Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Willie Soon – The California vs Chevron lawsuit against five oil companies is not going well for greens. After suggesting Climate Scientist Myles 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 Francisco

Five 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.

…

“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.

…

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.

…