From Courthouse News
July 18, 2017July 18, 2017 Big Oil, California, Global warming, Greenhouse gas
LOS ANGELES (CN) — In a legal assault similar to the one that won multibillion-dollar awards from Big Tobacco, two Bay Area counties and a coastal city blamed Chevron, ExxonMobil and three dozen other oil, gas and coal companies for climate change and rising sea levels that threaten communities on the California coast.
In separate lawsuits in separate superior courts, San Mateo and Marin counties and the city of Imperial Beach claim the fuel companies created a public nuisance by hiding for nearly 50 years that fossil fuel production was heating and damaging the earth.
The first-of-their-kind lawsuits accuse the companies of knowingly carrying out a “coordinated, multi-front effort to conceal and deny … those threats” by discrediting scientific evidence about climate change and spreading doubt among the public and regulators.
The defendants — which include, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Citgo, Conoco Phillips and Peabody Energy (coal) — “promoted and profited from a massive increase” in the use of fossil fuels as that use “caused an enormous, foreseeable, and avoidable increase in global greenhouse gas pollution” that has led to “a wide range of dire climate-related effects, including global warming, rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, melting polar ice caps and glaciers, more extreme and volatile weather, and sea level rise,” the plaintiffs say.
None of the fuel companies was available for comment after business hours Monday and none had issued a statement in response to the lawsuits.
The three lawsuits, each just under 100 pages, are largely identical. They were all filed by the San Francisco law firm of Sher Edling, working with San Mateo County Counsel John Beiers, Marin County Counsel Victor M. Sher and Jennifer Love of McDougal, Love, Boehmer, Foley, Lyons & Canlas of La Mesa as city attorney of Ocean Beach. Imperial Beach’s lawsuit was filed in Contra Costa County Court. All the lawsuits were filed on behalf of the plaintiff entities and on behalf of the People of California.
The public nuisance claims are similar the lawsuits that states and cities brought in the 1990s against tobacco companies. But similar lawsuits have fared poorly against energy companies so far.
The Supreme Court blocked a lawsuit by nine states against six major energy company polluters in 2011, and the Ninth Circuit used different grounds in 2012 to toss a suit from a tiny Alaskan village against 22 energy companies.
Each new lawsuit provides about a dozen pages of scientific information, charts and tables showing that the use of fossil fuels exploded over the past 50 years, and tying the increase to rising pollution, temperatures and sea levels.
The municipalities say the 37 defendants “are directly responsible for 227.6 gigatons of CO2 emissions between 1965 and 2015, representing 20.3 percent of total emissions of that potent greenhouse gas during that period.” A gigaton is 1 billion tons.
“Accordingly, defendants are directly responsible for a substantial portion of committed sea level rise … because of the consumption of their fossil fuel products.”
Each lawsuit spends another 30 pages asserting that the defendants, particularly ExxonMobil, knew fossil fuels were warming the globe and raising the sea level as early as the 1960s, but tried to obscure the information to profit from it.
For instance, they say that ExxonMobil and Chevron developed taller, sturdier offshore drilling platforms and planned for structures that could withstand ice forces, “allowing for drilling in previously unreachable Arctic areas that would become seasonally accessible.”
ExxonMobil came under fire after investigative news reports made similar charges in 2015. After those revelations, officials in Massachusetts and New York subpoenaed the company for records related to the allegations.
What Exxon knew and when it knew is came up during Senate hearings to confirm former CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.
Marin, San Mateo and Ocean Beach say rising seas pose a significant threat to them because all are on the coast.
HT/Bob
These baseless lawsuits show why the energy companies’ strategy of acquiescence to global warming propaganda was wrong from the start.
Exxon et al DID NOT knowingly enable “a wide range of dire climate-related effects, including global warming, rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, melting polar ice caps and glaciers, more extreme and volatile weather, and sea level rise,” because none of those dire consequences are actually true – they are scary stories fabricated by global warming propagandists to frighten gullible imbeciles.
The CEO’s of these energy companies DID knowingly acquiesce to false global warming propaganda because they thought it was good politics – easier to “go along” with the false warmist propaganda than to speak out against it. Now they are reaping the rewards of their own incompetence.
We knew decades ago that global warming alarmism was false. We confidently wrote in 2002:
[PEGG, reprinted in edited form at their request by several other professional journals , the Globe and Mail and la Presse in translation, by Baliunas, Patterson and MacRae].
http://www.apega.ca/members/publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
ON GLOBAL WARMING:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
ON GREEN ENERGY:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Our two above statements are now demonstrably true, to a high degree of certainty.
Yes, and it is equally awful that the natural gas interests joined with anti-fossil fuel environmentalists to subtly attack their competitors in the coal fired generation industry. That’s some short sighted thinking that will come back to bite them on the ass at some indefinite point in the future, IMO.
Just in case other commentators have not posted a link, THIS IS A MUST WATCH VIDEO presentation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y9ERtIJdvw
“Accordingly, defendants are directly responsible for a substantial portion of committed sea level rise … because of the consumption of their fossil fuel products.”
So the seawater promised to expand but has not yet expanded suspending the law of physics. Sue 7 billion people on Earth including yourselves for consuming fossil fuel products.
“Each lawsuit spends another 30 pages asserting that the defendants, particularly ExxonMobil, knew fossil fuels were warming the globe and raising the sea level as early as the 1960s, but tried to obscure the information to profit from it.”
ExxonMobil did not know the globe was warming in the 1960s because the globe was cooling from 1940s to 1970s. The accusers imagine the globe was warming in the 1960s to obscure the data to profit from it.
http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/style/images/uploads/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
Also at that time, ie., around 1970, the accepted position as detailed by NASA/GISS was that there was very low Climate Sensitivity to CO2. See the Schneider et al paper published in Science Volume 173.
This paper calculated that even an 8 fold increase in CO2 would result in less than 2degC of warming The paper even concluded/accepted that an 8 fold increase in CO2 would take many thousands of years.
If so, they were spectacularly inept at doing so wouldn’t you say?
Little known fact … there is oil in San Mateo County. I say … DRILL BABY DRILL!!! Just a few miles from the Green Billionaires of Woodside, Portola Valley and Hillsborough!
Mwaaaahaaahaaaaahaaaa! :EVIL
These lawsuits should be welcomed by all climate change skeptics. These cities can’t just walk into court and make these claims. They will have to offer up credible evidence. Pretrial discovery will be conducted, they will have to offer up witnesses who will be deposed and cross-examined, under oath. There will be document production where the plaintiffs will have to reveal conversations and communications that support or challenge their claims. Where are they going to find witnesses who will be willing to have their research disclosed, scrutinized and challenged in a public forum? Bring it on, this may be the only opportunity for a real debate, with real data and real evidence.
Hey oil companies…. quit selling fuel in those counties that are suing.