Russell Cook
Amazing what a person can find after doing deeper digging. Concerning the climate issue, a person does not have to be a climatologist or a rocket scientist to undertake this. The legacy news media journalists have not done anything of the sort, thus the perception persists that there’s a ‘growing number of lawsuits being filed to hold energy company polluters accountable for damaging the climate.’ This particular New Jersey-based Birmingham v Tillerson does little more than reinforce what I suggest – there isn’t any such ‘growing number,’ but instead we just have the single John Passacantando, Kert Davies, et al. [dba Greenpeace USA née Ozone Action / Our Next Economy / CIC ] v. Exxon & any other applicable energy companies; a seemingly basic template dutifully regurgitated in one form or another, tailor-made to fit whatever locality chooses to use it. While the defendants in Birmingham are just individual people, this one still fits my standard of being an “ExxonKnew” lawsuit. Maybe it gets redundant dissecting the fatal faults in these, but this effort serves the purpose of illustrating why we need investigations of how these are assembled … so that we can hold the background people accountable for the actual disinformation they spread in the climate issue.
My apologies for not spotting this lawsuit almost 6 years ago when it was filed on December 2, 2019, it apparently wasn’t a noticeable news item back then. First, let me explain how I found it. While doing daily searches for the “MIA” Casquejo v Shell lawsuit document I described here, one of my bookmarked web pages for that one is Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law entry for it, which still currently only shows a pointless Nov 2025 Greenpeace Philippines press release as the “document”). That’s odd. As troublesome as the Sabin Center is with its leader having far too close of association with the San Francisco law firm Sher Edling (that Sher Edling) which has filed the bulk of the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, Sabin’s “Climate Case Chart” has been doing a good job of gathering all of the court documents – most importantly including the initial complaint filings by plaintiffs. On top of that, the “Climate Case Chart” section does have one other value that I had not thought to exploit before April 5th: their search window, to look for any words related to the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits
I have a checklist of key words / names I use whenever I see prominent people or organizations hurling the accusation about ‘fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns. When I dropped the phrase “victory will be achieved” and “Wei-Hock Soon” into Sabin’s search window, its results were almost entirely lawsuits I’ve already dissected, with two exceptions – this Birmingham v Tillerson case, which I’d never heard of, along with the also new-to-me Ramirez v Exxon (which I’ll dissect later), and one other result containing a core accusation element that I’d completely missed during my years-ago dissection of it …… which will come up toward the end of this post. Hold that thought for a bit.
When I label these as “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, that’s shorthand for the longer sentence of ‘the fossil fuel industry knew their products caused global warming but chose instead to undercut the ‘science consensus’ via ‘deceptive public relations efforts designed to deceive the public.’ This Birmingham filing readily deserves this label, it uses variants of the word “knew”/”know”/”known” minimally 25 times in that context, launching into that no farther along than its #2 item on page 3 within its opening “Summary of Claims.” One particular instance leads straightaway into the other reason why I have a specific list of these, where these lawsuits include some major mention of an accusation about ‘industry-led disinformation campaigns – they’re all a one-trick pony in that way, routinely relying on one, two, if not all four of an established set of accusation elements.
Perhaps this lawsuit wasn’t deemed to be especially newsworthy for the masses because rather than sue for recovery from busted-up property and lives lost to weather disasters, this one aims in a more esoteric way to punish Exxon over whatever entails “Unjust enrichment” from ‘non-public material facts’ surrounding ‘proxy costs.’ It’s immaterial no matter what; make a claim based on worthless evidence, and I’d submit plaintiffs open themselves right up to getting their filings hit with Motions to Dismiss.
The handlers of this Birmingham filing decided to only rely on two of the ‘standard’ false accusation elements, and were apparently oblivious to how their first instance contributes massively to the defendants to get this case thrown out because of the dubious source behind their ‘claim.’ Who was their first source? “Inside Climate News” (ICN). That ICN, the group that is essentially intellectually dishonest about their own name, while seemingly having much too close of an association with one of the main promulgators, Kert Davies, of false accusations about ‘industry disinfo campaigns.’
What did Birmingham regurgitate within their lengthy indented “Drilling for Uncertainty” ICN article quote section starting on PDF file page 22 paragraph 50, out of its collective ICN ‘ExxonKnew” series of articles? The following, right at the end of paragraph 50 on PDF file page 25:
… in 1998 Exxon also helped create the Global Climate Science Team, an effort involving Randy Randol, the company’s top lobbyist, and Joe Walker, a public relations representative for API. Their memo, leaked to The New York Times …
… The memo declared: “Victory will be achieved when average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science” …..
It’s irrelevant what the memo declared, it was never implemented – (never implemented!) in any form anywhere. Not helping the ICN’s ‘journalism credibility’ at all, the API (American Petroleum Institute) ’98 “victory” memo was not leaked to the NYT as though some industry insider ‘whistleblower’ had a conscience and ‘wanted to do the right thing for the planet.’ It was outright given to them by the top administrator of the old National Environmental Trust group, as I detailed near the bottom of my Feb 2020 post. I have an entire blog post tag category devoted to the faulty narratives surrounding this API memo. One more thing here regarding ICN, they did not dig up that “victory” memo on their own. I already covered this in my February 2026 blog post: they cite Kert Davies as their source …. back when he still worked at Greenpeace USA.
