A point of amusement for me a week back on Twitter/X was a situation surrounding a volcanoes enthusiast going off topic by asserting the European heat deaths were ‘blood on the hands of people behind Big Oil-funded lies’ – meaning industry deception campaigns, no doubt. The famous Tom Nelson replied by pointing out how there was no evidence to back up the claim. I’ve detailed that problem right here at GelbspanFiles since 2013. Meanwhile, an environmentalist decided to counter Tom with ‘proof’ that ‘deception campaigns’ happened by recommending him to read the “a bit dated” Naomi Oreskes Merchants of Doubt book, implying the book compared Big Oil ‘misinformation mechanisms’ to ‘pro nuclear weapons / pro tobacco mechanisms.’ The comment there – likely well-intentioned and certainly believed by the person posting it – is a classic example of intellectual dishonesty – a person essentially lying to the public and to themself. I own a copy of that book, nowhere within it is evidence of skeptical climate scientists advocating use of nuclear weapons or even remotely being pro-tobacco. My response to that commenter was to read my SPM on Oreskes, to comprehend just how much disinformation Oreskes generates. But my recommendation goes much farther – the same basic accusation may end up in some form when the Supreme Court takes up a discussion about the Boulder v Suncor lawsuit.
Attorney presenting arguments on behalf of energy companies: … as it concerns so-called ‘evidence’ sourcing from Naomi Oreskes ….
Justices Sotomayor / Kagan / Jackson: “I must object here, what’s the relevance of bringing up her name?”
Attorney: “Goes to credibility. These cases hinge on her claims about industry-orchestrated misinformation – she’s the one putting out all the misinformation.”
She’s gotten away with all she puts out because nobody major – such as a potential reference to her authoritative assertions within arguments at a Supreme Court hearing – has ever illustrated just how hugely crippling the problem is.
Case in point is her 2024 University of Rhode Island presentation on (ironically titled) “Democracy in Peril,” in which her focus was on how ‘disinformation is a key factor eroding Democratic trust and transparency.’ That, coming from a person who’s real goal since 2004 has been to erode trust in the credibility of skeptic climate scientists through outright disinformation. It’s breathtaking to see this in action:
10:12 point, the host’s introduction: … Using diverse examples from corporate profit motives to public health crises, she examines how elites often purposefully use disinformation to undermine trust and to distort public understanding. Without sound information to draw upon, the core foundation of democracy, that people are the best judges of their own interests, is undermined.
If the bit there isn’t the perfect psychological projection of exactly what the enviro-activist elites themselves have done throughout the entire collective global warming issue, I don’t know what better summation could be made. By way of example, the PBS NewsHour news outlet has never provided its viewing audience with sound information on the issue, but has withheld vital information on it – the entire skeptic scientists side – for around three decades. This presentation here, meanwhile, couldn’t even get far enough along to actually have her speak before telegraphing exactly how she accuses others of doing exactly what she does.
12:52, Naomi Oreskes: … I think we all know that in the long run, denial makes things worse …
After all of the intros, her presentation didn’t start until the 12:31 point. She could not go farther than 20 seconds without offering an implication that skeptics of catastrophic man-caused global warming can all be slapped with the catch-all label of ‘climate change deniers.’ As Lord Christopher Monckton so ably once demonstrated, nobody on this side denies climate change – a 100% consensus.
12:59: … I think we know that the solution to disinformation is not to give equal time to both sides, and I think we know that more often than not, truth does not lie in the middle.
She’s channeling the late Ross Gelbspan about the ridiculous notion of ‘unfair media balance’ for skeptic climate scientists. The solution to disinformation is entirely to fairly examine both sides of the climate issue – those who say human activity is the primary and devastating cause, and those who say it isn’t – in order to determine who presents the most sound science argument. When you tell the public that skeptic scientist are paid to lie and should be ignored while not disputing their assessments or presenting viable evidence to prove their ‘industry-paid corruption,’ that is precisely what deceptive disinformation looks like. Oreskes has no climate science expertise, and her accusations about industry disinfo campaigns are totally without merit on several different levels.
13:18: … there are people who argue that studying disinformation is is a distraction, that it’s not the main event, and that focusing on on disinformation is polarizing. I’ve been accused of demonizing the fossil fuel industry to which I respond, “they kind of do that themselves”
Disinformation most certainly is the main event – it’s what kept the climate issue alive, by wiping out the validity of the skeptic side with anti-science notions about a “scientific consensus” and with outright character assassination of skeptic climate scientists. True, Oreskes most certainly has demonized the industry … but I’ve had to replay that little ‘demonizing themselves’ bit several times – it’s utterly nonsensical. And by default, nonsense statements offered as authoritative statements are disinformation.
