On September 2, Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla announced that Hoboken would be suing big oil companies for damages as a result of global warming. The history of climate change and its study date back to the 1820s and extend to the modern day, and the validity of Mayor Bhalla’s claim that these companies were aware of the effects of their industrial activity and attempting to hide it from the public rests upon the facts about global warming.
Support for Mayor Bhalla’s claims extends back to French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier, who developed a theory that as sunlight reaches the Earth, a portion of that energy is released back into space as radiation while some is kept on the planet, keeping it warm. 40 years later, Irish scientist John Tyndall began performing experiments on how different gases (including CO2, methane, and volatile hydrocarbons) could absorb different amounts of energy.
By the early 1900s, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius began to examine how different levels of CO2 explain some of the causes of past ice ages. According to his calculations, if CO2 levels were halved, global temperatures would decrease by around 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius). Curious about the inverse effect, he determined that doubling CO2 levels would have the inverse effect, increasing global temperatures by 9 degrees Fahrenheit.
By the 1960s, the effect that mankind was having on global temperatures began to cause concern. Post-World War II aerosols had the effect of temporarily decreasing temperatures, but this effect did not last. It became clear that while these aerosols would remain in the atmosphere for weeks, CO2 could last for centuries. This increased the concern regarding global warming.
While we know that global warming is a real phenomenon caused by increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, it is currently unclear as to whether or not global warming affects the regularity of hurricanes and similar natural disasters. According to the National Environmental Education Foundation, ocean temperatures have increased by roughly 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit per year. With hurricanes drawing energy from latent heat in the water, it is possible that global warming may have increased their severity.
In addition to this, sea levels have been rising steadily in the past century, resulting in a localized sea level increase of over one foot in the waters surrounding Hoboken. On its own, this extra foot hasn’t had a huge effect on daily life in Hoboken. However, combined with a storm like Hurricane Irene or Hurricane Sandy where the majority of the threat comes from flooding, this sea level increase can have a significant and negative impact on the Mile Square City.
The science is clear: humans have had an effect on the state of our environment, resulting in global warming. In their lawsuit against big oil, Mayor Bhalla and the City of Hoboken are seeking to gain compensation for damages and the extra preparation required to protect the city against the effects of global warming, which they claim never should have been necessary. The scientific basis for this claim is valid; the only thing that remains is to prove that these companies were aware of this and that they attempted to prevent this information from being published.
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