The inept handlers of City & County Of Honolulu & Honolulu Board Of Water Supply v. Sunoco Lp point arrows the size of Texas at where the real conspiracy efforts to deceive the public can be found in the climate issue.
I would have preferred to have known about this October 5 story back in mid-June, when the subpoena to API was delivered, because I could have showed back then where the Texas-size arrows are within it. The handlers behind the original March 2020-filed Honolulu lawsuit – it was merely another in a lineage of Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuits as I detailed here – and behind this months-old subpoena effort hope nobody digs deep to see and realize where the real conspiracy is.
So, what are those gifts handed on a silver platter to API within the 6/12/26 subpoena? For new readers of my GelbspanFiles blog who haven’t yet read my dissections of the boilerplate copy Sher Edling filings, the leaked memos / ‘newspaper ads’ / Smithsonian press release evidence which that law firm uses in these copy ‘n paste lawsuits across the country to support their claim that ‘industry-orchestrated disinformation campaigns‘ occurred can be summarized this way, on how the industry sinisterly declared,
“Victory will be achieved when we pay Dr Wei-Hock Soon $1.2 million to reposition global warming as theory (not fact) via deceptive newspaper advertorials.”
That is the literal best Sher Edling has as evidence to prove the claim, and it really is just that simple. This is the literal best ‘smoking gun evidence’ that all of the enviro-left has ever had in their arsenal to support their 30 year+ accusation about ‘industry disinfo campaigns.’ Everything else offered in support of those four accusation elements consists of weak ancillary quasi-related accusations which pathetically fail to show any actual sinister intent on the part of industry executives. And they continue to regurgitate this trash unimpeded because nobody with major authority and influential power counters this trash with, “Tell us, did you ever check the veracity of the accusations about those two memos and the “Chicken Little” advertorial, and whether at the end of the Smithsonian investigation they implicated Dr Soon with funding disclosure violations?”
No joke:
- the “reposition global warming as theory” memo strategy (unsolicited, including its alternate name suggestion) with its equally unsolicited and fundamentally illogical public relations audience targeting goal – all falsely attributed to the “Information Council for the Environment” “ICE” PR campaign – was never implemented anywhere.
- the “victory will be achieved” 1998 American Petroleum Institute memo was never implemented by anybody. Even a 2005-era Mother Jones article was able to spot that accusation problem. Steve Milloy – quoted in the above Oct 5 news report about this subpoena situation – can additionally attest to how the memo was never implemented.
- the “Chicken Little” / “Doomsday is canceled” newspaper advertorials falsely attributed to the ICE campaign were each, respectively, never published anywhere; Sher Edling crops the text out of the 3rd one that was actually published, likely because the missing text contains no disinformation (zoom in on the published text here).
- the accusation against Dr Willie Soon is so egregiously false that it may be epic-level defamation – Dr Soon clearly identified the fatal fault about the 2015 Smithsonian press release which Sher Edling is enslaved to for ‘evidence’ to this day.
The only thing the 6/12/26 subpoena to API does is reinforce the enslavement the handlers behind this new angle of climate litigation lawfare have to the above-noted pile of main and quasi-related ancillary accusations. Watch this, first in the order of the four main accusation elements:
1) “Email from Joe Walker to Global Climate Science Team, Draft Global Climate Science Communications Plan (Apr. 3, 1998), https://perma.cc/3M7L-MLWS;”
That one is Item “z” within the subpoena PDF file’s overarching heading section of “Documents To Be Produced” which starts on PDF file page 8, Item “z” is more narrowly seen within the Number 8 “All of the Documents listed below” section, PDF file page 11, print page 7. The requested doc there is none other than the notorious 1998 API “victory will be achieved” memo – complete with an unforced error perhaps committed by a hapless intern working for the main handlers of this whole Hawaii situation.
Click on the perma 3M7L-MLWS link right above. It first leads to the basic Perma page copy having the horribly degraded, essentially largely unreadable old photocopy images of the “victory memo.” Watch what happens when people click on the “View the live page” link up in the page’s menu bar – it takes you to an innocuous-looking “s3 documentcloud” file page, with no other identifier of where these scratchy images come from. Don’t stop there, however – swap out the particular url items in the page address this way –
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/784572/api-global-climate-science-communications-plan.pdf
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/784572–api-global-climate-science-communications-plan/
– and then proceed to the resulting page that is not the PDF file version, and what do you see?