13:46: … disinformation hurts people… and ultimately, it undermines democracy …
True statement, but nevertheless outright disinformation on her part because the disinformation in the climate issue comes entirely from her side – that the science is settled / that science consensus validates that ‘conclusion,’ and that the industry deceives the public with disinfo campaigns.
14:11: … where disinformation has killed people, is tobacco. For decades, as we all now know … the tobacco industry bombarded the American people with disinformation and misleading marketing about tobacco products … that we didn’t really know smoking caused cancer, when in fact, we did …
Enviro-activists love this talking point, despite how totally irrelevant it is to the climate issue. Whatever time, money, and resources the tobacco industry spent on material to downplay the harm of smoking, it was totally wasted because the public still labeled cigarettes as “coffin nails” and smokers said – between bouts of coughing – “these things will be the death of me yet” (“Puff, puff, puff and if you smoke yourself to death …”) Heartless as it may sound, if people were so dumb as to believe that inhaling burning particulate big enough to see with the naked eye wasn’t harmful, then maybe they deserved their fate.
16:42: … if these people had known that smoking caused cancer … if we hadn’t had disinformation from the tobacco industry, would these people have all quit? …
If an audience member had interrupted her right there to say, “That’s a ridiculous question – they knew, but they were nicotine addicts,” the person would have been escorted out by Security guards. In Oreskes’ “democracy,” anything that undercuts her narrative is not permitted.
18:11: … those of us who wore our masks did it because we accepted the scientific recommendation that wearing masks could slow the spread of COVID-19 …
An individual flu virus particle has a measurement which is smaller than what the human eye can see. Cigarette particles are large enough to see, as are vape particles from e-cigarettes. When cloth masks and paper masks don’t stop such particles big enough to see, it means they are even less effective at stopping smaller particles. Like BBs being tossed through a chainlink fence.
19:28: … when the mask mandates were implemented, cases went down, hospitalization went down, and deaths all went down in the counties in the counties that enforced the mask mandate, but in all of the other counties, every single one, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths went up …
Right. Notice the lack of full context transparency there. What specific classes of people experienced the uptick, and what other factors had an effect on the rate in either direction? What specific evidence is there that everyone within a red or blue-politically leaning county strictly adhered to the mandates?
22:48: … Peter Hotez .. estimates that 500,000 Americans died in what were essentially preventable deaths. … It’s still a lot of people who died because of vaccine refusal. …
What assurance is there that these same people would have died from some other virulent form of the ordinary flu virus, which periodically happens but gets little media attention. But notice what she does not mention: populations of otherwise healthy people getting the Covid vaccine who then were afflicted with myocarditis and other heart complications – a problem apparently withheld from the public. Again, when vital info is kept hidden, that’s a form of deception/disinformation no matter what the topic is.
25:21: … why are so many Americans overweight?… one of the reasons this is associated with stigma is the sense that overweight people are blamed, that it’s their fault, that there’s a persistent negative stereotype associated with claiming that overweight people are lazy or undisciplined. But I want to argue that overweight people aren’t overweight because they’re lazy or undisciplined, but because of the food we eat.
It is their fault; they’re undisciplined. I eat exactly the same kind of food which fat people eat, I just don’t eat half the cake for dessert, or half a pint of ice cream in a single sitting. Or three cheeseburgers and a thousand calorie Big Gulp drink. Tempting as all of that might be, it only leads to one result.
27:13: … you may remember this ad, the Lay’s Potato ad, where the devil says, I bet you just can’t eat just one. … We couldn’t eat just one, because these potato chips were manufactured to be hyper-palatable. They actually did studies where they adjusted the amount of salt, sugar, and fat in the potato chips to figure out what recipe would make these potato chips so palatable that we would find it hard to eat not even just one, but just five or just ten. So you can think about who the true devil is in this story … while foods were being manufactured to be hyper-palatable, we were also bombarded with misleading advertising … that implied these foods were good for us, or at least that they were part of a balanced diet …
Potatoes are part of a balanced diet, and if the chips were delicious, there was no disinformation there. Want to cure obesity by the Oreskes Plan? Force food companies to make bland food. Or you could follow the GelbspanFiles Plan: eat a handful – a dozen or so – for lunch and that’s it for the day. Label yourself disciplined if you do.
28:06: … just for fun, I asked ChatGPT last night, as I was finishing my talk, can Lucky Charms be part of a healthy diet? And guess what ChatGPT said? Yes, Lucky Charms can be part of a balanced diet because they contain whole grains and are a source of nutrients …
Those contain whole grains and nutrients, but more sugar than I care for. Eat one bowl for breakfast, not three, and no obesity occurs, Alternatively, eat four bowls a day and two other 1500+ calorie meals per day …. but do something to work that all off.
