Essay by Eric Worrall
Strangely the lawsuit does not include a demand oil giants immediately cease supplying their “catastrophic” product to the State of California.
California sues oil giants, saying they downplayed climate change. Here’s what to know
September 16, 20233:08 PM ET
By Juliana Kim, Michael CopleyThe state of California has filed a sweeping climate lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, as well as the domestic oil industry’s biggest lobby, the American Petroleum Institute.
The suit, filed on Friday in San Francisco Superior Court, claims that the companies misled the public for decades about climate change and the dangers of fossil fuels. It demands the companies help fund recovery efforts related to California’s extreme weather events, from rising sea levels to drought and wildfires, that have been supercharged by human-caused climate change.
“Oil and gas companies have privately known the truth for decades — that the burning of fossil fuels leads to climate change — but have fed us lies and mistruths to further their record-breaking profits at the expense of our environment. Enough is enough,” said Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general.
…
California filed its lawsuit against Exxon and other oil and gas companies just a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that executives at Exxon continued in recent years to raise doubts internally about the dangers of climate change and the need to cut back on oil and gas use, even as the company publicly conceded that burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2023/09/16/1199974919/california-oil-lawsuit-climate-change
The referenced Wall Street Journal article is paywalled, but there are no amazing new revelations in there. Exxon admitted CO2 contributes to global warming – but no stunning confession of guilt.
The Californian lawsuit contains this gem;
…
3. Defendants are large companies in the fossil fuel industry who have misled consumers and the public about climate change for decades. Defendants have known since at least the 1960s that fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution that would warm the planet and change our climate. Defendants’ own scientists knew as early as the 1950s that these climate impacts would be catastrophic, and that there was only a narrow window of time in which communities and governments could take action before the consequences became catastrophic.
4. Rather than warn consumers, the public, and governments, however, Defendants mounted a disinformation campaign beginning at least as early as the 1970s to discredit the burgeoning scientific consensus on climate change; deny their own knowledge of climate change- related threats; create doubt in the minds of consumers, the media, teachers, policymakers, and the public about the reality and consequences of the impacts of burning fossil fuels; and delay the necessary transition to a lower-carbon future.
…
Read more: https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FINAL-9-15-COMPLAINT.pdf
Just one problem with this claim – there is plenty of evidence none of this is true.
For example, the following is a copy of the Glaser 1982 memo, which was circulated to Exxon management.
The memo, and bear in mind this was a private internal memo, is anything but certain that climate change will have catastrophic impact. For example, at the bottom of Page 4, continuing to the top of Page 5.
“There is currently no unambiguous evidence that the earth is warming. If the earth is on a warming trend, we’re not likely to detect it before 1995. This is about the earliest projection of when the temperature might rise the 0.5° needed to get beyond the range of normal temperature fluctuations. On the other hand, if climate modelling uncertainties have exaggerated the temperature rise, it is possible that a carbon dioxide induced “greenhouse effect” may not be detected until 2020 at the earliest”.
Remember, this memo was written in 1982, 30 years after the lawsuit claims “Defendant’s own scientists knew as early as the 1950s that these climate impacts would be catastrophic”.
Worse, there were plenty of scientists at late as 1980 who published papers suggesting the world was cooling. There was a good reason for this – between 1940 to 1980, global warming stalled. For much of that period, the world cooled.
Climate alarmists try to pretend there was never a global cooling consensus, but there is plenty of evidence reputable climate scientists were comfortable promoting global cooling theories. For example, the wildly popular 1978 documentary “In Search of The Coming Ice Age” featured an impressive lineup of climate scientists, including Chester Langway, James Hayes, Gifford Miller (who described how the descent into the next ice age started 3000 years ago), and Stephen Schneider, who speculated about using nuclear energy to melt the ice caps, to halt the big freeze.
I remember watching the coming ice age documentary as a kid, and being impressed by the climate scientists who starred in the documentary. The entire “In search of” series was prime time viewing in Australia, because the presenter was actor Leonard Nimoy, who played Dr. Spock in the original Star Trek series. All the grownups were worried and talking about the imminent ice age the next day, after the documentary aired on TV.
