In a rare event, sanity prevails in California – Climate skeptics rule, alarmists drool.
A federal judge overseeing a lawsuit dismissed a core section plaintiffs brought in the case — oil companies conspired to cover up global warming science.
San Francisco and Oakland filed suit against five major companies, including Exxon and Chevron, demanding money for damages global warming allegedly caused. A core component of their suit is fossil fuel companies “engaged in a large-scale, sophisticated advertising and public relations campaign” to promote fossil fuels while they “knew” their products would contribute to “dangerous global warming.”
The cities’ suits against oil companies, however, do not show an industry conspiracy to suppress climate science from the public, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said, according to journalists who attended the hearing.
Alsup said plaintiffs “shows nothing of the sort” regarding some sort of conspiracy against science, Conservative journalist Phelim McAleer tweeted.
Judge slams California cities lawyers says they misled the court – says document they claim "shows conspiracy" shows nothing of the sort #climatechange tutorial @ClimateDepot
— Phelim McAleer (@PhelimMcAleer) March 21, 2018
In stunning end to #clmatechange trial tutorial judge dismisses claim that companies knew but conspired to suppress climate change science @climatedepot
— Phelim McAleer (@PhelimMcAleer) March 21, 2018
Alsup dismissing the idea that there was some sort of conspiracy amongst fossil fuel companies to suppress info on climate. Exxon discovery files tell a different story. #climatetutorial @ClimateLawNews
— Amy Westervelt (@amywestervelt) March 21, 2018
Cities and oil companies gave Alsup a five hour tutorial on global warming Wednesday, answering eight questions the California judge had given both parties ahead of time. A group of scientists skeptical of man-made warming also submitted amicus briefs for the hearing.
Via the Daily Caller News Foundation and Mike Bastasch
I predict they’ll try again with another angle, one even more ridiculous. It’s a mental issue with these #ExxonKnew people. They are self-brainwashed.
“demanding money for damages global warming allegedly caused” No actual damage, just alleged damage? In what ways have San Francisco and Oakland been harmed, real or allegedly, by perceived global warming? At least the Raiders are smart enough to be moving away from there.
Oil, gas, coal, etc. companies take great care in burning as little of those fuels as is possible to produe and deliver the burnable stuff to everybody. It is the “housewife” that burns it producing pollution. As are restaurants, schools, factories, offices, governments, greenies…. We should protest their existence, not Exxon-Mobil, and similar.
I went and checked. The ‘tutorial hearing’ transcript has been ordered by Chevron and Monckton, but is not yet available. I fear the circumstances are being misreported/misunderstood, as there is no record of any bench rulings whatsoever as part of this hearing. What judge Alsop said may signal future problems for the ‘conspiracy’ part of the plaintiffs case.
Having reviewed some other reports from those present, Chevron’s attorney did something quite clever legally. Leaned heavily on IPCC AR5. Then showed any harm is in the future based on models. (Note, the cities are in real trouble concerning past and present harm, since their bond prospectuses disclose none, nor any concerns for the future.) Then showed the CMIP5 models have got it wrong and run hot based on observational daranto date. E.g the Christy congressional testimony of 29 March 2017.
Hayhoe tried to counter for plaintiffs that CMIP5 had ‘real’ data (wrong description, she meant parameters tuned to best match real data) only through 2005, and better ‘model data’ is now available. Since SLR is a major issue in this suit, she might mean Nerems paper. But that has already been shredded two ways. That is generally weak for two reasons. 1. Models are not data. 2. There will be no CMIP6 until 2020, if ever.
Rud, have you read this?
Full PDF of the DEFENDANTS’ MPA ISO MOTION TO DISMISS:
https://www.eenews.net/assets/2018/03/20/document_gw_20.pdf
Now counter sue
Encouraging, but don’t celebrate too much, it ain’t over. Remember all the lawsuits against tobacco companies? They lost dozens of cases, year after year, until one of them won, and then the floodgates were opened. After that every lawsuit against tobacco won, with multi-billions in payoff to the plaintiffs and their lawyers.
They’re going to keep going after the oil companies until they manage to get an activist judge who ignores evidence and decides according to his ideology, and all subsequent lawsuits will succeed also.
“They’re going to keep going after the oil companies until they manage to get an activist judge who ignores evidence and decides according to his ideology, and all subsequent lawsuits will succeed also.”
By that time, there will be 9 originalists on the Supreme Court to overturn them.
The difference is, tobacco killed.
The smokers knew they were taking up a killer habit. I started smoking in ’65 and I was well aware of the danger. Did it anyway. Maybe 25 years previous it wasn’t well known, but from the ’60’s onward it was common knowledge. Except in communist China, they were never informed until they opened up to the rest of the world.
Next on the hit list we have….
Ford and GM
All animal farmers
Miners
Airlines
and all burger joints
When the alarmists have the IPCC, universities, and the media, the idea that oil companies (even in a conspiracy) could have had any impact on the debate is simply delusional. It is fairy dust.
Soros must have missed this guy.
Chevron said yes, there has been global warming, sea level rise and climate change but the anthropogenic effect is due to human economic activity, not the production and processing of “fossil fuels”. Liberals consistently confuse issues related to cause and effect, just another example.
IANAL, but I work with lawyers routinely on civil matters.
I don’t know the details of this case and haven’t even read the claims, but:
In civil matters “conspiracy” is a huge deal. The RICO criminal act was written to go after organized crime, but in civil lawsuits it says that damages are trebled if the bad actors are conspiring together.
By the judge dismissing the conspiracy claim, he tossed the possibility of treble damages.
Basically the potential damages that could be awarded to the cities was just cut by 2/3rds.
Judge Dredd D. Denierr sweeps California alarmist crap
How the hell are those Greens supposed to prove that natural disasters were caused by oil companies? It’s not like these things haven’t happened before. Besides, for objectivity they should also discuss the benefits of fossil fuels, because US courts are supposed to be fair and objective, atleast last time I checked. This sounds like pointless, feel-good witchhunt to me, a publicity stunt. Even if the Greens are right, it doesn’t really help anyone, but it feels good, which seems to always be the most important thing. I thought people in the 21st century were supposed to be smarter than 18th century peasants, especially if they live in a country like US… If those Greens lived 300 years ago, they would have probably been busy burning innocent people alive and preaching about the end of the world. These people have incredibly narrow and simplistic black and white view of the world.