All the "tutorial", reference, and amicus brief documents for the #ExxonKnew federal court case

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.

Sea Rise Map Oakland

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

Rising Seas in California

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:

http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180319_docket-317-cv-06011_na-1.pdf

http://blogs2.law.columbia.edu/climate-change-litigation/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2018/20180316_docket-317-cv-06011_amicus-brief-1.pdf

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Editor
March 23, 2018 6:11 pm

Anthony — Brief –

Robert Richards
Reply to  Anthony Watts
March 24, 2018 1:22 am

Why have Myles Allan et al’s submissions floated to the top and Lindzen et al are still being blocked. This is SO important>

gnomish
Reply to  Kip Hansen
March 23, 2018 8:08 pm

links to amicus briefs do not work for me 404

Richard M
Reply to  gnomish
March 23, 2018 8:32 pm

I also get a 404.

Bernard Lodge
Reply to  gnomish
March 23, 2018 9:14 pm

Me too

Reply to  gnomish
March 24, 2018 1:56 am

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

gnomish
Reply to  gnomish
March 24, 2018 3:52 am

TY daveburton

Reply to  gnomish
March 24, 2018 12:08 pm

Briggs is my cousin, family get togethers are interesting to say the least.

Richard Patton
Reply to  gnomish
March 24, 2018 2:21 pm

. 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.

Earthling2
March 23, 2018 6:12 pm

Dismissed, will be the final verdict, because it is frivolous and vexatious. And stupid.

David A
Reply to  Earthling2
March 24, 2018 7:50 am

Hope so. Can the defendants argue that the harms are not manifest, but the benefits are known and provable?

NW sage
Reply to  Earthling2
March 24, 2018 4:08 pm

I always thought that stupid was a requirement in California for filing any kind of lawsuit! Was I wrong?

Reply to  Earthling2
March 24, 2018 7:05 pm

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

Reply to  J Philip Peterson
March 24, 2018 7:18 pm

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???

Reply to  Earthling2
March 25, 2018 5:52 pm

Mostly stupid.

March 23, 2018 6:14 pm

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

Reply to  chaamjamal
March 23, 2018 6:43 pm

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?

John Garrett
Reply to  John DeFayette
March 23, 2018 7:11 pm

I’m a shareholder of Gazprom.

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  John DeFayette
March 23, 2018 9:04 pm

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.

Stevek
March 23, 2018 6:19 pm

Gas driven cars are a necessity for the economy. There is no replacement for gasoline without destroying the economy.

Max
Reply to  Stevek
March 23, 2018 6:58 pm

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.

Reply to  Max
March 23, 2018 7:18 pm

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.

Max
Reply to  Max
March 24, 2018 3:27 pm

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.

MarkW
Reply to  Max
March 24, 2018 3:34 pm

Actually it’s 4th, at about 0.04%

MarkW
Reply to  Max
March 24, 2018 3:35 pm

The colors you are seeing are from charged particles interacting with molecules in the earth’s atmosphere.

u.k.(us)
March 23, 2018 6:38 pm

I wonder who ends up paying the lawyer fees ?

Reply to  u.k.(us)
March 23, 2018 7:08 pm

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.

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
March 23, 2018 9:09 pm

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.

Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
March 23, 2018 9:51 pm

Tobacco and lead paint compared to CO2??? Don’t think you can compare them. Let them prove that CO2 is a pollutant.

Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
March 23, 2018 10:42 pm

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.

March 23, 2018 6:46 pm

An 8′ sea level rise would be a major improvement for Oakland. It should be so lucky.

Reply to  Max Photon
March 23, 2018 7:02 pm

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.

Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
March 23, 2018 7:57 pm

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

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
March 23, 2018 9:12 pm

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…….

Reply to  Max Photon
March 23, 2018 8:15 pm

Ah yes. Like Glasgow..comment image

Tom Halla
March 23, 2018 6:52 pm

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.

March 23, 2018 7:02 pm

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!!!

mike
Reply to  ristvan
March 23, 2018 7:34 pm

No doubt BLM and affirmative action hires. Maybe MB too.

David A
Reply to  ristvan
March 24, 2018 7:52 am

ristvan , Can the defendants argue that the harms are not manifest, but the benefits are kniwn, provable and offset the imaginary harms?

