News bits: Climate change, etc.

New Jersey tests a legal theory to punish liars

The state of NJ is suing big carbon energy polluters and their main supporting propagandist organization. DeSmog writes:

New Jersey Sues Five Oil Companies, Alleging Decades of ‘Concealment’

and ‘Public Deception’ on Climate Change

The case adds to a growing number of major climate accountability cases against the oil industry, a scenario that Shell predicted in 1998

The state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against five oil companies and the oil industry’s most powerful lobbying group for covering up and misleading the public about climate change, the latest round of state and municipal-led climate litigation seeking accountability from the oil industry.

The lawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court, states that the companies knew about climate change for decades and actively sought to conceal that information from the public. Instead, they funded PR campaigns aimed at confusing and misleading the public.

The oil companies “concealed and misrepresented the dangers of fossil fuels; disseminated false and misleading information about the existence, causes, and effects of climate change; and aggressively promoted the ever-increasing use of their products at ever-greater volumes,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit names ExxonMobil, Shell Oil Company, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group in which the five oil companies were members.  

As it happens, nearly 25 years ago, Shell predicted with remarkable accuracy the events that would broadly unfold. In a 1998 internal document that laid out future climate scenarios, Shell described a hypothetical catastrophic storm that would ravage the U.S. East Coast in 2010 — one that sounds unmistakably like Hurricane Sandy — which sets off a society-wide backlash that would engulf the oil industry. The result would be a legal and policy reckoning. From Shell’s 1998 forecast:

“Following the storms, a coalition of environmental NGOs brings a class-action suit against the US government and fossil-fuel companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists (including their own) have been saying for years: that something must be done. A social reaction to the use of fossil fuels grows, and individuals become ‘vigilante environmentalists’ in the same way, a generation earlier, they had become fiercely anti-tobacco. Direct-action campaigns against companies escalate. Young consumers, especially, demand action.”

Today, a long list of major climate accountability cases are proceeding in state courts, each with extensive documented evidence demonstrating that the oil industry, including Shell, covered up internal climate science and instead chose to fund climate denial and greenwashing campaigns.  

And as DeSmog reported last month, Shell is acutely aware of how its communications on the energy transition can open it up to further litigation, warning employees in internal emails and presentations not to confuse the oil major’s net-zero talk with the company’s actual business plan.

What fresh hell is this? Oil companies and their hired propagandists doing ‘concealment’ and ‘public deception’??? No. Greenwashing? No. That's just not possible. This is America, home of the free and land of the brave, mom and apple pie. Gigantic oil companies would never pollute, lie, conceal or deceive. This must be a mistake.  

Oops!

New Jersey home after climate change-related 

superstorm Sandy visited the beach in 2010

(not sarcasm)

A letter to the editor about an abortion study

The lead researcher on a study that followed a group of women who got an abortion they wanted and a group who were denied an abortion. She wrote this letter to the NYT criticizing a NYT opinion piece that discussed her research. 

To the Editor:

Re “The Abortion Debate and the Physical Costs of Pregnancy,” by Ross Douthat (column, Oct. 6):

I led the Turnaway Study and was quoted extensively in Mr. Douthat’s column. My study compared the lives of women who received a wanted abortion with those who were denied, or “turned away” from getting an abortion — following both groups for five years to see how their life paths diverged.

As Mr. Douthat notes, we found that most women denied abortions eventually reconcile themselves to parenting. But Mr. Douthat glosses over the most important findings from the study.

People who carried unwanted pregnancies to term suffered worse physical health for years to come; in fact, two died from childbirth. Women denied abortions were more likely to live in poverty, along with their children, and to have a hard time covering even basic expenses like food and housing, compared with those able to get their abortions. Not being able to access abortion services curtailed people’s other life goals such as getting a higher education, finding a high-quality romantic relationship and even having intended children later under better circumstances.

Mr. Douthat diminishes the substantial harm done to women’s lives and to the well-being of their existing and future children on the basis of the finding that women are emotionally resilient. The callous argument seems to be that it is OK for the government to force someone to sacrifice their body, their family’s security and their life goals so long as it doesn’t also break their spirit.

Diana Greene Foster
Oakland, Calif.

The writer is a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Greene Foster makes some good points. The forced birthers will probably attack and downplay this research, the researchers, the data and/or the data analysis. This is the kind of inconvenient science, facts and truths that America’s radical right does not have the moral courage to face or accept. Are most forced birthers moral cowards? Probably. It looks that way. 

The poison stolen 2020 election lie continues its journey through the courts

This speaks for itself. Trump is knowingly lying to the courts. It just does not matter to him. Facts are not going to get in the way of this gigantic lie. It is worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump, so why not keep lying?

Georgia Secretary of State staff about to hold a press conference refuting 1 by 1 the claims President Trump made on the call with @GaSecofState pic.twitter.com/dFOehpxula

— Justin Gray (@JustinGrayWSB) January 4, 2021

This is the flock that Trump is fleecing.