Guest essay by Russell Cook.

First, I must credit my newest Twitter follower Geoff Simon for the news item on his timeline today about the latest web page from The Union of Concerned Scientists, “The Climate Deception Dossiers.”

Don’t be expecting detailed UCS analysis of problematic science assessments, you need only read their subtitle to see where this is headed:

“Internal fossil fuel industry memos reveal decades of disinformation—a deliberate campaign to deceive the public that continues even today.”

If that doesn’t grab your attention, their bullet points further into the page will:

Fossil fuel companies have intentionally spread climate disinformation for decades.

Fossil fuel company leaders knew that their products were harmful to people and the planet but still chose to actively deceive the public and deny this harm.

The campaign of deception continues today.

Of particular interest to me is their “Deception Dossier #5: Coal’s ‘Information Council on the Environment’ Sham”, the core of which is the so-called leaked memo strategy statement “reposition global warming as theory (not fact).”

Where have we seen that phrase before? Spelled out in red letters full screen in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” movie. Who did Al Gore say discovered this revelation? Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter Ross Gelbspan, in his 1997 “The Heat is On” book, where Gelbspan insinuated the strategy to “reposition global warming as theory rather than fact” was carried out by Fred Singer, Pat Michaels and Robert Balling, aimed at “older, less educated men” and “young, low-income women.”

Problem is, Fred Singer was never involved with the PR campaign Gelbspan speaks of (hence the substitution of Sherwood Idso’s name in the 1998 paperback version), and Dr Singer pointed out that Gelbspan never won a Pulitzer. Add to that, others cited what Gelbspan quoted long before Gelbspan ever wrote about those phrases.

Most notably, Al Gore, in his 1992 “Earth in the Balance” book. What an inconvenient truth that is, particularly when neither he nor any other accuser after him ever proved the “reposition global warming” phrase was any sort of top-down industry directive.

Apparently, UCS people didn’t look carefully at their own evidence here, since the “Information Council on the Environment” thing was never anything more than an obscure short-lived pilot project PR campaign which only sought to bring some reality to Al Gore’s initial unfair and unbalanced global warming tirades.

Source: http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/images/2015/07/gw-minigraphic-climate-deception-dossier-5-ICE-memo.jpg

There’s a huge problem with the 20 year+ history of the overall accusation that skeptic climate scientists ‘lie to the public and are paid big industry money to follow the instructions of their benefactors.’ What the collective lot of accusers have abysmally failed to provide all along is evidence proving any money donated to skeptic climate scientists was given for the performance of following orders to knowingly fabricate false climate assessments.

This latest UCS “revelation” is no more than one more bit of trash to throw on that same stinking pile as growing evidence of a character assassination effort that intentionally spread disinformation for decades, where enviro-activists potentially knew their accusations were baseless, but still chose to actively deceive the public in a campaign of deception that continues right up to today.

Russell Cook blogs at GelbspanFiles.com, and is the author of the Heartland Policy Brief, “Merchants of Smear“

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