Oil Companies Admit to Contributing to Climate Change — and Blame You
Evidence on Temperature, Weather, Sea Level, and Greenhouse Gases Presented at Trial
Santa Barbarans like Christina Guerrero (left) and her daughter Kaleah Mesa pitched in to clean up the Refugio spill in 2015. The Sierra Club calls on citizens to rally again against the dangers of trucking that oil. | Credit: Paul Wellman (file)
In a Federal District Court in San Francisco, five oil companies argued before a judge on facts that uphold the 95-100 percent likelihood that human activity has been the dominant cause of the global warming of Earth since the mid-20th century. In 2017, the cities of Oakland and San Francisco and the State of California filed lawsuits against Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum (BP), the five largest investor-owned producers of fossil fuels in the world, which are considered responsible for over 11 percent of all carbon dioxide and methane pollution that has accumulated in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. That these oil producers agreed to the role they are playing in climate change is worth noting.
I
The Setting: Federal District Court, San Francisco
In 2017, the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, along with the State of California, filed lawsuits against Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum (BP). The cities sued for the cost to pay for sea walls and other shoreline defenses to protect against rising sea levels that could inundate airport runways, roads, coastal homes, and businesses. The cities claimed sea-level rise is being caused by a warming ocean and glacial melt from increasing atmospheric CO2 levels released when fossil fuels are burned. The case was assigned to Judge William H. Alsup of the Federal District Court, San Francisco. Alsup, who has a degree in mathematics, invited the parties to present a two-part tutorial on the subject of global warming and climate change “so the poor judge can learn some science — it helps to have science. This is a serious proposition to try to educate the Judge.” Alsup did not want politics in the tutorial — just the science. He requested the following two areas be addressed in the tutorial:
(1) “The first part will trace the history of scientific study of climate change, beginning with scientific inquiry into the formation and melting of the ice ages, periods of historical cooling and warming, smog, ozone, nuclear winter, volcanoes, and global warming. Each side will have 60 minutes. A horizontal timeline of major advances (and setbacks) would be welcomed.”
(2) “The second part will set forth the best science now available on global warming, glacier melt, sea rise, and coastal flooding. Each side will again have another 60 minutes.”
With these two subject areas, Alsup appeared interested to see some of the classic climate-skeptic arguments fought out, face to face, in his courtroom. Read on for what happened.
Before the hearing started, Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told Earth magazine that the hearing wasn’t to be a trial and he didn’t think it would look like one. “This will be the first instance where these companies have to go on the record in response to a series of particular questions about climate science,” he said. “What will be different … is that the fossil-fuel companies have to go into court and respond to questions that get at arguments they and their representatives have relied on in one form or another for years, to question the degree of certainty around climate science.”
The hearing was conducted on March 28, 2018, in Judge Alsup’s courtroom and lasted five hours. People lined up for hours before the courtroom doors were opened, and when they were opened, the courtroom became packed to standing room only. A second courtroom was opened so that those who did not get into the hearing room could watch the presentations on closed-circuit TV.
Dozens showed up at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse building to protest ExxonMobil’s proposal to restart oil trucking from Las Flores Canyon in 2018. | Credit: Paul Wellman (file)
As is normal, the cities, as plaintiffs, were first to give presentations. Myles R. Allen, an Oxford University professor of geosystem science with over 120 peer-reviewed articles involving different aspects of atmospheric science, outlined the early history and research regarding climate science. Allen has worked for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for over 20 years as a lead author on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th assessments. The IPCC is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations that is dedicated to providing the world with objective, scientific information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of the risk of human-induced climate change; its natural, political, and economic impacts and risks; and possible response options. The assessments are status reports that provide an update on the knowledge of the scientific, technical, and socioeconomic aspects of climate change. Thousands of scientists from countries all over the world do the work of the IPCC.
