Guest “Go ahead, make my day…” by David Middleton
Charleston sues ‘Big Oil’ for flooding in SC Lowcountry caused by global warming
By Mikaela PorterSep 9, 2020 Updated Sep 11, 2020The city of Charleston filed a lawsuit Wednesday in state court against two dozen major oil and pipeline companies, alleging their products and the spread of misinformation about fossil fuels have caused climate change and repetitive, disastrous flooding in the city.
The lawsuit demands those companies — some of the biggest names in the industry — pay for the cost of trying to keep the city dry. But it doesn’t specify a dollar amount.
It was the second assault on the oil industry in two days. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced a moratorium on drilling off the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.
[…]
The Post and Courier
First “Assault” – The Moratorium
Firstly, President Trump did not impose a moratorium. A moratorium was already in place. The President extended it.
Secondly, the area of the extension (off the Atlantic coast) is the South Atlantic Planning Area…
This is the Atlantic planning area with the least oil & gas potential.
I would have preferred that he not extend the moratorium… But the President doesn’t always do what I would want him to do. And, if an area of the Atlantic OCS had to remain closed, the South Atlantic was the right choice.
The first “assault” on the oil industry rates a Christoper Walken Award.
Second “Assault” – The Junk Lawsuit
The city of Charleston filed a lawsuit Wednesday in state court against two dozen major oil and pipeline companies, alleging their products and the spread of misinformation about fossil fuels have caused climate change and repetitive, disastrous flooding in the city.
The lawsuit demands those companies — some of the biggest names in the industry — pay for the cost of trying to keep the city dry. But it doesn’t specify a dollar amount.
The Post and Courier
Form the junk lawsuit’s introduction:
Defendants, major corporate members of the fossil fuel industry, have known for nearly half a century that unrestricted production and use of fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes our climate. They have known for decades that those impacts could be catastrophic and that only a narrow window existed to take action before the consequences would be irreversible. They have nevertheless engaged in a coordinated, multifront effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge of those threats, discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence, and persistently create doubt in the minds of customers, consumers, regulators, the media, journalists, teachers, and the public about the reality and consequences of the impacts of their fossil fuel pollution.
Junk Lawsuit
“They have known for decades…”
This cartoon appears on page 62 of this, and nearly every other, junk climate lawsuit:
The exact same image, including the caption is in Delaware’s recent junk lawsuit. The graph is from what is known as the “Black presentation” and supposedly reveals Exxon’s secret knowledge of climate change, which was being withheld from the public. The “infamous” 1978 Black presentation was derived from government and academic publications and conferences on the so-called greenhouse effect.
Here’s what Exxon knew in 1978…
Black’s allegedly proprietary climate model was just a cartoon based on publicly available literature. I overlaid HadCRUT4 (Northern Hemisphere) on the Black cartoon:
If HadCRUT4 is right (it isn’t), it’s now only slightly warmer than the “approximate range of undisturbed climate in past few centuries.” Just like the models of today, the observations track at or below the 95% confidence band. Way back in 1977, Exxon Knew that the climate models overestimated warming!
What’s even funnier? The “Black presentation” was made during the height of That 70’s Climate Crisis Show. If the climate models are correct (they aren’t), ExxonMobil and other purveyors of fossil fuels saved the world from this:
Just imagine the lawsuit if Exxon and all of the other purveyors of fossil fuels had stopped producing and selling fossil fuels back when they first learned “that unrestricted production and use of fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes our climate,” and this actually occurred:
“Repetitive, disastrous flooding in the city”
From page 2 of the junk lawsuit:
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas pollution, primarily in the form of CO2, is far and away the dominant cause of global warming, resulting in severe impacts including, but not limited to, sea level rise, disruption to the hydrologic cycle, more frequent and intense extreme precipitation events and associated flooding, more frequent and intense heatwaves, more frequent and intense droughts, and associated consequences of those physical and environmental changes.
Junk Lawsuit
The worst flooding in recent history was in 2015…
South Carolina Flood Frequency Q&A
In 2015, Dr. Robert Holmes, USGS National Flood Hazard Coordinator, took time to discuss some issues related to the flooding in South Carolina following the Appalachian Floods and Hurricane Joaquin.
[…]
Is this flood due to climate change?
USGS research has shown no linkage between flooding (either increases or decreases) and the increase in greenhouse gases. Essentially, from USGS long-term streamgage data for sites across the country with no regulation or other changes to the watershed that could influence the streamflow, the data shows no systematic increases in flooding through time.
