1. Intentional and negligent creation of public nuisance. The nuisance appears to be extreme climate events, and I'm doubtful that you could actually show sufficient action on the part of the oil companies to link them to the extreme climate events (the standard is probably that you need to show that but for the actions of the companies, those events wouldn't have happened and... yeah, that kind of direct attribution isn't possible).
2. Negligence. I mean, this section is a mere page long, and doesn't go into any detail whatsoever, so it's hard to even figure out what is the supposed duty that wasn't done. So... almost certainly going to die on a motion for dismissal.
3. Fraud and deceit, in that they covered up the effects of climate change. Except that's not fraud--fraud requires that someone be reliant on the lie to do something. So you'd need to show that, e.g., someone only bought a tank from gas from Exxon because Exxon said climate change didn't exist. I suppose it's possible that's true--there's millions of people in the country after all--but... that's not really something that happens (least of all, anything actually alleged in the complaint, so far as I can thing).
4. Trespass. Wildfires caused by climate change constituted trespass. Cute legal theory, but cute legal theories are almost always tossed out of court quickly.
So out of four claims, three of them are dead on arrival, and the first one has an uphill fight. And even if they win, the $50 billion for "abate the nuisance" definitely isn't going to happen, and you're looking more at the actual damages which is apparently around $50 million.
> Journalists who discuss a lawsuit without linking to the actual lawsuit in question...
The website seems like a PR dumping ground. Given the incomplete byline I would highly doubt they are an actual journalist —- more likely a freelance blogger.
I wish there were some law like "if you waste the court system resources for PR and virtue signaling, you are personally liable for triple costs" but it's likely impossible. So the incentive to pull stunts like this is always there.
Sadly, that likely wouldn't deter this, as the county doesn't really "make" money, it relies on taxes. So it's not their money they're playing with, and the ones pushing this lawsuit probably aren't elected anyway, so they don't risk much.
With regards to 1, I think these companies are the wrong ones to target. Oil companies are not the ones who are emitting CO2, they just bring the hydrocarbons to the surface and put it in containers. It's the big buyers of those containers that make the decision to burn the hydrocarbons. Targets of these lawsuits should be energy companies, trucking, shipping, flying, transporting companies.
As to 2 it certainly seems like a hard one, but not entirely without merit. Wouldn't it be negligence if you sell a product knowing that your customers are going to use that product to hurt the environment? It's not like a hazardous chemical where you can assume the buyer has processes in place to deal with the results. These companies did the research and they know their product negatively affects the environment when burned, they know the government is not enforcing any checks and balances and still they sell the product to customers who 100% are going to burn the product. In my opinion it's for sure the government and the customers themselves who bear the greatest blame, there's some negligence there.
I'm not sure why you're going back on your own argument in 3. I'm sure you could find people whose belief that their buying of oil doesn't affect the climate was cemented by the deceit of those companies. And if someone would start suing companies for negligent burning of hydrocarbons, I'm sure there would be CEO's that would happily point their fingers at the oil companies in accusation of deceit.
The trespass one seems ridiculous, I guess because a judge isn't supposed to let frivolous things affect their judgement it's a freebie to throw in?
Anyway, 2 and 3 seem to at least have some merit to my untrained eyes. Maybe it's more about sending a message than actually winning a lawsuit? If a judge takes the suit seriously and the oil companies are forced to publicly weasel out of these charges, wouldn't that be some sort of a win for the movement?
For #3, not that I agree but they commissioned several studies that showed the effect of fossil fuels on climate change and went to lengths to keep it a secret. Gov/state policy could have changed if that information was made public earlier.
I am surprised they didn't mention manipulation of research at unis.
This is an emotionally and politically charged topic that can be hard to discuss with any clarity. The Skeptoid episode What the Oil Companies Really Knew, part 2 of which can be found here: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4877, can be a good starting point because it is at least an attempt to try and provide a fair and factual overview.
I think this passage is particularly relevant:
> The message received from actually reading all of these documents is not — as is commonly reported — that oil executives' own scientists were warning them of the true nature of climate change. Instead, what they indicate is a broad pattern of scientists who were either outside their discipline or among the outliers who were unconcerned with the anthropogenic portion of CO2 buildup, advising those executives that no action was currently warranted. They were wrong, make no mistake; but that's what they were saying, and that's the information the oil companies were acting upon, at least through the end of the 20th century.
