A tale of two cities: whose sea rise is it anyway?

Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point, San Francisco

Some may say this smacks of an attempt at extortion, but the oil companies can at least afford the fees of the lawyers. Can it be a punishable offence to lack confidence in some of the claims of some climate scientists?
H/T The GWPF.

Two Northern California cities filed separate lawsuits against five major oil companies Wednesday, asking state courts to force the companies to fund infrastructure the cities say is needed because of climate change.

The suits, filed by San Francisco and Oakland in state Superior Court, are among the first in which plaintiffs are seeking to force companies to pay for infrastructure to protect coastal cities from potential damages caused by rising sea levels.

The cities are asking for the oil companies to pay for sea walls and other infrastructure projects, the cost of which aren’t yet known, according to the cities, but are expected to be in the billions of dollars, they said.

Greenpeace activists released with fines after oil protest

Russian response to the 2013 protest

They got off lightly compared to their Russian fiasco in 2013, as The Barents Observer points out. Probably cheap publicity given the level of fines.

Each of the six activists got from 25,000 to 30,000 Norwegian kroner (€2,700 to 3,200) in fine by the police in Tromsø.

It was last Thursday the activists protested the Norwegian oil company Statoil’s drilling in the Barents Sea. With kayaks, some of the protesters went inside the 500-metres safety zone around the rig «Songa Enabler» at the Korpfjell prospect.

Located 415 kilometres from mainland Norway, the drilling is the northernmost to be explored this season.

RSPB fights Scottish govt. backed Tay and Forth wind farm developments

From the Evening Express

The Scottish Government gave consent to four major wind farms in the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay in 2014, but the RSPB launched a judicial review.

The charity initially won a court victory but it was later overturned, clearing the development and prompting the RSPB to seek a further appeal.

Scotland’s Court of Session last month refused the application for the case to be sent to the Supreme Court, but the RSPB has now applied directly to the UK’s highest court.

The charity said it recognises the role renewable energy has in reducing emissions but the current project could lead to major declines in the population of gannets, puffins and kittiwakes.

The Road to Grenfell Hell was clad with Green Intentions

Report written by commenter ‘stickywicket’ at Spiked online

Everyone has been shocked to the core by the images of the inferno that engulfed the Grenfell Tower, killing 79 people. Most were horrified by the suggestion in the Times that the cause of the fire might have been penny-pinching on the type of cladding used in the recent refurbishment of the building. It seems unbelievable that they didn’t spend an extra £5,000 for fire resistant cladding.

This is probably not the whole story. The revelation that a further 70+ tower blocks have failed fire safety tests tells us that there is an endemic problem. We don’t know the precise reasons for the fire yet, but we should certainly look at the influence of slavish devotion to green regulations.

#ParisAgreement gets setback as Trump heads for the exit

As predicted here a few days ago, U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to end involvement in the Paris Climate Accord.

A tweet from the well informed Tony Heller around 4.20pm GMT today indicated the administration’s direction of travel.

I hear from insiders that @realDonaldTrump will be an American hero and cancel the illegal and fake Paris treaty today.

— Steve Goddard (@SteveSGoddard) June 1, 2017

How Team Trump plans to kill Obama’s Paris climate deal by declaring it a treaty

Signatories (light green) and parties (orange) to the Paris Agreement [credit: Wikipedia]

H/T GWPF / Washington Times

It may be a bit of a legal minefield but it would put an extra element of democracy into the current situation.

As President Trump’s top advisers prepare to hash out a final policy on the Paris climate agreement dumped onto their laps by President Obama, another option has hit the table: Declare the deal a treaty and send it to the Senate to be killed.

The treaty option could emerge as the middle ground in the increasingly tense battle between “remainers” on the one hand, who say the president should abide by Mr. Obama’s global warming deal, and the Paris agreement’s detractors, who say Mr. Trump would be breaking a key campaign promise if he doesn’t withdraw from the pact.

Mr. Trump’s principal advisers are slated to meet Thursday to hash out a final set of recommendations for the president, with several deadlines looming next month.

UK Government seeks clean air plan delay

City life in China

Maybe the courts could order the issue of free anti-pollution masks, pending any government ‘clean-up’ action.

The UK government may face legal action after seeking to delay publishing its plan to tackle air pollution until after the general election, says BBC News.

The courts had given ministers until 16:00 on Monday to set out draft measures to combat illegal levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution. A 2016 court ruling said existing measures proposed by the government did not meet the requirements of law.

