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Alaskan Village Sues Over Global Warming

hightower_40 writes to mention that a small Alaskan village has sued two dozen oil, power, and coal companies, blaming them for contributing to global warming. "Sea ice traditionally protected the community, whose economy is based in part on salmon fishing plus subsistence hunting of whale, seal, walrus, and caribou. But sea ice that forms later and melts sooner because of higher temperatures has left the community unprotected from fall and winter storm waves and surges that lash coastal areas."

34 of 670 comments (clear)

  1. Mistargeted law suit? by DrLang21 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IANAL. It would seem to me that if you are going to sue someone for causing you harm, you would need to sue everyone involved. In this case, that would mean sueing almost everyone in the world. It's not fair to target one small group just because they have money. IANAL.

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    1. Re:Mistargeted law suit? by KublaiKhan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      True, but bear in mind that lawsuits like this seem mostly intended not as an actual reparation of damages but to make a large public statement.

      Attention whoring, in a way.

      So they've already won what they wanted: to get attention for the difficulties that they and their neighbors have been having.

      IANAL myself, so take this comment cum grano salis.

      --
      In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
      A stately pleasure dome decree
    2. Re:Mistargeted law suit? by snarfer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In fact they're even using some of the same people and organizations that the tobacco compa nies used. "Doubt is our product" is the famous quote from a tobacco memo about their front-groups. They managed to put off a reckoning for decades by making people think that the science about cigarettes causing cancer was not clear.

    3. Re:Mistargeted law suit? by zippthorne · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The main difference is that smoking tobacco doesn't really benefit anybody wheras burning coal and oil has literally driven the engines of production creating tremendous wealth for the whole world. We still have some distribution problems resulting in a number of people not being able to take full advantage of this wealth, but that number is decreasing all the time.

      Even if coal and oil use is causing noticeable and net deleterious effects, there is some argument that they should be forgiven past liability and even protected from some amount of current liability, as long as they are taking reasonable steps to mitigate deleterious effects, now.

      The earth can support 6 billion modern people. It already does. It cannot support 6 billion cave-men.

      --
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    4. Re:Mistargeted law suit? by snarfer · · Score: 5, Informative

      Gore's house is entirely solar and wind now, FYI.

    5. Re:Mistargeted law suit? by SacredByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Offsetting one's "carbon footprint" is just about the stupidest thing I've heard in awhile. Its called riding a bicycle. I do it (durring the summer, anyway). I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, in a comfortable home (4 bedroom, 2.5 bath). Mr. Gore's home is several times the size of mine, and uses more electricity in a month than my home uses in a year.

      My comment was not meant to say "Gore does no good" but was meant to say "Gore says there are things you should do, like using fuel-efficient vehicles, and he doesn't even follow his own advice."

      I have absolutely no problem with someone telling me that they think I should so something--Like drive a fuel efficient car (I do BTW: 1994 Corola)--just as long as they follow their own advice. Mr. Gore does not but, as you say: Why let the facts get in the way?

    6. Re:Mistargeted law suit? by jejones · · Score: 4, Informative

      Gore is chairman of Generation Investment Management, the company that he buys carbon offsets from (see here for details), so he is paying himself.

    7. Re:Mistargeted law suit? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Informative

      He's probably confusing it with "coffin nails", which *is* documented back to the late 1800s. Cassell's claims it's only based on a resemblance, but I don't think so. While the linking of tobacco and cancer only goes back to the 1950s and 60s, there's always been a widespread perception that it's only common sense that breathing burning smoke on a regular basis *can't* be good for your lungs. Autopsies of smoker's lungs blackened by tobacco smoke go back that far.

  2. Surges That Lash Coastal... by Wandering+Wombat · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... coastal what?

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    1. Re:Surges That Lash Coastal... by Harmonious+Botch · · Score: 4, Funny

      It got washed away.

  3. The funny thing... by Otter · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The funny thing is that villagers like these use enormous amounts of fuel and create tremendous pollution (per-capita, anyway) with their snowmobiles and poorly insulated houses. And how many times do you figure the lawyer pushing them into this suit has flown in from Boston?

    I do love the part where they're complaining that global warming is keeping them from hunting "whale, seal, walrus, and caribou". Maybe Leonardo diCaprio should make a movie about that!

  4. More about money grubbing lawyers... by bagboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    than anything else. I live in Alaska and can tell you the driving force behind this is actually "The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment and the Native American Rights Fund -- plus six law firms." The natives in the village use gas-powered vehicles for transportation and (generator) electricity for their homes, suing the people who provide the source for those items.

    Shoot, why don't we all climb on board. Oh, wait - I drive a car to work and use natural gas to heat my home, plus electricity to power my net activities...