> There's a point I've tried to make any number of times on Skeptoid, and that's if you want your argument to be robust and persuasive, don't include any bad evidence. Include only strong evidence that has been proven to survive scrutiny. If you present cherrypicked quotes, like the authors of so many of these articles have been doing, it is very easy for your opponents to discover that; and when they do, the only point you will have made is that your argument is weak and easily countered — and thus probably false. It's a bad time in human history to harm the cause of educating people about global warming.
> scientists who were either outside their discipline or among the outliers who were unconcerned with the anthropogenic portion of CO2 buildup, advising those executives that no action was currently warranted. They were wrong, make no mistake; but that's what they were saying, and that's the information the oil companies were acting upon, at least through the end of the 20th century.
Except that's way too convenient to be a coincidence.
You mean to tell me that for decades all of the top scientists at all the major oil companies just so happened to be heterodox or hold highly conservative opinions about climate change? And all important decision-making executives just so happened to take them at their word, and never heard a contrary opinion? And if only they weren't so incredibly unlucky as to get consistently bad advice all consistently and conveniently giving them the answer they wanted to hear, they'd have acted on climate change sooner?
That's an utterly absurd hypothesis, particularly coming from a "skeptical" source. It ignores the obvious incentive for oil executives to deliberately and exclusively seek out such scientists.
This article is far far too accepting and apologetic, beyond the point of credible gullibility.
Yeah, reminds me of the scene in the previous Spiderman film where he tries to intentionally flunk out of a class and the teacher points out that the only likely way to get 0 out of 100 on a multiple choice quiz is to know the right answers and intentionally avoid them.
And this is the same oil majors that put lead in gasoline because ethanol was a competing fuel, blatantly lying about the safety of this and poisoning several generations.
Last time someone made this claim about "probable billions of dollars" here, I asked for examples and the best anyone could show was a $10k donation to a tiny charity run by one guy that campaigned against offshore wind farms, with a stated justification that there were better ways to help the environment.
Can anyone show an accounting of these billions? Because you can't spend that kind of money without leaving a lot of paper trails.
> There's a point I've tried to make any number of times on Skeptoid, and that's if you want your argument to be robust and persuasive, don't include any bad evidence.
I often have to wonder, how are these highly intellectual people able to have a world view like that?
From my experience, bad evidence works wonders in arguments, because they're generally driven by emotions. It doesn't even matter if they're disproven later on, as the person will have moved on to new arguments.
Rational discourse like this person seems to take for granted is - from my experience - beyond rare.
> From my experience, bad evidence works wonders in arguments
It is because people have different goals and are using different metrics. They are just getting confused and thinking they are aligned with the same goals. If you are seeking truthful arguments with debates between good faith and purely rational parties, then weak evidence isn't great, because (like the parent said) it just creates a man made of straw than can easily be torn down. BUT if your goal is to perpetuate arguing and drive up emotions, the tool is fantastic. Because it creates a man of straw which can easily be torn down! Everyone likes burning a big man. I hear they even do it yearly out in the desert.
So people just aren't able to properly communicate because language is fuzzy and filling in gaps. That we're assuming those gaps are filled in the same way, but they aren't. Weak evidence is either very useful or very hurtful, but it depends on your settings and goals.
“We are confident that, once we show what the fossil fuel companies knew about global warming and when, and what they did to deny, delay and deceive the public, the jury will not let the fossil fuel companies get away with their reckless misconduct.”
Oil companies also know that their products are critical to the production and distribution of food and a long list of other modern day necessities. Should they cease operation and let us starve ?
I think the argument here is that they shouldn’t deceive the public about the realities of their operations in order to raise or sustain their profits.
If the service is essential, the consumers of said goods can make their own decisions about how essential they are without all the smoke and mirrors.
By that logic everything that has any positive externality at all would be legal. The plaintiffs specifically argue that the companies behaved recklessly motivated by profit seeking. They actively misled the public about a negative externality associated with their product. That is basically the same argument that plaintiffs made against tobacco companies. Cigarettes were legal, they brought satisfaction to consumers, but the producers actively misled their customers about negative side effects in a reckless manner.