The general election is scheduled to take place on 8 June.

High Court rules fracking can go ahead in North Yorkshire

Now these ‘campaigners’ know how wind turbine protesters feel when they get overruled in their neighbourhoods.

Anti-fracking campaigners have lost their legal challenge to a decision to allow fracking to take place in North Yorkshire reports BBC News. Third Energy was granted planning permission to extract shale gas at Kirby Misperton in Ryedale in May.

Friends of the Earth and residents had challenged North Yorkshire County Council’s decision in the High Court. Mrs Justice Lang ruled the council had acted lawfully.

Irish High Court Finds Wind Turbine Maker Liable for Noise Nuisance – 7 Irish Families to Get Millions in Punitive Damages

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In which the law catches up with one of the wind turbine industry’s many excesses, not before time.

STOP THESE THINGS

The Irish High Court has just handed down a decision holding German wind turbine manufacturer, Enercon liable in noise nuisance in a claim pursued by 7 families whose lives and livelihoods have been thoroughly and mercilessly destroyed by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.

A report on the decision follows below, but first we’ll start where it all started back in 2013.

Families bid to sue wind farm operator
Irish Examiner
Michael Clifford
19 March 2013
By Michael Clifford

A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a wind farm operator in a landmark case, claiming the huge turbines are adversely affecting their health.

The seven families from Banteer claim they have been severely impacted, particularly through noise pollution, since the turbines began operating in Nov 2011.

If the action is successful, it is expected to lead to a number of others on similar grounds. Already…

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Jamie Foster: #Brexit Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

Reposted from the blog of Jamie Foster

Remember, remember the 4th of November, it’s the day the legal profession took leave of its senses. Hopefully temporarily but certainly noticeably. It was perhaps unsurprising. It is not often that a constitutional law case which could help define our political future appears on the front of our national newspapers with such a barrage of fireworks. It is easy to be drawn in by the pretty explosions.

The 3rd November marked a win in the High Court for a wealthy fund manager, Gina Miller. This modern-day Guy Fawkes placed her barrels of gun powder directly under the Government, rather than Parliament this time. Her explosive case determined that the Government had no right to trigger Art 50 and inform the EU of the UK’s desire to leave without a vote in Parliament. The sparks from the case caused explosions across the press, with the Mail and the Sun calling the three judges who took the decision ‘traitors’ and ‘enemies of the people.’

Litigators Set to Recover $Millions in Blackout Losses Caused by SA’s Wind Power Shutdown

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Stopthesethings provides the lawyers chasing wind operators in South Australia for blackout compensation with plenty of ideas on how to press their arguments.

STOP THESE THINGS

South Australia’s ludicrous attempt to run on sunshine and breezes hit a ‘black spot’ on 28 September this year, when – yet another – totally unpredictable collapse in wind power output plunged the entire state into Stone Age darkness: ‘GUILTY’: South Australia’s Statewide Blackout Caused by Deliberate Wind Farm Shutdown

Many parts of the State remained without power for days and thousands of businesses together suffered multi-$million losses. The biggest of those losses were suffered by Nyrstar’s lead and zinc smelter at Port Pirie, BHP Billiton’s gold, copper and uranium mine at Olympic Dam, Oz Mineral’s Prominent Hill copper and goldmine and Arrium’s steel works at Whyalla: collectively, the losses suffered by SA’s miners and mineral processors are in the tens of $millions.

With litigators breathing down their necks, nervous wind power outfits are running confused and desperate interference over the (now, well-known) cause.

The latest wheeze is that the…

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Inhofe to Obama: Your climate agenda will fail

Senator Inhofe – not a snowball’s chance…?

Getting any Paris-related climate legislation passed by the US Senate will be ‘Mission Impossible’ for Obama according to this report from the DC’s Michael Bastasch.

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe criticized President Barack Obama Thursday for joining an international global warming treaty without Senate approval.

The Senate committee chair also warned Obama his global warming ambitions were bound to fail since he needs legislative approval to make the emissions cuts he’s promised the United Nations.

“History already shows that this Paris Agreement will fail,” Inhofe said in an emailed statement.

