From the Oakland City Attorney: (h/t to Dr. Willie Soon)
Oakland Climate Change Lawsuit
City of Oakland sues top five oil and gas companies to make them pay the cost of protecting human life and property from climate change
On September 19, 2017, Oakland City Attorney Barbara J. Parker and San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed separate lawsuits on behalf of their respective cities against the five largest investor-owned producers of fossil fuels in the world.
The lawsuits ask the courts to hold these companies responsible for the costs of sea walls and other infrastructure necessary to protect Oakland and San Francisco from ongoing and future consequences of climate change and sea level rise caused by the companies’ production of massive amounts of fossil fuels.
The defendant companies – Chevron, ConocoPhilips, Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell – have known for decades that fossil fuel-driven global warming and accelerated sea level rise posed a catastrophic risk to human beings and to public and private property, especially in coastal cities like San Francisco and Oakland. Despite that knowledge, the companies continued to aggressively produce, market and sell vast quantities of fossil fuels for a global market, while engaging in an organized campaign to deceive consumers about the dangers of massive fossil fuel production.
Oakland coastline showing eight feet of sea level rise.
Court Documents & Tutorial Presentations
Alameda County Superior Court Case No. RG17875889
San Francisco County Superior Court Case No. CGC-17-561370
Understanding Climate Emissions
Myles Allen, Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment & Department of Physics, University of Oxford
Sea Level Rise and the San Francisco Bay Shoreline
Gary Griggs, Distinguished Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences, UC Santa Cruz
A Tutorial on Climate Change Science: the 4th National Climate Assessment
Don Wuebbles, Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois
Reference Documents
Answers to Questions Posed by Judge Alsup
Don Wuebbles, Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois
An Update on Sea Level Rise Science, April 2017
Additional documents:
http://climatecasechart.com/case/people-state-california-v-bp-plc-oakland/ (FULL LISTING)
Amicus Briefs from climate skeptics:
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Anthony — Brief –
fixed thanks
Why have Myles Allan et al’s submissions floated to the top and Lindzen et al are still being blocked. This is SO important>
I have no control over this.
links to amicus briefs do not work for me 404
I also get a 404.
Me too
They worked when I posted this….
The Columbia Law folks seem to have taken down the two Amicus Briefs. (Maybe they were afraid someone might read them and learn something.) Anyhow, I put copies on my server, here:
http://sealevel.info/Calif_v_BP_et_al/
20180319_docket-317-cv-06011_na-1.pdf → Happer_Koonin_Lindzen_Amicus_Brief.pdf
20180316_docket-317-cv-06011_amicus-brief-1.pdf → Monckton_et_al_Amici_Brief_With_Motion.pdf
TY daveburton
Briggs is my cousin, family get togethers are interesting to say the least.
@Dave Burton. Thanks. Looking at what the city of Oakland sent the judge with the Amicus briefs, the city of Oakland must think that the judge cannot comprehend anything higher than a 6th-grade level presentation.
Dismissed, will be the final verdict, because it is frivolous and vexatious. And stupid.
Hope so. Can the defendants argue that the harms are not manifest, but the benefits are known and provable?
I always thought that stupid was a requirement in California for filing any kind of lawsuit! Was I wrong?
I would send the judge this, from NOAA as to the sea level rise from before 1940 until now. 0.26 feet in 100 years equals a little over 3 inches per 100 years. And what are they predicting, and what is their source?
Alameda, California is right in between San Francisco and Oakland. This is almost 80 years of sea level rise actual data from NOAA in the area.
“The relative sea level trend is 0.79 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence
interval of +/- 0.41 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from
1939 to 2017 which is equivalent to a change of 0.26 feet in 100 years.”
This equals 3.12 inches per 100 years at the current rate…!!!
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=9414750
This was posted down towards the end of this thread, thanks to Theyouk March 24, 2018 at 8:47 am
Here is the map:
https://www.google.com.mx/search?q=alameda+california+map&oq=Alameda%2C+California&aqs=chrome.3.69i57j0l5.3967j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
If Alameda, California is only going to rise a little over 3 inches in the next century, where is the source from Barbara J. Parker that it is going to be around 8 feet, or whatever they are predicting???
Mostly stupid.
Doesn’t the plaintiff in this case first have to prove that emissions cause warming?
How are they going to do that?
