a CNBC article which essentially implied fossil fuel money bought influence with Republican officials. Dr Mann, you might notice here, didn’t do anything to bolster his personal image with that tweet. This doesn’t work out well for Oreskes, either, or as it turns out, for her long ago “Merchants of Doubt” co-author Erik Conway.

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Background: Key Word / Names Checklist – what to look when prominent accusers yell “Big Oil disinformation” / “crooked skeptic scientists

[Updated 5/22/23] 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.”)

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).

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.

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Municipalities of Puerto Rico v. Exxon Mobil, et al. Part 2: RICO-teering

Bad enough that this lawsuit filing from the Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman LLC law firm has a no-win appearance of being either a mismanaged effort guided by the Sher Edling law firm without any disclosure of that partnership, or it appears to be a spectacularly inept and possibly unethical plagiarizing of the accusation content and other bits from the 16 boilerplate copy Sher Edling lawsuits. I detailed all of that in my Part 1 blog post (handily reproduced at WUWT, enabling me to reach a wider reading audience).

Exponentially worse for Milberg Coleman is the widespread news assertions that their lawsuit filing “is unique” because it is “the first climate case against fossil fuel companies alleging harms against cities as a class of plaintiffs, and the first climate case to include Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) claims” as if this tactic is some kind of new idea. Many ‘news’ outlets belched out this RICO idea without questioning anything about it. It seems this mob is oblivious to the central hallmark of far-leftists, namely how they project what they do as accusations of what their political opposites do.

Why is all of this bad for Milberg Coleman? Because their RICO tactic doesn’t point to anything done by ‘Big Coal & Oil’ and skeptic climate scientists, it instead points an arrow the size of Texas at one of the core promulgators of the “crooked skeptic scientists” accusation. Continue reading

It’s Cute, How Hard They Try.

One of the things the political far-left does, including enviro-activists, is seemingly make assertions that they have no hopes of supporting while crossing their fingers that nobody ever questions them about those assertions (which seems to be backfiring of late in an epic way on a non-environmental topic). Additionally, with regard to global warming activists, they seem to have literally no self awareness of how ironic their clamoring is about guilt-by-association tainting the credibility of the people they criticize, compared to their own hugely troublesome associations. It’s almost endearing, the way they valiantly attempt to keep their beloved issue alive in the face of potentially deep investigations which could expose their fatally crippled thought processes and their troubling associations.

I have my fun with using famous movie lines to illustrate my analysis points. One from Annette Benning’s character in the 2019 “Captain Marvel” movie applies to an article topic a prominent climate figure alerted me to. Continue reading

The Big Naomi Oreskes Hole in PBS Frontline’s Part 3 “The Power of Big Oil” Train Wreck

Predictably, Frontline’s Part 3 program offered viewers only half or less of the full story they were telling, which is why the program as a whole could be labeled “disinformation,” but the program lost all the focus it had in Parts 1 and 2 on the ‘corrupt fossil fuel industry spreading disinformation’ accusation angle. I’ll cover that bizarre twist in highlight form toward the end of this post. The far larger problem overall now is the very weird “Naomi Oreskes Hole” that Frontline and Oreskes herself inexplicably dug for themselves. Her inability to keep her mouth shut on various items is the gift that keeps on giving; ammo handed on a silver platter to potential congressional investigators and law firms defending energy companies in global warming lawsuits. Continue reading

“CBS Sunday Morning” Puts all its Eggs in Chicken Little’s ‘Reposition Global Warming as Theory (Not Fact)’ Basket

On — of all days — Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022. I’m not kidding, that’s exactly what the CBS Sunday Morning program did with their “Suing over climate change: Taking fossil fuel companies to court” report. In doing so, they telegraphed to the whole country how enviro-activists indeed only have one viable-looking weapon in their arsenal when it comes to supporting their claim that fossil fuel companies deceived the public into thinking no harm was happening while ‘knowing’ their products were causing catastrophic man-caused global warming. Continue reading