Jamal Munshi: The United Nations: An Unconstrained Bureaucracy

An article about the failings of the UN highlights a paper by our friend Jamal Munshi -Professor Emeritus at Sonoma State University:

The situation has become so bad that some academics have concluded that it is time to shut down the UN’s out-of-control bureaucracies. A paper by Sonoma State University Professor Emeritus Jamal Munshi published by the Social Science Research Network, for example, makes a solid case for ditching the UN environmental bureaucracy. Under the headline “The United Nations: An Unconstrained Bureaucracy,” the June 2016 paper concludes that “unconstrained and undisciplined public sector bureaucracies do not serve the interest of the public” and that “such UN bureaucracies can safely be dismantled without any harm to the public interest.”

In a note to The New American, Professor Munshi said that “the case study is specific to the UNEP, however, the broader conclusion that we can draw from the UNEP case study is that a public sector entity without accountability and constraint and without adequate oversight and discipline mechanisms tends to serve itself and not the public.” That, he added, “would apply to the whole of the UN.”

Scale of climate damages ‘could dwarf tobacco lawsuits’

Warm weather – time for an ice cream perhaps. Or maybe a law suit? [image credit: RSPB]

Take an unproven theory, pretend it’s the law, and sue any group that even appears to question it. What could possibly be wrong with that? Er…quite a lot really.
H/T Climate Home – climate change news

Governments will face rising demands for climate compensation unless they crack down on coal, oil and gas companies operating within their authority.

That was the conclusion of a report by Australia-based NGO the Climate Justice Programme on Tuesday. Victims of global warming such as citizens from small island states will increasingly look for redress in the courts, it warned. The scale of damages could dwarf previous mass actions like those against tobacco and asbestos companies.

House Science Committee: we have a duty to investigate your effort to criminalize scientific dissent

Political battle lines seem to be being drawn over the attempt by some US Attorney Generals to use legal pressure to harass and intimidate perceived dissenters from climate change orthodoxy, whatever that may be.
H/T GWPF / Washington Times

The 17 attorneys general pursuing climate change dissenters for accusations of “fraud” want House Republicans to mind their own business. That’s not going to happen.

#Brexit The Movie: The six minute version

U.S. Republicans launch free-speech probe into prosecutors targeting climate sceptics

credit: paper-bird.net

The push back against US climate bullies gathers pace. If attempts to use the courts to impose climate dogma keep being resisted like this, maybe the whole idea will get dropped. — H/T GWPF

[From: Valerie Richardson – The Washington Times]
House Republicans launched Wednesday an investigation into the 17 attorneys general pursuing fraud allegations against climate change skeptics, citing concerns about the campaign’s impact on free speech and scientific inquiry.

“Americans are entitled to express their views on matters of science and public policy even if certain groups disagree,” said a statement from the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Full DC appeals court to decide on Obama carbon-cutting plan

District of Columbia Court of Appeals Seal [credit: Wikipedia]

How a court is supposed to figure out what is just or unjust in climate matters is an interesting question, but it’s going to happen anyway as Yahoo News reports. There will probably be a new US president before all the legal battles are over.

MICHAEL BIESECKER May 17, 2016 WASHINGTON (AP) — The full appeals court in Washington will hear arguments in the legal fight over President Barack Obama’s plan to curtail greenhouse gas emissions, potentially accelerating the case’s path to the Supreme Court.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an order Monday scheduling oral arguments on the legality of the Clean Power Plan for September 27.

RICO-20 Campaign Against Sceptical Climate Scientists Revealed In Emails

credit: gambacortalaw.com

The biter bit – H/T GWPF
Date: 14/05/16 Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal)Washington, D.C.

– Today the public came one big step closer to learning the truth behind how university professors launched “a national campaign” to have state attorneys general investigate and prosecute political opponents under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) — investigations which have now swept up think tanks and climate scientists who have dared challenge the climate agenda and claims made to force it into place.

Representing Christopher Horner and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, attorneys from the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic successfully argued that the public records of Professor Edward Maibach should now be disclosed to all, having previously been submitted to the court under a protective order.

Colorado Supreme Court rules fracking bans are “invalid and unenforceable”

Shale formation for natural gas in Pennsylvania, USA.
[image credit:
businesskorea.co.kr]

Another setback for fear-and-doubt merchants with this legal victory for shale gas development, as Somewhat Reasonable reports. Lack of evidence perhaps?

On Monday, May 2 the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on what the New York Times (NYT) called: “a lengthy battle for energy production.” The court’s unanimous decision to strike down two cities’ limits on fracking is a victory for oil-and-gas companies and a “disappointment” to anti-fossil-fuel activists. 

Several states, including Colorado’s neighbors, New Mexico and Texas, have faced similar anti-oil-and-gas initiatives that have also been shot down.