It's the first Monday in October, and the Supreme Court is back.
The front-page teaser goes here: "A Supreme Court Battle Over Climate Change Begins/The justices are about to hear a lawsuit that could determine whether the oil industry faces billions of dollars in liability for damages caused by global warming."
Nearly a decade ago, the outdoorsy, liberal enclave of Boulder, Colo., sued two oil companies over their role in climate change.... A win for Boulder would likely clear the way for dozens of similar lawsuits nationwide aiming to extract billions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry to fight global warming....
ADDED: The NYT quotes lawprof Todd J. Zywicki: "What this case is about is a bunch of one-percenter hippies in Boulder County who want to tell the rest of us how we have to live."
Posts
66 comments:
I'm just laughing.
Every part of that paragraph is wrong
I see the libs touting this as if they have a chance of winning.
How could it be a good idea for one nutty liberal city to set the policy and law for the entire country?
My question to libs is: Would you have wanted the 1963 Meridian, Mississippi City Council to set the rules for voting in federal elections?
There is so much money in CAGW. Say what you will about Trump, but his SCOTUS appointments saved the day.
Hillary would have appointed some real Leftists.
What prevents them from siding with Boulder? They don't determine facts, just procedure.
“Reclaiming my Climate Change!!!”
—— every moronic leftwinger ever
Some day, perhaps just a few years from now, the invaders who take over this country will sit around and just laugh at how easy it was.
They're just following CA's lead, setting regulations enforced by state law and making them painful enough to extort companies into making them widespread, using the profit motive. If your gas formulations are expensive to refine, then the economics dictate you must sell them to other states, too, to harness economies of scale. The market for the state-diktats leverages the corporation's bottom line parasitically, and expands influence to other markets outside of the state.
It's a form of corruption. But CO ain't as big as CA.
I really doubt they'll win, their whole theory seems off.
Unfortunately our species does seem bent on suicide one way or another. Malthus nailed it.
Ever since mork came down in 78
But with alito recusing theres a chance they could win or have a tie that sends it back to boulder
Boulder leftists drank the Climate Religion cocktail, and liked it.
They are devout.
"Extract" is a great descriptor. Once those funds are "extracted" the money will be siphoned off by one after another NGO, non-profit, or educational organization never to be seen again -- with the results buried in tons of white papers.
@R C Belaire is correct.
Let’s sue the oil companies for doing what we demanded of them. But if they were really involved in killing the street cars and urban mass transit, then that’s a good grounds to sue.
I used to live in Denver, and the famous brown cloud over the city disappeared when the bus drivers went on strike. Maybe if they have a problem in Boulder, they should fix it in Boulder.
Jim, the fact you comment approvingly of Malthus, who has been definitively proven wrong over and over, should give you pause. Doubtful though, amoebae are unable to respond to pain.
The seance of artificial influence and redistributive change schemes. Wait until they seek redress from the Green blight. The age of Morlocks and Eloi is now. Abort, sequester, and progress no more.
Oil is one of the things that made this country prosper
I presume the city of Boulder has ceased using all fossil fuels to prevent any further damage to the planet.
The real religion - is obedience to the Chi Coms.
Blow up the dams
Cut off all forms for energy... except wind and solar.
"I presume the city of Boulder has ceased using all fossil fuels to prevent any further damage to the planet."
Nope. But don't call them hypocrites.
Also- they continue to use copious amounts of water during a drought.
They just want their cut. The left always wants their cut. Then they use their cut to finance campaigns against civil society and Western culture.
And to simply pay themselves large amounts of money.
Seems a little unfair to demand that someone be punished for giving you exactly what you want. Are the plaintiffs arguing that they can't be trusted to decide what energy to use? Did they stop using petroleum products, or do they continue to voluntarily do the damage they claim is being done?
Yeah, sure, let's get the climate change crowd stirred up again. Lawsuits galore against oil companies is what we'll get if the SC decides to go nice on this. Sooner or later, the country will cave from the weight of the BS in every corner that just keeps piling up and up.
Can they split the baby and burn hydrocarbons to progress both the petroleum and Green industries?
