
Better climate science has opened the door to lawsuits against Big Oil - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/20/17031676/climate-change-lawsuits-fossil-fuel-new-york-santa-cruz
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Isamu
> Not long ago, the phrase “no single event can be attributed to climate
> change” was repeated like a catechism. This is no longer true. Though
> scientists still warn that it’s inaccurate to speak of weather events being
> “caused” by climate change — weather always has multiple causes — better
> climate models, more powerful computers, and refined methodologies now allow
> researchers to quantify how climate change has increased the likelihood or
> severity of heat waves, droughts, deluges, and other extreme events.

I agree with the last sentence, and the new research is interesting.

But I think with the first few sentences the author is saying that
"attributing" an event to climate change is not the same as saying it was
"caused" by climate change. Please help me to understand this position.

Edit: And it has been long known that climate change increases the likelihood
of some events. The new research is just putting some numbers on that.

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Udik
I don't get it. Exxon sells a product that is entirely legal, at the price
consumers are willing to pay in a competitive market. And those consumers are
ultimately responsible for buying it, at least from a moral standpoint.

Also, if you want to play the game, how much wealth did the society
collectively gain from burning oil in the past 100 years? Should we give the
oil companies a medal for that? A Nobel peace prize because they makes all the
ambulances run, saving lives every day?

It seems deeply questionable to me that you want to keep the benefits you
derived from oil, while offloading the blame for the downsides only on the
companies providing it to you. Have the citizens of San Mateo stopped using
oil, or renounced the cumulative societal benefits derived from its use in the
past century?

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woodandsteel
From the article:

"The new lawsuits will benefit from revelations about what fossil fuel
companies knew about climate change and when they knew it. In the years since
Kivalina, reporting by InsideClimate News and others has shown that fossil
fuel companies, Exxon in particular, conducted their own research in the 1970s
and ‘80s confirming the risks posed by greenhouse gasses. Internally,
companies prepared their own infrastructure for climate change, raising the
decks of drilling platforms and designing pipelines for predicted rising seas
and melting permafrost. But externally, they denied the risk, marketing and
selling fossil fuels while sowing doubt about climate change through front
groups. The suits compare the disinformation campaign to that waged by tobacco
companies, a comparison made easy by the fact that both industries paid some
of the same people to downplay the danger."

So you are saying it is legal for corporations to tell lies in order to
influence consumer decisions?

~~~
Udik
I don't think companies speak with a single voice, nor that it is the role of
companies to educate the public in regards to the general societal impact of
their products- especially when those impacts are as uncertain as climate
change has been in the past 40 years. Lobbying in the US is a legal activity,
and if politicians allowed themselves to make harmful decisions because of it,
it's entirely their fault and of the people who voted for them.

On the other hand, climate scientists, some working for Exxon itself, have
been publicly warning about the risks of climate change for 40 years. Did you
stop buying petrol or petrol based products, and did you stop enjoying the
benefits of cheap energy extracted from the oil reserves? No, you didn't. Now
you'd want Exxon to pay for the liabilities, while keeping the wealth you
enjoyed and accumulated during these years thanks to the very product you
blame them for.

Are you able to calculate what part of your wealth and security is derived
from the availability of the cheap energy Exxon has provided you? Are you
willing to give it back to Exxon, as you're asking Exxon to pay for the
damages it caused with its product? You aren't. You're trying to offload the
risks and responsibility of your choices on someone else, while keeping for
yourself the benefits they provided you.

~~~
woodandsteel
See my answer above.

You say "nor that it is the role of companies to educate the public in regards
to the general societal impact of their products- especially when those
impacts are as uncertain as climate change has been in the past 40 years." I
am not talking about whether they should educate the public, I am asking if it
is legal for them to lie, and the answer is it is not.

~~~
Udik
I am not really sure of what it means for a company "to lie". And I'm not sure
it's illegal even for a person to lie, except under oath or in official
investigations. A company can falsify official documents, but that would be
fraud, and I think it's limited to financial matters, where there are precise
algorithms to follow. Then there is false advertisement, but this as well,
needs to say something definitely wrong about intrinsic characteristics of the
product.

As far as I know (not much, in truth) allegations are that some Exxon
scientist informed the management board of the concerns in the scientific
community about climate change; the board simply decided that the risks were
too far away in time and too uncertain, while the alternatives simply weren't
there, for the company to take action upon this information. Which sounds like
a perfectly reasonable conclusion in 1982. Also, throughout the years, Exxon
seems to have financed and published sound climate science, while at the same
time emphasizing the uncertainty of the conclusions in the communication for
the general public. And again, this seems to be legitimate, as it is in
everybody's right to state the facts as they are, while trying to spin them in
the least damaging way for themselves.

Again, if the peer reviewed science was so sound, and publicly available, it
was the duty of the government and politics to act upon it, not of the very
companies that sold the product.