  5. Re:Erm by gatzke · · Score: 4, Informative


    Or at least before we switch back to "Igloo effect" hysteria!!!

    http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

    I was taught about climate change in middle school from a book that managed to have both cooling and warming in it, so I am always skeptical...

  6. Re:Yes but... by bunratty · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course. I always value the scientific opinion of the founder of The Weather Channel over the consensus of hundreds of climate scientists.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  7. "Alaskan Village" by ajs · · Score: 4, Informative

    The term might mislead some Slashdot readers. Please see:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_Claims_Settlement_Act

    which established:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_Regional_Corporations

    We're talking about the established tribal "village," which is a legal entity representing a group of natives for purposes of interacting with the Regional Corporations, not the traditional meaning of the word. The easiest comparison would be if you took recognized Native American tribes from the lower 48 and segmented them up into "villages" of roughly the size of a rural town.

  8. It's not "mis-targetted" by trolltalk.com · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They're looking to cash in on the "environmental windfall lottery",

    ... 390 people ...

    ... Relocation costs have been estimated at $400 million or more.

    Just follow the money.

    A million bucks each and they'll go away happy. It doesn't cost a million bucks a head to relocate people, unless you're relocating them to the ISS.

    1. Re:It's not "mis-targetted" by Himring · · Score: 4, Funny

      Quick eskimo jokes:

      How do you kill an polarbear? Kick him in the icehole....

      A baby seal walks into a club....

      Um, all I have for now

      Try the veal

      --
      "All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
    2. Re:It's not "mis-targetted" by geekoid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      How do you relocates a culture? History?

      There is no place similar to relocate these people and some of them won't be able to function in a city.
      So you have relocation, retraining, integration, etc . . .

      ONOH I'm sure you think you can just pick someone up, plop them anywhere and that's the end of.

      --
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    3. Re:It's not "mis-targetted" by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh, you think $1e6 per capita is too much? Wait until you see the claims of people with eroding property in California, Florida, and New York in a few years. I'm not saying the lawsuit is just or winnable, but I'll bet it is the first of many larger ones to come.

    4. Re:It's not "mis-targetted" by trolltalk.com · · Score: 5, Insightful

      they aren't living in igloos. They have rifles, snowmobiles, 4x4s, satellite tv, etc.

    5. Re:It's not "mis-targetted" by EvilNTUser · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Cultures don't have a right to live. People have a right to live.

      If your culture becomes unviable, you move on. It's not the rest of the planet's job to help you to live like a carbon copy of your father. We find this self evident with business models, but cultures evoke silly emotional reactions.

      --
      My Sig: SEGV
  9. Re:Yes but... by ArcherB · · Score: 4, Informative

    Of course. I always value the scientific opinion of the founder of The Weather Channel over the consensus of hundreds of climate scientists. Would believe raw data?

    Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

    No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. That's from HERE. They provide a nifty graph to go with it HERE

    It appears to me that those who said that the SUN was causing global warming due to increased sunspot activity, that has recently subsided, were correct. And all those scientist that claimed it was solely man made were wrong.

    Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.
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  10. Re:Yes but... by snarfer · · Score: 4, Informative

    You are linking to a site that is funded by Exxon, in case you didn't know.

  11. Re:They'll be happy to know the Earth is Cooling by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm sure they'll be delighted to know that last year was not only one of the coolest on record, but that the trend was so pronounced as "to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down."[dailytech.com] So, we're supposed to reject the nigh-universal consensus of climate scientists because a blogger tells us to?
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  12. Re:Yes but... by jonnythan · · Score: 4, Informative

    NASA's GISS just said that 2007 was tied with 1998 for the second-warmest year in the past century.

    Their data also shows that I think 8 months of 2007 were warmer than the corresponding months in 2006 - and all months of 2007 were at least as warm as the corresponding months in 2000.

  13. simple really .... by Brigadier · · Score: 5, Funny



    cost per person to relocate inhabitants = $30,000
    cost per person to have lawyers sign moving agreement = $970,000

    going to law school and specializing in environmental law .. priceless

  14. Re:They'll be happy to know the Earth is Cooling by MyNymWasTaken · · Score: 4, Informative

    This blog post seems to be a denier's primary point today.

    Here's the Hadley Center's global temperature record. Each of the past 6 years of decreasing solar activity, the waning side of solar cycle 23, have been in the hottest 8 on the 158 year record.

  15. Re: Yes but... by ArcherB · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I asked if you would believe raw data.
    You answered:

    Not in the absence of competence to interpret it. Then you say:

    Meanwhile both poles are melting faster than anyone feared. What TFA I linked says:

    Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on. What the Goddard Space Flight Center shows:

    While recent studies have shown that on the whole Arctic sea ice has decreased since the late 1970s, satellite records of sea ice around Antarctica reveal an overall increase in the southern hemisphere ice over the same period. Of course, it wouldn't be fair to bring up the opposing argument (from 2003):

    Australian scientists yesterday revealed new evidence of global warming, suggesting that sea ice around Antarctica had shrunk 20% in the past 50 years. So if decreasing sea ice proves global warming, wouldn't increasing sea ice DISprove global warming? I mean, I am not a climatologist and all, but I am a thinker.