Climate scientist Stephen Schneider, who appeared in the global cooling documentary, and speculated about using nuclear reactors to melt the icecaps, later backflipped and became a significant figure in the global warming movement.
My point is given the eagerness of high profile climate scientists to appear in a documentary which promoted the global cooling scare, which was made in 1978, the lawsuit’s accusation that scientists knew as early as the 1950s that global warming would have “catastrophic” impacts is total nonsense. There were clearly mixed opinions on whether global warming or global cooling was a threat, well into the late 1970s.
What about the present day? Anyone who reads this website will know there are a significant number of well credentialed scientists who dispute the alleged consensus that global warming will have imminent and catastrophic impacts.
The most glaring defect is the failure to demand the defendants immediately cease supplying their “catastrophic” product. Fossil fuel producers aren’t forcing people to accept fossil fuel. Given recent price rises, the market view could reasonably be interpreted as being that fossil fuel producers aren’t providing enough fossil fuel, especially in California, where the prices people pay for fossil fuel are amongst the highest in the USA.
The lawsuit demands “permanent equitable relief” – perhaps a lawyer can answer whether this implies California intends for oil companies to continue operating so they can pay regular large sums to the State of California, instead of forcing the oil companies to cease trading.
In my opinion, to demand a remedy for a “catastrophic” product, while at the same time not demanding that remedy include a cessation of supply, is an utter absurdity which should be treated with the contempt it deserves.
Update (EW): fixed a small issue with paragraph ordering.
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It keeps lawyers employed.
Lawyers keep lawyers employed.
Especially when those lawyers become judges.
“A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.” ~ H. L. Mencken
A reasonable response: Increase the price of your products sold in California to cover expected California-specific costs.
I wonder what would happen if one or more oil companies in California decided to go Galt for a while.
That’s exactly what they ought to do – if they don’t operate in the state (taking jobs with them) or sell product in the state, then they can’t be found liable!
How about a one week vacation for all oil company employees starting on the 1st of January?
Sell their California operations to the Chinese….
Too late. Colorado has been compromised.
Right On! The law suit is saying that the oil business is bad – so the prudent thing to do is cease and desist ‘polluting’ California according to the wishes of the state government.
The problem is that most gas stations are franchises. The companies have contractual obligations to provide fuel.
Also if the oil companies stopped supplying fuel to their franchisees, the franchises would be out of business in a few weeks. They don’t have the deep pockets that the parent companies have, nor do they have sales in other states or countries to tide them over.
One approach Exxon and the other defendants could take would be to argue that California is trying to regulate interstate commerce, as well as passing an ex post facto law by a backdoor “civil suit”.
Simple. If convicted they will be sued for and forced to pay a massive fine, ‘reparations’, for fictitious ‘damages’. Such a ruling would be tantamount to declaring that the defendants have committed a crime, why else the fine. Then the defendants can argue that they cannot be forced to continue committing that crime and decide all together and with immediate effect to stop supplying oil and gas products as well as electricity generated outside California in coal-fired power stations. I would give it a week before the last bucket of tar is used to chase their idiot governour and mental case of an attorney out of town covered in feathers.
Well not really – it won’t be a fine in a civil suit, it will be compensation for the “damage of climate change” – however even if it lost, ExxonMobil could easily claim that it is only responsible for its share of carbon emissions, not the portion in the air from China and the rest of the world. And I think it would also be valid to add that since the climate emergency rhetoric only emerged in the last few years, then the emissions before that point must have been OK. So, for the sake of argument, from 400ppm and up.
And of course it should point out in court all the good it’s products do, all the good the free extra CO2 does – point out agriculture yield improvements over the past century and certainly some part of that is due to the extra CO2.
Basically they need good lawyers, a good team of experts and the determination to never settle, because that is goal of the bullying government law-warfare.