A much bigger impact on flooding, though, is land use change. Without proper mitigation, urbanization of watersheds increases flooding. Moreover, encroachment into the floodplain by homes and businesses leads to greater economic losses and potential loss of life, with more encroachment leading to greater losses.
USGS
The USGS says that there is “no linkage between flooding (either increases or decreases) and the increase in greenhouse gases.” The Mark I human eyeball tells us that there is no linkage between the rate of sea level rise and the increase in greenhouse gases. There has been no change in the rate of sea level rise in Charleston over the past 120 years.
Variations of the word, “flooding,” appear over thirty times in this junk lawsuit, mostly in terms of future speculation.
For instance, average sea level has already risen and will continue to rise substantially along Charleston’s coast, causing flooding, inundation, erosion, and beach loss; extreme weather, including hurricanes, drought, heatwaves, and other extreme events will become more frequent, longer-lasting and more severe…
Junk Lawsuit
Now… I’m not a lawyer, nor have I ever played a lawyer on TV… But, I don’t think speculation about future damages establishes “standing” in court.
But, then again, with the Climatariat and the lamestream media, model-based prognostications about the future are often regarded as established facts.
That said, flooding is a serious issue in Charleston and a rising sea level certainly won’t improve the situation. But, Charleston doesn’t flood *because* climate change.
JUNE 24, 2014
The History Behind Flooding in Charleston, South CarolinaFor many the idea of sea level rise and its associated impacts are thought of as future events. But, here in Charleston it’s already a part of life. Coastal flooding is a major issue that the city faces. All it takes is just the right tide, or even worse, an extreme high tide paired with a torrential downpour during rush hour, and Charleston’s streets become fingers of the Atlantic Ocean that no car can ford. It’s not hard to fathom that these flooded streets will one day become creeks and marshes. And in many cases that is what they once were.
As far back as the 18th century, Charlestonians have made a practice of expanding the city’s footprint by filling creeks and marshes. Alfred O. Halsey’s Historic Charleston on a Map provides an amazing illustration of the change to the peninsula’s landscape (Preservation Society of Charleston [PSOC]). The map shows that many areas that frequently flood are atop man made land.
The aptly named Water Street in the South of Broad neighborhood was originally Vanderhorst Creek, until it was filled in 1792. Many are familiar with the images of kayakers paddling through the City Market after wayward bands from Hurricane Isaac flooded the city. This could have been a common sight if what was once Governor’s Creek wasn’t filled in to create Market Street in first decade of the 19th century. Both the Charleston Village and Cannonborough neighborhoods were filled in during the mid 1800s and both are notorious for their flood problems. The city has continued to alter the coastline as late as the 1960s. During this time, Lockwood Boulevard was constructed which resulted in cutting off the Charleston Municipal Yacht Basin from the Ashley River and converted it into a placid pond (Thompson 2013).
[…]
Geozone (NOAA Office for Coastal Management)
I put together a comparison of Halsey’s 1949 historical map (Preservation Society of Charleston) and an 1869 Charleston street map (University of Texas):
Charleston floods because they built much of the city in the Atlantic Ocean. And… let’s not forget subsidence.
The Defense Rests
About the Author
David Middleton is a proud member of the “climate wrecking industry” since 1981. He has been a geophysicist/geologist in the oil & gas industry for just under 40 years, working for companies you probably have never heard of. He normally doesn’t speak of himself in the third person.
The Gelbspan Files cover these lawsuits and how they can trace back to one fake document Ms Oreskes has been peddling for years complete with the reference kiting.
http://gelbspanfiles.com/
Thanks for the mention of my blog! What I cover is actually a little more complicated; I term it the “Gore-Oreskes-Gelbspan” accusation which is based not exactly on a ‘fake’ document, but a particular set of genuine leaked memo proposals that were never actually accepted or implemented by the PR campaign they were offered to, thus the portrayal of them as smoking gun evidence of fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns is fake news from Oreskes and her pals.
Regarding the “… this cartoon appears on page 62 of this, and nearly every other, junk climate lawsuit ….” statement in the guest post above, the reason behind that repetition appearance is because all the other lawsuits containing it are almost verbatim copies of each other from the SAME law firm. They just swap out the names of the plaintiffs and assorted defendants, so in a technical sense, it’s one single lawsuit regurgitated a dozen times now. I plop all of my dissections of those lawsuits into the “Sher Edling boilerplate” category ( gelbspanfiles.com/?tag=sher-edling-boilerplate ) at my blog. Stay tuned there for my dissection of this one and others as they appear.
