As the Supreme Court considers whether federal law preempts state climate lawsuits, Congress and the Courts should consider more serious failings.
Climate litigation is not, as has been argued, similar to tobacco litigation. The mass tobacco claims of the 1990s involved a substance strongly associated with small-cell lung cancer. The three elements – a dangerous substance, causation, and provable exposure to an injured party – support a proper lawsuit, regardless of the jury’s assessment of the merits, which could involve a knowing assumption of risk.
Climate claims, on the other hand, lack the necessary element of causation: they fail to establish that fossil fuels cause either environmental harm generally or the specific harm alleged, such as drought or flooding.
In his book, Unsettled, Dr. Steven Koonin, Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy under President Barack Obama, warns against the “consensus trap” of Progressive mob rule, bullying society into accepting science as “settled” when it is not. Koonin and other wise scientists decry the Federal Judicial Center's Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, recently published, which allows proof of scientific concepts based on “widespread acceptance.” By this standard, both Copernicus and Galileo should have been put to death for suggesting the Earth revolves around the Sun, a concept contrary to the day's prevailing “widespread acceptance.”
The IPCC conventional climate change theory is just that – a hypothesis derived from a mathematical model using simplistic assumptions. In the fifty years since Jule Charney’s 1979 model, the climate has never performed as increasingly refined models predicted.
But isn’t it at least clear that manmade CO2 causes global warming? Not really. Consider that since the Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago, at least seven extreme warming periods, including the present, have occurred, separated by little ice ages.
The two most recent warming periods are the Roman Warming Period (250 BC to AD 400) and the Medieval Warming Period (approximately AD 800-1300). During those two periods, the planet warmed significantly enough that fruit trees thrived at Hadrian’s Wall and grapes grew in “Vinland” (modern-day Newfoundland, Canada), which Leif Erikson discovered around AD 1000. Because of these pre-industrial comparators, we know that fossil fuel emissions are not a prerequisite for global warming.
Why then, one may ask, do today’s rising CO2 levels accompany recent global warming? Alarmists argue that today’s global warming period began with the Industrial Revolution, following a little ice age that ended around AD 1750-1800. But for close to 100-150 years after this warming began, global fossil fuel combustion was limited.
Based on over 100 years of direct weather measurements and thousands of years of proxy data, we can confidently conclude that CO2 lags temperature increases, not vice versa. In short, rising temperatures drive higher CO2 levels. Rigorous scientific articles convincingly show this relationship. (See HERE also).
In a January 8, 2009, speech delivered on the Senate Floor, Senator Inhofe (R-OK) noted that 650 scientists, many left-leaning, have rejected the politically motivated climate hysteria. Inhofe emphasized that the consensus on human-caused global warming was breaking down and that growing scientific dissent deserved serious attention, not dismissal as partisan opposition.
See also correspondence to the EPA regarding pending pollution regulations authored by MIT professor Richard Lindzen and Princeton professor Will Happer. They urged the EPA to reject its proposed limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil-fuel power plants because the rule rests on unreliable climate science and ignores the substantial benefits of CO2 and fossil fuels.
Even if CO2 is more than a trivial factor, what the world has not been told is that most CO2 is emitted naturally. As renowned scientist Demetris Koutsoyiannis notes, “Temperature increase causes the biosphere to expand and, in turn, produce more naturally emitted CO₂, which accounts for 96% of total emissions” (The Relationship, 39). He goes on, “The vast majority of changes in the atmosphere since 1750 (red bars in the graph) are due to natural processes, respiration and photosynthesis” (The Relationship, 43). Thus, per the above, “the causality direction is mostly opposite to the prevailing assumption” (The Relationship, 39), above linked. Living things like to be warm such that increased heat increases CO2 output in many different spheres. Just from heating oceans alone, more CO2 is released than all manmade emissions.
So, climate warriors are demonizing and punishing those who produce fossil fuels, which, in turn, have enabled the greatest period of human flourishing in history. Societies with abundant fossil fuels live and work in heated and cooled buildings, are fed thanks to fuel-based fertilizers that support their crops and livestock, are clothed largely in fuel-based synthetic fibers, and travel across land, air, and sea in fuel-powered vehicles at reasonable prices. Health care depends on reliable fuel-sourced electricity and equipment.
Scientifically ignorant AGs are now posing a direct challenge to affordability and alleviation of poverty worldwide. Even if increasing CO2 does heat the planet, and even if fossil fuels (contrary to proof) do significantly increase atmospheric CO2, there is a large causal gap as to the litany of specific alleged harms, including hydrological problems and hurricanes, floods and droughts, high winds and doldrums, with the current “Kelvin wave” a possible specific exception, but again, only if we accept the general manmade CO2 heating canard.
Unlike tobacco, where alleged causation has a scientific basis, the case against fossil fuels is still a mere hypothesis, notwithstanding a manufactured consensus.
As Jonathan Swift wrote, “Falsehood flies, and Truth comes limping after it.” Let’s hope our prosperous democracy can survive one more idiotic Progressive falsehood.
