By Eric Worrall – WUWT
h/t Willie Soon – The California vs Chevron lawsuit against five oil companies is not going well for greens. After suggesting Climate Scientist Miles Allen presented a misleading graph about CO2, and after receiving an admission from Oceanographer Gary Griggs that ice ages and other violent climate shifts, far greater than today’s mild warming, can be caused by natural forcings, Judge Alsup turned to the centrepiece of the conspiracy charge, the “Smoking Gun” memo.
Climate Alarmists May Inherit the Wind
They likened a courtroom ‘tutorial’ to the Scopes Monkey Trial. But their side got schooled.
By Phelim McAleer
April 1, 2018 1:58 p.m. ET
992 COMMENTS
San FranciscoFive American oil companies find themselves in a San Francisco courtroom. California v. Chevron is a civil action brought by the city attorneys of San Francisco and Oakland, who accuse the defendants of creating a “public nuisance” by contributing to climate change and of conspiring to cover it up so they could continue to profit.
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“Until now, fossil fuel companies have been able to talk about climate science in political and media arenas where there is far less accountability to the truth,” Michael Burger of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University told Grist. The hearing did mark a shift toward accountability—but perhaps not in the way activists would have liked.
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Judge Alsup was particularly scathing about the conspiracy claim. The plaintiffs alleged that the oil companies were in possession of “smoking gun” documents that would prove their liability; Mr. Boutrous said this was simply an internal summary of the publicly available 1995 IPCC report.
The judge said he read the lawsuit’s allegations to mean “that there was a conspiratorial document within the defendants about how they knew good and well that global warming was right around the corner. And I said: ‘OK, that’s going to be a big thing. I want to see it.’ 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. So they were on notice of what in IPCC said from that document, but it’s hard to say that they were secretly aware. By that point they knew. Everybody knew everything in the IPCC,” he stated.
Judge Alsup then turned to Mr. Berman: “If you want to respond, I’ll let you respond. . . . Anything you want to say?”
“No,” said the counsel to the plaintiffs. Whereupon Judge Alsup adjourned the proceedings.
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Read more (paywalled): https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-alarmists-may-inherit-the-wind-1522605526
I’m quite shocked at the poor preparation of the green plaintiff’s case.
I thought we were in for a proper showdown, a drawn out trial lasting weeks which would allow all sides to present their best evidence. Instead, in my opinion its looking increasingly likely the greens haven’t got a leg to stand on, that this court case was launched in the desperate hope that oil companies would simply fold and hand over the money.
As far as I can tell the green plaintiffs have yet to present a single piece of evidence against oil companies which can’t be knocked down within five minutes of cross examination. Even MSM is catching on that at least on evidence presented to date the green case is stuffed.
