Now That’s (Public) Service!

And you wonder why institutions lost trust

CLW (and Legal Newsline) readers know the backstory here.

Previously released public records from Oregon State University records show Distinguished Professor William Ripple thanking Multnomah County lawyer Roger Worthington for his “continued support” and other details of a mutually supportive relationship. University of Oregon records showed the Duck Athletic Fund’s development director helping establish the Roger Worthington Fund for Environmental Economics to purchase Associate Professor Keaton Miller’s time and finance a project designed to quantify Oregon “climate change” costs, and “move the needle” in the public conversation. The public being, among other things, the place where the judicial systems obtains its jurors.

One court made aware of Mr. Worthington’s modus operandi did not well receive the “lawyer’s tactic of “plaintiff lawyer’s undisclosed involvement in scientific studies… [and declared it] a “gobsmacking failure” to reveal potentially biased evidence in a high-profile climate lawsuit.”

The documents below (full production and privilege log here and here) complete the circuit: Worthington enclosed Ripple’s affidavit in a lobbying letter to Washington defending the Multnomah climate suit he prosecutes. Oregon’s congressional delegation leapt to action. Apparently the public universities supply the credentials, elected officials provide the plaintiff, the plaintiff’s lawyer supplies the money, other elected representatives run cover to protect the litigation, and the finished product returns to the lawyer’s advocacy file.

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15 Comments

Tom Halla

August 25, 2026 6:05 pm

No Sher Edling?

Jeff Alberts

Reply to Tom Halla

August 25, 2026 6:16 pm

No, but sheer chutzpah.

Russell Cook

Reply to Tom Halla

August 26, 2026 9:01 am

Nope, no Sher Edling in the Oregon County of Multnomah v Exxon — and that’s the weird part. In my dissection of Multnomah, I covered how that one was actually not much more than a partly plagiarized version of the (now-dismissed) Puerto Rico v Exxon filing, and in my dissection of Puerto Rico, I showed how it had lifted its accusation material straight out of Sher Edling’s most-recent-at-that-time filing of New Jersey AG Platkin v Exxon. This guest post here is from the guys at Climate Litigation Watch, and they are aware of the apparent plagiarism problem going on in these lawsuits. But it is a different tangent from what this guest post discusses. I don’t follow the ‘lawyers/political figures tangled web angle’ deeply myself, but it’s all part of the overarching situation of this climate litigation lawfare mob being really just one big happy tiny little family of folks trying to use this “ExxonKnew” lawsuits tactic to keep their beloved issue alive. Somebody is behind the salesman pitch to sell these lawsuits to the lawyers/political figures, that’s for certain. They all would have to go out and get real jobs if this lawfare effort fell apart.

Sparta Nova 4

Reply to Russell Cook

August 26, 2026 12:38 pm

It does not take much of a sale pitch to get a lawyer to file a claim, especially if he has a guaranteed payment.

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”
— William Shakespeare (Dick the Butcher in Henry VI)

AGW is Not Science

Reply to Sparta Nova 4

August 27, 2026 4:41 am

Or there’s the old joke –

“What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?”

“A good start.”

Dave Burton

August 25, 2026 8:57 pm

Prof. Ripple, who has a PhD in Geography, modestly calls himself “World Scientists,” and prattles on about imaginary “tipping points.” He gives crackpots a bad name.

In the past I’ve tried without success to constructively engage with him. He is uninterested in evidence or dialogue.

Here’s a screenshot of his error-riddled article entitled “Blue Ocean Event.” My comment (which he quickly deleted) is at the end:

https://sealevel.info/scientistswarning_dot_org_blue-ocean-event_comment-2286_screenshot.pdf

bnice2000

Reply to Dave Burton

August 25, 2026 10:18 pm

Arctic was basically “ICE FREE” (less than 1 Wadham), for much of the first 2/3+ of the Holocene.

LIA was a time of EXTREME HIGH sea ice that drove most sea creatures out of the region.

Unfortunately, the recovery from that deep freeze seems to have stalled. 🙁

Herman Pope

Reply to Dave Burton

August 26, 2026 12:36 am

Excellent Article! It is full of disasters, some that happened a decade ago, oops, they actually did not happen! Wolves at the door, maybe only kittens. The Vikings lived in Greenland when it was warmer than now, the Chinese mapped the Arctic when it was warmer than now, it snowed while it was warmer and got colder after that as the heavier ice flowed faster and ice extent on land and in the ocean increased. Lucky, we have Greenland Ice Core Records, the only times there is enough evaporation and snowfall to rebuild the ice on Greenland is when the Arctic Sea Ice is removed, that is necessary for evaporation of Arctic Ocean Water, it does not snow enough on Greenland when the Arctic Ocean is covered with Sea Ice. Check the Ice Core Records, most ice accumulations in warmest times, least ice accumulations in coldest times, the warm times with open Arctic Ocean are necessary to maintain ice on Greenland and other places in and around the Arctic. There have always been alternating warmer and colder times. There is more evaporation and snowfall and sequestering of ice in warmest times, reference the ice core records, there is less evaporation and snowfall in coldest times and the ice flows and thins and depletes in coldest times. That leads to the next warmest time and the cycle repeats forever and forever and for millions of years. The Climate changes because the balance of ice on land and water in the ocean changes over time. Increase the heat load and the AC in my house will run more, increase the climate heat load and the evaporation and snowfall will increase to self correct, it takes a while so you don’t get static correlation, you get dynamic cycles that store and use energy like a mechanical system with springs and dampers and capacitance.

Tom Abbott

Reply to Dave Burton

August 26, 2026 5:40 am

“He gives crackpots a bad name.”

That made me laugh! 🙂

George Thompson

Reply to Dave Burton

August 26, 2026 3:35 pm

My grad work was in Geography-I really wish my old Profs were still alive so we could all drink some beers with whiskey chasers. Those now dead Profs of mine would be appalled at the tripe that Ripple was pushing and on their behalf I am terribly embarassed for my chosen profession of 60yrs. ago. Granted, the world and the discipline has changed and evolved, but Ripple’s drivel leaves a very, very bad taste in my mouth, so bad I couldn’t finish his supposed “work”. The old timers were professionals, and trained me to be one also. So very sad, and so very damaging to what remains of the field. And they pay this guy? Boy, did I miss the bus-I had to use my knowledge in many places and make my living the hard way. I would have been disowned for something like that.

observa

August 25, 2026 11:23 pm

Trust them they’re from the Gummint and they’re here to help with experts-
‘Heat pumps are a waste of money’, says Labour’s mega eco-donor Dale Vince

Herman Pope

Reply to observa

August 26, 2026 1:03 am

Heat pumps try to cool your system when the air outside is hot, heat pumps try to warm your system when the air outside is cold. If you move your outside system coils into adequate groundwater, underground, you can improve the efficiency. If the groundwater is not migrating or flowing much, as happens around here, you heat the groundwater in summer and you cool the groundwater in winter and gain some more efficiency. If you want a heat pump for cooling, it could be as good as a good AC unit. If you want a heat pump for heating, to replace natural gas, or oil or coal, you may have a higher energy bill. When I was young, we had a coal furnace, when the power was off, we could still keep a coal and/or wood fire going in the furnace and the hot water would circulate through all the radiators in the house based on gravity of hot and cooler water. We would tend to it every several hours, I don’t recall our power being off very long, they longest power outage that I recall was 18 hours, this was after multiple record breaking snowfalls and freezing in Feb-Mar of 1960 in Southwest Virginia. We had waited, but we were getting ready to milk our cows by hand when the power came on.