There is a climate change case making its way through the courts in California in which the cities of San Francisco and Oakland are suing ExxonMobil and Chevron and four other Big Oil producers.
The suit alleges that the energy suppliers knew their product was dangerous back in the 90s, and did nothing about it. The two cities are seeking to hold the oil companies liable for the cost of infrastructure upgrades and remediation expected as they deal with effects of rising sea levels. It looks kind of like the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s.
Instead of using city resources to clean up the homeless poop problem, San Francisco is spending a ton of money on lawyers to make ExxonMobil build dikes to protect Fisherman's Wharf.
Well, the lawsuit has made its way to the courtroom of Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee. While most everyone would assume the case will go against the oil companies because we have a liberal judge in liberal California presiding, that might not be the case. This particular judge has a history of working to understand things for himself.
He likes tutorials.
He had a tutorial on self-driving technology before ruling that Uber, Lyft, and Google could go ahead and test driverless cars.
He learned some Java programming before ruling against Microsoft when it came to bundling Internet Explorer.
So, in this case, he asked both sides for a tutorial on the latest climate science. He wanted the presenters to “trace the history of scientific study of climate change” and fill him in on “the best science now available.”
Climate change activists are used to having their assertions accepted by an unquestioning media. So, it is likely they thought they were safe from detailed inquiry in a Northern California court. However, when Team Climate Change was up at bat, and it appears they might have struck out.
From the good people at Legal Insurrection:
During the tutorial, the judge pointed to several inaccuracies in the data and materials provided by the plaintiffs [Cities of San Francisco and Oakland], sometimes to the embarrassment of climate change activists.
Alsup also castigated the plaintiff’s claims of a “smoking gun” document that would prove the conspiracy claims true. The plaintiffs pointed to a report that the companies had in their possession as proof they knew about the nefarious effects of climate change in 1995.
The “smoking gun” document in question proved to be a regurgitated summary of a 1995 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. At the time of its release, the report was subject to significant scrutiny by many in the scientific community because it was riddled with huge uncertainties.
“There was a conspiratorial document within the defendants about how they knew good and well that global warming was right around the corner,” Alsup said. “Well, it turned out it wasn’t quite that. What it was, was a slide show that somebody had gone to the IPCC and was reporting on what the IPCC had reported, and that was it. Nothing more.”
The judge ruled that just attending the IPCC and getting a copy of a slide deck did not constitute conspiracy. Wow. That's really good to know. I'm sure everyone who goes to a professional conference from now on and brings back presentations will be reassured that they aren't engaging in a conspiracy.
Judge Alsup also questioned the validity of the data and the expert witnesses in the plaintiffs' case. And it wasn't pretty.
Judge Alsup started quietly. He flattered the plaintiffs’ first witness, Oxford physicist Myles Allen, by calling him a “genius,” but he also reprimanded Mr. Allen for using a misleading illustration to represent carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a graph ostensibly about temperature rise that did not actually show rising temperatures.
Then the pointed questions began. Gary Griggs, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, struggled with the judge’s simple query: “What do you think caused the last Ice Age?”
The professor talked at length about a wobble in the earth’s orbit and went on to describe a period “before there were humans on the planet,” which “we call hothouse Earth.” That was when “all the ice melted. We had fossils of palm trees and alligators in the Arctic,” Mr. Griggs told the court. He added that at one time the sea level was 20 to 30 feet higher than today.
Mr. Griggs then recounted “a period called ‘snow ballers,’ ” when scientists “think the entire Earth was frozen due to changes in things like methane released from the ocean.
OK. We have expert witnesses giving testimony about events in the Earth's history where human activity didn't play a role in either cooling or warming--mainly because there were no humans on the planet.
Maybe the highlight of the tutorials came when one of the defendants--Chevron--used the City of San Francisco's own words against them.
““The City is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur, when they may occur, and if any such events occur, whether they will have a material adverse effect on the business operations or financial condition of the City and the local economy.” Citing “City & Cty. of S.F. Tax-Exempt General Obligation Bonds, Official Statement (Jan. 2017)” and a similar statement by the City of Oakland.
Judge Alsup is expected to rule on a defense motion to dismiss the suit next month.