The argument should be that these externalities get priced into oil to help with climate change effects and transitioning to clean energy. The analog I think are cigarettes and how we have taxed them out of existence
The word “critical” used in this sentence suggests there is no way to produce or distribute food or other commodities without fossil fuels, which is plainly, obviously false.
No but they should at least not do buybacks and pay dividends, before cleaning up the mess that their production & product causes. This way an even competition field would form. Oil drilling is not a ludicrous business if you consider the actual costs for production (aka capturing carbon, decommissioning rigs, cleaning up production sites).
I'm somewhat sympathetic to this because oil companies suppressed research, but society has known about this risk for a long time and benefited from oil. I put more of the fault with consumers, voters, and lawmakers. Oil companies just produced when they asked for.
There is enough blame to go around but simply ignoring the responsibility of oil companies doesn't serve the debate, either. By that logic, the producers of Zyklon-B should have been cleared of any wrongdoing because they simply satisfied the Nazi regime's demand for a nerve agent to kill people in concentration camps. Simply ignoring severe known negative externalities associated with your product should always come with legal liability.
Shareholders of companies should be held accountable, no?
They’re the ones asking for more profits…
Or what about our current government who recently demanded oil companies produce more to lower prices? Am I as democratic voter morally in the wrong? If not, why not?
> Multnomah County is seeking $50 million from the defendants for actual damages from the 2021 record-breaking heat wave. Temperatures in the region reached 116°F, killing 69 people in the county. This is the hottest temperature ever recorded in the county’s history.
$51B of damages for ostensibly killing 69 people in that county? This seems farcical, they're shooting for the moon to make headlines, they can't be serious with this. It's a PR/political stunt.
Also, surely those four companies cannot be solely responsible for the emissions that allegedly caused that heat wave — which is assuming we can even attribute that heat wave solely to global warming. Surely this isn't the first heat wave that have killed people in that area.
Theres actually a whole thing in the law about who to sue and how damages are dealt with, specifically that one goes for the Big offender for the full amount and then that party can pursue the smaller offenders to repay thier share of the costs.
I'd be very interested in the testimony in this case as it seems that the plaintiffs argue that 100+ deaths during 2021 PNW heatwave were caused by global warming.
I'm not sure what argument you make. Climate is different from weather and there have been extreme temperature events throughout history. Furthermore, how do you account for natural releases of methane or the whole cow farting angle? How do you establish responsibility, etc.
Climate change increases the number and severity of extreme weather events in a given year. That is well documented by now. So you can’t attribute all heat wave deaths to climate change, but you you can have a high confidence in attributing some of them. You can also quantify the contribution of individual companies to historical CO2 emissions. As long as the court follows that basic logic (and courts in other countries have done so) I don’t see a problem.
Ah, but do you ascribe blame to the fuel producers? Or the fuel burners? As a liquid it's not a problem. Burning it is the problem. Therefore should it not be the burners who are responsible?
Perhaps the county should just ban the burning of fool fuels. If its causing do many local deaths then surely that's the logical first step? Or would that just be political suicide?
Well documented? This claim about extreme weather gets repeated and echoed by people who assume that it must be true because they keep hearing it, so they don't check. But it's not actually true.
There's a summary paper here that explores the data and shows this to be true:
The analysis is then extended to some global response indicators
of extreme meteorological events, namely natural disasters, floods, droughts, ecosystem productivity and yields of the four main crops (maize, rice, soybean and wheat). None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events
There are other indicators you could use but they also don't show any crisis of extreme weather, often the opposite. Examples:
- Wildfire burn acreage is drastically down over the past 100 years.
- Hurricanes are in decline, both in frequency and energy.
- Rainfall is also down slightly.
You can google those claims to find them if you like because the datasets are all public, except maybe the third which is a bit obscure so I'll give it here:
the small- and medium-size precipitation systems both exhibit significant decreases during 2001–2020 with trends at −1.13 and −2 mm/h per century, respectively. The large-size precipitation systems exhibit nonsignificant increasing trends during 2001–2020.