    I'm not saying that the climate didn't change or isn't changing. It is always changing. I'm saying that it is natural, not man made and that the "hockey stick" predictions of future climate models were dead wrong.

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  16. re: The funny thing - Eskimo cars by z80kid · · Score: 5, Funny
    An Eskimo is driving when his car starts to make a noise. He takes it to the garage and the mechanic looks at it. "Hmm, looks like you've blown a seal."

    "No," says the Eskimo, "it's just frost on my mustache."

    ~~~
    (What the hell, I've got some karma to burn.)

  17. Re:They'll be happy to know the Earth is Cooling by ncc74656 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, we're supposed to reject the nigh-universal consensus of climate scientists because a blogger tells us to?

    Consensus != science...and even if it were, it's hardly as universal as Algore and his Grünsturmabteilung would have you believe.

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  18. Re: Yes but... by ncc74656 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Climate change" means that we will see more extreme weather, including more regional snowfall in some places. So yes, more snowfall in North America actually shows that global warming IS occurring.

    ...and now we get to the core of the Grünsturmabteilung's argument: the unfalsifiable hypothesis. It's the intellectual equivalent of "heads we win, tails you lose." What's next? Are you going to tell us that anthropogenic global warming turned you into a newt, but that you got better?

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  19. Re:But they are targeting everyone! by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    See also: Brilliant plan by Democrats, announced today, to tax the profits of the evil oil companies.

    Quite frankly, if I were an oil company, and had politicians getting elected promising to ram a pitchfork up my ass, all the while they claim they're gonna decimate oil with alternative fuels, I'd be dragging ass too in constructing new oil pipelines, infrastructure, refineries, and the like, when, if said politicians have their way, much of that new stuff'll be useless in a few years as oil use decreases and thus you cannot recoup your billions.

    Screw that government and the people that elect it. Raise prices!

    Do not mark this flamebait. This is a serious analysis. That it upsets you, well, read my .sig.

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  20. Re:They'll be happy to know the Earth is Cooling by MyNymWasTaken · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A scientific consensus describes, not proscribes, the accumulated data & scientific theories. Read that again; descriptive, not proscriptive. Denying a consensus with nothing more than bluster and ad hominem retorts is a blatant denial of science. Provide relevant & complete evidence or you are no better than the creationists.

  21. Climate Change. by MaWeiTao · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The big push for at least a decade was that we were being threatened by global warming. The ice caps were going to melt, the seas were going to rise and who knows what else was going to come with that. All we hear about is some impending doom initiated by humanity. Except that it never actually arrives; it's always going to happen some day soon.

    On now that evidence is arising that discredits the notion of global warming the terms get switched around on us. So now it's climate change. The nice thing about this term is that it's so all-encompassing. Any time we get weather a bit out of the ordinary it's chalked up to be due to climate change, specifically man-made climate change.

    Last month is snowed lightly in Baghdad for the first time anyone can recall. You'd think so impressive an event would be covered more than it was. I eventually found a brief Agence France-Presse story about it. Predictably they stick a bit in there about how this was due to climate change. Like there's a set temperature for any spot on Earth.

    I guess the implication is that the Earth's climate has always been static. I can't help but think that Creationists should be the most ardent believers of man-made climate change given that they're convinced the Earth is only 6000 years old.

    Forecasters can barely predict the weather into next week and I'm supposed to accept has fact incomplete computer models that predict the weather in the next 50 or 100 years. More importantly, I'm supposed to subscribe to the belief that a global temperature increase is inherently a bad thing.

    A while ago I was reading about the history of Japan, specifically the Jomon period. It turns out that between 4000BC and 2000BC temperatures tended to be several degrees Celsius higher then they are today and the seas are believed to have been 5m higher. The fascinating part was that the people living in Japan at the time thrived during this era, having developed rice-paddy farming and government control. When the climate cooled the population of these people declined dramatically. This trend is reflected around the world. Europe endured famines in the 1300s during periods of cooling and glacial expansion.

    Unfortunately, it seems to be taboo to argue against man-made climate change. Any evidence critics put forward is dismissed off-hand. The double-standards are laughable. A believer will use a localized event as evidence of climate change. A critic does the same and their argument is discredited for being based on local weather.

    So now we have these eskimo pulling what is essentially a publicity stunt. Well, it's worse than that. Behind them are a pack of scumbag lawyers looking to line their pockets.