What a bunch of nonsense…the state knew what they were granting drilling licenses for. Why aren’t they to blame ? Exxon didn’t burn the fuel, why aren’t motorists, railroads, airlines, that burned the fuel they demanded from Exxon at fault ? Incredible ducking of responsibility going on…
If “[misleading] consumers and the public about climate change for decades” were actionable then Mike, Greta, Al, Naomi, the IPCC, and thousands of trough-slurping modelers would be making little ones out of big ones right now.
IMO some of the oil producing and refining red states (Texas, Louisiana) ought to sue these organizations and individuals AND our current federal gov’t and EPA for undercutting their business! Might be harder to sue non-US entities, but surely they could attack those based or operating in this country.
The oil companies certainly should be held accountable for releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and making food more plentiful and cheaper. How dare they?
Yes, California wants to eliminate the oil industry that is in CA to meet the demands of the state.
Those demands could easily be transferred to China who is coming to the rescue with Asia’s 88 new refineries for manufactured oil derivatives that are the basis of most every product being used by mankind, as well as the manufactured fuels used by every transportation infrastructure, and the military.
The California lawsuit is just another way of “leaking” emissions to other locations in the world with less environmental controls, thus great emissions for the world to help California become cleaner within the borders of the state.
If we eliminate the DEMANDS of society for jets, merchant ships, cruise liners, militaries, and space programs, there would be no need for oil!
“If we eliminate the DEMANDS of society for jets, merchant ships, cruise liners, militaries, and space programs, there would be no need for oil!”
If we eliminate the DEMANDS of society for jets, merchant ships, cruise liners, militaries, space programs, and CLOTHING, there would be no need for oil !
There – fixed.
Even today, the climate is hardly understood- yet CA thinks oil companies fully understood the climate several decades ago? I’ve heard rumors that Wokeachusetts may follow the lead of CA with a similar suit.
Why did only EXXON scientists know?
Plainly govt scientists did as well, so why did not succesive Fed Govts take no action?
Apparently Exxon scientists are geniuses on the level of Einstein- so they should be offered Noble prizes! 🙂
How did Exxon “know” something that isn’t even real now.??
Yes, they knew about the baseless conjecture…
… but they also “knew” about the Easter Bunny, Goldilocks, and the Big Bad Wolf.
Exxon, just like everyone else who looked at the subject, did not know what CO2 would or would not do in the Earth’s atmosphere. That was true in 1982, and it is true today.
There is no evidence then or today that CO2 is causing any climate changes. It’s all natural variation until proven otherwise, and it hasn’t been proven otherwise as of this very minute.
Exxon knew what?
The prosecutors today know what?
Neither of them could prove CO2 is doing anything in the atmosphere, much less doing anything detrimental.
The whole lawsuit is absurd, based on no credible evidence.
A judge ought to know the difference between evidence and conjecture. Any logical person can figure out the difference.
Now the question is will the judge accept conjecture as evidence? Exxon wins if the judge sticks to the evidence.
There’s no evidence “Exxon Knew” and there is no evidence there is anything for Exxon to know in the first place, since it has not been shown that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
This lawsuit is wrong on its two main points: That Exxon knew something nobody else knew, and that CO2 is a dangerous gas that needs to be regulated.
Up unto “limits to growth” and “silent spring” global warming (climate amelioration) was considered a positive thing.
California has rampant crime and rampant homelessness. So the AG wastes time on this nonsense instead. Loser.
Image over substance, Rud. Image over substance.
I never expected an oil company to warn me about climate change; why on earth would I?
Greens are the awkward squad, nothing is too fantastical for them
Agnotology is the study of ignorance and how it’s produced. Just point on the consensus of the 196 or 197. Case “won”. They could start with the following article.
New Surface Stations Report Released – It’s ‘worse than we thought’ • Watts Up With That?
And then go on to Willie Soon´s latest paper. Lets talk about UHI. The list is long. One question do comes to mind, what have you done as a state to reduce UHI through human ingenuity and engieneering?
So, Michael Mann, professor of ignorance at Penn State, is an agnotologist
If the theory about institutional sclerosis presented by Mancur Olsen in 1984 based on MMs rent-seeking behaviour + publishing free-rider “solutions” means that these two 1+1 = “agnotologist” you “can in theory say so.