29:11: … the other thing I just want to point out, we’re not very happy in this country. If you look at any measure of happiness, the United States typically lands not even in the top 10 or 15, so lots of places in the world, virtually all European countries, but also Costa Rica, Kuwait, Chechnya, Lithuania, Slovenia. People are happier in all these other countries, some of which are not as wealthy as the United States. So, my conclusion is that happy meals do not make us happy …
A statement utterly devoid of any context, and thus is basically disinformation. What’s the ratio of Americans migrating to Costa Rica, Kuwait, Chechnya, Lithuania, Slovenia compared to the reverse, legally or illegally coming to America? That would be a fuller context indicator of where many outsiders would be happier. People in 3rd world countries would probably be deliriously happy to have immediate access to a range of hyper-palatable food. Perhaps as much as half of the American public would be happier if they weren’t being inundated with disinformation from a population which seeks to control everyone else.
29:41: … Now, advertising is not generally thought of as disinformation, but maybe it should be …
It’s amazing nobody in her audience burst out laughing at that. A person need only undertake an internet search for “tricks used in advertising to make things look better” to see the level of deception that’s been done in TV and print advertising for decades. This statement alone ought to bring enough pause to anyone concerning the rationale she uses. Meanwhile, immediately following the above line as rationale for why Covid deaths were greater for obese people was …
…. Advertising and marketing have contributed to our eating food that we thought was healthy, or at least we thought it was healthy enough, but in fact was making us sick …
Obese people are duped into eating too much yummy food, making them more susceptible to falling victim to Covid19. Blame for their deaths – using Oreskes’ rationale – is the result of advertising disinformation. Not the result of a Chinese virology lab losing control of their material.
29:56: … now let me talk a little bit about climate change. For the past 20 years I’ve worked on the question of the causes and effects of climate change denial … so it’s quite hard for me to talk about it for only five or 10 minutes but that’s what I’m going to do …
That’s disinformation. The only people who actually engage in climate change denial are those on her side, demanding a climate level that never changes from one chosen from 150 years ago. Nobody on the skeptic side denies climate change, thus technically the ‘work’ she did starting from some time in 2005 – 19 years – was on a non-existent situation. What she needs to be is honest with her audience, and say she’s worked on impugning the character of skeptic climate scientists since she has no climate science expertise to dispute their science-based climate assessments.
30:53: … views on climate science are highly polarized with science rejection correlating most strongly with political party or self-identified political leanings …
Yes. But she needs to aim that statement entirely at herself in the mirror. What is one of the more blatant forms of science rejection? Dismissing an entire side out-of-hand on the excuse that they are liars-for-hire, when that accusation is devoid of a scintilla of evidence to back it up.
And that right there is just the first 30 minutes of a 45 minute presentation where she essentially utilized disinformation to setup the notion that government science authority, and thus democracy, is under threat, and then used that to imply that anyone questioning the ‘science consensus’ on global warming is part of that threat … saying that these descriptions of threats are the shortest part of her presentation because it’s something everyone knows.
Of which every “threat” she offered as examples were not threats to democracy at all. If an audience member had interrupted her right there to say, “There are huge questions to be asked about the ‘Jan 6 attack on congress’,” the person would have been escorted out by Security guards – again reinforcing how the actual threat to democracy and freedom is governmental authority and sycophants working with them demanding unquestioned acceptance of their dictates and suppressing any efforts to question those dictates.
Oreskes didn’t stop there when it came to offering misleading points to the audience. During the nearly half hour of post-presentation discussion with her host, she claimed – no joke, starting at the 53:13 point – that basic ‘Hollywood rejection of harsh realities’ is what led to the election of Ronald Reagan. No, that would be a historian rewriting history there, it was the reality of double digit inflation under President Carter and his administration’s inept handling of relations with the Soviet Union and Iran which eroded basically all confidence that if he was re-elected, he could dig himself out of his collective political hole.
Why anybody would tap Naomi Oreskes to speak outside her ‘lane of climate disinformation expertise’ is a mystery, when she only erodes her own credibility by offering authoritative-sounding assertions which are really nothing more than items of disinformation.
The above presentation was in October 2024. What’s she been up to lately? Hoping yet another audience would accept her disinformation about a specific ‘attack on science’ without question:
June 22, 2026, Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies presentation, 56:59 point: … “There was one ad campaign that ran in the states in the 1990s around the time Congress was supposed to be voting on Kyoto said ‘why would you spend money fixing a problem that doesn’t even exist?’”
That’s her one-trick pony effort about the old 1991 Western Fuels Association public relations campaign which she claims to be an expert on, where she gets the name wrong for the actual campaign and claims it operated under a memo directive which it never did while showing a pair of newspaper advertorials falsely attributed to that campaign which were never published anywhere. One has to wonder if she inadvertently telegraphs that she is aware of her faulty claims about the advertorials, because the one she mentioned just last week in Brussels is one that actually was published. Except her paraphrase of its headline is essentially disinformation. The actual wording makes all the difference in the world. If a Brussels audience member had interrupted her right there to say, “What you just said is not what that actual advertorial said,” the person would have been escorted out by Security guards.