I somewhat disagree with your reasoning Russell. The lawsuit says ” They have nevertheless engaged in a coordinated, multifront effort to conceal and deny their own knowledge of those threats, discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence, and persistently create doubt in the minds of customers, consumers, regulators, the media, journalists, teachers, and the public about the reality and consequences of the impacts of their fossil fuel pollution.”
As you say this was only a PR firm’s unsolicited proposal that was never acted on. So the lawsuit is saying a lie, as it says they acted on the documents, which are fake because they were never used by the company. I could have chosen my wording better but the “company documents” were never that.
You are right that they trace back to the same tired story being peddled
You are correct in the fundamental point of it all — beyond assertions about science details, the lawsuits say Big Energy “knew” AGW was settled, yet engaged in a disinformation coverup. But if the lawyers had done any due diligence on the core ‘evidence’ supposedly proving the existence of disinformation campaigns, they’d know their ‘evidence’ on that angle was worthless. Question is, are they that inept in basic paperwork research, or are they crossing their fingers that neither the energy company defendants or objective reporters look deeper into that specific accusation and the ‘sources’ behind the long-term corruption accusation?
For those that don’t get it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8
If you REALLY don’t get it FF to 3:00
D.M.: You’re really an eclectic kinda guy.
If they would only plagiarize the Black report in its entirety, rather than the original lawsuit… They wouldn’t have a lawsuit.
+10
“Regarding the “… this cartoon appears on page 62 of this, and nearly every other, junk climate lawsuit ….” statement in the guest post above, the reason behind that repetition appearance is because all the other lawsuits containing it are almost verbatim copies of each other from the SAME law firm. They just swap out the names of the plaintiffs and assorted defendants, so in a technical sense, it’s one single lawsuit regurgitated a dozen times now.”
Sounds like a conspiracy to me. Who is paying for this, George Soros?
Just watched Biden speech from Wilmington,Delaware on the Democrat plan to address the “climate crisis”.
The degree of misinformation on extreme weather events as evidence of a climate crisis was extraordinary.
Mr. Biden proudly announced that the A/G of Delaware had sued 29 Oil Companies for damage knowingly caused by their product.
No mention that similar flawed actions have all failed in Federal Courts.
Is it 4-0 in these ‘lawfare’ suits to date against the plaintiffs?
From March 2019…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/14/ny-attorney-general-defies-judges-order-in-exxon-case/
Yet the lame-stream media continues to report this nonsense as if the oil & gas industry is losing this war in court.
The good guys employ a special legal clerk to help with the cases. His name is John Galt.
Who is John Galt? 😉
The important question is, will John Galt show up if Biden wins? I spent 8 years waiting for John Galt during the Maobama Maladministration… 😉
Well after 8 years of the Maobama Maladministration John Galt finally showed up in the voting booth. Lets hope he make a return appearance this year.
David,
Thanks. I had read the March post but couldn’t remember the score to date.
I think we will be able to add Delaware and Charleston to the losing column in due course.
That was just the score against New York… 😎
“But, I don’t think speculation about future damages establishes “standing” in court.” How about speculation about current damages, event X from action Y has happened (coincided) before, so current action Y must have caused event X now? What if action Y did not cause event X every time, or even very often? Still action Y guilty unless you can prove event X didn’t happen from action Y. I recall one such dumb claim, wonder if it works now, guilt by association?
Yes, guilt by correlation is a principle of social justice. Diversity dogma, for another, denies individual dignity, individual conscience, normalizes color quotas, color blocs, and affirmative discrimination, a progressive condition.
David,
Thanks for carrying the fight to the enemies of Mankind! It’s always a pleasure watching a well trained fighter step into the ring and display his prowess! While this is no Hagler/Hearns spectacle (watched it at Lake Tahoe on my honeymoon) it is nice to see the opponent bleeding and stumbling around the ring so quickly!
The only drawback with the Mark I human eyeball is that it only functions properly when connected to a working CPU, known colloquially as the human brain. Sadly, most of these units do not function properly or have been programmed with a bunch of garbage when coming directly off the assembly line! Many can be repaired or reprogrammed, but a large number are beyond all hope! Not even shutting them down and rebooting will get them to work! Maybe a bigger hammer… Hmmm!
Clearly, those mentally defective morons are not my intended audience, unless I am mercilessly ridiculing them… 😎
David,
Don’t sell those mentally defective morons short; they seem intent on pushing all the independents and many more conservative (less radical) Democrat voters into voting for Trump! All the Republicans have to do is run videos of the Biden Rioters and Burn, Loot, Murder protestors attacking people in stores and restaurants; their campaign ads write themselves!
Now all we have to do is expose the voter-fraud-by-mail scheme to the public and we can have four more years of “Drill, baby, drill!”
