Reposted from Government Accountability and Oversight
Today the public interest law firm Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C., published a paper on behalf of its client the government-transparency group Energy Policy Advocates, titled “Private Funders, Public Institutions: ‘Climate’ Litigation and a Crisis of Integrity”.
Minnesota’s “climate” lawsuit and its replica filed the next day in Washington, D.C., like all of these suits, represent transparent attempts to manufacture state jurisdiction for a litigation campaign that, its proponents previously admitted, is national, belongs in federal courts, and seeks to substitute verdicts for Congress’s refusal to adopt their desired policy agenda.
The paper reveals, for the first time, damning details confirming who is actually conducting this purportedly governmental litigation campaign and how they are doing it, as described in the parties’ own hand.
This paper, and yesterday’s Supreme Court opinion in BP p.l.c. et al. v Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, serve as bookend reminders of the importance of this jurisdictional issue in the wave of “climate” litigation washing over state courthouses around the country, and the impropriety of their proceeding in local courts.
Read the paper here.
Does anyone have a good link to the actual Supreme Court decision on BP vs Baltimore. I spent a couple of minutes on it and could only find links written by leftards running around like chickens with their heads cut off ….. Rud Istvan ??
Sorry, thought placed as subcomment. Goofed. See link below.
Thanks Rud, gottit.
From what I briefly saw, the court ruled 7-1 that energy companies can make sure these junk lawsuits are in federal courts instead of state courts. That is good news because that means the bogus cases will be less likely to be heard by judges who would like to think the law and constitution says whatever they want it to say.
What is most interesting is that it was a 7-1 decision. In other words, all but one of the leftist judges ruled in favor of the energy companies.
The leftist judges appreciate a chauffeured drive to work as much as the next person. They’re not about to screw that up.
The dissenting judge just didn’t happen to think it through. 😜
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Seriously, any time the oil companies get really, really pi$$ed off at the nuisance lawfare nonsense aimed against them, all they have to do is pack it in for a few weeks or months. Any jurisdiction that tries to corral an oil company will be on its knees in a week or so, There is no substitute for oil at this time.
For now, I’m guessing that even the army of lawyers the oil companies have hired to defend against the nuisance suits is cheaper than shutting down for a month or so. But if push comes to shove, the oil companies just might flex their muscles and turn off the spigot.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-1189_p86b.pdf
Court ruled on jurisdiction, state vs federal court.
Baltimore wanted case to go to state court. SCOTUS said not so fast.
Wow- and will the MSM mention any of this? Of course not.
Perhaps because some of them are also implicated? Rockafellas and Bloobmerge are in MSM up to their necks.
From the linked paper:
I feel somewhat vindicated in working at exposing propaganda and advocacy disguised as journalism.
Thanks, Charles.
It was apparent after reading Oreskes 2012 La Jolla conference results paper based on her 2010 book Merchants of Doubt that:
-She is not a lawyer
-Those few who were advising her were very poor lawyers
-The state AGs who tried to carry out the plan may have passed the bar but were professional politicians.
The fatal flaw in the Oreskes plan is in actually winning any meaningful result. For climate damages, you first have to have climate damage. There isn’t any.
For injunctive relief, climate damage must be imminent. Immenent does not mean immediate, but is also does not mean somewhen. And the climate/lfuture damage connection must also be very plausible. Plausible connot be shown from repeatedly falsified climate models and their failed past predictions.
Finally civil RICO requires actual proof of conspiracy. The notion that big oil conspired to hid its knowledge of climate was always laughable, as the Exxon defense of Schneiderman’s suit showed.
Now contrast the tobacco civil RICO Oreskes wanted to emulate. The palbable cancer damage from cigarettes was since the 1950’s. Bit tobacco advertized otherwise, and concealed its own lab findings showing the public health experts were right. And big tobacco provably conspired to do so. Oreske’s thinking this was a good model to follow for climate is just delusional.
Rud, slow down, your fingers are flying all over the place. Thanks for the comment, though.
Sorry about the typos. I actually had to switch to main machine after iPad glitched twice halfway thru comment. And in that machine, could not enlarge the input box. Without my reading glasses, did catch the typos.
I always blame the low blood levels in my coffee stream.
