My past two posts have revolved around Climate Change – and those who promote it through misleading representations.
In Oreskes’ Exxon Study, CAI & Five Years of Coordinated Climate Deception, I show how the Climate Accountability Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists came up with a long-term plan in 2012, to go after Exxon for carbon emissions – using tactics learned from Tobacco Litigation.
The official report from that 2012 meeting, Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages: Lessons from Tobacco Control, makes for very interesting reading and contains a surprising amount of quotes from the original workshop.
It serves as a generalized transcript.
In the process of compiling my article I went through twitter accounts from various climate activists.
What I found was a well-orchestrated – and intertwined – Echo Chamber.
Naomi Oreskes, Bill McKibben – founder of 350.org, Richard Heede, Michael Mann, Peter Frumhoff, Robert Brulle, Mike MacCracken, Angela Anderson and InsideClimate News are all inter-connected.
Oreskes, McKibben, Heede, Frumhoff, MacCracken and Anderson were all attendees of the original 2012 workshop. The workshop had 23 attendees in total.
Heede, McCracken, Frumhoff, Oreskes, and Mann all sit on the board of the Climate Accountability Institute. Frumhoff serves as Director of Science and Policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Anderson is a Director, Climate and Energy Program, for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The interconnected institutions – Climate Accountability Institute, Union of Concerned Scientists, 350.org and InsideClimate News – all appear to get a significant portion of their funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
InsideClimate News produces ongoing articles, providing continual news fodder for the other participants. They are not a traditional news organization.
From their website:
Started in 2007 as a blog by its two founders, our start-up was incubated by Public Interest Projects, which served as our fiscal sponsor until 2014. InsideClimate News is now a non-profit incorporated in the state of New York and a 501 C3 tax exempt organization operating with IRS approval as a public charity. It is governed by a Board of Directors and guided by best practices of non-profit management.
We are supported primarily by grants for general support from charitable foundations and also tax deductible donations from our readers.
Although InsideClimate News takes pains to avoid disclosing details, they are apparently owned by the PR Consulting firm Science First. Jillian Kay Melchior at National Review details how money is first funneled to another nonprofit, NEO Philanthropy, which served as the “fiscal sponsor” for both of the entities.
A Senate Report titled, The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement, provides in-depth analysis of the network of funding.
Back to the twitter accounts.
These folks send out articles, some actually written by the participants – including InsideClimate News – some by third-parties. One tweets it, then the other and the other – and so on.
No individual gives any evidence of connection to the other person. The intent is to act as independent and unaffiliated scientific parties – who have all formulated agreement on the same issue.
In short, they act to create a well-organized Echo Chamber.
From InsideClimate News:
It’s now clear that #Harvey will force a new reckoning over major US energy and climate policy questions https://t.co/EAqURvypXW pic.twitter.com/cVMzmGNS86
— InsideClimate News (@insideclimate) August 29, 2017
This was then retweeted by Oreskes, who quickly followed up with:
Let’s hope…
— Naomi Oreskes (@NaomiOreskes) August 30, 2017
Bill McKibben sent this tweet – as part of an ongoing effort to link Harvey to Climate Change and flooding around the globe:
About 1/3 of Bangladesh submerged by floods. “We’re used to flooding, but we’ve never seen anything like this.”https://t.co/dyvNweWqDU
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) August 30, 2017
It was quickly retweeted by Oreskes.
Oreskes even tweets out articles about her flawed Exxon Study – as if she was not the author:
great piece by @DavidSuzukiFDN Exxon Mobil misled public by withholding climate knowledge, study finds https://t.co/h7AXltUe0t
— Naomi Oreskes (@NaomiOreskes) August 31, 2017
The study referenced in the Huffington Post article is Oreskes’.
Her co-author, Supran, is a bit more honest. He tweeted the study many times, but acknowledged he is the study’s author when he tweeted the same Huffington Post article:
Huge honour to see climate hero @DavidSuzuki sum up our new study showing Exxon misled the public on climate change: https://t.co/khVqAIWKvR
— Geoffrey Supran (@GeoffreySupran) August 30, 2017
They made sure to get the usual activist celebrities involved:
No big deal, @MarkRuffalo & @SusanSarandon tweet/RT my research all the time ;p Seriously tho, thx for all u do, Mark & Susan! @NaomiOreskes https://t.co/sKMP6BzJRO
— Geoffrey Supran (@GeoffreySupran) August 31, 2017
In addition to retweeting the others, Supran made sure to acknowledge Mann’s recent article:
“It’s a fact: #climatechange made Hurricane #Harvey more deadly” – @MichaelEMann joins the dots: https://t.co/a6I0maWZO9
— Geoffrey Supran (@GeoffreySupran) August 29, 2017
Michael Mann tweeted out his own article more than twenty times. He also retweeted the same articles as the others.
I responded to one of Mann’s tweets with this:
Stationarity – not intensity – caused the immense rains and flooding.
This is poor reporting and worse science.— Jeff Carlson, CFA (@themarketswork) August 29, 2017
I would show you more of Mann’s involvement but I’m now unable to do so.
He blocked me.
The Exxon study provided for an ongoing narrative. InsideClimate News sent this tweet:
Just days before #Harvey hit, a new Harvard study confirmed Exxon misled public about climate change https://t.co/DnL6Y7oCHk pic.twitter.com/yly0f3Bgem
— InsideClimate News (@insideclimate) August 31, 2017
While making no mention that InsideClimate News is connected to both of the study’s authors, Oreskes and Supran.
Exxon pushed back on the flawed methodology of Oreskes and Supran:
Preposterous & inaccurate activist claims masquerading as research; read our statement here: https://t.co/5ZJXPQ5HOW
— ExxonMobil (@exxonmobil) August 23, 2017
Answering the NYT’s distortions: https://t.co/9M93wAHv9R
— ExxonMobil (@exxonmobil) August 24, 2017
The second response by Exxon is a concise, worthwhile read.
The authors of the study claimed persecution through yet another LA Times Op-Ed:
Exxon is baselessly attacking us & our *peer-reviewed* work showing it misled on climate chg. We debunk in @latimes: https://t.co/WehMYki6VZ
— Geoffrey Supran (@GeoffreySupran) September 1, 2017
And got assistance from an inter-connected colleague:
I was reviewer on this paper, & was pretty tough in my review. They really reworked the paper, & it is now a very strong analysis. https://t.co/AMutw8f9iL
— Robert Brulle (@RBrulle) September 1, 2017
Oreskes responds, further disseminating the comment by Brulle:
I can vouch for that.
🙂— Naomi Oreskes (@NaomiOreskes) September 1, 2017
Another helpful colleague joins the discussion:
.@NaomiOreskes + @GeoffreySupran show that Exxon not only misled the public, they’re now misleading about misleading https://t.co/g2QNViPEI2
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) September 1, 2017
And so it continues.
Take a peek into any of these accounts and you will see the coordination – along with a litany of alarmist behavior. Endlessly tweeting about the latest heat wave, flood or storm and presenting these natural global occurrences as definitive proof of Climate Change and Global Warming.
These coordinated activities, designed to create an echo chamber of climate hysteria, come from the same groups – with the same funding.
And the same agenda.
None of this is about facts. It’s about creating an actionable public perception.
These people are not honest scientists. Their studies contain a contortion of facts, blending questionable data with flawed methodologies – the Scientific Method ignored.
These people are actually well-funded lobbyists.
Our climate has been changing for billions of years.
It’s a staggeringly complex system with an enormous number of inputs – some of which we may not even know of. But exactly how it is changing – and how it will change – is knowledge that is currently beyond our grasp.
Despite what the lobbyists are telling you.
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