{"id":392790,"date":"2025-08-04T08:41:56","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T06:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=392790"},"modified":"2025-08-04T08:42:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T06:42:11","slug":"oreskes-embrace-of-the-victory-will-be-achieved-memos-redux-in-honolulu-v-sunoco-big-big-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=392790","title":{"rendered":"Oreskes\u2019 Embrace of the \u201cVictory Will Be Achieved\u201d Memos, Redux, in\u00a0Honolulu v Sunoco\u00a0\u2013 Big, big mistake."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gelbspan Files<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russell Cook<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The widely shared\u00a0Associated Press news<\/a>\u00a0on July 28th was that a hearing in Hawaii was scheduled to take place the next day on whether the\u00a0Honolulu v Sunoco<\/em>\u00a0global warming damages lawsuit should be tossed out because the \u2018statute of limitations\u2019 on the case had somehow run out. The defendants\u2019 law firms legal technicality minutiae maneuvers from all their prior 8+ months of effort to\u00a0get it out of state court<\/a>\u00a0and into Federal court\u00a0didn\u2019t work<\/a>, so it appears they are trying a different maneuver \u2026 but in ABC News\u2019 July 28 regurgitation of the AP story, which I fortuitously screen captured on July 29th, showed how Naomi Oreskes\u2019 name just\u00a0could not stay out of the overall situation<\/a>. I say \u201cfortuitous\u201d because one day later when I reopened both the ABC \u201cHonolulu\u2019s lawsuit against fossil fuel companies leads climate change legal fight<\/a>\u201d story and the AP original version to copy words out of them \u2013\u00a0poof<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Oreskes has\u00a0vanished<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0both<\/a>. But what\u2019s seen on the internet\u00a0cannot be unseen<\/a>. What\u2019s going on right there with that erasure? Luckily, someone smarter than me preserved\u00a0an Internet Archive version<\/a>\u00a0of the original AP story,\u00a0with the two Oreskes paragraphs intact<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not<\/strong> an especially bright idea for the AP to say Oreskes had submitted an Opposition filing against the defendants\u2019 \u2018statute of limitations\u2019 maneuver; dumber yet is to bury that fact like it never happened. However, that\u2019s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg in this particular new situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pure \u201cStreisand Effect<\/a>\u201d for me. Readers here at GelbspanFiles will remember we are talking about\u00a0that<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Naomi Oreskes,\u00a0she of her self-proclaimed \u2018expertise\u2019 \u2013 be sure to click on this screen capture image\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0on that \u2013 concerning \u2018particular smoking gun evidence\u2019 of the fossil fuel industry\u2019s efforts to deceive the public. I already detailed\u00a0the fatal problem<\/a>\u00a0within her\u00a02021 Friend of the Court brief for\u00a0<\/a>Honolulu,<\/em>\u00a0so upon reading that she\u2019d very recently filed something new on this case, I wanted to see how she spoke of\u00a0ye olde<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u201creposition global warming\u201d memos, the set that basically\u00a0helped to launch<\/a>\u00a0her \u2018industry accuser\u2019 speaking career back in late 2007-2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uhhh \u2026 Houston, we have a problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For any new readers arriving at my blog, I\u2019ll explain that the problem surrounds the fact that Naomi Oreskes always was purely a one-trick pony when it came to providing so-called \u2018evidence\u2019 that the fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns. The notorious (it turns out, never-implemented<\/a>) \u201creposition global warming\u201d memos, hand-in-glove with the notorious \u201cChicken Little\u201d newspaper advertorial<\/a> (which, it turns out, was never actually published anywhere<\/a>) wasn\u2019t merely the best evidence she had for her accusation, it was essentially the only<\/em><\/strong> evidence she had in her 2007-2008 \u201cYou Can Argue With the Facts\u201d traveling lecture presentation act<\/a> (I dissected that presentation here<\/a> point-by-point). Who knows why it was left out of her 2010 \u201cMerchants of Doubt\u201d book, but she felt compelled to repeat that accusation while mentioning her then-upcoming debut of that book<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until the first<\/a> of her Friends of the Court briefs in 2019 that she finally mentioned the second<\/em>-best \u2018evidence\u2019 the enviro-activists have about \u2018industry disinfo campaigns, namely the (it turns out, never-implemented<\/a>) \u201cvictory will be achieved\u201d memos. This strange 12-year omission of hers \u2013 when so many others were mentioning the \u201cvictory\u201d memos \u2013 struck me as being inexplicable, and I detailed more about it in my Jan 2025 \u201cNaomi Oreskes\u2019 Embracing of the \u2018Victory Will Be Achieved\u2019<\/a>\u201d memos blog post. I brought up the situation at that time because I\u2019d been alerted to one of her co-authored 2019 publications . . . . . which entirely omitted the \u201creposition global warming\u201d memos. I thought it was really out of character for her to do<\/a>, worthy of deeper investigation of why she chose to do that. Why on Earth would she not<\/em><\/strong> say anything about her \u201cbest\u201d evidence when she led with that \u201creposition\u201d accusation for the prior dozen years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That question needs to be asked again regarding her May 2025 Declaration submitted to the Hawaii court. She never mentions anything related to her most beloved of accusations within her 42-page Declaration<\/a>, which is otherwise the cornerstone of the 4-element accusation overall<\/a> seen in the Sher Edling boilerplate copy lawsuits, including Honolulu<\/em>: Bam<\/a>, bam<\/a>, bam<\/a>, bam<\/a>.<\/strong> Sher Edling boilerplate copy<\/a> lawsuits are just that predictable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being on retainer with Sher Edling<\/a> as \u2013 no doubt \u2013 their go-to expert on \u2018industry disinfo campaigns\u2019 (she\u2019s not a climate scientist<\/a> nor has any climate science expertise on that issue), she only brings up the last two in her Declaration:<\/p>\n\n\n\n