Oakland and SF sue five oil companies for damages from rising seas
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
Also, though the article doesn't say it outright, it looks as if there's not even given any evidence of current damages, just hundred-year-out projections. (And the record of long-term predictions in this domain is certainly not precise enough to base legal arguments on.) So they're meant to pay now for hypothetical damages that may happen later, as punishment for providing the energy that runs our whole society. Okay?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
To give an example, we should be paying more for many electronics as the result of suits against most existing companies for not dealing with Tantalum sourcing.
Getting quantitative results is entirely useless if you don't want to think about the subjective qualitative reasons we thought some arbitrary metric might matter and how they might be limited. Having a high GDP or salary is about raising your quality of life and options. If you are actively prevented from living all sorts of other lives simply because they are not as profitable then you are poorer than the wild man.
I'd say that's giving organizations rights in civil matters that only are supposed to apply to individuals in criminal ones. The end result is thousands of companies actively trying to kill us and manipulate evidence and politics for much higher profits than the ones doing net positive work.
Why do companies make profit? It's because they're offering a product or service that people buy. Why do people buy the product or service? It's because the value they get from the product outweighs the cost. What this really means is that--- all successful companies are doing social good, simply by being in business. If a company is making a big profit, they're probably doing so by providing much more value in their product than what they are charging.
Some companies produce more good than bad. Some companies produce more bad than good, but the bad is primarily not affecting their customers. The latter is inherently easier which is why civil courts must be eternally vigilant.
I agree that we should include the negative externalities in any product, and that can be done by adding taxes to products. And that we should have a healthy civil court system. And I agree that companies often get to settle for far too little. But the way you phrased your previous comment was _really_ putting the carriage before the horse.
I'm all for reducing climate change. But there are ways to do that. First of all, get rid of all the oil subsidies! That's the first thing that should be done. Then, tax the oil industry and others pollutants proportionately to the amount of climate change produced, perhaps measured by the amount of resultant Co2.
That said, oil companies have known about the effects of climate change for a while, have known that their products cause it, and then with that knowledge funded climate change disinformation campaigns to persuade public policy.
You can liken it to a drug company knowing about the effects of thermeldahyde on pregnant women, but still pushing it as a cure for morning sickness.
[1]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...
When the solution to climate change is “pay me” then I am skeptical. Perhaps the San Fran area ought to immediately ban all gasoline and diesel sales and close all highways to non electric vehicles. And close the shipping port. And the airport.
No, they won’t do that because this isn’t about some immediate threat, this is about getting paid. As long as there is a single gasoline station in the Bay Area, Oakland and friends are doing nothing more that leveraging FUD to get paid.
Remember the name kids, Black Tar Sands Crude: that's Black Tar Sands Crude, the only bitumen-based-oil unnecessarily pumped through multiple countries that's fit for your family!
Can we expect the companies to shift production to something other than oil? In fact, as we became more and more aware of human-influenced climate change, we LEARNED what caused the problem. It's easy to look back on when we first really determined humans and the biggest cause of climate change, and judge them based on what we know NOW. Taking 2017 knowledge and applying it to 1997 by saying "they've had a long time to fix this" is disingenuous armchair quarterbacking at worst.
Compare this to the methane emissions of a single cow. You're being reductive to the point of being offensive.
I mean, that'd be amazing. Beef is way too cheap in America; we're just having our grandkids pay it.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld a lower court ruling on Crawford et al concerning FATCA; the 6th Circut overturned the precedent set by Susan B Anthony List v. Driehaus by adding a heightened requirement for standing; harm doesn’t need to just be credible to give rise to standing, it has to be credible AND certain.
Interestingly the recent 6th Circuit decision on Crawford gutted Roe v. Wade as well — essentially making the standing of any woman suing doubtful. Crawford rewrote the standing requirements of Roe v. Wade — and if applied to this current case, the cities will have the case thrown out because a harm from rising sea levels might be credible, but it definitely isn’t certain. That seas levels will rise at all is credible but also not certain. And beyond standing, the question is: did the oil company cause the harm? It could be argued that if an oil company caused a harm by supplying oil, Oakland and San Fran harmed themselves by using gasoline and oil for years and years themselves. So who is culpable? The addict or the dealer? How about city building codes that didn’t properly address the credible harm from rising seas? If such a harm were known and Oakland et al chose to ignore it and continue to issue building permits, then it casts doubt as to the credibility of that harm. If they issued a construction permit while being knowledgeable of the harm, they are negligent; if they don’t actually think it’s a harm enough to change building codes, then it’s obviously not harm enough to get paid by oil companies.