The Supreme Court’s public credibility is on the line here.
As extreme-weather losses rise, insurers are raising premiums and retreating from the most vulnerable markets. When private insurance disappears, states increasingly become the insurer of last resort, yet without adequate funds, rebuilding becomes unaffordable, and without insurance, many homeowners cannot even obtain a mortgage.
Whatever one thinks of the legal theory, the Court should understand the real-world stakes. Climate destabilization is becoming a chronic financial disaster for property owners. A ruling that leaves states without another potential source of compensation will inevitably raise the question: did the Court help address the problem, or simply make it harder to manage?
Those industries are not run on hot air and rays of sunshine.
Extracting billions of dollars from the oil industry is just another way of saying extract billions of dollars from the people who use oil (that would be everyone) and give it to corrupt governments.
Manns minstrels laid an egg the worst states like california snd new york and californicated colorado
Jesus, IEE, I think you're on an indefinite excursion from reality. "Climate destabilization," really??
Malthus's basic idea was that an expanding population with fixed resources will implode.
We have an economy based on ever expanding mass consumption. Given that this form of economy is going global, with currently available technology and resource pool I think we are in a Malthus trap. Per head resource consumption is still increasing exponentially.
I don't deny that we can innovate our way out of the trap. But I see the engineering gene being completely overwhelmed by the consumption gene. Who is to persuade Asia, Africa, and South America that they are not worthy?
Its only monday like the coyote in the cartoon
The likes of christopher Holm the extinction heir hedgemaster
“I'm just laughing.”
I wish I could.
Climate Change is BS. It’s sciency nonsense. And maybe more than anywhere else in the country, the center of it is in Boulder. NCAR, NOAA, NIST, even NCAR (headquarters though 30 miles S in Golden, where we rode our horses growing up), and of course, CU. Daughter got her PhD there, in MechE, and practically every grant proposal in her research group involved “Climate Change”. First Cousin spent his career there at NOAA, and the last decade of it was spending a lot of his time at global climate confabs (stays with Phil Jones at East Anglia University whenever he is in England).
The oil companies have no chance of winning, if tried in state court there in Boulder, regardless of whether Climate Change has any validity. We may have had no hurricanes this last year in the Atlantic. Zero. Doesn’t matter. It’s Boulder. And they are crazy there. And have been that way since I was in college over half century ago.
A black rock the size of a boulder.
Democrats finally out with their plan to lower energy costs!
“ As extreme-weather losses rise, insurers are raising premiums and retreating from the most vulnerable markets. When private insurance disappears, states increasingly become the insurer of last resort, yet without adequate funds, rebuilding becomes unaffordable,”
I am sure that insurance rates have skyrocketed in Boulder due to the last seven or eight Hurricanes there.
“Climate change is BS because Boulder is crazy and we had no Atlantic hurricanes” is less a scientific argument than an impressive demonstration of how many unrelated anecdotes can be assembled before breakfast.
Your relatives’ careers, Boulder’s politics, and one hurricane season may make an interesting memoir. They don’t establish that the underlying climate science is wrong.
And the Supreme Court isn’t being asked to decide whether climate change is real. The legal question is whether Boulder’s state-law claims seeking damages from fossil-fuel companies for alleged climate-related harms can proceed in state court, or whether federal law or federal jurisdiction prevents those claims from doing so. That is a question of jurisdiction, preemption and the proper forum not whether Boulder has “crazy” people in it.
For a former attorney, confusing the alleged merits of a claim with the threshold question of whether the claim may be heard in that court is a rather curious way to make the legal argument.
This is so ludicrously unconstitutional, the question is how does Kagan vote?
At the penalty phase, Judges says, OK what are the damages they owe and how did you figure it. Plaintiff, "Ha, Ha, it climate change, so just give us some money". "No, that's not how is works, what are the damages attributable to the defendants?" Plaintiffs, "You're a denier!!"
Oh my gosh! The court will lose all credibility if if doesn’t agree with leftist! LoL
"As extreme-weather losses rise..."
I am sure you will be happy to hear that extreme-weather losses in the first half of 2026 were greatly reduced, and the lack of any hurricanes in the Atlantic/Gulf foretells the second half being just as low.