David
You said, “But the President doesn’t always do what I would want him to do.” You really should take him out to lunch more often! 🙂
I don’t think he eats at Jimmy John’s or Whataburger… 😎
That would have been President Obama. He loved a good burger when he could sneak away for the queen.
Introduce him.
I wouldn’t want him to have a heart attack… I would gladly take a Whataburger for President Trump… 😎
Well, he did order from Wendy’s and McDonalds when he invited the Clemson Tigers over to the white house….
Maybe I do need to introduce him to Whataburger… And Taco Cabana!
So we may have worked at some of the same places… Possibly the French asylum in Sugar Land?
Never worked in Sugar Land, but I did visit the Unocal office there at least once to look at a prospect back in the late 90’s.
1981-1997 Enserch Exploration, Dallas TX
1997-2001 Chieftain International, Dallas TX
2001-2006 The company formerly known as Box Energy, Dallas TX.
2007-2012 The company that bought the company formerly known as Box Energy, Dallas TX.
2013-Present The company that bought the company that bought the company formerly known as Box Energy, Dallas/Houston TX.
I finally ran out of Gulf of Mexico companies in Dallas… So I’ve been commuting to Houston since 2016… But working from home in Dallas since March.
From 1981-1988, I worked East Texas. Since 1988, I’ve worked the Gulf of Mexico. Funny thing, the first offshore field and first 3d survey I ever worked was in East Cameron South Addition. That field has followed me around. Chieftain was the only company I worked for that didn’t operate it or have a large working interest.
Au contraire. He is famous for his junk food consumption.
HD Hoese
“Causation” has to be established. Speculation alone isn’t sufficient. Correlation alone does not prove causation.
OK then. Refer to the court document linked as ‘junk lawsuit’. Refer to the Causes of Action starting on page 120.
Each of the causes of action alleges that the oil companies have (already) damaged Charleston or that they had a duty to warn people of the possibility of such damages.
Charleston can’t sue for hypothetical future damages, so at least they didn’t make that mistake.
Good luck proving that any of the sea level rise over the last two hundred years is the fault of the oil companies.
There is also the duty of a plaintiff to mitigate damages. link Charleston built on a flood plain. That’s pretty much a guarantee that Mother Nature will flood them.
In addition to the plaintiff’s reckless conduct and failure to mitigate damages, we also have the issue of the benefits they have enjoyed due to fossil fuels. I would say the benefits exceed the damages by several orders of magnitude.
I look forward with glee to seeing the oil companies’ defence documents.
They don’t even allege any specific damages there.
I see no change or acceleration on the entire eastern sea board…
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Selected-tide-gauge-records-from-the-North-Atlantic-Data-are-sourced-from-the-Permanent_fig6_259504511
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Selected-tide-gauge-records-from-the-North-Atlantic-Data-are-sourced-from-the-Permanent_fig6_259504511
There has been no acceleration of SL rise in South Carolina or the entire eastern Sea Board for nearly a century or more.
A clever attorney would start filing class action lawsuits against these lawsuits on behalf of oil company shareholders. The legal theory would be that there are absolutely no provable damages resulting from the use of fossil fuels, therefore the lawsuits against oil companies constitute judicial abuse, with the intention of damaging the oil company through negative publicity and legal expenses. The decline in shareholder stock prices and the costs of defending these lawsuits ARE provable damages.
Some clever attorney’s should file a complimentary suit against the localities that are filing these suits for their role in buying, using, and not outlawing the use of fossil fuels in their jurisdictions since they believe them to be so dangerous, citing these lawsuits and the claims there in as proof of these localities own culpability in any “damages” they are claiming for not only having not ceased the use of fossil fuels in their jurisdiction but continuing to allow their use at present. After all if they know fossil fuels such a danger, it’s their own negligence for continuing to use them. Hoist them on their own petard and see how quickly they change their tune.
Climate cooling… warming… change. Undeniable. Unfalsifiable. Plausible, with an evolutionary (i.e. chaotic) outlook.
To show good faith as they prepare a response, Exxon should immediately cease distributing fossil fuels to Charleston and collaborate with all other ‘polluters’ to ensure no company provides Charleston with fossil fuels. To further appease Charleston’s ‘leaders’ Exxon should collaborate with all electric utilities in the area to ensure no fossil fuel-generated electricity is inadvertently used by the virtuous residents of Charleston.
+ + + +
Those oil companies would lose in a heartbeat all lawsuits claiming malicious damage to the public by discriminatory action.
On the other hand, if they could get away with it legally, it would certainly be justified morally.
