22/03/2018

Court As Class: Judge Gets Climate Change Lesson In Oil Suit

ABC America - Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press


EPA Chief Scott Pruitt still won't say if President Trump believes climate change is a hoax

There were no test tubes or Bunsen burners, but a courtroom turned into a science classroom Wednesday for a U.S. judge considering lawsuits that accuse big oil companies of lying about the role of fossil fuels in the Earth's warming environment.
Leading researchers taught U.S. District Judge William Alsup the basic science of climate change at the unusual court hearing after he asked lawyers for two California cities and five of the world's largest oil and gas companies to present "the best science now available on global warming."
He cautioned at the start of the hearing against expecting "fireworks" and said he wanted to avoid politics and "stick to the science."
"This is a serious proposition to try to educate the judge," Alsup said.
What he got at the end of the nearly five-hour hearing was a primer on the history of climate change research, carbon dioxide's role as a greenhouse gas, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme weather.
His teachers included Myles Allen, a professor at the University of Oxford who studies human influences on climate, and Don Wuebbles, an expert in atmospheric science at the University of Illinois who co-authored a 2017 U.S. government report on climate change.
An attorney for Chevron, Theodore Boutrous, also presented, saying the oil giant does not dispute the findings of an international panel of scientists that it is extremely likely people are the dominant cause of global warming since the mid-1900s.
But he pointed out how thinking about global warming has evolved and said the company does not agree with all proposals in place to deal with it.
"The notion that we know today of a dynamic changing climate is relatively new in human understanding," he said.
Alsup interrupted Boutrous and the scientists to ask about the climate on Mars, what caused the ice age and whether the ozone layer has a role in the warming and cooling of the planet, among other questions.
He is considering two lawsuits, one by San Francisco and the other by neighboring Oakland, that accuse Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, BP and Royal Dutch Shell of long knowing that fossil fuels posed serious risks to the climate, but still promoting them as environmentally responsible. They also allege the companies mounted campaigns to downplay the risks of global warming and discredit research that human activity was to blame.
The companies have asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuits. Federal law controls fossil fuel production, and Congress has encouraged oil and gas development, they said in court documents. They say the harm the cities claim is "speculative" and part of a complex chain of events that includes billions of oil and gas users and "environmental phenomena occurring worldwide over many decades."
Legal observers said they had never heard of a court holding a tutorial on climate change, and they were eager to see how the oil companies explained global warming.
None of the other companies spoke. Alsup told their attorneys that he wanted them to file documents indicating whether they disagreed with what Chevron's attorney said.
"You can't get away with sitting there in silence and later say he wasn't speaking for us," the judge said.
The lawsuits say the companies have created a public nuisance and should pay for sea walls and other infrastructure to protect against the effects of climate change — construction that could cost billions of dollars.
New York City, several California counties and at least one other California city have filed similar suits.
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said the hearing showed the science on climate change was "clear."
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Australian Bushfire Threat: Longer & More Dangerous Seasons

Climate Council



INTENSIFYING CLIMATE CHANGE is driving Australia’s escalating bushfire threat, creating longer and more dangerous fire seasons than ever before, according to the Climate Council.
“New South Wales and Victorian towns have been hit hard with devastating bushfires that have affected the lives of hundreds of people, with homes and properties lost and damaged in the process,” said Climate Council Acting CEO and Head of Research Dr Martin Rice.
“Intensifying climate change is exacerbating extreme weather events including rising temperatures, severe heatwaves, supercharged storms, flooding, intense rainfall and even bushfires,” he said.
“High bushfire danger weather has been increasing in Southeast Australia over the past forty years due to worsening climate change, which unfortunately has increased the odds that dangerous fires, such as the events we have seen at Tathra and western VIC, will occur.”
Dr Rice warned that Australia will continue to experience an increasing number of dangerous fire weather days, placing fire services and medical professionals under pressure, and communities at risk, as climate change intensifies.
“Communities, emergency services and the health sector must prepare and resource for worsening fire danger conditions now and into the future,” he said.
“The cost of bushfires in New South Wales alone is likely to more than double by mid-century to 100 million dollars per year.”
“Australia experienced its hottest winter on record last year, which was made 60 times more likely due to climate change. As Australia continues to experience such unprecedented temperatures, parts of the country are seeing dangerous bushfire conditions emerge.”
Dr Rice said the Federal Government must deeply and rapidly cut Australia’s rising greenhouse gas pollution levels, in a bid to protect Australians from worsening extreme weather events, which are creating more severe bushfire seasons.
“Australia’s carbon pollution levels have risen every quarter since March 2015,” he said.
“The Federal Government must rollout strong and credible climate and energy policy that addresses climate change and the bushfire threat - unfortunately the National Energy Guarantee falls short of this.”
“Tackling climate change, through transitioning to clean, affordable and reliable renewable energy and storage technology is critical to reducing the risk of extreme weather events, including severe bushfires we’ve seen in Victoria and New South Wales this month."
The Climate Council has created a climate and energy policy roadmap ‘Clean & Reliable Power: Roadmap to a Renewable Future’, outlining 12 key principles essential to tackle climate change in Australia.