“Contributed by Kert Davies (Greenpeace ).” As I’ve showed in many of my dissections of the Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuits, they’ve routinely done that in an apparent effort to hide that name and that organization from court document viewers. I’d wager API has never seen that memo before and will say they don’t have any such memo in their files, which will only prompt the handlers of this Hawaii situation to say API destroyed their copy. But hold that thought about that name and that organization in my screencapture above for just a moment …. they come up in the next accusation element.
2) The 1 – 2 punch of item “bb” (just two places below the prior above item “z”). “Willie Soon & Sallie Baliunas, Proxy Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years, Climate Research (Jan. 31, 2003), https://perma.cc/TTV2-393B” and “109. Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a/k/a Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory” on PDF file page 20, print page 18, within the long “Appendix A” list which is first referenced on PDF file page 9 print page 7 regarding the subpoena demand for all correspondences with “Agencies, Trade Associations, Think Tanks, consulting firms, industry coalitions, non-profit organizations, or non-governmental organizations listed in Appendix A.
This is the identical 1 – 2 punch seen within all of Sher Edling’s boilerplate copy lawsuits pertaining to the [egregiously false] accusation that Dr Willie Soon was paid $1.2 million by Exxon to spread disinformation. Sher Edling’s citation of the 2003 Soon & Baliunas science paper is meaningless since nobody in that firm has the science expertise to dispute what’s in the paper. From the 2017 beginning of their lawsuit filings (San Mateo v Chevron) up until their Sept 9 2020 Charleston v Brabham Oil filing, Sher Edling linked straight to the 2015 Smithsonian press release concerning that Institution’s start of their inquiry into Dr Soon’s funding disclosures. However, starting with their Sept 10, 2020 Delaware v BP filing, they needed to link to the Internet Archive version of the press release …. because the Smithsonian Institution had taken the press release offline; it was no longer viewable to the public. No matter its status online or off, the press release was in no way evidence that Dr Soon had failed to disclose his funders, it only showed that his employer had just begun its inquiry into the matter. As noted in the link above to Dr Soon’s short video on this matter, Smithsonian took the press release offline after five years because their inquiry turned up nothing wrong.
What was the impetus for the Smithsonian to start their inquiry in February 2015? The international ‘breaking news’ about it at the time, where the source of the news was – here’s that name and that organization again – Greenpeace’s Kert Davies. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg there. Revealed within New York State Freedom of Information – Law (FOIL)-released documents which the Energy Policy Advocates watchdog site received in 2023, the 2015 New York AG office had an upcoming meeting with Kert Davies and his former Greenpeace / former Ozone Action boss John Passacantando who were teased to the office attorneys as being ready to break the ‘news’ of Dr Willie Soon’s ‘industry corruption.’ As I detailed in my list of climate damages lawsuits after 2015 which utilize that accusation against Dr Soon, Davies’ infatuation with that [false] accusation actually dates back to 2009 when he was just guessing it might be true. But hold the thought about the Davies and Passacantando names for just a moment …. they come up in the next pair of accusation element.
3) “89. Edison Electric Institute”
That entry is seen on the very same page as the #109 entry for the above-noted “Smithsonian Institute. “Edison – who?” is probably the reaction the readers at API said when they got that far down into this subpoena. What that organization means in the context of the subpoena is quite literally only the unsolicited, never implemented “reposition global warming as theory” memo. I noted this just briefly in my bulletpoints paragraph above, and I will elaborate here: the late Washington Examiner columnist / “Undue Influence” book author writer Ron Arnold described in his June 2016 LeftExposed piece how the ‘leaked memo directive’ containing that memo phrase was part of a rejected proposal sent by the Edison Electric Institute to the Western Fuels Association’s ICE campaign. WFA’s copy of the proposal ended up in the trash, thus there was no way it would have been shared with API years later as a template on how to ‘achieve victory’ in efforts to deceive the public.