Her savior is New York Times v Sullivan, which basically allows libel of “public figures”.
Imagine if you had to look at that in the mirror.
You and her should really get a room. Your infatuation is obvious.
I detest leftists, even the pretty ones, however few there may be.
So you take every opportunity to comment on how she looks not the content of her speech. You’re an anonymous coward.
I do the same with Michael Mann (and I often repeat the genius notion that Al Gore is half man, half bear and half pig), and no I don’t have an infatuation with him either, nor would I want to get a room with Mann, Gore or Oreskes.
My belief is that her logic is fallacious and I’ve mentioned as such before. Others here rip her arguments to shreds, so there is little sense in me beating a dead horse, especially with a face like that.
I will admit I’m no Adonis myself, but thank you for not defending her looks as I would have to suspect that you have poor eyesight.
Thank you for sinking to my level in calling me an anonymous coward. You have a different sense of humor than I do, not that there is anything wrong with that.
I didn’t sink to your level. You proved your worth, or lack thereof. Making fun of someone’s looks is grade school “humor”.
Others have already done a pretty good job of eviscerating her speech.
That doesn’t mean you rip on their looks at every opportunity. It’s just childish.
Wikipedia describes Naomi Oreskes as a “professor of the history of science” but how can anyone become a professor of the history of science and learn nothing about the history of science?
The guys at ANGSOC must have some idea about that lol. I’ll ask Winston before he gets eaten by the rats.
Many academics don’t know much.
Outside the physical sciences, few academics know anything.
With most of the social sciences, what they know counts as negative knowledge. There is so much they know that isn’t true, there is no room left for anything that is true.
Someone once described “The DaVinci Code” as one of the few books where you find yourself dumber after reading it than before.
Anything written by Oreskes falls into the same category.
As Hegel said :
History teaches us that we don’t learn from history.
And Oreskes was probably the best in her class.
But like everyone else, she is somehow a climate expert.
Per Wikipedia, Oreskes’ 1999 book “The Rejection of Continental Drift” ‘examines why American geologists in the early 20th century dismissed continental drift as “unscientific,” despite later acceptance as a cornerstone of plate tectonics. The theory, first proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, was initially rejected due to lack of a plausible mechanism for moving continents’.
I don’t think it’s merely coincidence that Oreskes, who based on the above book seems capable of understanding that there can be problems with ‘consensus science’, always seems to come down on the side of consensus on politically-driven issues that favor government intervention, e.g., climate change, covid, etc.
The title of her 1999 book has always creeped me out. She’s a geologist by college training, did some work in the field, so she could’ve simply written a book on the topic of the basic history of the scientific understanding about it, and/or simply how it works. When she made the collective premise of it “The Rejection of…”, the reaction by the entire geology field should have been, “Who cares who rejected it?”
As I detailed in my March 23, 2021 blog post, she claims to be on a first-name basis with Al Gore. Call it tinfoil hat conspiracy on my part, but if Gore and his assistants spotted her 1999 book before he started making his 2006 movie, I’m wondering if he saw how usable the “science consensus” idea would be, and then commissioned her to concoct the 100% consensus study which he could use as a segue in his Inconvenient Truth movie into trashing the ‘tiny handful of contrarian scientists,’ Sheer coincidence that his segue went straight into the notorious “reposition global warming” industry memo, which is the same [never-implemented, btw] one Oreskes used to essentially launch her second career of trashing skeptic scientists?? Sheer coincidence that she nevertheless uses that memo to this day in her Friends of the Court briefs to trash the oil industry??
Rejecting a theory because there is no known mechanism by which it can operate is basic science.
You can proclaim that it’s quite a coincidence that so many land features on opposite coasts of the Atlantic line up, and it is, but until you can find and prove a mechanism, it remains just conjecture.
As I like to say, coincidence is not proof, but it is often a good place to start looking for that proof.
However until you find that proof, coincidence is little more than conjecture.
‘Rejecting a theory because there is no known mechanism by which it can operate is basic science.’
I don’t recall if Newton had a ‘mechanism’ for gravity, but you do bring up a good point. Namely, we should actually reject climate alarmism on the grounds that we know that its proposed mechanism, radiative energy transfer, is inapplicable to the Earth’s convective troposphere.
He didn’t have a mechanism, but his theory made predictions that were accurate.
Can’t say that about the (at the time) theory of continental drift.
‘Can’t say that about the (at the time) theory of continental drift.’