ECS equilibrium climate sensitivity doesn’t really work because of uncertainty
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3117385
They might try the TCRE proportionality of temperature with cumulative emissions to prove that the warming is man made
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3142525
But there is a problem with that. It turns out that the “proportionality” is seen for any variable that contains only positive numbers (as emissions does).
https://ssrn.com/abstract=3144908
I think that first they’ll have to prove there’s a problem. Is Oakland under 8 feet of water like the picture shows? Once they’ve shown us the problem the they’ll have to prove the long chain of causal events to the culpability.
Also, why are only the largest shareholder-owned producers beieng sued? I Hu not Gazprom and Saudi Arabia?
And are they really suing to pay for protections? Great, then build them and maybe we’ll discuss who picks up the tab. Or are they just suing for a big pile o’ cash??
When will California elect some adults for once?
I’m a shareholder of Gazprom.
Because they dont have any adults in California. Just greenies who have never grown up and think that everyone should have the same amount of money that everyone else has and that meritocracy is unfair and a 1 world government would be cool and that capitalism is bad. The problem is that there never will be a 1 world government and even if it ever happened it would soon turn to dictatorship the same as every actual attempted socialist government has in reality descinded into dictatorship in all of human history.
Gas driven cars are a necessity for the economy. There is no replacement for gasoline without destroying the economy.
Would anyone buy a car if there was no gasoline? Would anyone buy a house if they could not heat it? Would everyone grow their own food because farmers could not use their tractors? This lawsuit is ridiculous, volcanos produces more CO2 in one day then all of humankind, including Exxon, since the iron age. An X class flare from the sun has billions of tons of methane and ammonia and other gases which oxidizes in our atmosphere causing sea level rise. (it also causes Antarctica ice to get a foot thicker every year on average)
I always hear the warmatolgist’s say they “BELIEVE in man-made global warming”
Belief is a statement of faith, religious faith. To force everyone, even the courts, to believe in this religion is forbidden by the constitution. This country does not recognize their religion over any other, even if they try to force us to believe in it. Their God is not my God.
An X-class CME certainly has no detectable amounts of organic carbon molecules (methane) or reduced nitrogen compounds. Its almost exclusively ionized hydrogen (as fast moving protons), some small amount of helium, and a charge balancing amount of electrons.
As for total global volcanic CO2 emissions, if benthic submarine CO2 release is included in your total, then maybe your statement is true.
The fact is we really don’t know how much CO2 is outgassing globally from volcanoes, both on land and more importantly in the deep oceans and under the Antarctic ice shields. Total CO2 from vulcanism is a very unconstrained by observation number, i.e highly uncertain.
Carbon , if I’m reading this right, is the third most abundant element in a CME.(“C” Page 20)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.03449.pdf
I believe it was 2014 when earth experience the perfect solar storm. A larger storm over took a smaller one making the most spectacular northern lights ever. You could tell the composition of the stellar gases by the color of the flame burning (oxidizing) 50 miles away in the upper atmosphere lighting up the entire sky. A few days later it was announced that the Arctic reached over 400 ppm CO2 for the first time ever during the event. It must’ve been a coincidence.
Actually it’s 4th, at about 0.04%
The colors you are seeing are from charged particles interacting with molecules in the earth’s atmosphere.
I wonder who ends up paying the lawyer fees ?
The cities (plaintiffs) are being represented by private law firms… on contingency, hoping for a Big Tobacco-style payment. The details of the agreements between the cities and those law firms is client confidential.
If (more likely “when”) Big Oil wins (defendants) and gets awarded claims for their attorney fees, the details of those confidential agreements likely spell-out who is has to pay and how much.
No they let it public knowledge that the lead law firm would take 23%. Well as it turns out 0 * 23% = 0
Correct me if my math is wrong.
Tobacco and lead paint compared to CO2??? Don’t think you can compare them. Let them prove that CO2 is a pollutant.
Alan,
What is confidential is who will pay the defendants’ legal bills when plaintiff loses and petition for legal fees is granted by the judge.
The result is the Lead Law firm and/or the taxpayers of those cities, the result is not zero, but negative.
An 8′ sea level rise would be a major improvement for Oakland. It should be so lucky.
SLR is far too slow to make for a good Hollywood drama story.
But the San Andreas and Cascadia faults simultaneously rupturing each with 9+ magnitude quakes (with associated 3-10meter plate drop) followed by a 35 meter tsunami as real SLR. now that would be a crowd-pleaser.