Allen told Judge Alsup that the role of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane as they affect the Earth’s temperature has been known since the mid-1800s. As greenhouse-gas levels increase in the atmosphere, the atmosphere retains more infrared radiation, heating it up. As a consequence, the Earth heats up as well. “We’re seeing carbon dioxide levels rising to levels that have not been seen for over 20 million years,” Allen said. “They are now … around 410 parts per million.” In 1853, according to NASA data, the levels were 285 parts per million. In 165 years, CO2 levels have increased by 44 percent. Allen presented graphs dating from 1861 showing the monthly temperature of the Earth increasing with periodic swings in both directions.
Next, Gary Griggs, professor of earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz with over 190 peer-reviewed articles on oceanography, shoreline processes, coastal protection, and hazard analysis, spoke about the relationship between climate change and sea-level rise. Griggs explained the role of Earth’s changing orbit and axis tilt and wobble that have brought ice ages and past changes in climate. He also explained the role of what he called “positive feedback loops” and how they push climate change along. For instance, as more CO2 is emitted, the heat-trapping properties of the atmosphere increase, raising Earth’s temperature. As the temperature rises, glaciers and sea ice melt, exposing darker surfaces underneath. Normally, glaciers and sea ice reflect and deflect the sun’s rays, keeping the land and ocean cold. But as they melt, the darker surfaces below are able to absorb heat, melting more glacial and sea ice, which creates a feedback loop. In this way, glaciers and sea ice help to moderate Earth’s temperature by reflecting back the sun’s rays and keeping what’s below cold. Without them, the darker surfaces absorb heat and contribute to further heating of the planet. Griggs also pointed out another feedback loop created with the melting of permafrost. Permafrost is frozen ground in the northern latitudes, including Siberia, northern Alaska, and Canada. Trapped in permafrost is methane — another greenhouse gas, which is 84 times more potent than CO2. With global heating, permafrost melts — and is melting — releasing large quantities of methane into the atmosphere, which in turn further increases its heat-trapping capability that in turn leads to further increased temperatures. In September 2019, National Geographic reported that methane was beginning to be released from Siberia and Alaska’s permafrost sooner than expected. According to National Geographic, “Within a few decades, if we don’t curb fossil fuel use, permafrost could be as big a source of greenhouse gases as China, the world’s largest emitter, is today.”
Griggs then moved onto the subject of sea levels and sea-level rise. A 2018 report by the California Ocean Protection Council says that sea levels along the Pacific Coast are increasing at rates far sooner than have been predicted, and that under a continued high greenhouse-gas rate of emissions without reductions, sea levels are predicted to rise by 2.3 feet by 2050. Griggs said scientists are concerned about sea-level rise because 200 million people around the Earth live within three feet of a high tide, which is already rising today, and much of this population is centered along the coast or in major cities with a lot of infrastructure that will be at risk.
Credit: Courtesy
In Santa Barbara, California, the staff of the city’s Community Development Department reported in January 2020 the following: “Although Santa Barbara has experienced a relatively small amount of sea-level rise to date from climate change, the rate of sea-level rise in the region is expected to accelerate significantly in upcoming years. The State of California’s current conservative sea-level rise projections for the Santa Barbara area are 0.8 feet by 2030, 2.5 feet by 2060, and 6.6 feet by 2100 (Ocean Protection Council, 2018). If no action is taken, 6.6 feet of sea level rise could result in increased flooding and erosion hazards on more than 1,250 parcels in the City.”
Griggs then showed slides of what sea-level rise will mean for the Oakland
International Airport. He told Judge Alsup that an extra one foot of water would be disastrous to the airport and bay front areas of the East and South San Francisco Bay. During El Niño years, high tides can become even higher, causing an increase in sea level over that of global warming caused sea-level rise.
