Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new study claims that the contribution of big oil companies to hurricane intensity can be calculated with sufficient precision to determine how much fossil fuel companies should pay as compensation for storm damage.
Big Oil must pay for climate change. Now we can calculate how much
It is possible for scientific evidence to help apportion responsibility for climate damages among fossil fuel producers. Our paper shows how.
Peter C Frumhoff and Myles Allen
Friday 8 September 2017 00.00 AEST
As communities in coastal Texas and Louisiana confront the damage wrought by Hurricane Harvey, another hurricane, Irma, fueled by abnormally warm waters, is barreling into the Caribbean and threatening Puerto Rico and Florida.
We know that the costs of both hurricanes will be enormous and that climate change will have made them far larger than they would have been otherwise. How much larger? Careful studies will take time but the evidence that climate change is warming ocean waters, increasing both sea level and the risk of extreme precipitation in these regions is well established.
…
Today, we and several colleagues are publishing a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Climatic Change that shows it is possible for scientific evidence to help apportion responsibility for climate damages among fossil fuel producers.
Using a simple, well-established climate model, our study for the first time quantifies the amount of sea level rise and increase in global surface temperatures that can be traced to the emissions from specific fossil fuel companies.
Strikingly, nearly 30% of the rise in global sea level between 1880 and 2010 resulted from emissions traced to the 90 largest carbon producers. Emissions traced to the 20 companies named in California communities’ lawsuits contributed 10% of global sea level rise over the same period. More than 6% of the rise in global sea level resulted from emissions traced to ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, the three largest contributors.
We have the data needed to link the emissions traced to products sold by a fossil fuel company to a specific share of changes in temperature and sea level rise. Determining who should pay what for climate damages is a social and political question. But this kind of scientific work can help inform public and policy debate over the issue and potentially offers an approach that can help juries and judges to monetize damages in cases like the California communities’ lawsuits.
…
It may take tens to hundreds of billions of dollars to support disaster relief and recovery among Gulf coast communities affected by Hurricane Harvey. ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP have collectively pledged only $2.75m.
As scientists further identify the role that climate change has made to exacerbating this tragedy, courts of law and public opinion should judge whether they are paying their fair share.
Peter C Frumhoff is the Director of Science and Policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Myles R Allen is Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geoography and the Environment, University of Oxford
The abstract of the study;
The rise in global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature, and sea level from emissions traced to major carbon producers
Authors
B. Ekwurzel, J. Boneham, M. W. Dalton, R. Heede, R. J. Mera, M. R. Allen, P. C. Frumhoff
Researchers have quantified the contributions of industrialized and developing nations’ historical emissions to global surface temperature rise. Recent findings that nearly two-thirds of total industrial CO2 and CH4 emissions can be traced to 90 major industrial carbon producers have drawn attention to their potential climate responsibilities. Here, we use a simple climate model to quantify the contribution of historical (1880–2010) and recent (1980–2010) emissions traced to these producers to the historical rise in global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature, and sea level. Emissions traced to these 90 carbon producers contributed ∼57% of the observed rise in atmospheric CO2, ∼42–50% of the rise in global mean surface temperature (GMST), and ∼26–32% of global sea level (GSL) rise over the historical period and ∼43% (atmospheric CO2), ∼29–35% (GMST), and ∼11–14% (GSL) since 1980 (based on best-estimate parameters and accounting for uncertainty arising from the lack of data on aerosol forcings traced to producers). Emissions traced to seven investor-owned and seven majority state-owned carbon producers were consistently among the top 20 largest individual company contributors to each global impact across both time periods. This study lays the groundwork for tracing emissions sourced from industrial carbon producers to specific climate impacts and furthers scientific and policy consideration of their historical responsibilities for climate change.
Read more: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-017-1978-0
Back in the real world, even NOAA doesn’t think the alleged impact of anthropogenic CO2 on storm intensity is detectable. (h/t Benny Peiser)
… It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate). …
Read more: https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
The Myles Allen study admits a joke size climate sensitivity range of 1.5C / doubling to 4.5C per doubling of atmospheric CO2, unknown impacts from a variety of factors such as aerosols, and a need for further study; an interesting set of admissions for scientists who provided the initial impression that they have a precise means of modelling anthropogenic damage to the climate on a per company basis.
How should oil companies and other fossil fuel businesses respond? What should be obvious to oil executives and shareholders is more needs to be done to publicly challenge scientifically suspect climate claims which threaten their businesses. If you try to appease your opponents, if you let their wild claims stand, it just encourages them.
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Then it should also be possible to compute drivers’, home heaters’, commercial and industrial fossil fuel users’ individual bills.
Unusually warm. In the world of the alarmists, summer has never happened before. I guess for them it’s always winter, but never Christmas.
+10
And the think Aslan is a tame lion.
The alarmists are like “Langoliers” that eat the knowledge of the past.
Or how much big oil contributed to hurricanes before 1850.
Are we going to let “Little Oil” off scott-free?
I’m sure that Big Whale Oil can be blamed.