And No MagicMolecule™️ hand-waving required.
Seward, AK got a full meter of SLR, all in one day (54 years ago, as of Tuesday).
Since then it’s since lost 5.4 inches of that SLR.
Neither of those changes were due to anthropogenic CO2.
http://sealevel.info/9455090_seward_noaa_2017.png
No maybe the CO2 molecule is so strong that it separates all the faults in an earthquake. Ummmmmmmmm maybe they should reconsider that carbon capture strategy…….
Ah yes. Like Glasgow..
The oil companies should buy just enough San Francisco and Oakland bonds to get standing, and sue the cities for material misrepresentations in their bond offerings. As the statements in their bond offerings were directly inconsistent with the climate change lawsuit, it would give the cities choice of admitting at least one is false.
A few legal comments based on reading the Alameda County (Oakland) complaint illustrated by their attorney in the post. Wont go well, and I did not even go full depth/length on this dreck.
Complaint 1 page 1 intro: ‘harming Oakland now’ despite no tide gauge delta SlR in San Fran Bay in a century. Factually FALSE. Not a good way to begin, especially when the city’s bond offerings claim the opposite of this assertion.
2,3,5,6 sections set out the conspiracy theory, PROBLEM, no credible supporting evidence, as judge Alsup noted.
8: models predict 10 feet SLR by 2100. Two issues. The only ‘model’ ‘predicting that is goofy Hansen. But his goofy paper did not go beyond 2050. Oops.
The complaint just gets worse. These warmunist lawyers have no grip on reality at all!!!
No doubt BLM and affirmative action hires. Maybe MB too.
ristvan , Can the defendants argue that the harms are not manifest, but the benefits are kniwn, provable and offset the imaginary harms?
Only had a few hours on torts long go, but don’t the plaintiffs have to show “harm or expenses” in these type of suits?
In other words, no compensation for “predicted” future harm or expenses.
The tobacco case had a lot more evidence of medical harm and costs and studies to backup their claims.
Secondly, the Florida tobacco lawyers got about 20% of the huge settlement if memory serves, but thankfully it was primarily from Florida’s cut of the settlement.
– “The lawyers who represented the first states [Florida, Mississippi and Texas] to settle with the tobacco industry over health care costs were awarded $8.2 billion in fees yesterday, the richest legal payday in the nation’s history.. .Steven Yerrid, a plaintiffs’ lawyer in Tampa, who had helped represent Florida in its case said that he believed that the $3.4 billion paid to him and his colleagues was justified.” : NYTimes 1998
You read that right! $3 billion for his firm. Doubt he is still practicing law, ya think?
All should read “King of Torts” to see how it works.
The biggie from later Florida tobacco suits is this:
– A 2006 Florida ruling “… rejected a class representing some 700,000 Florida smokers as well as a jury award of $145 billion in punitive damages against the industry. But it established as res judicata the jury’s findings that cigarettes cause cancer, nicotine is addictive, and manufacturers sold a defective and dangerous product.” : Forbes 2013
And that reward to the plaintiff lawyers is what the oilers’ lawyers in the current case are fighting.
Gums comments…
Having just watched the entirety of that video, I’m struck by two things. a) This has to be one of the most specious lawsuits ever conceived.
b) How on earth do those halfwits even have jobs?
A: b) diversity quotas and an electorate bought with OPM.
OPiuM
This case will last years. I would not be surprised if it lasts over a decade until all appeals are exhausted. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the plaintiffs win a judgment of some fashion. This IS California after all. The standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence (basically 51%). The judge will not prove that global warming is a fact or not. Nobody can do that. Instead, he will rely on the testimony of experts. This “tutorial” is merely an effort to improve his ability to assess the credibility of these experts (i.e. improve his BS detector). The plaintiffs will have an endless parade of prominent government and university experts. They have huge weaknesses in their case, but California courts have a boundless creativity for liberal outcomes. I would not be sanguine about a quick or easy victory by defendants.
DeLoss McKnight
See comment above re: defendants purchasing sufficient bonds issued by Oakland and SF and then suing them for willful misrepresentation because situation A and Z cannot both be correct at the same time.