Besides, how can you ascertain that CO2 causes GW? It’s been shown in a small-scale model, absolutely, but can a 2m3 box model be used in court to demonstrate Earth-sized climate changes? Are petrol companies responsible for all weather events starting from now? And for how long? Are they non-responsible when we come back to 400ppm of CO2?
Perhaps they should adopt contract terms to prevent their products from being sold or used in Multnomah county, it's only reasonable that they should seek to mitigate the risk of the plaintiffs claiming an ever increasing amount of damages.
Readit News
The lawsuit appears to be available at https://multco-web7-psh-files-usw2.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.co.... Heading straight for end and looking at the causes of action:
1. Intentional and negligent creation of public nuisance. The nuisance appears to be extreme climate events, and I'm doubtful that you could actually show sufficient action on the part of the oil companies to link them to the extreme climate events (the standard is probably that you need to show that but for the actions of the companies, those events wouldn't have happened and... yeah, that kind of direct attribution isn't possible).
2. Negligence. I mean, this section is a mere page long, and doesn't go into any detail whatsoever, so it's hard to even figure out what is the supposed duty that wasn't done. So... almost certainly going to die on a motion for dismissal.
3. Fraud and deceit, in that they covered up the effects of climate change. Except that's not fraud--fraud requires that someone be reliant on the lie to do something. So you'd need to show that, e.g., someone only bought a tank from gas from Exxon because Exxon said climate change didn't exist. I suppose it's possible that's true--there's millions of people in the country after all--but... that's not really something that happens (least of all, anything actually alleged in the complaint, so far as I can thing).
4. Trespass. Wildfires caused by climate change constituted trespass. Cute legal theory, but cute legal theories are almost always tossed out of court quickly.
So out of four claims, three of them are dead on arrival, and the first one has an uphill fight. And even if they win, the $50 billion for "abate the nuisance" definitely isn't going to happen, and you're looking more at the actual damages which is apparently around $50 million.
The website seems like a PR dumping ground. Given the incomplete byline I would highly doubt they are an actual journalist —- more likely a freelance blogger.
As to 2 it certainly seems like a hard one, but not entirely without merit. Wouldn't it be negligence if you sell a product knowing that your customers are going to use that product to hurt the environment? It's not like a hazardous chemical where you can assume the buyer has processes in place to deal with the results. These companies did the research and they know their product negatively affects the environment when burned, they know the government is not enforcing any checks and balances and still they sell the product to customers who 100% are going to burn the product. In my opinion it's for sure the government and the customers themselves who bear the greatest blame, there's some negligence there.
I'm not sure why you're going back on your own argument in 3. I'm sure you could find people whose belief that their buying of oil doesn't affect the climate was cemented by the deceit of those companies. And if someone would start suing companies for negligent burning of hydrocarbons, I'm sure there would be CEO's that would happily point their fingers at the oil companies in accusation of deceit.
The trespass one seems ridiculous, I guess because a judge isn't supposed to let frivolous things affect their judgement it's a freebie to throw in?
Anyway, 2 and 3 seem to at least have some merit to my untrained eyes. Maybe it's more about sending a message than actually winning a lawsuit? If a judge takes the suit seriously and the oil companies are forced to publicly weasel out of these charges, wouldn't that be some sort of a win for the movement?
I am surprised they didn't mention manipulation of research at unis.
Complete amateur hour
Dead Comment
I think this passage is particularly relevant:
> The message received from actually reading all of these documents is not — as is commonly reported — that oil executives' own scientists were warning them of the true nature of climate change. Instead, what they indicate is a broad pattern of scientists who were either outside their discipline or among the outliers who were unconcerned with the anthropogenic portion of CO2 buildup, advising those executives that no action was currently warranted. They were wrong, make no mistake; but that's what they were saying, and that's the information the oil companies were acting upon, at least through the end of the 20th century.
> There's a point I've tried to make any number of times on Skeptoid, and that's if you want your argument to be robust and persuasive, don't include any bad evidence. Include only strong evidence that has been proven to survive scrutiny. If you present cherrypicked quotes, like the authors of so many of these articles have been doing, it is very easy for your opponents to discover that; and when they do, the only point you will have made is that your argument is weak and easily countered — and thus probably false. It's a bad time in human history to harm the cause of educating people about global warming.
