{"id":18122,"date":"2025-01-29T15:21:24","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T22:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=18122"},"modified":"2025-01-29T15:22:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T22:22:17","slug":"naomi-oreskes-embracing-of-the-victory-will-be-achieved-memos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gelbspanfiles.com\/?p=18122","title":{"rendered":"Naomi Oreskes’ Embracing of the “Victory Will Be Achieved” memos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like I said at the top of my prior blog post<\/a>, it doesn’t matter where you drop into the accusation about fossil fuel industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns, nothing lines up right. The inspiration for this blog post comes from a result (utterly typical of many) in my daily email alert from Google of search results for articles containing the words “global warming” \u2014 a Jan 22, 2025 anti-President Trump piece at “The Conversation” website by Wrigley Institute Director for Environment and Sustainability Joe \u00c1rvai titled “How the oil industry and growing political divides turned climate change into a partisan issue<\/a>.” The author is a psychology professor with exactly zero expertise in climate science who’d likely accuse me of being unqualified to speak on the issue \u2026 because I have exactly zero expertise in climate science. Psychological projection<\/a> being a major hallmark of extremist enviro-activists, the title of his article needs to aim its accusation at enviro-activists for turning climate science into a partisan issue. When he speaks of ‘oil industry disinformation tactics,’ he needs to aim that 180\u00b0 back at people on his own side. I could devote an entire blog post to all the elements of mis- disinformation in his piece. However, I’ll instead focus on a gem citation within his piece that’s something congressional investigators \/ law firms representing defendants in the \u201cExxonKnew\u201d lawsuits \/ genuinely objective journalists might want to look into:<\/p>\n

Naomi Oreskes’ embracing of ye olde<\/em><\/a> “victory will be achieved” memos. What does she know about them, and when did she know it?<\/p>\n

I ask this question because when I first began looking in earnest back in 2010 to find the full context of\u00a0ye olde<\/em> (never-implemented<\/a>, it turned out) “reposition global warming” memos, Oreskes was a major promulgator<\/a> of them at the time, but she made the monster mistake of claiming the memos were archived<\/a> in a place which they were not.<\/em><\/strong><\/a> What I also discovered in 2010 was that while the “reposition global warming” memos were the best the enviro-activists had in their arsenal to indict skeptic climate scientists of being paid fossil fuel industry money to spew ‘disinformation,’ the 1998 American Petroleum Institute (API) “victory will be achieved” memo set was merely the second<\/em>-best ‘evidence.’ At least the API memos were easy to find on the internet in their full context, unlike the ‘state secret’ “reposition” memos<\/a>. Upon reading the “victory” memos, my immediate impression was that there was nothing damaging in them. They were ripe to illustrate how a mirror-flip of them would turn them into memos Greenpeace would gladly operate under<\/a>. They were clearly worthless on their face to use as evidence that the industry ran disinformation campaigns. Embarrassingly so.<\/p>\n

Naomi Oreskes – to the best of my ability to discern at that time – never spoke of them at all, despite them being a major accusation item for enviro-activists for the prior dozen years<\/a>. Her focus was entirely on the “reposition global warming” memos during her 2007-2008 traveling lecture series<\/a> about them (much more on that here<\/a>). When she published her 2010 “Merchants of Doubt” book, which contained no mention of either memo set and only contained two tangential mentions<\/a> of “American Petroleum Institute,” she seemed perturbed enough about the “reposition” memos omission to bring it up while promoting her “Merchants” book. Her particular note about “bad facts” in that instance<\/a> was quite likely a nod to her same-year book chapter contribution to a multi-authored book<\/a> in which her own chapter was sarcastically titled “My Facts Are Better Than Your Facts<\/a>,” a swipe at the Western Fuels Association’s efforts<\/a> (a false implication on her part) to “reposition global warming as theory” via disinformation rather than stating facts. Their clearly stated goal was to get all<\/em><\/strong> of the facts out to the public<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If I remember correctly, the first time I saw Oreskes even mention the “victory will be achieved” memos as ‘evidence’ of sinister fossil fuel industry efforts, it was in her first Friend of the Court brief she filed on behalf of four California lawsuits suing Chevron – I dissected that amicus brief here<\/a> in 2019, and noted her utterly predictable (albeit ineptly handled in the brief) enslavement to the”reposition” memos \u2026 but I also mentioned her seemingly out-of-the-blue decision to finally say something<\/em> about the “victory” memos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But there might be more to dig into concerning the 2019 date there, courtesy of the above-noted psychology prof’s screed about President Trump.<\/p>\n

Prof Joe \u00c1rvai needed links<\/a> in his piece to support his assertion about an ‘oil industry disinformation campaign.’ The third link is the major problem link for Oreskes.<\/p>\n