Or just tell them to get the extortion funds from the people that actually USE the petroleum products. 😉
If Exxon knew.. Everybody knew.
Its not as if the climate fakers didn’t make enough idiotic noise about it. !
This political lawyering is getting to be a major problem and tarnishing the whole legal profession. The only fix is an overarching law (probably a new Constitutional right) that so long as democracies don’t declare a product illegal or banned it’s every citizen’s or entity’s fundamental right to promote trade and sell any or every legal good. No more 20/20 hindsight witch hunts and vexatious lawyering. Produce your science and evidence and get it banned democratically or naff off.
14 Sept: CNN: The world may never consume more oil than in 2019, BP says
by Hanna Ziady, CNN Business; John Defterios contributed reporting
LONDON – Demand for oil may have peaked last year, according to BP, which says the global market for crude might never recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
In a new report published on Monday, the company lays out three scenarios for energy demand, all of which forecast a decline in demand for oil over the next 30 years. The scale and pace of the decline will be driven by the increasing efficiency and electrification of road transportation, BP (BP) said…
The new report is a major change from last year, when BP expected growth in oil demand to continue into the 2030s…
Analysts think the crisis will accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels towards renewable forms of energy, particularly as governments and investors heap pressure on companies to tackle the climate crisis amid growing evidence of its devastating effects… READ ON
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/14/business/bp-oil-demand-peak-coronavirus/index.html
11m to 22m: US election; segment host, Ed Butler.
guest Ian Bremmer: China prefers Trump win.
plus other** conspiracy theories; includes Obama guy, Daniel Russell; BBC claims they contacted Trump Commerce Dept but no-one was available for this program.
around 21m, Rachel Winter of ***Killik & Co., re BP report: (paraphrasing) “oil demand could fall from here, but that’s not bad for BP, because they are moving heavily into renewable power”.
AUDIO: 14 Sept: BBC: World Business Report
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08rg4dm
**Ian Bremmer apologizes for tweet about President Trump and Biden
WaPo – May 27, 2019 – A prominent political commentator tweeted a made-up comment he said Trump made about Joe Biden and North Korea…
11 Sept: ***KILLIK & CO: BUILD BACK BETTER – JOE BIDEN’S ENVIRONMENTAL PLAN AND WHAT THIS MIGHT MEAN FOR THE US ENERGY INDUSTRY
by Mark Nelson
With less than two months before the US presidential election, Democratic candidate Joe Biden is leading in the polls. Criticism of current President Donald Trump’s handling of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, amongst other issues, appear, at the time of writing, to be supporting former Vice President Biden’s campaign…
Joe Biden’s Build Back Better economic plan draws heavily from the Green New Deal put forward by left-wing members of the Democratic party, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. The plan promises to put the US on an irreversible path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050, creating millions of jobs in the process. ..
Amongst the most noteworthy aspects of the Build Back Better plan, is the target of creating a net-zero power sector by 2035. This target is more ambitious than any of the US States, which have often been ahead of the Federal Government in adopting environmental goals, and it is also five years earlier than the EU’s target as part of their own Green Deal…
https://www.killik.com/the-edit/industry-insight-us-energy-industry/
Lewandowsky and co:
AUDIO: 54m5s: 14 Sept: ABC: Big Ideas: Conspiracy theories in times of crisis
What do climate deniers, anti-vaccination activists and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists have in common?
Why are they so resistant to ‘facts’?
When the truth has no currency anymore and rational arguments don’t count for anything, it seems like there is not winning against conspiracy theories. But that’s not quite right.
On Big Ideas, a panel of experts looks behind the concept of a conspiracy theory: what feeds them and what can kill them.
Crisis and Denial presented by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre and The Conversation. June 18, 2020
Guests:
Stephan Lewandowsky – Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol
Professor Julie Leask – social scientist, University of Sydney (2010: What do vaccine sceptics have in common with climate change deniers? – Crikey.com.au; LEASK: “The climate change issue could learn a lot from immunisation debates. In both there is a pressing need for action to prevent human suffering; a minority element attempting to stymie progress; and a scientific community looking on in dismay offering well intended fact-for-fact rebuttals that are more likely to entrench existing positions because they are along ideological/world views)
Dr Carmen Lawrence – psychologist, director of the Centre for the Study of Social Change, University of Western Australia (LABOR PARTY MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT)
Chair: Misha Ketchell – editor of The Conversation (EX-ABC; BANNED CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICS FROM ‘THE CONVERSATION))
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/conspiracy-theories-in-times-of-crisis/12627670
Not one non-scientist there I would bother listening to for even 1 second on either topic. !