Gums
Reply to  ristvan
March 24, 2018 10:33 am

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…

Dryden Ayrd
March 23, 2018 7:14 pm

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?

Reply to  Dryden Ayrd
March 23, 2018 7:22 pm

A: b) diversity quotas and an electorate bought with OPM.

MarkW
Reply to  Joel O’Bryan
March 23, 2018 8:20 pm

OPiuM

DeLoss McKnight
March 23, 2018 7:31 pm

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.

tetris
Reply to  DeLoss McKnight
March 23, 2018 7:47 pm

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.

DeLoss McKnight
Reply to  tetris
March 23, 2018 8:16 pm

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.

Reply to  DeLoss McKnight
March 23, 2018 10:51 pm

The Court may be in California, but it is a United States District Court. That mean Federal, not State, jurisdiction.

Roger Knights
Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
March 24, 2018 12:41 am

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.

Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
March 24, 2018 3:47 pm

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.

Reply to  Retired_Engineer_Jim
March 24, 2018 3:47 pm

And, importantly, Federal rules apply, not State rules.

BallBounces
March 23, 2018 7:33 pm

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.

mike
Reply to  BallBounces
March 23, 2018 7:36 pm

Heinlein’s silly season is upon us.

Old44
March 23, 2018 8:01 pm

Just stop selling oil based products in California.
I would give it 3 days before the clowns in power start getting assassinated.

noaaprogrammer
Reply to  Old44
March 23, 2018 10:05 pm

To all oil based products, just add the label: “Known to cause cancer in the state of California.”

Reply to  noaaprogrammer
March 24, 2018 6:46 am

😎
What do all the things “Known to cause cancer in the state of California” have in common?
California!

NW sage
Reply to  noaaprogrammer
March 24, 2018 4:17 pm

The psychological state called ‘California’ can be found in California. Therefore California is known to cause cancer in California! qed

R.de Haan
March 23, 2018 8:02 pm

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?

R.de Haan
March 23, 2018 8:10 pm

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.

DeLoss McKnight
Reply to  R.de Haan
March 23, 2018 8:24 pm

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.

thomasjk
Reply to  R.de Haan
March 24, 2018 4:37 am

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.

TA
Reply to  thomasjk
March 24, 2018 8:41 am

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.

Art
March 23, 2018 8:31 pm

I assume all the plaintiffs walked to the courthouse and the hearings are being held under candlelight. Such f**kin’ hypocrites.

JBom
March 23, 2018 8:38 pm

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

March 23, 2018 9:02 pm

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.

charles nelson
March 23, 2018 9:12 pm

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?

March 23, 2018 9:32 pm

Turn the oil spigot off completely to San Francisco and Oakland…!!!

Reply to  J Philip Peterson
March 23, 2018 10:02 pm

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.

March 23, 2018 9:45 pm

I think they can afford a 7″ (inch) sea wall over the next 100 years without the oil companies contributing.

Reply to  Neil Jordan
March 24, 2018 2:05 am

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.

March 23, 2018 10:02 pm

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

willhaas
March 23, 2018 10:35 pm

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.

Dr Strange
March 24, 2018 2:32 am

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.

Steve Borodin
March 24, 2018 4:00 am

I watched the video. Now I have to clean the carpet.

GP
March 24, 2018 4:09 am

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?

Reply to  GP
March 24, 2018 6:30 am

There is almost zero incoming longnwave radiation. The sun is too hot.

GP
Reply to  ristvan
March 25, 2018 9:27 am
michel
March 24, 2018 4:09 am

A source which is coninually updated is the following:
http://climatecasechart.com/case/people-state-california-v-bp-plc-oakland/
Worth bookmarking and using to keep up to date. If it ain’t appearing here, its not real.

joe - the non climate scientist
Reply to  michel
March 24, 2018 9:30 am

Thanks for the link – I didnt want to pay for pacer to access the docs from the ND of Ca court website.
I did notice that there is no order granting any motion to dismiss any thing.
Specifically, there is no order dismissing the conspiracy claim, every though it has been reported at Wattsup at least 3 times and at lease once at the daily caller

michel
Reply to  joe - the non climate scientist
March 24, 2018 11:14 am

Yes, it never happened. Fake news. Download the all parties motion to dismiss from the link, worth reading carefully.
Don’t read the electricity users amicus brief while drinking coffee!