Well, no, it’s kind of a slow process, so measuring plate movements would have to wait until the technology evolved. However, the theory had tremendous explanatory power from its beginnings, e.g., how marine fossils ended up on mountain tops. This evidence, to me, puts the consensus scientists of Wegener’s day in the same category as today’s climate alarmists.
Excellent article, thank you very much!
I do have a few minor comments, though:
— Regarding people with morbid obesity, diet obviously plays a major role, as does lifestyle in general. That said (and I know full well this is not always the case), biological factors can also come into play, including hormonal disorders, a predisposition to stress, or the use of certain medications. I myself gained weight as a result of a long-term course of medication, and I lost it once I was able to stop the treatment. Of course, a sedentary lifestyle only makes matters worse, but conditions such as neurasthenia, for example, can be truly debilitating, ultimately reinforcing harmful habits with potentially disastrous long-term consequences.
— As for wearing masks during COVID: indeed, ordinary surgical masks are largely ineffective at protecting you from airborne particles expelled by the people around you. FFP2 and FFP3 respirators are much more effective, provided they are worn properly. In countries such as Japan and South Korea, wearing a simple surgical mask has long been part of everyday social etiquette. So, when people are ill and have to go out for one reason or another, they wear a mask to avoid spreading their germs to others, which, in my view, is simply a matter of basic courtesy in those countries. (People also avoid blowing their noses in public in Japan.) Japanese and South Koreans also tend to be fairly disciplined, for better and for worse. So when the government says, “Everyone should wear a surgical mask,” people generally do not question it. As for me, whenever flu season comes around in winter, I now wear an FFP2 mask if I have to be in a fairly crowded place. To me, it is simply common sense: I have no desire to come down with a cold or viral gastroenteritis because someone kindly sneezed or coughed all over me.
This is not a rant at all—I want to make that perfectly clear. I greatly enjoy Mr. Cook’s articles. I admire both his intellectual rigor and the clarity of his writing, and I am genuinely grateful for the work he has been doing for so many years.
Yes, the accepted international authoritative organization on the efficacy of various types of masks – the Cochrane organization – said from the get-go that the ordinary across-the-counter facemasks being mandated by governments were useless in shielding contraction of airborne COVID.
Bur all the “authorities” elected to ignore this tested research in favor of “the narrative” to serve political ends.
For Governments, the most important thing when faced with a crisis like Covid is to be seen to be doing something, even if it is completely futile.
You mean like the “6-foot” separation that was based on a wild-ass guess? Or mandating “masks” outdoors?
ON the mask Packets it stated this is NOT suitable for disease prevention …I pointed it out to the gp..he grabbed the box but didnt manage an answer;-)
And Biden stated that if you could not get a face mask, used any kind of face covering.
Phew.
Face masks and face coverings do not protect you especially given reuse and lack of hand washing etc. Face masks only limit the amount of spreading a sick person can create.
And I thought that the “mask debate” was a thing of the past. Just as a correction, the so-called “surgical” masks are designed and made to help protect the field of surgery from contamination by the surgical team (coughs, sneezes, etc) and are never meant to be used as a viral disease prevention. They have a place in helping sick persons to limit disease spread or, perhaps, helping alert close-by people that a person is ill.
They are also intended to protect the surgical team from fluid splatter.
You’re right that surgical masks were developed for keeping the operating room staff from contaminating patients’ wounds. But I’ve read that post-op infection statistics fail to show the expected benefit. Masks do catch spittle, and they certainly work as talismans.
It’s not a matter of the “mask debate” but rather the similarities to the “mask debate” as those similarities appear today.
Those who ignore, forget, of fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
Without even mentioning that in France, first we were told masks were useless, then they suddenly became essential—but there were none left (brilliant idea to outsource our national mask production to China, guys. Congratulations. It’s all well and good to patronize the public when you’ve dismantled the country’s industrial base), then we were told that wearing a mask properly was a technical skill—which isn’t entirely untrue, but it was explained in such a condescending way that it made the message unbearable and impossible to take seriously. Someone working on an assembly line would have no trouble putting on a mask correctly, but they might not feel like doing it if the government treats them like an idiot. (I use the example of an assembly-line worker because operating industrial machinery is undoubtedly more difficult than adjusting a mask properly.)
I’m one of those hopelessly naïve people who think that if politicians were honest, things would generally go better. Or, at the very least, a little less badly.
Wearing a mask “correctly” is entirely irrelevant if the mask isn’t suited for the intended purpose.
It works if everyone wears it, as in Japan or South Korea (a simple surgical masks only stop the particles you emit, not those you receive, but if everyone wears it the right way, that’s enough). The problem is not so much the mask itself as the infantilization of people by elites.
If you keep taking people for fools, you end up losing their trust. Who would have thought!
A mask not designed to stop viruses isn’t going to stop them no matter how many people wear them.
They work for Naomi Oreskes.