John Roberts could be the 4th and tying vote. Think about what his fellow summer residents in Maine would think of him then! Instead of protesting him in their boats, they would probably disappear for a while.
Don't forget that Alito recused himself.
If oil companies are assessed billions, guess who pays.
This only drives up the price at the pump. So much for caring about affordability.
Imagine if there was a class action suit regarding cold related deaths, more people by far die from cold than from heat, if somehow the lawsuit succeeded and Boulder was through some magical process, able to lower the planetary temperature!
I could see Boulder now, during the Little Ice Age, suiing people for not burning enough coal.
"If oil companies are assessed billions, guess who pays.
10/5/26, 10:32 AM
Bob Boyd said...
This only drives up the price at the pump. So much for caring about affordability."
You guys are just making them want it more.
They want famine and strife through all the fraud
“ As extreme-weather losses rise, insurers are raising premiums and retreating from the most vulnerable markets. When private insurance disappears, states increasingly become the insurer of last resort, yet without adequate funds, rebuilding becomes unaffordable, and without insurance, many homeowners cannot even obtain a mortgage.”
“Whatever one thinks of the legal theory, the Court should understand the real-world stakes. Climate destabilization is becoming a chronic financial disaster for property owners. A ruling that leaves states without another potential source of compensation will inevitably raise the question: did the Court help address the problem, or simply make it harder to manage?”
Such ignorant nonsense. Even extreme for IEE. How many Hurricanes this year in the Atlantic? Zero. How much did the sea levels rise? Zero again. How much farmland was lost in the world last year, due to global climate change? Even worse - Less than zero.
Yes, insurance companies are having problems. But it is not caused by Climate Change. It is often caused by human actions - but h aging nothing to do with CO2. building on the ocean is problematic because some washes out to sea, and land subsides, when the aquifers underneath are drained.
Many have moved into the woods, and a lot of buildings have burned down. And smoke from fires along the Pacific is a big problem every year. But Thats mostly because fires have been suppressed for the last century, and logging for the last several decades. The climax forests evolved for small low level fires to periodically burn through there, and the amount of fuel levels. On the ground now cause crown fires instead. Plus, of course, the irrational environmental policies on the left coast. In MT, our long distance power lines still operate as fire breaks, because the brush is periodically cleared. Not so in CA, where the state has forbidden the utility companies from passing the costs onto their customers. Etc.
The biggest cause of your climate instability is bad government policies. And, of course, the governments making the worst. Policy decisions are the most bankrupt. Instead of spending money on fire prevention, CA now has a Reparations commission, and is pouring further billions down the high speed rail from nowhere to nowhere, d own the drain. Oh, and fully funding the illegal aliens who streamed in under Biden.
"I believe the Climate is REAL."
The biggest problem with the Bernie-left - is their mind-numbed adherence to whatever it is they are supposed to believe and reject. They do not question anything. And all the grant money is only doled out if you OBEY.
Turns out sheep like money.
Insurance rates are up because replacement building costs are up, and the number of targets has increased due to population growth and associated home building,
*****
Once those funds are "extracted" the money will be siphoned off by one after another NGO, non-profit, or educational organization never to be seen again
*****
Oh, it will be seen again, in different form. Much of it will indeed go to otherwise-unemployable Oberlin types with e-mail/TikTok/Insta jobs in climate-related NGOs, but more will be funneled to other leftist NGOs engaged in vote fraud on behalf of the Democrats, and a healthy chunk of it will be kicked back to Democrat politicians themselves.
So rocks have standing now?
A gallon of gas is like a pack of cigarettes?
In a dystopian
“And the Supreme Court isn’t being asked to decide whether climate change is real. The legal question is whether Boulder’s state-law claims seeking damages from fossil-fuel companies for alleged climate-related harms can proceed in state court, or whether federal law or federal jurisdiction prevents those claims from doing so. And the Supreme Court isn’t being asked to decide whether climate change is real. The legal question is whether Boulder’s state-law claims seeking damages from fossil-fuel companies for alleged climate-related harms can proceed in state court, or whether federal law or federal jurisdiction prevents those claims from doing so. “
The purpose of the first anecdotes was to show that the prime claims and projections of the Climate Change fanatics are showing up as busts. They have essentially been falsified. The remainder was to show that Boulder is maybe the craziest place in the country for this nonsense. And the conclusion I was trying to draw was that if this sort of junk science case had any chance of success, it would be in Boulder County District Court.