joe - the non climate scientist
Reply to  joe - the non climate scientist
March 24, 2018 12:49 pm

Frustrating since the this site is usually pretty good.
The misreporting is something more common with skeptical science. Though I do have to say that I got banned from SK science when I pointed out errors on that site.

jaymam
March 24, 2018 4:53 am

Professor Myles Allen’s diagram of CO2 actually shows 260,000 parts per million instead of 400 ppm.comment image
“Professor Myles Allen was illustrating how much Co2 was now in the atmosphere when the judge rebuked him for using a misleading illustration that made the atmosphere appear to have more than 400 parts per million of Co2.
“It’s 400 parts per million but you make it look like it’s 10,000 part per million,” he said.

Paul Schnurr
Reply to  jaymam
March 24, 2018 7:21 am

Wow, that judge has gone right to the point. I’ve often wondered how many climate “activist”, not to mention your average “man-on-the-street”, has any conception of how small “400 ppm” is. I bet less than one in a hundred. And each molecule only absorbs less than 20% of the infrared spectrum.
Let the oil companies stop producing if you want to see a real cataclysmic event.

R. Shearer
Reply to  jaymam
March 24, 2018 7:44 am

What the hell is that?

jaymam
Reply to  R. Shearer
March 24, 2018 1:23 pm

In a spreadsheet I have counted the 1438 air molecules in Professor Myles Allen’s diagram that he showed the judge, and 374 of them appear to be CO2, i.e. 26% of them. That is 260,000 parts of CO2 per million parts of air. CO2 is really only 400 parts per million. The diagram has 650 times as many CO2 molecules as it should.

Bryan A
Reply to  jaymam
March 24, 2018 10:40 am

For the model spheres shown, not one single modeled sphere would be CO2 at that quantity. If you doubled the amount then you could have 1 Cyan sphere

Bryan A
Reply to  Bryan A
March 24, 2018 10:44 am

Exactly what to expect from Oxford University

jaymam
Reply to  Bryan A
March 24, 2018 3:44 pm

I have added a yellow sphere to represent what the actual proportion of CO2 should be in Professor Myles Allen’s diagram.
I can’t imagine what the blue, red and cyan spheres are supposed to represent. Perhaps Oxford University could clarify, or issue a new diagram.comment image

Reply to  jaymam
March 25, 2018 5:59 pm

Here’s MY diagram of what 400 ppm looks like, along with the HUMAN percentage of THAT:comment image

Reply to  Robert Kernodle
March 26, 2018 10:54 am

In case anyone does not get the above diagram, the BIG cube consists of a million smaller cubes, … the pink volume represents the number of those million smaller cubes that are CO2, … and the red volume represents the number of those million cubes within the pink volume that are HUMAN-produced CO2.
If you go to the image link, and keep zooming in on it,then you can see the individual small cubes within the entire million small cubes that make up the large cube (“Earth’s atmosphere”).
Now imagine distributing that red volume of small cubes equally throughout the whole million small cubes.
Very sparse.
And THIS is what is supposed to control the entire fluid dynamic mass of Earth’s atmosphere in such a manner as to produce catastrophic effects.
Magical !

March 24, 2018 6:05 am

Mr Watts, I’ve written a rebuttal to Dr. Myles Allen’s presentation, but because you have a much larger following, it would be great if you or one of your frequent guests would do the same.
Sophistry In San Francisco; Half-Truths are Twice the Lie
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/sophistry-in-san-francisco-half-truths-are-twice-the-lie/

Reply to  co2islife
March 24, 2018 9:46 am

From your link:
From your link:

ADMINISTRATIVE MOTION OF WILLIAM HAPPER, STEVEN E. KOONIN, AND RICHARD S. LINDZEN FOR LEAVE TO SUBMIT PRESENTATION IN RESPONSE TO THE COURT’S TUTORIAL QUESTIONS
LINK

On page 6 from the above you will find this line:
Taken as a whole, the average climate is becoming “milder” across most of the United States.
I love it.

Reply to  Steve Case
March 24, 2018 10:17 am

Thanks, I’ll use that.