Thanks for the kind words! Good points – and in Oreskes’ presentation, much like so many others I ran across in the news at the time, few if any differentiated between FFP2 / FFP3 respirators or any other masks capable of making some dent in slowing down virus travel …….. and cloth / paper masks. Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to view a friend’s wedding photos from that time period, which also happened to feature closeups of two of the attendees’ Covid tests that were positive. All were wearing pointless cloth masks, with a few showing obvious gaps around the edges, yet the impression I got from my friend is that everyone thought they were doing the right thing to stop the spread.
The impression Oreskes was trying to get across is that if people were not wearing masks at all, they were science-deniers, and thus a threat to democracy. I thank Anthony Watts, Charles Rotter, and anyone else at WUWT who helps get my work out to a wider audience. My objective is not to actually shut Oreskes down, but to instead have her go louder with her tirades, but in front of someone the caliber of Louisiana Senator John Kennedy or Texas Senator Ted Cruz who can expose her for what she really is. So if even one additional person reads here how vulnerable Oreskes’ credibility is to total collapse and can then relay that to someone who knows someone who’s a Senate staffer for Kennedy / Cruz or others who may not know enough about Oreskes, it’ll be a victory we all can use. She can and will hang herself by her own faulty narratives on the climate issue and her apparently fabricated stories about herself, influential people just need to comprehend how ripe of an opportunity that is.
ABC in Aus kiss her ass and have he ranting all too often NO comment or alt opinion allowed of course EVER
You’re very welcome. Those compliments are entirely sincere.
We are in complete agreement on the issue of masks, and on the accusations of “climate skepticism” (I put the term in quotation marks because I do not regard it as a pejorative label, unlike “climate denial,” whose implicit analogy with people who deny the Holocaust makes me want to throw up), and, more broadly, on the accusations of conspiracy thinking, flat-earthism, and so forth, leveled by people of Ms. Oreskes’s ilk.
I hope the wish you express in the second paragraph of your comment comes true. A perhaps naïve question: have you yourself written to the politicians you mention? I assume it must be possible to send them letters. (At least in France, one can write to members of Parliament; in fact, doing so is encouraged whenever one has a request to make or a point to raise. Generally speaking, if you write to the representative for your constituency, he or she will reply. Whether it has any effect beyond receiving a letter signed by that representative, stating that “the contents of your correspondence have been duly noted,” probably depends on the individual and on the extent of their devotion to the people.)
One more question, which I am a little more hesitant to ask: could you recommend a series of articles that would give me a general overview of your work, so that I might navigate more effectively through the many articles that have accumulated on your blog over the years? It is a veritable spider’s web, and I must admit that I sorely lack the method needed to find my way around it, even though the subjects you write about are of the greatest interest to me.
Go ahead and wear your mask if you think it is effective,but please don’t vote for idiots that require it.
I don’t vote. The people who might actually restore France’s sovereignty have virtually no chance of being elected. Moreover, a blank vote is counted as an invalid vote, unlike in Belgium, where you can (at least in theory) be fined quite heavily if you don’t vote, but where a blank vote is counted as a vote in its own right rather than as an invalid ballot. That’s the bare minimum. I think it’s the same in Switzerland.
As for masks, I’ll simply repeat what I said above: basic surgical masks are of no use (whether during COVID or during a flu epidemic) unless everyone wears them properly. FFP2 and FFP3 masks are much more effective, but they also have to be worn correctly; otherwise, they aren’t much use either.
The main problem, in my opinion, is that the authorities treated people as if they were complete idiots. By treating them that way, they earned the public’s antipathy and distrust (amply deserved!), which then made it very convenient to dismiss people as “conspiracy theorists” whenever they applied the most basic logic by distrusting yet more lies or blatant nonsense coming from public institutions. This polarization also led some people to play the role of self-appointed little police officers and sanctimonious do-gooders. I deeply dislike that type of personality. And I’d rather not even get started on some of the absurd things that were said at the time, such as this real example: “At Christmas, so that Grandpa and Grandma don’t get sick, they should eat the turkey in the kitchen while the rest of the family eats in the dining room.” In the kitchen? Why not send them to the garden shed while we’re at it? If anyone were to be sent to the kitchen (assuming such an absurd scenario), it should be the younger people, while the elderly would have dinner in the dining room, as would be fitting in a normal world. But respect for one’s elders is disappearing, just as the cultural fabric is deteriorating and the elites are becoming increasingly detached from the “common people.” It’s disgusting.
The situation is more complicated than: “Gullible leftists wearing masks vs. free thinkers refusing to submit to government mandates.”
Nuance matters on this subject, as it does on every other (climate being one obvious example). WUWT is a great place precisely because it lends itself to discussions that go beyond tiresome black-and-white thinking.