Except that's way too convenient to be a coincidence.
You mean to tell me that for decades all of the top scientists at all the major oil companies just so happened to be heterodox or hold highly conservative opinions about climate change? And all important decision-making executives just so happened to take them at their word, and never heard a contrary opinion? And if only they weren't so incredibly unlucky as to get consistently bad advice all consistently and conveniently giving them the answer they wanted to hear, they'd have acted on climate change sooner?
That's an utterly absurd hypothesis, particularly coming from a "skeptical" source. It ignores the obvious incentive for oil executives to deliberately and exclusively seek out such scientists.
This article is far far too accepting and apologetic, beyond the point of credible gullibility.
And this is the same oil majors that put lead in gasoline because ethanol was a competing fuel, blatantly lying about the safety of this and poisoning several generations.
Dead Comment
Not to mention the probable billions of dollars spent in an effort to increase public ignorance[1] around the issue. (See [2], for example.)
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology
2: https://www.desmog.com/2014/10/31/oil-and-gas-industry-s-end...
Is there a name for this "appeal to-non emotion" line of non-reasoning? Maybe the "Vulcan Fallacy"?
Can anyone show an accounting of these billions? Because you can't spend that kind of money without leaving a lot of paper trails.
I often have to wonder, how are these highly intellectual people able to have a world view like that?
From my experience, bad evidence works wonders in arguments, because they're generally driven by emotions. It doesn't even matter if they're disproven later on, as the person will have moved on to new arguments.
Rational discourse like this person seems to take for granted is - from my experience - beyond rare.
It is because people have different goals and are using different metrics. They are just getting confused and thinking they are aligned with the same goals. If you are seeking truthful arguments with debates between good faith and purely rational parties, then weak evidence isn't great, because (like the parent said) it just creates a man made of straw than can easily be torn down. BUT if your goal is to perpetuate arguing and drive up emotions, the tool is fantastic. Because it creates a man of straw which can easily be torn down! Everyone likes burning a big man. I hear they even do it yearly out in the desert.
So people just aren't able to properly communicate because language is fuzzy and filling in gaps. That we're assuming those gaps are filled in the same way, but they aren't. Weak evidence is either very useful or very hurtful, but it depends on your settings and goals.
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Dead Comment
If the service is essential, the consumers of said goods can make their own decisions about how essential they are without all the smoke and mirrors.
Companies should be expected to pay the true cost of what they produce and not have it be borne by the rest of society.
They’re the ones asking for more profits…
Or what about our current government who recently demanded oil companies produce more to lower prices? Am I as democratic voter morally in the wrong? If not, why not?
$51B of damages for ostensibly killing 69 people in that county? This seems farcical, they're shooting for the moon to make headlines, they can't be serious with this. It's a PR/political stunt.
I'm not sure what argument you make. Climate is different from weather and there have been extreme temperature events throughout history. Furthermore, how do you account for natural releases of methane or the whole cow farting angle? How do you establish responsibility, etc.
Perhaps the county should just ban the burning of fool fuels. If its causing do many local deaths then surely that's the logical first step? Or would that just be political suicide?
There's a summary paper here that explores the data and shows this to be true:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1140/epjp/s13360-02...
The analysis is then extended to some global response indicators of extreme meteorological events, namely natural disasters, floods, droughts, ecosystem productivity and yields of the four main crops (maize, rice, soybean and wheat). None of these response indicators show a clear positive trend of extreme events
There are other indicators you could use but they also don't show any crisis of extreme weather, often the opposite. Examples:
- Wildfire burn acreage is drastically down over the past 100 years.
- Hurricanes are in decline, both in frequency and energy.
- Rainfall is also down slightly.
You can google those claims to find them if you like because the datasets are all public, except maybe the third which is a bit obscure so I'll give it here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...
the small- and medium-size precipitation systems both exhibit significant decreases during 2001–2020 with trends at −1.13 and −2 mm/h per century, respectively. The large-size precipitation systems exhibit nonsignificant increasing trends during 2001–2020.
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