Little Oil? Isn’t that a rapper?
Let’s take a look at their proposed responsibility (presuming that virtually ALL sea level rise since 1880 is caused by human induced carbon emissions).
Sea level has risen about 20cm (8 inches) since 1880 (137 years)
90 producers = 30% of the rise or 2.4 inches or around 1/4 inch average per producer.
20 companies named in California communities’ lawsuits = 10% of the rise or 0.8″ or around .04″ per company.
Exxon, Chevron and BP are responsible for 6% (average 2% each) of sea level rise or .48″ (.16″ (less than 1/6″) per company and less than 1/2″ total)
That is such a ridiculous amount of sea level rise that I am shocked I’m not drowning or treading water.
If it wasn’t for these NASTY 90 producers, Harvey would have dumped 1″ less rain and flooding would have been…THE SAME
Oops forgot the graphic on sea level rise
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/eoc/special_topics/teach/sp_climate_change/images/sealevel_recent.png
I wonder if they will ever calculate what percent of the subsidence at various locations is due to governments building our system of dams and levees. Half to 2/3 of the sea-level rise in N.O. (according to a series of articles in the local newspaper a few years back) is due to subsidence. The other side of the equation, of course, is that people bought those fossil fuel products for heat and transportation, so should the consumers have to pay? And under the law, does one have to know one is doing damage to be held liable?
From 1880??????
Apparently CO2 is so powerful that it can influence the climate decades before it is released into the atmosphere.
Oops…2.4″ / 90 producers = 0.026″ each, far less than 1/4.
I hope “Big Oil” gets a rebate for the all the hurricane free years
Continuing with the same logic, the oil companies should be CREDITED for the value of the fossil fuels used to mitigate the damage. That would include the difference in the amount of energy expended in the cleanup using bulldozers and trucks compared to the use of horses and oxen and even human muscle power. Oh yes, there are millions of other fossil fuel derived benefits, from the use of emergency evacuation helicopters which don’t run too well on battery power, to the fuel used to carry the President to Texas in A F 1 so that he can establish the funding for the cleanup.
As noted in a graph in Middleton’s post today, there has been no trend in hurricanes since 1850. Exxon-Mobil is also responsible for the extinction of unicorns?
The apparent number of more hurricanes recently is simply due to better detection of small ones which don’t approach land, and probably from more lax standards for Cat 1 hurricanes, as opposed to tropical storms.
For instance, 2005 is rated the busiest Atlantic hurricane season, and might well have been, with 15 storms rated as hurricanes. But 1933 probably had more than the 11 with which it is credited. However the counts of major hurricanes for the two seasons are probably comparable. The 1933 season had six major hurricanes, of which two were Cat 5, versus a tie record of seven major hurricanes for 2005, of which four have been rated Cat 5 (tied with 1961; when two Cat 5s).
Since catching peak winds while the storms are still out to sea was hit or miss then, the 1933 season might have had more Cat 5s.
Gloateus,
Your comments noted, but it suggests that the data, at least, is uncertain.
We have of course been told that the science is settled . . . . . . .
And 1933 is within the lifetimes of – well over a million Americans, all those over 85.
Indeed in 2010 85-94-year-olds numbered over five million – per the census. That is unlikely to have fallen in the seven years since.
it is not like it was in the later Upper Stone Age.
And yet we are being urged to rip up our entire economic system because of – wind.
[Not flatulence, although I think that also will be reduced when the extreme watermelons reduce the humans capable of flatulence to below 750 million. By having the rest of them die.]
Wind – or something.
Auto
See
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/cei/graph/us/cei-tc/01-12
U.S. Climate Extremes Index With Tropical Cyclone Indicator shows a slight, statistically insignificant DECREASE in extreme weather events from 1910 through 2016.
That’s the best comment I’ve ever heard mocking climate change foolishness.
What utter nonsense. This presupposes that CO2 causes climate change–not proven; that we can isolate a specific company’s impact–not possible.
Instead we should look at the $trillions spent on climate change and re-allocate current funding from climate change projects to disaster relief funds.
Sea level has dropped since Trump’s election. He should get paid at least a billion per mm.
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/lsa/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries_global.php
And it looks like 3 billion.
How should they respond : “F-off & die”
The fact that these slimy climate crusaders would use a human tragedy of epic proportions to try to extort money to line their own filthy pockets in nothing short of despicable.
Well said.
Like all class action suits, only the tort lawyers get the money, so any fraud is as good as another…and the climate change fraud is the biggest of them all.
Wealth redistribution knows no bounds, not even reality.
I trust the authors use horse and buggy and a Smith-Corona as they would be complicit in using these ocean-warming fossil fuels…
What about the plastic keys on late model typewriters. And the ink? Energy to make the metal parts?
What’s a typewriter?
Now they just need to support the lie that hurricanes have become more intense, severe or frequent.
When will these charlatans dressed as scientist devolve to human sacrifice?
Oh wait! These charlatans are members of a community that has members openly discussing genocidal reductions in human life, and do so without condemnation from their community.
The formulas they use are nothing more than science sounding incantations.