Show should be called “Little Ideas”…… or even better “NO IDEA !”
Hydrologic Effects of Urban Land Use – 1968
USGS Circular 554, 1968, by Luna B. Leopold
Amazing how much of other peoples money our authorities are prepared to waste on frivolous law suits.
So then, should we assume that the city of Charleston uses absolutely no fossil fuels in its operations? Because if they do, the case should be dismissed in the first two minutes of the trial and city mayor and council who launched this lawsuit should be punished.
This sentence – “Anthropogenic greenhouse gas pollution, primarily in the form of CO2, is far and away the dominant cause of global warming,” – is demonstrably untrue. Even warmist sciences admit that water vapor is responsible for around 95% of global warming. Schoolboy error right there.
The ‘Exxon knew’ canard is getting funnier by the day. What is the allegation? That Exxon’s scientists knew about GW back in 1978. What does that say about the scientists in academia? That they didn’t know what Exxon’s scientists ‘knew’. In other words: Exxon’s boffins were better boffins than those in academia, that academia was second rate. It still is. Then, why should we listen to academia and not to Exxon’s ‘experts’?
But, of course, the whole allegation is a trumped up ruse, playing to gallery. Hope they are forced to pay the lawyer’s bills.
If they are repaid lawyers’ bills perhaps they should make a handsome donation to a ‘third world’ charity with plenty of baby pictures.
“….Defendants, major corporate members of the fossil fuel industry, have known for nearly half a century that unrestricted production and use of fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes our climate. They have known for decades that those impacts could be catastrophic and that only a narrow window existed to take action before the consequences would be irreversible……”
Can’t quite follow this argument. Manufactures of knives and guns (and broomsticks) also know that these items can be used to murder people. Manufactures of cars know that car use is strongly associated with accidents – many of them fatal. In each case society addresses the issue by putting limits and controls on the use of each dangerous item, and holds the end users responsible for instances where damage occurs. Not the initial producer of said items….
I’m waiting breathlessly for some idiot with a tofu bone to pick over nothing to try to sue someone/somebody for the extra water in Lake Michigan. I don’t know how you’d keep it from falling out of the sky into the lake or the local rivers, but — well, somehow, Hoomans did it and someone has to cough up some cash…. or something like that.
Those people never really win anything, do they? Well, I did turn on the furnace and set it at 74F, on September 9, which is the earliest I’ve ever had to do that. If there’s any of that global warming available, could someone send it my way? Furnace filters are on sale right now. I guess I’ should stock up.
Flooding happens in flood plains- so don’t build there. Problem solved.
Refiners should stop sending their product to Charleston, for their own good of course.
I continue asking: What part of BELOW sea level don’t people understand? You don’t have to walk anywhere, so build above sea level. Our “stupid” ancestors MOVED to safe ground when they could, so now is the time for us “smart” humans to do the same.
It is time to save Charleston. Shut down the gas stations, and all pipelines and port facilities conveying oil and gas to the beleaguered city. Airdrop solar panels.
“There has been no change in the rate of sea level rise in Charleston over the past 120 years.”
Uh, ok.
Projected change from now to 2100, using pre 1980 data, extended to 2100, acceleration included – ~0.15 meters.
Projected change from now to 2100, using post 1980 data, extended to 2100, acceleration included – ~1.43 meters.
And BTW, per either the freeware workup, or that available in PSMSL, the P5’s and P95’s don’t bail you out, either.
Feel free to goal post move all you like, but this is YOUR data….
Hey, how’s those hedges werkin’ fer ye? Don’t know who you work for, but most of the class of companies you describe have lost over 80% of their market cap in the last 5 years, and their current CAPEX budgets hardly cast a shadow. And they also all have weasel words in their quarterly reports that essentially say that if a’lOrange didn’t give them indefinite breaks on realistic asset retirement bonding, they would face an immediate cash crunch. Love that corpo welfare, David. But it DOES give you more time to post….
The EverReady Bunny is back.
Horst schist. For sea level to rise over 1 meter over the rest of this century, it would have to accelerate to a rate twice that of the Holocene Transgression.
The rate from 2081-2100 would have to average 20 mm per year, twice that of the Holocene Transgression. This is only possible in bad science fiction movies.
Try to follow along.