In Judge Alsup’s courtroom, the next speaker for the cities was Don Wuebbles, a leading climate expert from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Atmospheric Science. Wuebbles has published over 500 peer-reviewed articles involving different aspects of atmospheric science and has been a co-author on numerous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports as well as the “Climate Science Special Report,” which he called the most comprehensive report of its kind ever conducted by the U.S. There have been four of these special reports since Congress passed the Global Change Act in 1990, the most current one published in 2017. These reports go through six levels of review: first by the public, then by the National Academy of Sciences, and finally by four U.S. agencies before they are released. Wuebbles began his presentation with the following statements, supported by the most recent data.
“Our climate is changing, it’s changing very very rapidly, and it’s happening now,” Wuebbles said. “About 10 times faster than any other changes we’ve seen since the end of the last ice age. So it’s very unusual, certainly in human experience. It’s not just the temperature that is changing; we’re seeing severe weather becoming more intense in many cases. We’ve had a lot of discussion today about sea-level rise, and certainly sea level is rising. The evidence strongly indicates it’s largely happening because of human activities. The climate will continue to change over the coming decades, no matter what we do, but certainly our choices for the future could make a strong impact on just how large those changes are.”
Wuebbles presented examples of a number of feedback loops, based on the publicly stated fact that over the last 50 years, the global average temperature “has increased dramatically.” He added that even when factoring in the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, the current temperatures are well above anything the Earth has experienced in the last 2,000 years. Wuebbles also explained the changes in precipitation patterns occurring across the United States, coupled with the general warming trend, which are changes that don’t happen evenly. According to Wuebbles, multiple lines of evidence support the existence of climate change: Land and sea surface temperatures are increasing, lower atmosphere temperature is increasing, the heat content of the ocean is increasing, the average humidity of the atmosphere is increasing, and the extent of Arctic sea ice is shrinking, as is the mass of the Earth’s glaciers. These lines of evidence point to the same conclusion: The Earth is heating up.
In the courtroom, Wuebbles described how climate change is affecting Americans to date. NOAA has been tracking what it refers to as “Billion-Dollar” events since 1980. These are weather- and climate-related events that cause at least $1 billion in infrastructure and crop-related damage. Since 1980, the number of these events has been increasing, as well as their cost, in billions of dollars. Adjustments for inflation were made to the data set.
Wuebbles pointed to the increasing trends in California wildfires, which are bigger and burning hotter than ever before, a trend he says is expected to continue because California is an area prone to drought, and dry periods are expected to increase in the southwest and southeast of the country. Across the U.S., the fire season is now three months longer than it was 40 years ago. With an increase in temperature, the atmosphere holds more moisture, which means more rain will fall when it does rain. This increases the risk of flooding in these areas already prone to flood. Atlantic hurricanes are increasing in intensity because of warmer ocean temperatures, a trend that is also expected to continue. Another trend: There are now more heat records than cold records. Seventeen out of the last 18 years on record are the warmest years since 1881. This is more proof that the Earth is heating up.
Mockingbird Fire in Santa Barbara, CA | Credit: Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire (file)
II
Chevron Presents Its Case
Of the fossil-fuel industry, only Chevron gave a presentation, with representatives of four other oil companies in the audience. Chevron was represented by Theodore Boutrous Jr., an attorney with the firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Boutrous did not deny the science behind climate change and based his presentation on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2013. Dr. Myles Allen, who had been the first presenter in this courtroom hearing, had been the lead author on the Fifth Assessment report. The assessments are status reports that provide an update on the knowledge of the scientific, technical, and socioeconomic aspects of climate change.
“Chevron accepts the consensus in the scientific communities on climate change,” said Boutrous. “There’s no debate about climate science.” Boutrous made the case that oil companies are not directly responsible for climate change. Rather, he said, humanity’s larger economic decisions are to blame. Boutrous told Judge Alsup that the “IPCC does not say it’s the extraction of fossil fuels [that causes climate change], it’s the energy use — the economic activity — that generates emissions.” Boutrous deflected the blame to users of fossil fuels. In other words, oil doesn’t cause climate change. People burning oil causes climate change.
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