All true, but as a non-lawyer, I don’t think the idea was to “win” any of these cases per se, but to bleed the company. Consider, for a moment, that for the relative pittance of Soros’ funding the election of leftist DAs, or Bloomberg’s paying the salaries of climate law fare specialists that he then seconds to activist DA offices nation-wide, the alarmist cause is able to tap public funds to bring these suits, which are then widely publicized through a sympathetic media. Meanwhile, the company has to devote substantial resources to prevail in court. This is clearly asymmetric warfare, which I’m sure is intended to demoralize management and turn the weaker members of the board towards giving up the fight and pushing for respite in the form of, say, a carbon tax.
I just scanned Rud’s link to the ruling, below. My take, again as a non-lawyer, is that we have about 25 pages of turgid prose that is about as readable as the linear A inscriptions at a Minoan archeological dig. All to the effect of deciding whether a state or federal court has jurisdiction. I’m reminded of the distinction made by Kevin Gutzman between “constitutional” law and “constitutional case” law.
The former means that the court would consider the intent of the framers, and where that wasn’t clear, the intent of those favoring ratification at the state ratifying conventions. For example, if before the invention of autos, the city of Baltimore, which benefitted commercially from the use of horses, subsequently tried to sue hay farmers for horse flatulence, they’d have been thrown out of court.
By contrast, the latter approach, which builds upon and is dependent on prior precedents, some of which are awful, potentially can give rise to very bad law. In this manner, it is very much like the diverging outputs from a GCM ensemble, where the range of the year 2100 temperature anomalies can span many degrees. In other words, rather than having predictability in law, we are always at the mercy of activist jurists.
Frank,
I’m going to have to read it again — my take was that most of the court thought that two different federal district courts had made rulings on similar cases in opposite ways. They needed to address the current case in order to correct the disconnect. I still wasn’t sure if they intend to rule in favor of one or the other district court, maybe refusing the same appeal again in more detail, or if they’ve got to grant the appeal. Obviously, I’m not a lawyer either, so I’ve just probably missed what you saw.
Cheers!
dk_
I’m sure you’re quite correct on the legal point that the court was trying to tie disparate precedents. My point, badly made, is that this process of basing law on precedents, rather than on constitutional intent, always raises the risk of bad law coming to the fore.
No, I need to parse several times before I can begin to understand. I’m going to read it again, and come back to your point. I think I see it, but my eyes are watering, so I cant be sure. I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of it.
Frank,
This thread is probably dead. I take your point and we are in agreement (esp. on turgid and minoan, wish I’d had the kind of courage it takes to put both in one sentence.). I tried to get through Sotomayor’s dissent, and I’m pretty sure she was punching up the City’s claim. I find it interesting that the few references of precedent that she listed and I was able to look up seemed to be energy related or evil, chemical mongering, festering capitalist vs little guy. I wonder where the clerk worked before? I wonder who fed the clerk case notes? Could it have been cribbed directly from the City’s case? Maybe Oreskas?
But I do still think the USC’s hook here was a procedural difference. Sotomayer’s “fear” wasn’t justified at all by her minoan art, and the majority opinion pretty much seemed to dismiss it.
They’re only ruling on a lower court’s appeal. I don’t think it will do much but keep it churning for several more years.
Soto got her greenie points in. Genuflection was probably all that mattered there.
At your service. Easiest link is not SCOTUS. It is
https://www.eenews.net/assets/2021/05/17/document_gw_08.pdf
What do you think of Sotomayor’s dissent?
About as much as I think of most of her other legal stuff. In short, affirmative action is not a good look for SCOTUS judges. 7:1 says it all. BTW, was not 8:1 because one Justice had to recuse.
This from someone for whose years of service to the appellate bar section of the ABA (state supremes, and federals appeals court judges only, pretty rare legal air) I was personally given a pair of gold SCOTUS cufflinks by Justice Clarence Thomas at a Navy catered banquet in the SCOTUS Great Hall (the hall outside the hearing chamber to its right, just up the front portico steps and in thru the great bronze doors. Is intentionally very Greek temple like; Temple of Law…
Can a recusing judge, write an independent concurring opinion, even if he/she didn’t vote.
Sotomayor dissented, wrote her own opinion. Alito recused, does not comment that I remember. Still digesting.
It seemed to me that she didn’t deal with much in the majority opinion and rather, just complained that the process could be abused.
So, is she arguing for less access to the Supreme Court?
If I understand the history correctly, the Supreme Court got extra jurisdiction so it could over rule state courts in civil rights cases. If that’s true then it’s ironic that the social justice warriors want to take jurisdiction away from the Supreme Court.