“As for masks, I’ll simply repeat what I said above: basic surgical masks are of no use (whether during COVID or during a flu epidemic) unless everyone wears them properly.”
No. A surgical mask won’t stop the spread of a virus. It is not designed to do that.
As I said above in response to your comment, if enough people wear it, that is sufficient. I wouldn’t even need to wear an FFP2 during flu season if sick people took it upon themselves to wear a surgical mask to prevent saliva particles containing the virus that made them ill from ending up in the air. You can call me a hypochondriac, but I honestly have better things to do with my time than being confined to bed for two weeks, having strange dreams with a 39°C fever while sipping chicken broth and chamomile infusions.
Things went better in Japan (whose people are not known for being idiots or leftists — the Liberal Democratic Party has been in power forever, and Ms. Takaichi seems to me ideologically closer to Margaret Thatcher than to Christiana Figueres) because over there the collective comes before the individual. There are good sides to that, and naturally bad ones as well. This conformism and heightened discretion probably contributes to the sense of serenity felt by foreigners traveling in the Archipelago. I would love to be able to walk around my city on warm summer nights without fearing being mugged and stabbed. There, it is possible.
The surgical mask has entered Western daily life in a catastrophic way. If I go to the post office to send an urgent parcel and I wear a basic mask to avoid passing on the cold I’ve had for five days, it is likely that some people will look at me with contempt, thinking I must vote for the far left (and potentially be terrified of the imminent climate change that is going to roast us all alive).
Westerners are not Japanese (nice insight, I know), and one cannot blame a people for not adopting the customs of another people. In many respects, Japanese society functions better than French society. Listing the advantages of the Japanese Archipelago over my country would be enough to make me appear, in the eyes of my left-wing acquaintances, like a fascist and a nostalgic admirer of Pétain. Yet it is no coincidence that many of them, while simultaneously spitting venom at the “far right,” spend their holidays in Tokyo, Okinawa, or Hokkaido (and their carbon footprint? Well, that’s for the common folk) without looking behind them to make sure no one is following them with a switchblade in hand to rob them (and perhaps even worse).
I have said how much I detest the moralizers who constantly lecture “bad citizens.” I have expressed the deep irritation I feel at the contempt politicians showed during COVID. That does not change the fact that people do not need my germs, and that I do not need theirs.
I believe my position is clear.
Saliva particles are not at issue. An airborne virus will not be stopped by a surgical mask, no matter how many people wear them.
Charles, have you read Infectious Disease Journal, May 2020, specifically the meta-study on masking to prevent influenza spread? It reviewed several real-world studies and concluded that masks did not significantly prevent the spread.
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll find it and read it! 😊
Regarding masks- I came across a version called P95. It will stop vapors. The reason I used for several years before retiring as a forester is that before I discovered P95, when I marked trees for cutting- using paint from a spray gun- some of it bounced off the tree and I could smell it- meaning I was also breathing in some of it. The P95 really stops vapors. I cold not smell the paint wearing them- but with the usual N95 masks, I could smell the paint. If a P95 can stop vapor, it might be able to stop some germs. I really don’t know but it seems reasonable. They’re expensive- made by 3M- ordered them from a company in CA. It says on the box- not good if you’re doing serious paint spraying, like painting your car- all I know is that it stopped the smell of tree marking paint.
Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if masks designed for other purposes could effectively substitute for FFP2 or FFP3 surgical masks. If the only thing that really matters is the filter’s particle size, that would seem perfectly logical to me.
Your comment reminded me of the context you mentioned: I remember you saying that, before retiring, you worked as a forester—if I’m not mistaken. One of my acquaintances is actually a forestry engineer. He’s considerably older than I am, and years ago, when I told him about my growing concern over global warming (I must have been around sixteen at the time), convinced as I was that it was responsible for the wildfires we kept seeing on the news, he immediately explained that poor forest management was the real culprit. In particular, he pointed to excessive regulation and to privately owned land that had been left neglected (at least in France). The parallel with your own experience is quite striking: people who actually work in the field are generally much less likely to be taken in by nonsense about their area of expertise—which is hardly surprising.
More generally, that’s rather like what Freeman Dyson said (I think it was him?) about modelers. Wrestling with the real world is tiring.
An office chair is much more comfortable!
But in the end, you get soft…
I have really enjoyed the give and take of all the discussions about masks and forced masking (which really PO’d me-I hate being told what to do). But, to me, the final analysis of the whole flu or covid virus issue comes down to this-get the damned flu shot-the over strength one for seniors, wash your hands alot, use the germicidal wipies usually found at the door. I haven’t had the flu for decades. Oh, BTW-I seriously resented seeing guards at the doors of Wal-Mart keeping the evil eye on everyone entering to make sure they were masked. I asked one what he was gonna do if someone refused-he said “nothing” because he had no legal authority, The whole covid thing was a set-up cluster-f to extend gov. powers.