Great man, Olsen. There are some observations which explain a great deal about present society and social movements.
One is Olsen’s observation that an interest group often sees it as being in its interest or that of its members to secure a gain for them, even if this results in a loss for the country as a whole.
A second is Olsen’s explanation, which you allude to, of why it is that politically unstable areas often have grown their economies more rapidly than stable ones. The American South, France in the 19c. The explanation he gave was that prolonged stability led to the entrenchment of special privileges, whereas instability, defeat or revolution forced reconstruction from scratch of the social and business environment, with all those privileges abolished.
A third is Turchin’s explanation of instability as caused by over production of elites. Explains cyclical political crises. And among other things, explains why student radicals exist in some periods not others, and why they are so destructive.
Its quite interesting to look at the current activist movements on climate, race and gender as social phenomena in the light of these three things. Most of their actions are clearly not going to achieve anything on what the activists claim to be concerned about. But if you consider their actions and demand from the above perspective, you see that they are fairly natural outflows of having a surplus of elites whose interests are indeed in line with Olsen’s observations.
Taken in consideration that his point with the concept IS was, that it made lobbying easier and cheaper, it fits quite well when it comes to the three movements, climate, race and gender.
Especialy the “97%” consensus in climate-science could also be defined under the theory about “groupthink” by Irving L Janis, published two years before MO´s book.
Janis defined groupthink as a mode of thinking people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. Beside MMs hockey-stick, you could also use what James Lovelock said, if I haven´t “extrapolated to far” my book(s) wouldn´t have sold. Well, no poop, Sherlock.
Keep in mind Exxon ISS a huge beneficiary of climate alarmism. Coal has been replaced with natural gas and the intermittent renewables are backed up with natural gas.
Why are climate alarmists driving so much business there way?
I was taking a quick look through the PDF (135 pages).
Lots of GW doom and gloom. Their models are IPCC RCP8.5.
https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/FINAL-9-15-COMPLAINT.pdf
Gov Newsom and the CA AG office are crossing their fingers that nobody either fact-checks this lawsuit, either on it’s ‘science’ assertions or its ‘evidence’ that Big Oil ran disinformation campaigns. Just like nearly all of the other 28 current “Exxon Knew”-style lawsuits I’ve compiled in my list, this latest one is enslaved to what I facetiously term as ye olde “victory will be achieved” memos (from the American Petroleum Institute circa 1998) for its claim that ‘Big Oil’ misled the public on what it knew. Read through that old memo set (fully legible pages are under the “Memo Follows” subheading here) and you won’t find a sinister thing in them, they’re merely a set of truisms on what would be accomplished if the public became fully aware of all the science. It’s just that simple, and it’s easy to mirror-flip what’s supposed to be incriminating in that set into a bunch of assertions that Greenpeace would happily endorse. The whole effort by API was never implemented in any form, it was all done initially to react to the remote possibility that the U.S. Senate might ratify the Kyoto Treaty, and when that possibly obviously was not going to happen, API dropped the entire consideration – former COO of API William O’Keefe elaborated further in my April 2021 interview of him. That “victory will be achieved” memo set is worthless to serve as evidence that any fossil fuel industry ran disinformation campaigns to deceive the public about the harm of CAGW, Gov Newsom and AG Bonta just didn’t bother to be certain if it actually had any merit to it or not.
There’s considerably more wrong with the political accusations within this latest lawsuit, key items repeated in this one point to who’s been pushing the “crooked skeptic climate scientists” accusation for years. Stay tuned for those details at my blog.
Thank you for your efforts on this over the years.
This is another occasion to say that Exxon SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER in the 1980’s than to take the claims about CO2 warming on face value. Brunt and Simpson, in their comments on Guy Callendar’s paper in 1938, explain why attribution of reported warming to rising CO2 concentrations should be questioned.