There have been at least three recent peer-reviewed papers asserting an anthropogenic acceleration in the rate of sea level rise (SLR): Church & White, 2006 (CW06), Church & White, 2011 (CW11) and Nerem et al., 2018 (N18). N18 only covers the satellite era (since 1993) and might actually be correct, albeit irrelevant. The primary culprits in the SLR acceleration scam are CW06 and CW11. Two other recent peer-reviewed papers clearly shoot down the notion of a recent anthropogenic acceleration: Jevrejeva et al., 2008 (J08) and Jevrejeva et al., 2014 (J14). This post will focus on CW11 (updated through 2013) and J14.
J08 and J14 indicate that the acceleration, to the extent there is one, started 150-200 years ago, consistent with the end of neoglaciation and that a quasi-periodic fluctuation (~60-yr cycle) is present. CW06 and CW11 also note the 19th Century acceleration; but also assert a more recent acceleration, presumably due to anthropogenic global warming. This SLR acceleration is, at worst, innocuous.
310 mm from 1990-2100 is less than 3 mm/yr… Not much of an acceleration.
Here’s a comparison of Jevrejeva et al., 2014 (J14) and Church & White, 2011 (CW11):
J14 vs CW11. 310 mm is less than the length of an Estwing rock pick. The green curve is CW11’s pentadal (5-yr) average. The red curve is J14’s pentadal average. The CW11 y-axis is shifted up 100 mm to tie J14.
J14 starts 60 years earlier than CW11, capturing the falling sea level at the end of neoglaciation and the Little Ice Age. We can see that J14 and CW11 match up pretty well from 1880-1930 and then again from about 1993 onward; but they are very different from 1930-1993. J14 exhibits an acceleration to 3.2 mm/yr from 1929-1963 and then a deceleration to less than 1 mm/yr from 1963-1993, after which it accelerates back to about 3.2 mm/yr.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/09/sea-level-rise-acceleration-jevrejeva-vs-church-white/
What’s the current rate of SLR?
However you slice it, the rate yields far less than 1 meter of SLR this century.
You must have worked for the sh!ttiest companies in the oil patch to become so bitter.
I actually have more time to post when I’m in the office than when I’m working from home.
“Horst schist. For sea level to rise over 1 meter over the rest of this century, it would have to accelerate to a rate twice that of the Holocene Transgression.”
But that’s not what I referred to. I referred to the ACTUAL trends, including the acceleration that you conveniently ignore. I showed you, using your own example, that you are incorrect w.r.t physically significant time periods.
“You must have worked for the sh!ttiest companies in the oil patch to become so bitter.”
Interesting. No dispute over my accurate info. Just invective
No, not “bitter” at all. Oil biz, ben bery, bery, gud tu mi, starting out way before you, pulling slips in the Sooner Trend, under age. After my first “Mines” degree, all mid sized Indies, all very good employers. They even paid thru the nose for USC grad school. But unlike you, I got out of my comfort zone and went international, rotational, in conflict areas, in the late ’90’s and aughts. As you might have heard, hyper lucrative, which enabled me to fade away from it 8 years ago, as it all started flaming out. My larger view woke me up to the upcoming financial and environmental fiasco in E&P, without even a mention of AGW. One can only hope that, unlike most of us, you’ve saved up.
Kids are teaching, software engineering. I.e. out of the patch, for which I thank the Imaginary Guy In The Sky every day…..
You engaged in arm waving. I posted actual trends from actual data, demonstrating that your arm waving was horst schist.
The actual, post “acceleration” trend is ~3.3 mm/yr. It’s been ~3.3 mm/yr since at least the mid-1990’s. Even with Nerem’s bogus asserted acceleration rate, 21st SLR still falls short of 1 meter.
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2022
What “accurate info”? Just more speculation and arm waving. Our market cap has cratered ~80% since January. Down-cycles suck. But it creates a lot of buying opportunities.
There’s no need to invoke climate change to explain the flooding of the Charleston peninsula:
1. Approximately half of the Charleston peninsula (where the flooding occurs) consists of filled in marshes and sawmill ponds.
2. Until the 1970’s, artesian fountains flowed throughout the city. Groundwater withdrawal has lowered the groundwater level to the point that they no longer flow.
3. Charleston is seismically active. The last great earthquake was in 1886, but small quakes occur regularly. One result of the tectonic activity is that some areas of the SC lowcountry are slowly rising, while others are slowly subsiding.
Case dismissed.
“There’s no need to invoke climate change to explain the flooding of the Charleston peninsula:”
There is, but I didn’t. FYI, if you assume that the sea level data does not take into account the ~5″/century of subsidence, and then subtract that from the pre and post 1980 rise data, the projections from now to 2100 change hardly at all.
The deniersphere is apparently allergic to actually evalauting the data….
Where did you come up with your BS number of ~5″/century of subsidence?