4) “Audience/Advertising Testing”
This phrase is seen in three places within the subpoena, twice in the “Produce all Documents and Communications Relating To Your Public Climate Change Communications” section and one more time in the Glossary section. Notice in particular the related words I highlight in those screencaptures, “audience profile” and “identifying subgroups.”
Meaning nothing short of the infamous “older, less-educated men” and “young, low-income women” audience profile subgroups proposed in the rejected Edison Electric Institute proposal to the Western Fuels Association’s ICE campaign. It’s a fishing exercise where API will turn up nothing, which will only prompt the handlers of this Hawaii situation to say API destroyed their copy of the EEI proposal.
The above 4 problems for the handlers of this Hawaii situation – again, opportunities handed on a silver platter for API to flip 180° – don’t stop there.
Consider what’s going on about the ancillary accusations that “Exxon knew the science was settled for decades.” Notwithstanding that the accusation all by itself is ludicrous in the face of how it was never possible for Exxon et al. to know with any certainty the use of their products caused global warming as far back as the ’70s when uncounted numbers of reports spoke of the dim prospect of global cooling. Thus the following ancillary accusation instances are disingenuous at best, because the handlers of this Hawaii situation never show the contradicting evidence about the uncertainty of climate science.
“Memorandum from J.F. Black” / “Memorandum from Henry Shaw” / “Memorandum from M.B. Glaser” / “Memorandum from Joseph M. Carlson”
I’ve used these evidence’ items before in my dissections of the Sher Edling boilerplate copy filings as additional proof that the fillings are indeed not much more than copy ‘n paste efforts from ones of plaintiffs to the next set. Here, these items are all on the same page and in the same section as the above-noted “victory” memo / Soon & Baliunas science paper. But look who the sources for these ‘evidence’ items are. Not only does this subpoena directly spell out the source – singular – Kert Davies’ Climate Investigations / Climate Files, the clickable links also lead straight his Climate Files uploads, e.g. the J.F. Black memo – no need to do any switcheroo alterations of the url address to reveal that.
Begs the question, if the handlers of this whole Hawaii situation have no fear of sourcing Kert Davies directly, why do they choose to hide his Greenpeace upload of the “victory” memo behind an innocuous link when they could link straight to his Climate Files upload version?
This whole Hawaii subpoena situation is like a reverse of the court tactics Tom Cruise’s character voiced in the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men”:
Prosecuting attorney Lt Dave Spradling: “I’m going gonna charge him with possession …you plead guilty i’ll recommend 30 days in the brig …”
Lt Kaffe: If you ask for jail time, i’m gonna file a motion to dismiss … and if the MTD is denied, I’ll file a motion In limine seeking to obtain an evidentiary ruling in advance, and after that i’m gonna file against pre-trial confinement, and you’re gonna spend the next three months going blind on paperwork …
Spradling: “B misdemeanor 20 days in the brig.”
Kaffe: “C misdemeanor,15 days restrictive duty.”
Spradling: “I don’t know why i’m agreeing with this.”
Kaffe: “You have wisdom beyond your years.”
It’s the handlers of this whole Hawaii situation who want API to go blind on paperwork. They want API – or any other handy defendant with less money and fewer attorneys to plead out. But neither API nor any of the other defendants ever possessed any illegal material, and they most certainly never declared any victory on repositioning a political issue by publishing disinformation or paying shill ‘experts’ to lie.
On PDF file page 17, the very last item #31 under the “Documents To Be Produced” order is for API to turn over “Documents and Communications You have produced, that were produced on Your behalf, that You made available for inspection, or that were made available for inspection on Your behalf, in any Climate Change litigation or investigations into Climate Change deception.”
That right there is an order API can turn 180° in the opposition against Sher Edling, on how Sher Edling was apparently supplied with the basically bogus ‘evidence’ they rely on and exactly who the suppliers were under what conditions.
And this very same order is one API and/or the other defendants in the “ExxonKnew” lawsuits and/or U.S. House / Senate / Department of Justice investigators can aim squarely at the main promulgators of the ‘industry disinfo campaigns’ accusation and at the ‘weak link subordinates / associates‘ of those promulgators.