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Buried, Altered, Silenced: 4 Ways Government Climate Information Has Changed Since Trump Took Office

The Conversation -  | 

Some information on the climate has been obscured. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
After Donald Trump won the presidential election, hundreds of volunteers around the U.S. came together to “rescue” federal data on climate change, thought to be at risk under the new administration. “Guerilla archivists,” including ourselves, gathered to archive federal websites and preserve scientific data.
But what has happened since? Did the data vanish?
As of one year later, there has been no great purge. Federal data sets related to environmental and climate science are still accessible in the same ways they were before Trump took office.
However, in many other instances, federal agencies have tampered with information about climate change. Across agency websites, documents have disappeared, web pages have vanished and language has shifted in ways that appear to reflect the policies of the new administration.
Two groups have been keeping a watchful eye on developments. We both belong to the Environmental Data Governance Initiative, the organization behind the data rescue events. The initiative now monitors tens of thousands of federal websites with the help of specialized tracking software. In January, the group published a report that describes sweeping changes to federal web resources.
Meanwhile, Columbia University’s Silencing Science Tracker documents news stories about climate scientists who have been discouraged from conducting, publishing or otherwise communicating scientific research.
These groups have documented four ways that climate-related information has become less accessible since Trump took office.

1. Documents are difficult to find
Documents on existing international environmental treaties and national climate policy have been buried or removed from departments’ current websites.
The State Department’s Office of Global Change, for instance, no longer publishes Climate Action Reports, which the U.S. is obliged to produce under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The reports can no longer be found at their former addresses. Instead, they are archived at new addresses in the Department’s Obama-era web archive, making the reports more difficult for the public to access.
Climate reports removed from the State Department website. Versions from Jan. 20, 2017 (left) and Jan. 26, 2017 (right) on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
URL: https://www.state.gov/e/oes/climate/climateactionreport/index.htm
Environmental Data Governance Initiative, CC BY
In another instance, the Environmental Protection Agency removed links to the Climate Change Adaptation Plan documents, which offer guidelines on climate change mitigation. While the web pages still exist on the EPA server, links from key access points on the site have been removed or redirect to a “This Page is Being Updated” notice.

2. Web pages are buried
Some administrative pages have disappeared from agency sites and can be accessed only from the Obama-era web archive.
The Bureau of Land Management’s climate change page – which discussed the agency’s climate-friendly approach to land planning – now exists only in archival form. State Department pages describing the Montreal Protocol, a global effort signed in 1988 to protect the ozone layer, are similarly displaced.
The EPA appears to have been hit the worst. Two hundred of the original 380 web pages on climate and energy resources for state, local and tribal governments are now accessible in archival form only. What’s more, the word “climate” is no longer in the official website’s title.
The EPA also removed the website for the Clean Power Plan, a signature Obama-era regulation that the current administration hopes to repeal.

3. Language has been altered
Departments have scrubbed websites of environmental terms. The term “climate change,” for instance, no longer exists across certain web pages of several agencies, such as the White House, the Department of Transportation and the Department of the Interior.
Within the Department of Energy, the Clean Energy Investment Center removed the term “clean” from its title. The Government Accountability Office deleted an online warning that “oil and natural gas development pose inherent environmental and public health risks.”
In other cases, language has been changed to reflect the new administration’s agenda. For example, the Bureau of Land Management removed “Clean and Renewable Energy” from its list of national priorities, adding “Making America Safe Through Energy Independence” and “Getting America Back to Work” instead.
Bureau of Land Management’s shifting priorities. Versions from Feb. 7, 2017 (left) and Nov. 26, 2017 (right) on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
URL: https://www.blm.gov/about Environmental Data Governance Initiative
4. Science has been silenced
But website changes and deletions are just the tip of the iceberg.
Columbia’s Silencing Science Tracker records 116 instances when scientists have been obstructed. The list includes budget cuts, staff cuts, unfilled positions and suspended funds. Climate-related research projects have been canceled and climate fellowships rescinded. In some cases, advisory boards and research centers have been dismantled entirely.
For instance, as of Dec. 31, 2017, the administration had filled only 20 science-related positions out of the 83 total. That pace falls short of both the Obama administration, who had appointed 63, and the Bush administration, who had filled 51, at the same point in time.
The silencing suggests that the administration values “pro-growth” policies over environmental goals and stands with industry, no matter the cost.

Why it matters
In most cases, it’s not possible to know who ordered and administered these changes, whether agency staff working independently or the Trump administration itself.
History shows us how public information on government activities has changed to reflect the policy directives of different administrations. The Bush era saw a similar chilling affect on scientific research and environmental regulation. Several scientists at the time came forward to accuse the administration of censoring public awareness efforts about climate change.
In recent years, the U.S. has reduced its own greenhouse gas emissions. And the Obama administration invested in combating climate change and making related information more available to the public. Now that information is being stifled, but climate change continues, whether it’s documented or not.
These changes are not just damaging to those trying to address climate change. In our view, burying climate science diminishes our democracy. It denies the average citizen the information necessary to make informed decisions, and fuels the flames of rhetoric that denies consensus-based science.

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