I realize that the 6th Circuit doesn’t apply to California, since they are in the 9th, but it’s highly likely Elena Kagen will grant Cert to the Crawford case — a case that’s going to have an incredible effect on standing requirements for lawsuits such as these.
This suit is very disingenuous and nothing but political grandstanding.
The equivalent would be states suing gun companies for manufacturing handguns that are used in crimes, even though those same guns are used by police officers to uphold the law.
Don't energy companies produce energy resources that help impoverished people obtain clean drinking water and protect against environmental threats?
We have governments and companies with experts to allow normal people to just live their lives. When companies act in bad faith we need to hit them hard. My main problem with capitalism is that we're not hitting the same shareholders that existed back when all these shenanigans were going on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerc...
Here's the sea level data for San Francisco, CA since Abraham Lincoln was President:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station....
Nice consistent trend going back 167 years. 1.94mm/year, +/- 0.19mm, for as long as we have been keeping records.
There is NO increase in the rate of sea level rise here, or anywhere in the US, that is above long-run trends going back to the start of record keeping. A quick glance at official government data will prove it. In fact, many West Coast stations (as well as Hawaii), show a decrease in sea level, due to continental rebound and volcanic rise.
Humans have been dealing with and adapting to the natural rate of sea level rise for hundreds of years. Most of Florida, most of Manhattan, almost all of Louisiana, and many, many other highly-populated areas were uninhabitable swampland before we learned to master sea level and the slow, natural rise that has gone on for as long as we have been making scientific measurements.
This panic about rapidly rising seas is nonsense. No Pacific islands have "disappeared" due to sea level rise, nor have any Arctic or Alaskan villages -- those that have seen changes are due to subsidence, not rising seas.
If you want to attribute the 160-year record of slow, steady, 2-3mm/year (2-3cm/decade) natural rise in sea levels to some mysterious factor that has been in place since CO2 levels were below 300, let's hear your theory. Otherwise, there is nothing to be alarmed about.
Here in reality, I actually live on an island. And our 100-yr flood lines just got moved in, meaning 2000 houses that weren't considered at risk of flooding are now having to deal with flood insurance or lack thereof.
Modifying flood insurance coverage maps isn't anything new, either, but any changes being made should not be blamed on an INCREASE in the rate of rise, because there is no INCREASE in the rate of rise.
So far this season, Greenland is gaining about 50 gigatons PER DAY in ice -- and the rate of gain is INCREASING.
https://beta.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s...
https://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-she...
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2016/ArtM...
Greenland is losing ice at around 200Gt/year (this is also in your second link). And I don't see where you get the 50Gt/day gains. Unless the graph is lying, it's in Gt/day. Ranging from gains of about 12Gt to losses of about -8Gt over this past year. Quoting your source:
Over the year, it snows more than it melts, but calving
of icebergs also adds to the total mass budget of the ice
sheet. Satellite observations over the last decade show
that the ice sheet is not in balance. The calving loss is
greater than the gain from surface mass balance, and
Greenland is losing mass at about 200 Gt/yr.
Temperatures in the center of Greenland's ice sheet never rose above -10C all summer, so it's hard to see how it could have lost any ice. Ice accumulation is nearly two standard deviations above the 1981-2010 mean for the same period, and it is very, very early in the season for such gains.
Both of Greenland's largest glaciers (Jakobshavn and Peterman) are growing at record rates, about 1km/year.
Icepacks and glaciers calve into the sea. That's what they do. It's Nature's way of moving the ice and snow away from the center and back into the ocean. If they didn't, the snowpack/ice would extend to the Equator, which is impossible, or the snowpack would be 5 miles high, which is not the case.
If it were true then the chart should show well in excess of 200Gt accumulated for this year so far, and it does not. In September they have so far accumulated 50Gt which is in line with previous years at this point.