Reply to  Steve Case
March 25, 2018 10:45 am

Truth! “Global” warming isn’t really very global. It doesn’t much affect tropical highs (which is nice, because the tropics are warm enough already). Instead, it mostly makes harsh northern climates a little bit milder, because it disproportionately warms cold winter nights at higher latitudes.
Also, thanks to their absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere, the oceans are becoming (very slightly) less caustic.
What’s not to like? 😃

michel
March 24, 2018 6:47 am

Here’s what I don’t understand about this suit.
Are they seeking for the conduct, the production and sale of oil based products, to continue indefinitel, but essentially paying a tax to the cities for the harm caused?
Or are they seeking for the conduct to cease, ie the companies are to stop production and sale?
The first seems to be what the claims are demanding, but its not in the least an environmental remedy. We would not, for instance, allow particulate pollution as long as a tax was paid. We seek to stop it, on health grounds. London does not allow burning of coal, but tax the coal. It only allows burning of smokeless fuel. Hence the end of smog.

MarkW
Reply to  michel
March 24, 2018 12:59 pm

The want the oil companies to give the city billions of dollars.
The cities will claim that the money is for sea walls and such, but like the tobacco settlement money that was supposed to be spent on health care and education, it will end up being spent on whatever will buy the most votes for the politicians involved.

jake
March 24, 2018 7:05 am

Those “oil” companies exhibit great care to burn as little portion of the precious product as possible.What they burn they cannot sell. It is those lawyers, and all of us, who burn the stuff to heat/cool offices, schools, dwellings, the courtrooms for those frivolous lawsuits, making products in factories, …. why not to sue the energy users instead of producers?

March 24, 2018 8:47 am

If I lived in the SF Bay area, I’d be utterly terrified of the rapidly rising sea…oh wait; scratch that.
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=9414750

oppti
Reply to  Theyouk
March 24, 2018 9:41 am

Try the 50 year trend it is more interesting:
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=9414290
It shows a clear acceleration signal. This must be due to global heating.
When did the oil company’s start? 1900? It must be correlated.
BART system took over transportation at 1970 so this is the turning point!
Could it been shown more clearly?

Reply to  oppti
March 24, 2018 9:39 pm

oppi wrote, “Try the 50 year trend [for San Francisco] it is more interesting: It shows a clear acceleration signal.”
It’s not real. It’s an artifact of the “apparent datum shift” circa 1897. The apparent acceleration vanishes in the part of the graph which does not include 1897 within the 50-year window.
NOAA helpfully marked that “apparent datum shift” with a dashed vertical line on their “Relative Sea Level Trend” page for San Francisco, but they did not bother to do that on their “Variation of 50-Year Relative Sea Level Trends” page for San Francisco.
Here’s quadratic regression (in orange) for San Francisco sea-level, starting the month after the 1906 earthquake, and continuing to present (January 2018), juxtaposed with CO2 (in green); I also enabled 3-month “boxcar” smoothing:
http://sealevel.info/9414290_SanFrancisco_2018-01_since_1906-05_quadratic_3mo_smoothed.png
Here’s an interactive version (but without smoothing enabled):
https://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=9414290&c_date=1906/5-2019/12&lin_ci=0&linear=0&quadratic=1&quad_ci=1
That orange line looks looks perfectly straight, doesn’t it? Hold a ruler up to it and you can detect that it curves downward ever so slightly. That’s deceleration, but it is not statistically significant:
−0.00296 ±0.01385 mm/yr²

oppti
Reply to  oppti
March 25, 2018 1:22 am

Thanks-but it does not change anything after 1922!
It is the same change today for the 50 Years as then. (1,4 mm/year) and it has been twice as high (2,58 at 1945 that is mean of 1920 to 1970)
Water circulation might give the periodic change.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/jisao-pdo