Something tells me the defendants most likely have far more competent attorneys working for them than the plaintiffs.
tetris, I know of that defense and was amused by it as well. I’m sure the plaintiffs, if they have to argue that point, will simply say that the bond prospectus was only talking about the risks for the lifetime of the bond issue, which in the vast majority of cases is 30 years or less. They can plausibly argue that while SLR acceleration is “baked in,” the rise won’t be significantly higher in the next 30 years. They can also argue that the extent of accelaration wasn’t known at the time those prospectuses were written. They will also double down and say that they *would* have disclosed those risks if the defendants hadn’t suppressed the information about those risks.
By the way, I meant to say above that while I wouldn’t be surprised at a victory in District Court, or the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a Supreme Court victory would be doubtful…unless the court composition has changed to the liberal persuasion by then.
The Court may be in California, but it is a United States District Court. That mean Federal, not State, jurisdiction.
But senators have an informal but strongly observed senatorial-privilege-type veto over federal judges in their state. That’s how California got all those liberal judges.
That may be how the Federal Courts located in California got so many liberal judges. However, Judge Alsup doens’t sound like one of them.
And, importantly, Federal rules apply, not State rules.
The judge seems to be pre-post-modern. Post-modern judges rule based on feelings; truth is relative, and decided by the preferences of those in power.
Heinlein’s silly season is upon us.
Just stop selling oil based products in California.
I would give it 3 days before the clowns in power start getting assassinated.
To all oil based products, just add the label: “Known to cause cancer in the state of California.”
😎
What do all the things “Known to cause cancer in the state of California” have in common?
California!
The psychological state called ‘California’ can be found in California. Therefore California is known to cause cancer in California! qed
Who is responsible for the snow records and supersized hail in Oklahoma that took out cars in such numbers that no rental cars were available anymore?
The latest Budget signed off by Trump besides defending the borders of foreign nations still contains financial support of the World Meteorological Organization. No other but Rand Paul actually read the bill before it was signed off. We’re screwed because “In Trump we Trust. Time to wake up and point out he’s undermining his own policies.
Here’s the article from ZH: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-23/rand-paul-live-tweets-exposing-rotten-13-trillion-spending-bill
R.de Haan, I read a number of those tweets this morning. They are a fascinating and depressing example of pork production. I hope that Trump will live up to his promise to never sign such a bill again, but the current dynamics are such that he will likely be forced to. This is the 21st century. There has to be a better way to craft and pass legislation that is transparent and and open to input from the electorate. It is only to the advantage of special interests (i.e. bribes) to legislate like we currently do.
His way of “draining the swamp” bears a strong resemblance to expanding and deepening rather than draining, doesn’t it? Could this kind of budget policy decision become a kind of a back door path to the utter extinction of the strange little parasitoid foreign country that’s called The District of Columbia.
Trump signed the budget bill because the United States may be involved in one or more wars in the near future and the U.S. military is NOT ready.
Half our combat aircraft can’t fly because of maintenance and spare parts shortages. And that’s just one example of how much harm was done to the U.S. military preparedness by the sequester that was imposed on it by Obama and the Republicans in Congress for the last eight years.
Trump needs to rebuild fast. That’s what he is thinking and why he signed the bill. The U.S. military and the American people can’t stand for the Congress to waste more time before giving the military the money they need. We are in great danger currently.
Trump also has some solutions: Do away with the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate so it only takes a majority to pass legislation; and give the president a line-item veto power. Only a line-item veto power will save the U.S. economy from bankruptcy. The disfunctional Congress certainly won’t do it, as we have just seen.
Lots of swamp to drain. Lots of feckless Republicans and obstructionist Democrats to replace in the 2018 elections.
I assume all the plaintiffs walked to the courthouse and the hearings are being held under candlelight. Such f**kin’ hypocrites.
I liked very much the bit about the Oakland and San Francisco municipal bonds issued 70 years ago up to last year that cities are not affected by sea level!
Well it does she spits or swallows?
Are Oakland and San Francisco Municipal Bonds based on Fraud?! Yep.
Ha hahahahahahhaha
Right about now the major fossil energy interests are telling the world’s largest banks with whom they’ve done trillions of dollars in finance that it would be a shame if it came to choosing their business or dealing in the City of Oakland’s bond offering.
Does anyone else think that (Barbara Parker) a woman who is wearing ‘dark glasses’ on an obviously dull and cloudy day may have some ‘perception’ issues when it comes to things like Global Warming?
Turn the oil spigot off completely to San Francisco and Oakland…!!!
And turn off the gasoline spigot from Chevron, ConocoPhilips, Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell companies…and any electricity power supplies from these companies.