Am I missing something? (Yeah, stupid question.) What am I missing?
She is not exactly the ‘wise Latina” she touted herself to be when stood for confirmation as Supreme Court justice. Now probably thinks it necessary to let the other justices know her preferred pronouns and identifies as “Latinx” (sorry international readers: deconstructing the English language is the latest American craze).
Any of the “international readers” who are familiar with Orwell already know what The Left (Marxist ideologues) are wont to do with language to distort any dialogue. This tactic is used to corrupt meaning not broaden it. Anyone who isn’t aware of that is being willfully ignorant (or obtuse).
Since I was born and raised in the area where the second/real Luddite uprising started, I particularly like their corruption of the word “progressive”. They actually don’t even bother with Luddism and skip right over it as they “progress” right back to scaring stupid people with the weather, all medieval-like. “Liberal” is a close second. Translation “nitwit Stalinist wannabe”.
Brilliant …
Have you noticed the frequency in which Liberals talk about “needing to have this conversation”, when in fact they mean; “you need to listen to me but I have no interest in your pov”.
Liberals have their own dictionaries that contain new meanings for many common words.
Peace means absence of any opposition to them.
Consensus means everyone has to agree with us.
Bi-partisan means everyone working towards our goals.
etc
Phil, that’s why I say leftist instead of liberal. I don’t accept the twisted revised meaning.
So woke she is a joke.
cB,
How much would you bet against the possibility that if one of the evil red states litigated against one of Sotomayor’s pet causes, she would have ruled in favor of federal court jurisdiction?
Leftists have always defined right and wrong based on whether they benefit.
“Politicians have always defined right and wrong based on whether their sponsors benefit.”
There, fixed it for you….
commieBob, IMO she could say anything she wanted since the others were going to bring it back anyway. Since they’re calling back a refused appeal, perhaps to refuse it again, perhaps she just had an oppotunity to add to her writing legacy?
The Wise Latin-equis
The only latin-equis i want anything to do with is dos-equis
My inner twelve year old points out that she’s one end of an equis anyway.
I think you mean equus?
🐎 🐴
Indeed. Not that end though.
Sotomayor sidesteps the basis of the ruling; Congress said the entire “order” is reviewable. She just wants a result that supports her ideology. She thinks fossil fuels and oil companies are evil.
Perhaps She should be made to walk to work. Certainly no private car or any use herself of fossil fuels. Would probably remove her from the court she would Notbe able to do anything.
The most desirable outcome!
She could stand the exercise, yes
Maybe exorcism?
Do you know that if you refer to a Joseph Postma video or even mention his name you get your comment deleted from WUWT?
Both mine and eben’s were disappeared.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/16/thunderstorm-world-a-model-to-explore-ideas-from-willis-eschenbach/
I must try harder and harder to embrace lukewarmism where I am allowed to add, subtract and divide radiative fluxes in a meaningful way. Did you know you can divide insolation by 4 so that the sun shines all the time over the whole planet and still melts ice and forms clouds?
Editor: Is this comment thread also off topic?
What do you want me to do? Wait until the same topic is discussed again? I chose the latest article. This is about comment cancellation with no explanation. Even the Guardian gives you that. WUWT is fast becoming “the science is settled” website. Don’t question the absolutely accepted back radiation theory.
(Get back on topic and drop your complaints about Posta videos and other references to his group because it is a Blog POLICY to delete them) SUNMOD
“What do you want me to do?” I think I speak for many here when I say:
1) Post comments that are relevant to the particular thread. It’s incredibly annoying the way you continually spam unrelated threads.
2) Actually learn something about the topics you post about. I think if you spent a couple of years studying appropriate engineering thermodynamics and heat transfer courses (where the analysis MUST work well), you might start to make a constructive contribution here. But now, you don’t even understand things that are easily demonstrable in controlled and repeatable laboratory experiments.
Ed Bo. Why do you continue to talk b0ll0cks? Name one lab experiment that shows CO2 causes radiative warming.
You know nothing about me. WUWT deleted eben’s comment and all replies. Then it reinstated all the replies but left out eben’s comment.
Dave Fair replied to eben, “Mindless BS” now it looks like he is saying that to the article.
Poor attempt at covering up attempt to control free speech.
Laughable.
Is Tim Ball a Sky Dragon?