Reply to  oppti
March 25, 2018 10:24 am

(Sorry about the botched </i> tag in my previous comment.)
opti wrote, “Thanks-but it does not change anything after 1922! It is the same change today for the 50 Years as then. (1,4 mm/year) and it has been twice as high (2,58 at 1945 that is mean of 1920 to 1970)”
Yes, here’s NOAA’s sea-level graph for San Francisco:
http://sealevel.info/9414290_san_francisco_msl_noaa_2018-03.png
Here’s their “50 year trends” graph, which I’ve annotated to show the parts which are distorted by the “apparent datum shift.” Note that NOAA only did their 50-year trend calculations at 5-year intervals; I’ve circled the “1945” period in orange:
http://sealevel.info/9414290_san_francisco_50yr_trends_noaa_2018-03_annot1.png
The 50-year trends which aren’t distorted by that 1897 “apparent datum shift” are all pretty close (within about ±0.6 mm/yr) to the long-term 2.0 mm/yr rate. I think that the variation is just an artifact of the starting and ending years for each calculation period. The 1945 period shows a higher than typical rate because it happens to start with a transient “slosh down” and end with a transient “slosh up,” which I’ve circled here:
http://sealevel.info/9414290_SanFrancisco_2018-01_since_1906-05_with_1920-25_and_1965-70_circled.png

Reply to  Theyouk
March 24, 2018 10:00 am

From the above link – Alameda, California, which is right between San Francisco
& Oakland, CA:
“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.”
0.26 feet = 3.12 inches. I guess the sea wall only has to be a little over 3″ (inches) to keep up with the SLR over the next 100 years, not the 7 inch wall I mentioned earlier in this thread…

Reply to  J Philip Peterson
March 24, 2018 10:54 am

Should probably start the evacuation now….
😉

Reply to  J Philip Peterson
March 24, 2018 7:31 pm

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 say??

March 24, 2018 11:12 am

I’ve completed the rebuttal of Dr. Myles Allen’s presentation and would appreciate any comments, edits, additions, etc etc. Please share and pass it on.
Climate Sophistry In San Francisco; Half-Truths are Twice the Lie
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/sophistry-in-san-francisco-half-truths-are-twice-the-lie/

Warren Blair
Reply to  co2islife
March 24, 2018 4:52 pm

Submit it to WUWT for posting . . .

Trailer Trash
March 24, 2018 12:56 pm

Thank you for the link to the Happer, Koonin, Lindzen amicus brief. I’ll take it as authoritative. Only an extremely stupid arrogant fool would try to pull the wool over the eyes of a federal judge – unless they like living in a tiny concrete room with a metal sink and toilet.
The brief deserves wide distribution. Even white trash such as myself can understand most of it. I was surprised to learn that the atmospheric temperature rises above 20 km, then goes down then up again. I must’ve been sleeping in class the day the teacher talked about that.

March 24, 2018 7:04 pm

Climate Alarmist is Playing San Francisco Judge as a Complete Fool
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/climate-alarmist-is-playing-san-francisco-judge-as-a-complete-fool/
Dr. Myles Allen must think that the San Francisco Judge is a complete fool. I just finished a post refuting many of his claims, but one example needed to be singled out. In his presentation, Dr. Myles Allen replaced the poster child Mt. Kilimanjaro, which was exposed as a $%$ in the Climategate emails, with the Glacier National Park Glacier. He claimed that man-made global warming is the cause of the decline of the glacier.

climatebeagle
March 25, 2018 2:49 pm

FOI request against Oakland to provide an explicit list of how Oakland has suffered consequences of climate change.
https://oaklandca.nextrequest.com/requests/RT-23205
No response yet …

climatebeagle
March 25, 2018 2:51 pm

The 8 feet of sea-level rise was taken from page 25 in:
Rising Seas in California
AN UPDATE ON SEA-LEVEL RISE SCIENCE:
http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/docs/rising-seas-in-california-an-update-on-sea-level-rise-science.pdf

March 26, 2018 10:10 am

Local jurisdictions do not have to utilize the Federal flood elevations as established through FEMA and shown on the FIRM maps … they may adopt more stringent rules.
For example, Oakland could require construction around the bay, and in areas that are subject to potential future flooding, to be built higher that the minimum federal requirements. They could require construction to be five feet above the BFE if they wanted to. Have they initiated this requirement?
The City of Oakland is required to manage the floodplain development in a manner that keeps the development reasonably safe from flooding. If they have signed off on any FEMA LOMA of LOMR-F applications (“knowing”, as they do, that the flooding will be much higher than the model as developed by FEMA), then they (Oakland CFM’s) should be subject to the penalties outlined in the CFR under floodplain management.