Naomi Oreskes, … who listens to this clown? Seriously?
I never read anything other than idiotic and dishonest claims from her.
Anyway, thanks to have taken the time to expose her for what she is, once again.
You’ll be astounded at how often the ignorant chatterrati quote her “Exxon Knew” schtik with confidence that it is the last word.
Naomi Oreskes is the most ludicrous conspiracy theorist on the planet. Usually conspiracy theorists try to do some basic research before spouting their insane drivel but she thinks that she is above that.
This is the ol’ “I slog through all this trash so you don’t have to” situation. Somebody needs to do it, I volunteer for some of it. Folks really need to have some kind of hazard pay for any attempt at it. I had to break my dissection of her 2008 video diatribe against ‘Big Coal’ into three parts, she put out an item of disinformation in that one on average of once a minute for the first 30 minutes. My dissection of her “Merchants of Doubt” documentary movie had to be done in 4 parts. Dive into Youtube with a search of her name, and the frightening results are how many video presentations she’s done.
The person described in this article, among many others, do what was discussed in this video I saw today “what Dostoevsky knew about people who can’t stop lying“.
People like this lie to themselves first, and believing their lies, cannot distinguish from the truth.
This is where it’s at today in the climate-energy nexus – a blizzard of lies blanketing the truth.
The truth is CO2 emissions didn’t drive the climate in the past, and won’t in the future.
She is a celebrity to persons of a negative mentality. Celebrities know everything (just listen to many Hollywood starlots).
This may be disinformation but I understand that several Harvard alumni have suspended their donations to the Alma Mater as long as Oreskes is on the payroll.
The most obvious piece of disinformation is the premise that there is a scientific consensus that cannot be challenged. “Nullius en verbs” “on the word of no one” is the foundation of scientific thought.
The entire scientific enterprise is based on doubt.
I’m just surprised that anyone is still buying the moldy garbage she’s still peddling.
Back when folks were having meltdowns over Elon Musk taking over Twitter, she threatened to leave …. but first had to sell more of her books.
There will always be those who want to believe.
It has a lot to do with a desperate desire to be seen as one of the cool kids, part of the “in crowd”.
Was it not she who said “We own the science!”? I would say it is that statement alone that tells you all you need to know.
That was Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications at the United Nations during a WEF forum in 2022.
As an interesting aside:
“We partnered with Google,” Fleming said. “For example, if you Google ‘climate change,’ you will, at the top of your search, you will get all kinds of U.N. resources.”
Just to think that this communist/j–ish interloper was commissioned by pope Francis to write his Greenencycical together this Shellenhuber from the Potty dam Institute.
We still have clowns in the Catholic church preaching that nonsense and our ‘new’ Chicago Pope is following on.
Are the joooooooooooos in the room with us right now?
They’ve got their Space Lasers™ trained on him right now!
Yep, her name is on the front cover of Pope Francis’s Encyclical. That’s frightening just by itself, on the possible international sphere of influence she might have.
Funny thing about the “communist” label, she absolutely bristles at the accusation against her, but when you dive into her whole story of how Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe supposedly labeled her that way, her story ends up looking like a fabricated consolidation of several dubious angles designed to make her look like a heroine.
A long time ago I was told the number 1 priority of a government is to protect its citizens from the government.
This Oreskes activist is pushing for exactly the opposite.
The “balanced diet” is the main cause of the chronic diseases of old age. Eating glucose and fructose along with fats initiates the Randle Cycle which spikes up blood insulin and eventually leads to diabetes 2.
While I am opposed to smoking, I have not yet seen any scientific proof that smoking causes cancer. Not even lung cancer. Very strong association after age 70, yes there is that.
And genetics predispositions.
My maternal grandfather started smoking at age 14. He died at age 99. On his last day, he smoked his standards 2 packs of Camels.
From under the headline but very relevant question:”Why anybody would tap Naomi Oreskes…”
Sorry couldn’t help myself.
Good article! I note that she categorizes both tobacco and energy companies as firms willing to lie to the public in order to make a buck by selling harmful products. The irony here is that she doesn’t mention that even in the most ‘progressive’ blue states and cities, cigarettes are still readily available, the only difference being that they now cost a gazillion dollars a pack, most of which accrues to various levels of government. What this tells me is that she’s not so much against ‘big oil’, as she is a ‘principled’ Leftist who favors bringing the industry under government control.
Anthony, you should know that your “login” is largely broken. I wanted to Comment on the Einstein post but it will not let me login. The overall site has me logged in, but, when I go to the Einstein post, it wants me to login again and shunts me back to the Home page. Oddly, the Oreskes post has me logged in, which is why I am messaging you here.
I don’t have any problem logging in, and remaining logged in. Might it be your security settings (mainly cookies)?