Please go to the Guardian.
dk_
Would I see you at the Guardian? They are just like you except they are warmists not lukewarmists.
Is Tim Ball a Sky Dragon?
“What do you want me to do?”
Take you sky dragon slaying nonsense elsewhere rather than hijacking and spamming unrelated threads in order to complain about something that you’ve been repeatedly told is against forum rules.
John Endicott, show me one experiment that shows that CO2 can cause any radiative warming. I’ll save you the trouble, there isn’t one. Do you criticise Tim Ball for being a “Sky Dragon”? No you don’t.
Is Tim Ball a Sky Dragon?
Correlation does not equal causation.
“Correlation does not equal causation.”
It does if your name is Willis Eschenbach.
What a patently ignorant and divisive thing to write.
Willis is a lukewarmist. Sad fact. He believes CO2 causes radiative warming.
Not a bot, definitely the damaged and or contentious humanoid sort.
dk_
Name one experiment that shows that CO2 causes radiative warming or just SHUT YOUR BIG OBNOXIOUS CAKE HOLE!
The paranoia is strong in this one.
Everyone who doesn’t believe in your peculiar delusion, is out to get you.
My little stalker. What was it you said? The GHE is true because CO2 is a greenhouse gas? Hahahahaha!
Somehow YOUR comment is still here despite that his name is posted……
Secondly it is the blog policy as quoted here, from the ABOUT link at top of page.:
THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!
Haha! WUWT has come full circle.
The climate sceptic website does not allow climate scepticism.
Absolutely pathetic!!!
Does Tim Ball know this?
Scanned the linked doc. WUWT cited in footnotes #83. Documents the link between activism of Rockefeller Family and Bloomberg activism non-profits, with state governments and University law schools. Might be harder to show links between schools of law and the departments involved with climate advocacy in those and other Univerities, I didn’t catch much of that in the scan.
Rud, someone: If Bloomberg and Rockefeller families are involved as non-profits, but still are also demonstrably involved in the energy industry, does this not potenitally show a conflict of interest that disqualifies the activist organizations’ non-profit status? Is it unreasonable to be skeptical that someone might be using charitable cover to obtain a business advantage?
Terrific question. It depends. IF the wealth management of a foundation is separate from its charitable giving side (think Rockefeller) then probably no. If some how conjoined (think Gates foundation) then probably yes. But Gates isn’t invested much in the energy business, so for that specific example, probably no.
All complicated by the IRS ‘nonprofit so tax exempt’ status determination being mostly in the eye of the IRS beholder, as the Lois Lerner/Teaparty scandal showed.
In these sorts of questions, the devil is almost always in the details.
For 7:1 BP v Baltimore, one justice had to recuse because personally owned stock in several oil companies, an easy clear conflict.
From my perspective, we seem to have public evidence that:
Is any of that wrong?
P.S. I’d appreciated your note to 7-1. I think you meant to address commenter Wade. But I’d read of the recusal from your linked ruling. Without that, only one justice would have opposed. I am curious to find out how that case will come out. It seemed to me that the 7 were trying to correct a conflict between separate district court rulings. Perhaps the recusal or the dissenting vote just didn’t matter.
As the world turns, it seems that there’s a strong possibility of some class-action suits with the demonstrable damages being in the $Trillions of taxpayer money for this fraud on humanity.
Maybe the IPCC and the individual climate liars will be a little more thoughtful about the possibility of being named as defendants with the primary targets of what is actually asymmetric warfare on the side of the Plaintiffs, against big targets like the Rockefeller loons.
It might even bring down the elitist BBC pricks too.
I tried to ignore the attention being brought to the Bloomberg link before now. But now the only way the Rockefeller link makes sense is that the family business is trying to take back their dominance of the industry, and their stake in their former business, using the real loons to do it. Bloomberg is along for the ride, having found a great way around financial oversight. What would happen if the freak show realized they were the ones being conned?
To me, it looks like another version of the “Melinda got angry about Epstein and divorces Baal” scam, a way to move a LOT of money, in the open, with little or no attention from regulators and taxmen.
The shysters and sciencers taking part, are either complicit or ignorant. And they gladly exchange proper payment for brownie points, apparently…
Paranoid g.