But, as usual, you insist on nit picking my posts, ignoring my points, and focusing, and then ignoring, my details. I guess that maybe I should start by repeatedly stating where I am going, since you seem to have problems following my arguments. I expect that is mostly on you, and most here can follow my arguments.
Universe
Wasn't the palisades fired started by a deranged rage fueled antifa/leftist?
Bruce 10:48 - Excellent points.
Most fires occur naturally and the fire is part of nature's renewal process.
Sucks for us humans.
If courts can decide matters of science, I guess we live in a universe that revolves around the earth. Wasn't Galaleo put on trial for suggesting that the Earth orbited around the Sun? Imagine how complex the computations would be to launch a satellite if engineers were required by law to have the Sun orbiting the Earth.
Fires were far more common in North America in the pre-industrial era. We know this from looking at the soot layers in ice cores from Greenland. But I guess we are not allowed to point that out!
I think that the basic problem with this case is that there is no way to calculate any damages. It's just not scientifically and mathematically possible since the science is still not settled on exactly how much climate change occurs and what the tangible effects are?
And shouldn't any amount of damages be offset by the benefits that climate change has produced? (Which is also impossible to calculate.) History teaches us that humans usually thrive when the climate is warmer. Since Colorado isn't in a hot area, have agriculture outputs increased because of the warmer weather? Are there less illnesses, injuries and fatalities from excessive heat?
For example: Say they get higher than average rainfall because of climate change, water's an asset and it helps crops grow. But that creates more floods and might increase the amount of moisture related problems, like mold. But if they get less rainfall because of climate change, then the damages vs benefits equation gets flipped.
See what I mean? Damages are impossible to calculate. Plus, there the obvious problem of science not being able to tell us exactly how much of the fossil fuel being used in Colorado actually contributes to overall Climate Change. Again, it's incalculable.
Climate change is real alright, there was a time when the Earth was pretty much a snowball. There was a time, not too long ago, when the Sahara was a green plain, up to six thousand years ago. Not sure when Gilgamesh was composed, but civilization had certainly reached its infancy.
IEEE for the last month: "Ebul Trump Raising fuel prices REEEe/arbleGarbleVoteDemocrat!!!!"
IEEE Today: "How dare the Supreme Court not allow Boulder CO to sue and bankrupt every oil company in the world! We need to make fuel prices skyrocket to please Mother Gaia!"
Human intelligence evolved quickly when the climate was cold, you know why? Because life was hard and stupid people died.
Let me add that I grew up in the county just south of Boulder County, and from 10 on, in Golden, 30 or so miles south of Boulder. I had no interest in attending UCB (but did attend UCD in Denver), but my next three brothers did, as well as my daughter, earning 5 master’s degrees and a PhD. A number of Neighbors and other family members obtained degrees there too. It’s always been a crazy place.
When I was in college, nearing 60 years ago, we would drive up there, just to see the crazies (and some to score drugs, of course - best drugs in the state were in Boulder). Then would return on occasion to watch their infamous Halloween Mall Crawl - until it was finally banned. Back in college, I went there a couple of other times, spending the night, with the son of the director of NCAR, and got my first taste of the environmental research there.
All that said, Boulder is also the fittest cities of its size in the country, and maybe the world. Bicycles are a real menace, and the judicial system is squarely on their side. First year in grad school, my daughter was living with 3 other female grad students, and cumulatively they had maybe 10 bikes and at a minimum, 8 pair of skis. No room in the garage for anything else, and the girl whose father built bikes had to keep her overage in her room. Luckily she spent most of her nights with her BF.
CO is a cluster.
WE have the worst human being on earth running for AG.
The radical leftist running for gov will win.
The left inserted their own GOP candidate.
I'm voting for Greg Lopez.
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