“Strikingly, nearly 30% of the rise in global sea level between 1880 and 2010 resulted from emissions traced to the 90 largest carbon producers.”
And here I thought that it was the end-users of fossil fuel that converted it to CO2. Little did I know that the producers were holding most of it back and releasing it into the environment out of some perverted sense of evil.
As soon as you go back to a producer, it opens up a can of worms.
Every gun manufacturer, bullet manufacturer, powder manufacturer is liable for every death where firearms are used, and every car manufacturer for deaths involving automobiles, etc.. The list becomes endless.
It is the end user that decides whether they want the product, and what they will do with it, and how they will use it.
Regarding guns, liberals have tried that tactic against gun manufacturers. Suing them to recover damages caused by criminals using guns.
So called big oil should shut the fuel off, and its benefits, to all of these climate thieves.
I, too, have suffered under the effects of ‘Big OIl’ and several other companies and need a compensation cheque right away.
You are so right. Tanking drains my account. Can I get my money back and some to cover the injuries they caused to the environment. Of course, the money shall be squeezed out from the present owners, as any good socialist knows.
The oil companies didn’t build the cars that use their gasoline.
And I bet every one of these jackasses owns car, a BIG house from their government salary.
We know their leader, Big Al, has a carbon footprint the size of a small-medium nation.
It is not just the cars. It is not cars. It is everything people do. Everything. Try living without fossils. You just can’t do that. Or can, for a short time, but you’ll get soon hungry and later you’ll die because you didn’t have medicine.
Trying to fault that on oil companies is what we traditionally call ‘hate speech’.
Of course, the only money the oil companies have come from consumers , so this is a charge against consumers who drive cars. Therefore you are requiring auto drivers to pay reparations regardless of the fact that their only mode of transportation uses fuel provided by oil companies.
How about the pain and suffering caused by fraudulent global warming claims, such as these?. Let’s catalog the lies promulgated by the Union of Concerned Scientists (they claim there will be deadly disasters from nuclear accidents, kiling tens of thousands, for example, a claim they cannot possibly demonstrate has a significant probability of occurance).
OK but when you take big oil to court please bring some empirical evidence that fossil fuel emissions drive changes in sea surface temperature and show that to the judge.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3033001
An interesting study, but it is based upon highly adjusted data. Even with that highly adjusted data, the correlation is very weak to non existent.
One needs to look at the raw unadjusted data. I suspect that would drive a nail in the coffin with a sledge hammer.
The authors of this study know that Big Oil won’t be the one paying damages. Even if they get Congress or the Courts to agree with their nonsense, it is the customers of Big Oil who will foot the bill in the form of higher prices. So if more poor people die because they can’t afford the higher energy prices, the authors of this study should be sued to pay the damages that can be attributed to them. What goes around comes around.
Me thinks you attribute too much intelligence to the authors. It appears “Hire the handicapped” has also now been implemented in academia. :<)
Big oil exists to meet the need of the consumers. Oil companies could just as easily be blamed for car accidents because the cars are fuelled by gasoline. As it is, big oil will fund the repair because it gives us the weath to do so.
Just remember where ALL the money would go – the tort lawyers.
Three of the six authors are paid climate crackpot organizations. (click on author affiliations at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-017-1978-0
That should be:
Three of the six authors are affiliated with climate crackpot organizations. Click on author and affiliations at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-017-1978-0
Hey,…. UCS has some very clever members.. particularly Kenji Watts
“…Dr. Ekwurzel also presents frequently to a range of audiences on climate science, educating the public on practical, achievable solutions for climate change…”
Practical and achievable solutions? It sounds so easy. I want to know more!
Obviously whoever came up with this idea is not a lawyer, or even very intelligent. To collect damages you
have to prove responsibility. In this case who is responsible for the burning of gasoline and diesel fuel in our vehicles? You would have to go after the people who invented the gas powered car – over a hundred years ago. They are all long gone. Good luck collecting from them.
Oil companies neither invented gas powered cars, nor do they build them , nor do they sell them.
Kind of like filing a lawsuit against a bullet manufacturer for producing the projectile that was used to murder someone
They don’t want to collect damages. They want to continue the hype to keep the money coming in so they can continue the hype that produces the income they need to do their work.
Some of these same authors wrote a very similar paper in 2015 with the help of the horrible Oreskes…keep going to the well!
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-015-1472-5
The oil companies have already started to donate many millions of dollars to the Houston area.. Perhaps the oil companies will get tired of the blame game and reply with napalm. ( A little sarcie, but not 97% )
Why legitimize it with the prefix “Claim:”
Call it “Hate Speech:”, because that’s what it is.
Assuming prophecies of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, Climate Change, whatever unfulfilled.
What’s the bet that the specific fossil fuel companies that can b e targeted by these incredibly smart climateers are all American? No prizes for guessing why.
I read up to:
“Using a simple, well-established climate model….”
–and instantly went full stop.
No need to read further.
TL
There is no such thing as a well established climate mode.
If it’s simple, it’s not a GCM.