Everybody knows Big Oil has conspired to hide the fact that it knew decades ago that its product was causing global warming that puts all humanity at risk. Greens have been claiming that since the 1990s. AG’s United for Clean Power endorsed the claim and initiated investigations and lawsuits.

Except not. For years independent journalist Russell Cook has exposed the errors of the conspiracy claim.

Now a federal judge in the ultra-liberal San Francisco circuit has rejected the claim, too. In an early stage of hearing a complaint by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland against major oil companies, Federal District Judge William Alsup dismissed a section of the complaint that claimed the oil companies had long conspired to hide from the public information they already had that supported the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) driven by carbon dioxide emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

In announcing the suit last September, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Oakland City Attorney Barbara J. Parker said,

The defendant companies — Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell — have known for decades that fossil fuel-driven global warming and accelerated sea level rise posed a catastrophic risk to human beings and to public and private property, especially in coastal cities like San Francisco and Oakland, who have the largest shoreline investments on San Francisco Bay.

Despite that knowledge, the defendant companies continued to aggressively produce, market and sell vast quantities of fossil fuels for a global market, while at the same time engaging in an organized campaign to deceive consumers about the dangers of massive fossil fuel production.

Alsup, however, dismissed that claim out of hand Wednesday. Environmental journalist Amy Westervelt, present at a 5-hour tutorial hearing Alsup held, tweeted, “Alsup dismissing the idea that there was some sort of conspiracy.” True believer that she is, she added, “Exxon discovery files tell a different story.”

But another journalist, Phelim McAleer, tweeted, “Judge slams California cities lawyers says they misled the court—says document they claim ‘shows conspiracy’ shows nothing of the sort ….”

Alsup, who has some science background and is known in particular for having gone to the extent of learning a computer programming language in preparation for hearing another case, arranged the hearing as what he called a “tutorial” for himself on the science of climate change. He asked proponents and critics of dangerous manmade global warming claims to summarize their scientific arguments in answer to eight questions he gave them in advance.

CAGW skeptics filed two briefs for the hearing.

One, by British journalist and polymath Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, argues that “an elementary error of physics”—failing to account for initial feedback in the climate system—caused climate models to grossly exaggerate the warming effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The other, by physicists William Happer and Steven Koonin and atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, first reviews the history of climate science and basic global warming theory, then answers each of the judge’s questions directly. Happer is Cyrus Fogg Bracket Professor of Physics Emeritus at Princeton University and has extensive
experience advising the government on energy research and policy. Koonin served as the second Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy in President Barack Obama’s administration. Lindzen is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All three have been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

They offer this overview of their paper:

Our overview of climate science is framed through four statements:

1. The climate is always changing; changes like those of the past half-century are common in the geologic record, driven by powerful natural phenomena

2. Human influences on the climate are a small (1%) perturbation to natural energy flows

3. It is not possible to tell how much of the modest recent warming can be ascribed to human influences

4. There have been no detrimental changes observed in the most salient climate variables and today’s projections of future changes are highly uncertain

We offer supporting evidence for each of these statements drawn almost exclusively from the Climate Science Special Report (CSSR) issued by the US government in November, 2017 or from the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) issued in 2013-14 by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or
from the refereed primary literature.

Alsup’s dismissal of the conspiracy claim does not end the case. He still needs to hear arguments over whether the oil companies should be held liable for damages stemming from global warming their products allegedly caused.