City of Hoboken v. ExxonMobil, et al.

These lawsuits suing energy companies ‘to recover the costs’ of damages from global warming are really stacking up now. In addition to Imperial Beach, San Mateo, Richmond, Santa Cruz, Rhode Island, Baltimore, Honolulu, the District of Columbia — just to name a few — Hoboken, New Jersey is among the very latest communities to unwisely join this collection with their with their September 2 filing, Why is this unwise? If the industry defendants’ lawyers decide to prominently challenge the veracity of the core accusation within the lawsuit, namely that fossil fuel industry executives employed ‘shill’ skeptic climate scientists in disinformation campaigns to deliberately deceive the public about the harm of global warming, it could not only expose how Hoboken officials didn’t undertake basic due diligence to check the basic veracity of the accusation, it could also torpedo all the rest of the lawsuits across the country in a similar manner, while further exposing how the mainstream media completely overlooked the obvious faults in these lawsuits and in the 25 year+ history of the basic accusation and the core clique of people who’ve promulgated it. Continue reading

When ‘Reporting’ looks more like Propagandizing

“Ok, student reporters — here’s everything you need to know about the fossil fuel industry’s sinister disinformation campaign to spread lies undercutting the certainty of man-caused global warming which employed shill skeptic scientists, and here’s the professional researcher who can assist you with writing a report about that very conspiracy.”

Anybody spot the main problem there? Yes, we might wonder about the fate of the student reporters/researchers or the postdoctoral researchers/faculty members if they dared to question anything presented to them, but a bigger question remains at the end of this excise concerning the ‘professional researcher,’ and the nature of his involvement in the work these reporters/researchers undertook. Continue reading

What Naomi Didn’t Say, Sharon & Sheldon Did

There are golden opportunities for GOP congressional representatives or energy company defendant lawyers to hammer ‘expert’ witness testimonies about the validity of the ‘corporate-funded global warming skeptic liars-for-hire’ accusation. I’m not kidding when I say these so-called witnesses are enslaved to only one set of supposedly viable ‘leaked memo evidence’ for their accusation. Continue reading

Naomi “no evidence” Oreskes – careful for what you wish for, Pt 2

Naomi Oreskes’ appearance at a 10/23/19 House hearing on the topic of “the oil industry’s climate denial campaign” wasn’t a one-time event. She reappeared six days later at a Senate “hearing,” where her Prepared Written Testimony contained the identical blunders I detailed in Part 1 of this two-part blog post. Unlike the House hearing, she and the others at this “hearing” offered truly bizarre and comically self-damaging statements without fear of anyone questioning them. Continue reading

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

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

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

NOT exactly something you want to draw attention to

Loyal readers here know I have said on more than one occasion that Naomi Oreskes has an inability to keep her mouth shut regarding ancillary details (plural) surrounding the accusation about skeptic climate scientists being ‘liars for hire’ on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry.

She’s done it again.

Continue reading

Prominent Global Warming Deniers are Funded by Fossil Fuel Companies.’ Spread This Line Widely; NEVER Check its Veracity.

And there’s really no necessity to tell anybody exactly what that accusation means. Al Gore and the top-most promulgators of the ‘climate scientist liars-for-hire’ accusation know what it means …. they simply haven’t proven that any such corruption actually exists anywhere. Continue reading

The Roll Call of a Single Source Wipeout, Part 2

In the middle of the summer of 2016, Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse participated with his comrades in a U.S. Senate floor speech stunt decrying the hazards of man-caused global warming. His speech contained a roll call of people who supposedly exposed the complicity of skeptic climate scientists in a fossil fuel industry-funded disinformation campaign. I’ll note why this older event is still relevant today at the end of this post, and for the newer readers arriving here, please do click on my links, as many are quick-glance screencaptures of text details I refer to, or are fuller context posts about my references. Continue reading

Flying off a Cliff with the Same Old Worthless Talking Points & how Entire Legacies may be Lost

I’ve posed a tough question to ‘global warming true believers’ for years ….

….. and it always turns out embarrassingly bad for people attempting to answer the question. So, regarding this particular hapless anonymous commenter, let’s peel back the layers and see where the wipeouts occur. But after that exercise, consider this: what happens when this same basic inquiry is put to luminaries such as former Vice President Al Gore, or to “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie star/book author Naomi Oreskes, or to the plaintiffs in the assortment of global warming lawsuits, all of whom claim the fossil fuel industry hid the harm of its product causing global warming by hiring shill scientists to spread misinformation? Continue reading