More here. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/02/open-thread-52/#comment-3703255
And now we have high resolution, near-real-time evidence from space to make it even more obvious why Brunt and Simpson were right to challenge the claimed attribution.
https://youtu.be/Yarzo13_TSE
wake me when the State of California has parked all vehicles, grounded all State aircraft and docked all State watercraft which use petroleum derived fuels. Continuing their operation would mean the State of California is willfully using Exxon’s products resulting in increased CO2 in the atmosphere
irony in the stupid state.
The State of California “knew™”… but did absolutely nothing to curtail its use of fossil fuels.
They should be suing themselves.
In fact, if you look at road and highway development since the 1970s in SoC…
…. you will see that they actively encouraged the massive use of fossil fuels.
The environmentalists are the one that wanted fossil fuels used, instead of nuclear, and kept the nuclear industry from building new plants here in the US.
Clearly Exxon had in the 1950s world-class genius scientists who knew long before academia about global warming issues. What was academia doing at the time? Twiddling their thumbs?
Rewriting history. Favorite pastime of the left.
From the 1970’s to the early-1980’s, the world’s top climatologists were most concerned over global cooling, not global warming. This fact is confirmed by examining the preponderance of scientific publications and popular press articles and even made-for-TV-programs* of that time period.
*The classic example from this interval of “climate change” craziness was the alarmist video “in Search of the Coming Ice Age” (1978), featuring Leonard Nimoy, the actor then well-known for having played the role of Mr. Spock in the original TV series Star Trek. For real hoot, you can revisit that 22 minute-long video at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0
I’m have no doubt that Exxon (scientists) knew . . . about this video.
How can anyone know the outcome of a chaotic system? I rest my case m’lud.
Good point son but they “believe”. No need to “know”.
In 1921, the California Legislature created the first tidelands oil and gas leasing program. Between 1921 and 1929, approximately 100 permits and leases were issued and over 850 wells were drilled in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties.
— reference: https://www.slc.ca.gov/oil-gas/
Furthermore,
“During the 1970s, the greenhouse effect became a major topic in many overlapping fields. Scientists eventually determined that a bit over half of the effect of humans on climate change is due to emissions of CO2 (mainly from fossil fuels but also from deforestation and cement manufacture). The rest of the effect is due to methane and other gases emitted by human activities; atmospheric pollution by smoke and dust; and changes in land use such as replacing dark forest with sunlight-reflecting crops or desert.”
— https://history.aip.org/climate/co2.htm
Therefore, the State of California knew or should have known since 1980 or before that their leasing of lands to commercial businesses, such as Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron and the many oil exploration/production companies contracting with them, was directly causing damage to the environment and thus to humans because it enabled the use of fossil fuels that led to human emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere.
This means that the citizens of the State of California, indeed all citizens of the USA, should file class action suit against the State of California for the “immeasurable harm” they have caused from then up to the present by continuing said leasing of lands and the permitting of oil and gas production from such lands that were/are under their control. 😉
The damages sought for the State’s misfeasance and malfeasance in this matter, conveniently titled “California Knew”, should amount to many times that sought in the lawsuit discussed in the above article.
After all, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Eric, Leonard Nimoy’s character on Star Trek was Mister Spock. Doctor Spock was a well know pediatrician – my kids’ pediatrician took part in his memorial.
Fair point 🙂
IRRC, Dr. Spock ultimately admitted his advice was bogus. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters’ interactions are infinitely more complex than some shrink can know.
If Big Oil knew….does Big Solar/Wind now know?….that this whole subject is a giant farce?
I would love to see the oil company lawyers present this on the first day in court:
“Your Honor, the Defendants acknowledge certain points of the lawsuit. Until such time as further fact finding can occur, and to prevent any further damage to the residents of the State of California, as of midnight tonight, all Defendants will cease providing any fossil fuel derived product to the State of California for the foreseeable future. Thank you.”
Based on allegations in the lawsuit, the judge should immediately issue an injunction prohibiting the defendants from engaging in further damaging behavior.
Precautionary Principle, you know.
More hacktivist political lawyering clogging up the Courts-
Minister faces court action over climate harms (msn.com)
As I posted in the Indiapolis Star thread:
“””