Yet moah climate suing

There's not much going on right now, so time for some low-grade climate suing news. Of which the last was in 2018... can that really be so? No, there's this from 2019 too. But is about time for yet moah. Why is it time for moah? Perhaps the 2020 election season approaches, a time when public official spaff taxpayers money against the wall on lawyers in an effort to look good for re-elections?

First, it's good to see that our old friend ClimateLiabilityNews is back, with a new name, ClimateDocket sounding eerily like ClimateDepot. It isn't clear whether we're supposed to know they are the same thing, or indeed if they are exactly the same thing, but climateliabilitynews.org¹ redirects to climatedocket.com, which is something of a hint, and CD's "about" page says "The editorial content of CLN is not subject to approval or influence by CCL or its donors" which looks like a careless failure to update (h/t The Dark Side). Also, their page source includes some "yoast-schema-graph" gumpf which still include "name":"Climate Liability News" Aaanyway, enough of that, who cares who they are really.

There's DC Files Latest Climate Suit Vs. Big Oil and also Minnesota Sues Fossil Fuel Industry for Climate Fraud. They look to be run-of-the-mill kind of stuff. For the second, the Dork Side helpfully supplies me with a link to the suit which contains The economic devastation and public-health impacts from climate change were caused, in large part, by a campaign of deception that Defendants orchestrated and executed with disturbing success. I suppose it has to; they have to at least assert cause. I don't think it is true (in two senses: there is no current economic devastation from GW in Minnesota³; and GW isn't in large part caused by Evil Fossil Fuel Company propaganda; this is the familiar "if only it weren't for you EFFCs everything would be spiffy" nonsense.

The next point is around timelines, who-knew-what-when, and I think that will fail, as I've said before and more (caution: link may² contain picture of monkey genitals). Para 214 asserts a scientific consensus as early as 1982, which is drivel.

Browsing along, I'm struck by how badly researched the complaint is. Important facts about EFFC profits are cited to the Graun, not to some authoritative source. That CO2 causes GW is just stated and not cited, although there's all that nice stuff in Alsup they could cite - perhaps they don't want to draw attention to Alsup and hope that if they pretend it doesn't exist, no-one will notice? It starts to resemble that carbon tax proposal that appeared to have been written by children. Well, if you think it's doomed and only done to bolster your re-election, there's no need to put much work into it.

Para 55 and on is the by-now-familiar drivel that we knew all of this in the 50s. Including the stuff about Teller. Why are they doing this? There's no chance of it standing up. There are pages and pages of this, all boiler-plated from stuff they've been fed I suspect. Para 84 is the wearying Despite their superior understanding of climate change science, which is a lie: the EFFCs knew nothing that the govt didn't know, that wasn't in the scientific public domain. Para 87 is Instead, they engaged in a campaign of deception. As I said before: the API and its friends, most obviously Exxon under Lee Raymond, said things sufficiently misleading to constitute misinformation and probably lies. But just how evil was this campaign of deception? Para 89 tells us: This deliberate campaign of deception and half-truths is described, in part, by internal strategy documents: A 1988 ExxonMobil internal document states that Exxon... Urge a balanced scientific approach. Fuck me that's Evil (but yes of course, I've been deceptive in what I've elided).

Para 93 is Defendants’ misleading statements were part of a conspiracy to defraud consumers and the general public, including consumers and the public in Minnesota, about climate change and the role of fossil-fuel products in climate change. This I think goes to the heart of their problem (though I'm guessing of course, because I don't know the details of their law or how it is likely to be interpreted; para 185 appears to say that the law doesn't require any actual damage). Simply being misleading is unlikely to be criminal or attract large damages. They need to show intent to defraud. This is going to be tricky, because they'll need to show a net loss, which so far they haven't even attempted.

Para 125 is ...Defendants secretly paid scientists to produce research that supported their campaign of deception. However, the only one they can find is Willie Soon. They try to pad it our with William Happer but are obliged to admit that he has never published a peer-reviewed article on the topic. Unable to find a second scientist to justify their plural, they fall back on These examples are part of a pattern and hope no-one will notice.

Ah, at last: para 139 at last attempts to demonstrate harm (they won't, as they should, try to balance harm against good; but I'm not expecting miracles from them). There were nearly 60 heat-related deaths between 2000 and 2017 (they don't mention that the largest year was 2001). Was this larger than the previous 20 years? They don't say. What does the long-term trend look like? They attempt no attribution. Have winter cold deaths changed? They don't thik to comment. They note that High temperatures can also lead to crop damage but don't note that yields are increasing; to understand that properly you'd have to extract the various causes. In contrast to the vagueness of temperature-related damages, they can find lots of $ for flooding damage, but make only the sketchiest attempt to attribute the floods to GW.

Para 249 asks that hizzoner Order ExxonMobil and Koch to disgorge all profits made as a result of their unlawful conduct. Which sounds odd: those companies no longer have those profits, of course. They've been paid out in dividends and so on. It also isn't clear whether Minnesota wants all of the profits for itself, or only its share, measured by some as yet to be determined sharing theory.

So, meh, another suit. Will it do any good, other than to the pockets of lawyers? I'm doubtful.

Notes

1. Weirdly, that link shows you a nearly-there page. But just select the URL in your URL-bar and press return, and you'll get redirected to CD.

2. Oh, all right, does.

3. They assert Minnesota has already experienced billions of dollars of economic harm due to climate change since Defendants began their deceptive campaign; if they provide a source, I'll let you know. Looks like no... para 54 begins Without Defendants’ exacerbation of global warming caused by their conduct as alleged herein, the current physical and environmental changes caused by global warming would have been far less than those observed to date... but still no source. Ah, read on; it comes in para 139.

4. Para 94 says Defendants’ websites contain misleading statements about climate science but doesn't quote any of the misleading statements, and contains no URLs, references no archived copies. It all just hopeless, amateurish, pathetic.