Probably you are right. I’m thinking that the Rockefeller and Bloomberg charities are donating to the mindless screamers directly, to their information outlets directly and indirectly, to their own and other media outlets, and to State prosecutors, University law departments, and environmental justice activist legal tax exempt charities. Rock and Bloom also have for profit investment and business outlets and media firms that support the same States Attorneys general with funding and media in election campaigns and political contests. The investment firms are seeking political coverage, subsidies, and tax breaks for energy schemes, and the charities are beating up on the energy business rivals.
Three days ago I would have called my own suspicions of today paranoid. Now I’m wondering if I’m paranoid enough?
It’s not paranoia if the bastards really are after you…
Biden new offshore wind czar:
https://www.adn.com/politics/2021/05/18/this-biden-nominee-with-alaska-ties-has-worked-for-top-offshore-wind-firms-now-hes-poised-to-help-oversee-the-industry/
For me, the most import question is not to be found. Who asks it? Where is our present climate in relation to the optimum for our life giving biosphere? To the extent the climate is really changing, is it moving towards or away from the optimum? To what extent is human activity involved?
Since we are in one of the coldest periods in the history of life on earth barring glacials, and if we are currently warming then we are moving toward optimum.
I judge this by more people starving less.
Human activity responsible?
Any guess will do as they are all guesses.
If humans are responsible for pulling us out of the LIA and the rebound cold from the 40s to the 80’s, then well done and more of it is what I say.
Question. If World War Two had happened in the 30’s would Germany have won, as the Russian winter played so much a hand in their eventual defeat?
What would mild winters in 41-43 have done to that conflict?
no sorry – according to many scientists who work in this field – we’ve had snowball Earth https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-38839-6
And so elated to read this article – thanks Charles – and because you can’t fix stupid – not covering their A…..es …… and not making any attempt to understand the science – it’s not a matter of if just when – the climateaggedons will be undone
Answer: Was America (and England) already shipping weaponry to the Bolsheviks prior to your hypothetical earlier war? If not, then the invasion of Russia wasn’t necessary, and would not have happened.
But in the end, the war would have continued as long as what the Banksters were to be allowed to create more credit for more weapons, until Germany succumbed, to the World Banksters, come hell, high water or snow enough to stop a postman.
Really now, the only reason why we have wars is because bankers want more profit?
No. Germany wasn’t nearly ready for war in the 30’s – it wasn’t particularly ready in 39 either; Germany was banking on 5-10 more years of slow build up and expansion before military action.
The real question is if WW2 had happened in 1949, would Germany have won?
Richard as to 1930’s it couldn’t have happened. You are right, but the question still makes my head hurt. I don’t want to even try to understand the point, and I was doing okay until I read it.
Alt history fiction is okay, sometimes, but hard to draw pertinent conclusions from stuff that never happened, there’s too much of that already going around.
I’ll take a stab at that. The data seems to indicate that planet Earth is continuing its almost unthinkable descent into the abyss of a frigid world. It would also appear that carbon dioxide at current levels and above won’t be enough to stave it off. Other periods were called “optima”. The Holocene climate optimum, the Roman climate optimum etc. This current climate is described as a climate emergency, a climate crisis, which would appear to indicate that we reached peak collective intelligence at some point in the past. Then again, it could be ascribed to global human-human parasitism, still on the up-slope.
But the Viking Optima sounds like part Volvo, part Kia.
Good question, a barometer based on observed data, longevity,planet greening,reliable energy, food resources, transport efficiency and affordability etc
A related question would be, which optimum. I strongly suspect that the optimum conditions for one group of critters would be different then the optimum for another group.
Since CO2 has more impact on areas that are dry, than areas that are humid, one area could be moving towards optimum while another is moving away.
I personally am convinced that a planet with more CO2 would be a more desirable planet over all.
From the report:
As noted, supra, this paper leaves it to the private parties targeted by this RFF-inspired, RFF-financed and, apparently, RFF-led litigation campaign to explore which if any of these elements are actionable. It is not inconceivable that the group has violated the conditions of its tax-exempt status, engaged in tortious interference and/or, depending upon the totality and circumstances of the misrepresentations by it or its agents, possibly other and more serious offenses.
The targeted parties really need to do this. The exposure of the original AG RICO lawsuit nonsense did not stop RFF, they merely changed tack. Time for the gloves to come off.
Whether or not this is true, it is also true that our current “woke” Justice Dept. will never prosecute such crimes.
Charlie I’ve kind of asked about this in the past. The feeling that I get is that it would have to be done by a federal prosecutor, since interstate heads of law enforcement are involved. I don’t see that happening soon.