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.
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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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Even if one believed this incredible stupidity for one second, there is the much, MUCH larger offset of positive economic activity which is the result of the use of fossil fuels. “Peer review”…..yeah, sure.
The gall of lawyers is unbounded. The more justified action would be to sue climate alarmists for the trillions of dollars wasted on unnecessary projects funded under the guise of the fake “fight” to stop global warming.
Yes exactly.
They can drone on about precisely approportioning blame for damages that are no different (actually far less lethal) than 100 years ago.
But these inept jokers are personally in frame for advocating policies to promote BigWind, BigSolar and BigBio.
Solutions that don’t really work to problems that don’t really exist.
Lawyers don’t have to win in order to get paid.
People have died because of Femin@zi Betty Friedan’s demand that hurricanes be given both male and female names. At least her insistence that they be called “himmicanes” wasn’t adopted:
http://time.com/4927889/hurricane-names-history/?xid=homepage
Coming to cinema near you
Taking the “billing those responsible” thesis to its ultimate level, then perhaps
(see Spanish woman claims ownership of The Sun, Telegraph, 10 Dec 2010.
There is often if not always substantial space weather when TCs form and grow. There were solar flares last weekend when Irma gathered her full fury. The link between solar weather and terrestrial weather is not yet confirmed and so is tenuous, still conservatively considered as “possible,” but it is on more solid ground than that of CO2 emissions. Hold the owner liable.
. .
How can they claim that science that has had to switch sell even its basic name from global warming to climate change can be considered even probable proof when the law requires beyond reasonable doubt?
They have never even explained how without the global warming as well we could get man made climate change as the mechanism is supposed to be heat retention by the CO2 blanket.
In a civil case, merely the balance of probabilities.
Bid Wind is to blame, they sucked the energy out of the wind and now it is pssd off and looking for revenge !
“Big” Wind
More than just a touch of irony, asking for big oil to pay for damage to infrastructure that big oil created.
Similarly, I have data to prove the misanthropogenic climate change alarm is responsible for 97% of the pain in my back. Following the logic of Peter C Frumhoff and Myles Allen, they should volunteer to finance the palliative care, including and not limit to the physiotherapist sessions for the rest of my life.
And so the life goes on – more and more spending their time discovering ways forcing others to pay for it, rather than producing something worthy for them in return.
In Australian case law there is an event in Sydney, 1919, wherein person Mary Mahoney was said to have been paid to make a fabrication that a meat pie made by the reputable firm of Sargents, caterers, contained parts of a rat or mouse. Sargents claimed damages for loss of business from loss of good reputation.
Today, instead of Sargents the caterers, we have Exxon etc the oilies, we have the Union of concerned Scientists playing Mary with the phantom rat tail trying to damage the reputation of Exxon etc.
When, oh when, will the big oilies finally start to sue for reputation damage and consequent business losses of $$$? Only a few successful cases would be needed to bankrupt the Mary Mahonies? The evidence to secure a win every time seems hard to argue against. Geoff.
When I was in high school in the late 1960s I remember reading an article (in car and driver) about a chap that was driving a delivery van in Australia. He got into an accident and was thrown through the drivers window and died. Hi wife sued.
But the judge said had he put his seat belt on he would have survived so he dismissed the case.
Last time I respected a judges opinion.
The idea that you can somehow transfer responsibility and payment for any problem to some third party is a common theme today, yet, in this instance, those who use the products of the oil companies business will have to pay, this includes just about all of us. Fore or against modern life and the enormous benefits it has provided makes no difference, most if not all drive cars, depend on lorries to move goods, heat their houses, employ plastics etc. Stupidly attacking the companies whose endeavours produce the things which have made modern life possible is an unthinking malevolence that should it get out of hand will reduce life to collective pauperism. Be careful what you wish for.
The courts decided years ago that proportional damages meant fewer paydays for lawyers. Under modern standards, a client who is found to be 1% responsible for an accident can be forced to pay 100% of the damages, if their pockets are deep enough.
Venezuela and Cuba are good examples of this “collective pauperism” in action.
Maybe “Big Oil” should think about that proposition for at least one second.
That is of course after the rent seeking beneficiaries of government renewables subsidies have repaid the trillions they’ve stolen/gouged on the basis of the biggest hoax in the last two centuries.
Who would have thought BS artists produce BS,!
“Careful studies will take time…”
but until then, we’ll just make shit up.
Haven’t they been doing these studies for nearly 40 years, and still have not found convincing evidence.
The last IPCC Report accepted that it was not possible to establish a link between more extreme weather events and Climate Change.
This task is becoming ever more difficult because there has been no, or very minor warming these past 20 years. ENSO is presently neutral, but there are signs beginning to emerge that a La Nina may occur within the next 6 months.
Don’t forget that weather phenomena are atmospheric events where satellite data must be more pertinent, or they are driven by oceans where because the SST has not warmed Trenbeth and his ilk claim it is a travesty and that the energy/heat is hiding in the deep.
Richard, I have no intent to argue the IPCC’s position, or even the mainstream NASA/NOAA position. As a participant in the development of the NOAA/NASA (in that order) remote sensing systems used by our current generation of satellite systems I have no choice but to agree with you.
I don’t at all care for the recent changes made to those data and have difficulty believing the rationale for them. You can hide a truth forever, but I lie is soon discovered.
“A lie”. Oh my. Was that Freudian or what? 🙂
Surely big oil is responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs as well – a hitherto unknown effect of Quantum time tunneling physics requiring a vast amount of funding – please send cheques immediately.
To the person who asked what a typewriter is – it is a device once used by academics and others which gave sufficient time to reflect between the moment of thinking something and the physical action of writing it down.
Quantum time tunneling, that must be how CO2 that was released in last half of the 20th century can impact sea level rises back in the 1880’s.
I see that you fully understand the effect and should immediately receive massive funding to investigate further. Anyone doubting is a deplorable denier!
That should be “vast amount of research funding”.
Proof positive of second paragraph.
2 plots that say it all.
First sea level rise:
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Holocene-Cooling-Sea-Level-Gulf-Mexico-Donoghue-2011.jpg
Second, landfall hurricanes past 140 years and CO2.
http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CO2-vs-Hurricanes.png
Where is the CO2 Climate change signature?
I want to remind people that it takes 25.4 mm to make an inch. 1.7 mm per year is not very much..barely more than 1/16 of an inch.
Presumably they also recommend suing Chinese coal producers and….just about everyone else. Good luck with that.
Big oil is the reason why whales did not become extinct by 1930.
These “researchers” are nothing but slimy, low-life charlatans attempting to benefit from a tragedy, and pushing a warped, anti-human ideology. Disgusting.
Watching SKY news right now. Some bald fella is telling us that Atlantic hurricanes are becoming more frequent and stronger with an obvious upward trend since the 1970’s. He put up a couple of graphs in support but I did not recognize them nor did he say where they came from.
It looked to me to be totally incorrect. Then he extrapolated a straight line through to 2100 showing what looked to be a five fold increase so it is obviously propaganda.
What a world, what a world.
In defense of Big Oil … “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” [ President Obama ]
It must be somebody else’s fault.
last time I checked the oil companies actually burn very little fossil fuel … shouldn’t they blame the people who burn the fuel ?
Can we also calculate with reasonable precision the contribution of these same companies to the local economies resulting in the construction of these homes and businesses?
They can use the calculation as a write off against the total, no?