Answer the following:
How many inches/year do the landfilled marshes in Charleston subside?
How many inches/year does the artesian aquifer beneath the lowcountry subside due to dewatering?
How many inches/century does tectonic activity cause different areas of the lowcountry to uplift or subside?
FYI: these are rhetorical questions for now, because at the moment, no one knows the answers.
And FYI: numbers pulled from your bunghole neither qualify as ‘data’, nor do they make you look smart.
“Where did you come up with your BS number of ~5″/century of subsidence?”
https://sealevelrise.org/states/south-carolina/
” In Beaufort County, SC, the ground is sinking approximately 1 inch lower every 20 years.”
“Answer the following:”
Why? It’s already been done, per my link. But if you have a different post 1900 schedule of subsidence, feel free to post it, with it’s link. Then. we’ll apply that schedule to PSMSL data, and do those pre and post 1980 projections from now to 2100, to see how they change those from the PSMSL data. I already showed you that the published 5″/century value makes not a whit of difference, but feel free to keep on diggin deeper…
I am sure that the city is a major purchaser of fossil-fuel-derived energy. The first question i would ask as the lawyer defending against this law suit is why?They are willingly buying the very product that they claim will destroy their city.
Nice to know Charleston has so much (taxpayers’) money to toss down the drain. Y’all are welcome to throw some my way. 😀
Your Figure 11 is not quite right. It shows relative sea level rise, not true sea level rise. Land subsidence at the Charleston gauge is available from PSMSL.org and shows a subsidence of about 2 mm/yr. When corrected for subsidence, Charleston’s true sea level rise is about 1.3 mm/yr which is consistent with Larson at [https://meridian.allenpress.com/jcr/article-abstract/22/4%20(224)/788/28512/A-Search-for-Scale-in-Sea-Level-Studies?redirectedFrom=fulltext] which shows a true sea level rise of about 1.6 mm/yr on the US East coast for the past 6,000 years. Why is Charleston sinking this much? Perhaps it is due to fresh water extraction as is the cause for Norfolk, Virginia – sinking even faster. Perhaps it is due to movement of geologic faults in the area. It seems that the question of Charleston’s sea level rise requires more study.
Read the last sentence in the post…
Okay I’ll ditch my prelim ideas for vacations to Hilton Head, not because of flooding or global warming but because of local, Official idiocy. The phrase “out of an abundance of caution” works both ways.
If “corporations” are responsible for global warming, how come it is only western – mostly US – corporations that are in the dock? Any large fossil fuel producer will have been aware of the climate “science” since the late 1980s.
In 2017 the Guardian reported on the top 100 corporations by contribution to global emissions in the period 1988-2015. Maybe silly stats, but still relevent to who should be prosecuted.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change
The top 5 with % of global greenhouse gas emissions were
1 China (Coal) 14.32%
2 Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) 4.50%
3 Gazprom OAO 3.91%
4 National Iranian Oil Co 2.28%
5 ExxonMobil Corp 1.98%
The top 4 are state-controlled corporations. If “Exxon knew” then so did the states of China, Saudi Arabia, Russia & Iran. They must, in fairness, also be in the dock. But fairness has nothing to do with it. These lawsuits are inspired by those who revile capitalist wealth creation and, by implication, the high living standards of the United States.
David M nailed it. I am from Charleston and lived there for most of my life until about 7 years ago. Downtown, peninsular, Charleston lies pretty much at sea level at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers. These two rivers meet to form Charleston harbor which empties into the Atlantic ocean. The stormwater drains empty into the adjacent rivers and harbor and during high tides, especially King Tides, there is simply no place for the run-off from rain storms pto drain. Even the slightest rainfall during a high tide can cause flooding in the low lying areas. To make matters worse, as indicated by David, much of the peninsula is built on filled in creek beds and marshland and these areas are subsiding.
I recall an event some years ago, when driving through one of the filled in areas, encountering an intersection that was covered by a large puddle maybe 120 feet across and perhaps 8-10 inches deep at the center. What was surprising about this was that it was a clear spring day without a cloud in the sky. As I crossed the intersection I noticed a small ‘geyser’ of water perhaps one inch in diameter shooting up about 4-5 inches above the surface of the water at the center of the puddle. As I drove by I examined the ‘geyser’ and saw that it was emanating from the lifting hole in a manhole cover over a stormwater drain. I later determined that we were experiencing an unusually high tide that day and concluded that the puddle and the ‘geyser’ resulted from water from the river flowing back through the stormwater drain onto the street; the water in the river was apparently significantly higher than the street level at the point of the puddle.
The mandate EVs should work fine in that.