I think they can afford a 7″ (inch) sea wall over the next 100 years without the oil companies contributing.
Re 7″ seawall. Sorry, this is Crazyfornia. Seawalls are contentious and litigious:
https://www.gravel2gavel.com/2017/07/lynch-v-california-coastal-commission-supreme-court-coastal-development.html
https://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/california-supreme-court-rules-for-coastal-commission-in-seawall-case
Wow, This looks like a case for Rosa Koire to fight (if she could) – Hey, they’re taking away our property rights. Hu-Un, you already lost your private property rights under UN Agenda 21, and ICLEI: https://www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com/iclei-when-they-say-local-they-mean-it.html
I would bet that their zoning laws have been replaced by the local planning board of un-elected officials, compliments of ICLEI, etc.
The Columbia Law folks seem to have taken down the two Amicus Briefs, so I put copies on my server, here:
http://sealevel.info/Calif_v_BP_et_al/
20180319_docket-317-cv-06011_na-1.pdf → Happer_Koonin_Lindzen_Amicus_Brief.pdf
20180316_docket-317-cv-06011_amicus-brief-1.pdf → Monckton_et_al_Amici_Brief_With_Motion.pdf
I notice that in the video, all the people there make use of goods and services that make use of fossil fuels so if there is any culpibility, they share it. They are wearing clothes whose transport involved the use of fossil fuels. They are living in cities built primarily by materials that were transported by the use of fossil fuels. I would think that the’re being transported to that location involved the use of fossil fuels..They are standing there exhaleing CO2 and H2O into the atmosphere After all it is their money that keeps the fossil fuel companies in business. To date it has been legal to make use of goods and services that involve the use of fossil fuels, in all of the United States so the oil companies have not been doing illegal.
The AGW conjecture has been around for decades yet the cities involved have done nothing to outlaw the use of goods and services that make use of fossil fuels. AT the very least the cities of San Francisco and Oakland should make it illegal to possiess or make use of fossil fuel or and equipment such as cars, trucks, generators, furnaces should be baned from those cities. The companies involved should stop selling fossil fuels in Oakland and San Francisco. What would happen if all the companies involved just stoped doing business io avoid any more litigation? Where I live, in Southern California if such action took place most of us would all starve to death in short order because so much of our food supply is moved by trucks that make use of fossil fuel.
The primary greenhouse gas is not CO2 but rather H2O. The cities involved have done nothing to stop the evaporization of H2O into the atmosphere within their jurisdiction. They should make it illegal to possess or make use of H2O within their city limits. They should also sue all water companies that supply water to their cities because more H2O in the atmosphere is suppose to contribut to global warming.
Another problem is that the cities involved are full of hydrocarbon based materials that could burn and by so doing add greenhosue gases, H2O and CO2 to the atmosphere. All such materials should be removed and baned from the cities involved. That includes all wood, plastics, paper, asphault and all organic material. Oxides of Nitrogen is another threat and to rid the cities of these very harmfull greenhouse gases all forms of Nitrogen, Oxygen, high heat, and electricity should be removed from the city limits. I believe that if Oakland and San Francisco took such actions to protect themselves global warming that they would eliminate any possibility that anyone in their cities would be hurt by climate change because there would be no people within those cities.
The reality is that based on the paleoclimate record and work done with models, one can conclude that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans ove which mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rational that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero.
The AGW conjecture is based on only partiial science. The AGW conjecture depends upon the existance of a radiant grreenhouse effect caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands, The radient greenhouse effect has not been observed, in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere, or anywhere else in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction so hence the AGW conjecrture is science fiction.
There is no scientific consensus as to the validity of the AGW conjecture because scientists never registered and voted on the subject. Such a consensus would be meaningless because science is not a democracy. Theories are not validated via a voting process. The laws of science are not some sort of legislation.
Apparently the rulling had nothing to do with the validity of the AGW conjecture. The judge did not see any evidence of a conspiricy.
It is like 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee all over again where the religious zealots (present day climate activists) tried to stop the teaching of evolution.
Another monkey trial! Hopefully the judge will be more objective this time.
I watched the video. Now I have to clean the carpet.
In Don Wuebbles response to Questions #4, he makes a point of describing only how CO2 affects incoming shortwave radiation. Is there any research on how CO2 affects incoming long wave radiation?
There is almost zero incoming longnwave radiation. The sun is too hot.
“too hot” is not the answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_spectrum_en.svg