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edit: In response to Jtsummers below, since HN thinks posting more than 3 times per day is too quick:
>If the radius of the balloon increases at a constant rate, the volume of the balloon is increasing at a much greater rate (specifically, proportional to the cube of the increase in radius).
Sure, but we're talking about a numerical value which moved ~20cm over the entire measurement time, compared to the balloon which is 1,270,000,000 cm in diameter. The effects that you mentioned are entirely negligible and probably even beyond the resolution of our measurements.
Consider by way of analogy a balloon. If the radius of the balloon increases at a constant rate, the volume of the balloon is increasing at a much greater rate (specifically, proportional to the cube of the increase in radius).
By reducing the discussion to merely the sea level, we are ignoring the fact that we must add increasingly large amounts of water to the oceans each year to maintain even a linear rate of growth of sea level.
It should also be noted that since the oceans are not in an arbitrarily deep cylinder, as the oceans rise they will also increase in spread (overtaking what is presently land). If the rate of water going into the oceans were constant, we should expect a sub-linear increase in sea level due to this as well.
EDIT: The only way to have both a constant increase in volume and a constant increase in sea level would be if the oceans stopped at their present boundaries and went straight up sheer walls. I rather doubt this is the case.
The balloon was strictly meant as an analogy, but it is illustrative and establishes the upper bound on the rate of increase of water volume.
Regardless of that, showing a linear increase in sea level (constant rate) still necessarily implies a non-constant increase in water volume due to the shape of the "container" for the oceans. Our oceans are not bounded by sheer walls, so it must also be increasing in surface area (spread over land). If it is increasing in surface area and still increasing linearly in sea level [0], then the volume is growing at a super-linear rate. That means each year more water is going into the oceans than the prior year (on average, at least).
[0] One measure from San Francisco, of course, is not enough to demonstrate this as there will be lots of local variations due to many factors.
I agree with the logic of your statement - it is perfectly sound. My point was that for a large enough balloon and a small enough rate of increase, the effect will "look" linear(e.g. look at the domain [4.1,4.125] of e^x and determine if it is a linear or exponential function), and our instruments (probably) can't even begin to measure for the effects which you propose.
Two key quotes from the article:
* "The legal complaints also cite an internal Exxon document from 1982. Its authors predicted that global temperatures will rise 3 degrees Celsius before the century ends."
* "The defendants “promoted fossil fuels and fossil fuel products for unlimited use in massive quantities with knowledge of the hazard that such use would create,” the San Francisco suit says."
Can't wait for gaz stations to be like cigarette packaging/advertising (in most of the western world except the US): un-branded and with large warnings about the health/environmental consequences.
- big power plants are much more efficient than internal combustion engines, especially as the latter are operated over wide range of speeds
- it's much easier and cheaper to put emission capture tech on a power plant chimney than to put it in cars
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ucs-electric-...
The power from the grid can be made cleaner too by increasing usage of renewable energy.
That, and social media.
Did it rise 3C?
Cars, planes, trains do about 35% of it.
Manufacturing most of the rest.
I find this all rather populist, I'm not sure it's the best approach.
The lawyers of Oakland and SF don't drive cars? Or travel on planes?
If the intention is to put pressure on the Oil companies to stop lobbying against clean energy - I don't think, this is the right approach.
Didn't we do exactly that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax
This is also done for other things like having tobacco companies or alcohol companies finance health care and treatment programs.
Actually, for oil companies that is not even new. They usually pay quite a bit to account for the local damage they cause to the environment, so adding global damages as well seems very reasonable.
The only weird thing is why Oakland and SF are suing and not, say the federal government or the UN.
I'm disappointed in the discussion here so far. When did we become a community of "be nice to the big guys"?
do you honestly believe this isn't the case? where do you think low fat marketing and all of the insanely bad public health fallout came from? it's bought and paid for by the sugar industry.
having said that, no, i don't think we should sue them, what's the point of that? people like eating crap and medical care is still privatized.
This is a classic example of looking a gift horse in the mouth. Putting regulations on oil companies would benefit all, rather than this frivolous lawsuit which would benefit the two cities ONLY.
Why not Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, Boeing...? Hey, I sell gasoline /diesel, one of the many (legally available) fuels, you either buy it or you don't.