Journalist: #ExxonKnew is 'completely unraveling'

Interview with Business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Jr. of the Wall Street Journal on how #ExxonKnew “is completely unraveling.”  

Host: “It’s an attack on Big Oil and on free speech. Here to tell us about it is our columnist Holman Jenkins Jr, I should say. Holman, great to have you on Opinion Journal. Mary Kissle is out today, but we are fortunate to have you. We’ve been tracking this amazing series of events with the state Attorneys General demanding documents and files on pretty much anybody who has had a dissenting opinion on global warming, and has had some communication with the oil companies or think tanks that also share some skepticism.  Leading the fight has been New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. What’s the latest on this Holman?”

Holman Jenkins Jr.: “Well the latest is that his campaign is completely unraveling. First of all, it was a phony-bologna case to begin with, that Exxon had done these studies in the 70s on climate change and then lied to the public about what it had found. It didn’t. It published these studies in journals and made them available to everybody and they’ve been available ever since, so there was no mystery here.

But the other this is that Eric Schneiderman claimed he had assembled 17 Attorneys General – all the Democratic Attorneys General in the state, in the US – to follow this case with him, and it’s increasing clear that that was just a lie. He committed his own fraud. Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands signed on for a while, but now they’ve melted away. California claimed it was going to launch an investigation and it never did. The rest never signed up at all. I mean we have these private lawsuits that have now brought out all these private emails, like ones between the Iowa Attorney General’s staff saying that Schneiderman himself was the wildcard and that they didn’t want to participate in this charade.”

Host: “And of charade, and speaking of the credibility of this whole process, we should remind people – and correct me if I am wrong – these were non-judicial subpoenas that [uh], a non-judicial subpoena that Eric Schneiderman sent to Exxon. In other words, no judge, no court ever sanctioned this ‘phishing expedition’ into the views of people within and outside of these companies.”

Holman Jenkins Jr.: “That’s right. And in fact, the most far reaching was issued by a very lightweight Attorney General office in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which went after all these think tanks, all these groups marginally connected to Exxon, or who had voiced skepticism about mainstream climate science claims. That subpoena has now been withdrawn, and the Virgin Islands has basically disappeared from this whole enterprise as well. So Schneiderman is left standing there alone, and now he’s basically abandoned the whole thrust of this investigation and turned to a new thing he invented just to, sort of, run out the clock until his term ends in 2018.”

Host: “Holman, as you mentioned, going back to where this began – allegedly searching for evidence that Exxon and others that they knew supported, were skeptical, or were misleading people about climate science. As you point out, not has Exxon published a lot of research, but have also been putting in their disclosures to investors for years warnings about the potential impact of climate change. Where does, where does he go from here? And does it tell us anything that the political coalition for climate change is pursuing this kind of path instead of, for example, persuading people about the science of climate.”

Holman Jenkins Jr.: “Yeah, that’s one of the sad things about this. Remember that is all kicked off when this website, Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, independently produced supposedly investigative reports exposing Exxon’s completely public and open research into climate science in the 70s and early 80s. It turns out both of those efforts were funded by Rockefeller Foundation, a group, an NGO, which also, along with other NGOs, simultaneously conferring with Attorney General Schneiderman about how to gin-up lawsuits based on these reports. So the reports were pretty bogus, because as we said Exxon hid nothing from anybody, but also there is this deeply conspiratorial and suspicious coordination between the media and Attorney General Schneiderman via these NGOs. So that’s another sign, I mean these are the environmentalist activist groups, and that’s another sign that they’ve just given up hope on anything except vilifying people who don’t agree with them.”

Host: “Yeah, just to underline the really shoddy reporting, there were moments in that series where, for example, it would quote an Exxon scientist saying, you know, ‘many or some scientists believe that climate change is happening due to man, and it’s [a] dire problem.’ And then pretending the person was misleading the rest of the world, while they said this internally. And then what they didn’t quote was the next line would be, ‘but I don’t believe it and here’s why I don’t think it’s happening.’ So they just [uh], really just an amazing campaign of distortion. But anyway, we will keep following it and we know you will to. Thanks for joining us Holman.”

VIDEO: http://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-journal-attacking-big-oil/E7F0FDC1-2C51-4A80-AE01-568FD74B26FB.html

h/t to Matt Dempsey