[TheClimate.Vote] November 26, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 26, 2019/

[Back to court]
*Global warming suit against oil industry goes to appeals court*
By BOB VAN VORIS on 11/24/2019
MANHATTAN (Bloomberg) - New York City urged a U.S. appeals court to 
reinstate a lawsuit against five of the world's biggest oil companies, 
after a federal judge last year rejected a claim that the industry 
should reimburse the municipal government for costs tied to climate change.

The biggest U.S. city sued in January 2018, seeking to pin financial 
responsibility for harms caused by global warming on Exxon Mobil, 
Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips. New York demanded 
billions of dollars to cover the cost of dealing with increased flooding 
and extreme weather conditions, among other impacts.

New York claims the companies have been responsible for more than 11% of 
all the atmospheric carbon and methane pollution since the Industrial 
Revolution more than a century ago. Greenhouse gases constitute a 
"public nuisance" -- an illegal threat to community welfare, similar to 
a brothel, drug den or illegal hazardous waste dump -- and unreasonably 
interfere with local land use, the city said.

"All we're asking for is compensation for the harms," the city's 
attorney, John Moore, said Friday at a hearing in Manhattan before three 
judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. "We're not 
seeking to impose regulations."

The circuit judges considering the appeal are Amalya Kearse, who was 
appointed to the court by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, Richard 
Sullivan and Michael Park, both of whom were appointed by President 
Donald Trump. The panel didn't say when it would rule...
https://www.worldoil.com/news/2019/11/22/global-warming-suit-against-oil-industry-goes-to-appeals-court


[Carbon Brief on UK POLICY]
*Election 2019: What the manifestos say on energy and climate change*
Chart tracks issues for 9 parties
Conservatives, Labor, SNP, Liberal Democrats, DUP, Plaid Cymru, Green 
Part, Brexit Party and IKIP.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/election-2019-what-the-manifestos-say-on-energy-and-climate-change



[Beckwith]
*Climate Restoration to Ensure Life's Long-Term Survival on our Planet: 
1 of 3*
Nov 25, 2019
Paul Beckwith
When people talk about what society needs to do about climate change you 
often hear talk of Mitigation (reducing emissions to zero by 2050) and 
Adaptation (dealing with the changes that are already occurring). We 
must add CLIMATE RESTORTION to this lexicon. Climate restoration is all 
about ensuring that the climate for our children and grandchildren is 
returned to the healthy climate enjoyed by our parents and grandparents 
when they were young children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2hwE-os6c


[how much is too much?]
*Supreme Court lets lawsuit by climate scientist continue against 
conservative outlets*
**By Robert Barnes - Reporter covering the U.S. Supreme Court
November 25, 2019
A climate scientist may pursue his defamation lawsuit against a 
conservative magazine and a libertarian Washington think tank after the 
Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene at this stage of the 
litigation.

National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute had asked the 
court to review a decision by local District of Columbia courts that 
said the lawsuit by Pennsylvania State University professor Michael Mann 
could continue.

The court turned down the request without comment, but Justice Samuel A. 
Alito Jr. dissented, saying the case "presents questions that go to the 
very heart of the guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press."
In the defamation case, Mann is an internationally recognized expert on 
climate change and has published work that blamed human activity for 
global warning. The work was criticized by some scientists, but an 
investigation by Penn State cleared him of any wrongdoing.

That did not stop the criticism. In a CEI blog, Rand Simberg wrote that 
Penn State had "covered up wrongdoing" by Mann, and he characterized 
Mann as the "Jerry Sandusky of climate science," because he had 
"molested and tortured data in service of politicized science."

Sandusky is a former Penn State football coach who was convicted of 
molesting children.

Mark Steyn picked up the theme in a post on the Corner, a blog hosted by 
National Review Online, the website of National Review.

In his post, Steyn said that while he would not have "extended the 
metaphor all the way into the lockerroom showers," Mann was "behind the 
fraudulent climate-change" study and the investigation clearing him was 
a coverup.

Mann demanded retractions and apologies from CEI and National Review.

Instead, National Review published a response from its editor, Rich 
Lowry, titled "Get Lost." He refused to retract and clarified that " 
'fraudulent' doesn't mean honest-to-goodness criminal fraud. It means 
intellectually bogus and wrong."

Mann sued.

The publications and authors tried to have the lawsuits dismissed under 
the District's anti-SLAPP Act. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit 
Against Public Participation, and the laws are intended to provide for 
early dismissal of meritless lawsuits filed against people for the 
exercise of First Amendment rights.

But the D.C. Court of Appeals said it could not find at this stage of 
the litigation that a jury could not review the evidence and rule for 
Mann, and said the lawsuit could go forward.

In his dissent from the Supreme Court's refusal to intervene, Alito 
noted the preliminary status of the case. "It may be reviewed later if 
the ultimate outcome below is adverse" to the authors and publications, 
he wrote.

"But requiring a free speech claimant to undergo a trial after a ruling 
that may be constitutionally flawed is no small burden," Alito wrote. 
". . . A journalist who prevails after trial in a defamation case will 
still have been required to shoulder all the burdens of difficult 
litigation and may be faced with hefty attorney's fees. Those prospects 
may deter the uninhibited expression of views that would contribute to 
healthy public debate."

Alito said the court has traditionally protected expression, especially 
on issues of public controversy such as climate change.

"Politicians, journalists, academics, and ordinary Americans discuss and 
debate various aspects of climate change daily--its causes, extent, 
urgency, consequences, and the appropriate policies for addressing it," 
Alito wrote. "The core purpose of the constitutional protection of 
freedom of expression is to ensure that all opinions on such issues have 
a chance to be heard and considered."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-lets-lawsuit-by-climate-scientist-continue-against-conservative-outlets/2019/11/25/710ce7a6-0f94-11ea-bf62-eadd5d11f559_story.html



*This Day in Climate History - November 26, 20096 - from D.R. Tucker*
In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger 
(R-CA) notes that fellow Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma is 
someone who has his "thinking in the Stone Age" on climate.
http://youtu.be/gcZ7DWMeyQA
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