However, the above bit is not the end of its handlers relying on faulty information sources. Further along on its PDF file page 29 paragraph 53, we see this with its quote sourced from John Cook’s “America Misled” report:
… the fossil duel industry, including Exxon, has subjected the American public to a “well-funded, well- orchestrated disinformation campaign about the reality and severity of human-caused climate change.
What’s seen on the very next page of Birmingham‘s filing coming from John Cook? A snippet of the “victory” memo with two other unrelated memos, supposedly illustrating ‘evidence of industry-led disinfo campaigns.’
That John Cook and his “America Misled” report, which a hapless university professor cited while not knowing how much of a faulty source Cook was, as I detailed in my Jan 2025 “Naomi Oreskes’ Embracing of the ‘Victory Will Be Achieved’ memos” blog post.
Who did the “America Misled” authors John Cook / Geoffrey Supran / Stephan Lewandowsky / Naomi Oreskes / Ed Maibach cite as their source for the API “victory” memo? The never say, as though it was some kind of state secret. The little notation beneath their graphic in their report falsely labels as “an Exxon & friends” memo. Over in her Friends of the Court briefs (plural!) for the plaintiffs in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits, e.g. for her personal declaration submitted to Honolulu or for her Washington DC amici, she cites Kert Davies’ Climate Files website. Notice in my screencapture for her Washington DC amici, I circled the url address for the PDF file as being from the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) organization. Who’s the current Investigations Director at CCI? Kert Davies.
There was no need to drag the ‘middlemen’ of ICN or John Cook into this Birmingham filing, all they needed to do was cite Kert Davies and all his Greenpeace-era material against Exxon.
Ill-advised as the handlers of this Birmingham filing were in stumbling down the path of relying on the worthless “victory will be achieved” memos to prove industry disinfo efforts took place, the other blunder they made was to dutifully regurgitate – PDF file page 35, paragraph 60 – the false accusation against skeptic climate scientist Dr Willie Soon, with no citation source to support it at all.
That was actually a far bigger blunder than it seems at first glance. Remember what I said up in my third paragraph here about the “other” Sabin Center search result that I’d completely missed of a lawsuit I dissected, but where I’d overlooked its accusation against Dr Soon?
Watch what happens when you compare the accusation paragraph in Birmingham with paragraph #192 of Massachusetts v ExxonMobil, which I needed to add on 4/6/26 to my list of “Climate Lawsuits Falsely Accusing Dr Willie Soon.” I’ve bold-highlighted the particular wording changes to make them stand out:
Birmingham:
Until at least 2009, Exxon also funded fringe research without any significant support in the scientific community to cast doubt on the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change. For example, Exxon funded research by Wei-Hock Soon (“Soon”), a part-time employee of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who holds a degree in aerospace engineering and claimed variations in the sun’s energy was the primary cause of recent global warming, not human activity, including the combustion of fossil fuels. Soon presented his conclusions to Congress, state legislatures, and the media in a manner that was intended to reach the general public. According to media reports, Soon accepted over a million dollars from Exxon and other companies in the fossil fuel industry, and he failed to disclose that conflict of interest in his published scientific research papers. In correspondence with his patrons, Soon described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” he completed in exchange for their payments.
Massachusetts:
Until at least 2009, ExxonMobil also funded fringe research without any significant support in the scientific community to cast doubt on the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change. For example, ExxonMobil funded research by Wei-Hock Soon, a part-time Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics employee who holds a degree in aerospace engineering and claimed variations in the sun’s energy was the primary cause of recent global warming, not human activity, including the combustion of fossil fuels. Mr. Soon presented his conclusions to the U.S. Congress, state legislatures, and the media in a manner that was intended to reach the general public. According to media reports, Mr. Soon accepted over a million dollars from ExxonMobil and other companies in the fossil fuel industry, and he failed to disclose that conflict of interest in his published scientific research papers. In correspondence with his funders, Mr. Soon described many of his scientific papers as “deliverables” he completed in exchange for their money.
Almost word-for-word identical. Just a slight little artful rearranging of a few words here & there.
Massachusetts was filed on Oct 24, 2019, Birmingham was filed just 39 days later on Dec 2, 2019. Coincidence? Or one more indicator that there’s a behind-the-scenes shared template among all these supposedly unrelated law offices? People may correct me if I am wrong, I see no overlap of attorneys in this New Jersey esoteric investors filing and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s filing. So, what possible reason could there be for what looks like plagiarized content done by the handlers of Birmingham?
By the way, the news about Massachusetts in March 2024 was that Sher Edling had been taken on as co-counsel for MA AG Maura Healey’s lawfare efforts. What possible reason could there be to prompt that necessity to happen?
Just askin.’ Prominent investigators may want to explore that same question. I’d suggest this is potentially not just one attorneys office copying the ‘homework’ out of another office because of sheer laziness.
One more thing, lest anyone forget, or are unaware of it: Sher Edling has accused Dr Soon of wrongdoing ever since their first filings in 2017. They have the 2020 amended copy of Massachusetts at their website. Just two years prior to the start of the current “ExxonKnew” lawfare efforts put out by Sher Edling, who was seen in the New York AG’s office advertised as having killer evidence against Dr Soon? Kert Davies and his former Greenpeace boss, both of who were revealed in 2016 as having an apparent vendetta against Exxon.
