I wonder at the implications of this

[ljgeoff]

The cities of San Francisco and Oakland are suing in state court and under state law the oil companies BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and Shell. Previous suits against fossil fuel companies have gone after the selling of a product that harms the environment and the people living in it and "US Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (which covers California) had dismissed prior cases brought in federal court, holding that congress enacted the Clean Air Act to comprehensively address the emission of greenhouse gases, and that therefore there was no role for federal lawsuits of this kind."

This suit, instead, claims that the fossil fuel companies sold their products under deception:"The court found that while the Clean Air Act addresses the ­emissions from fossil fuel combustion, the San Francisco/Oakland case was not about emissions of pollutants, but rather an alleged scheme to sell a product through deception. The court reasoned—again with some logic—that the Clean Air Act offered no remedy for that conduct, and therefore did not preempt this lawsuit."

Here's the part that I was wondering about: "On top of this, the court also ordered the parties to participate in a five-hour “climate science” tutorial for the court, to be held on March 21. The judge ordered the parties to “trace the history of scientific study of climate change, beginning with scientific inquiry into the formation and melting of the ice ages, periods of historic cooling and warming, smog, ozone, nuclear winter, volcanoes and global warming.” And further, to inform the court of “the best science now available on global warming, glacier melt, sea rise and coastal flooding.”

This is fascinating and highly unusual."

full post on Ken Kimmell's Union of Concerned Scientists blog, here.

Comments

[amaebi]

The mandated tutorial is very interesting indeed!