IN THIS ISSUE:
- Research Continues to Undermine Unusual, Catastrophic Nature of Present Climate Change
- Climate Lawsuits Continue to Fizzle Out
Research Continues to Undermine Unusual, Catastrophic Nature of Present Climate Change
For two decades or more various politically connected researchers and the mainstream media outlets have proclaimed to the world some variation of, “the science is settled, humans are causing catastrophic climate change through our use of fossil fuels.” This claim is almost always accompanied by the assertion that “a consensus exists, 97 percent or more of scientists believe humans are causing dangerous climate change.”
These related claims are of themselves unscientific in the extreme. There is no “the science,” rather science is a method or systematic approach to coming to knowledge and is never “settled,” in the sense that it is possible and has happened quite often that new discoveries have overturned what were previously believed to be established or “settled” truths. Second, consensus is a political term, not a scientific one. Agreement of a vast majority of experts in any field may or may not correspond to the truth, but such agreement does not establish any truth. Historically, the “consensus” on key scientific matters has been wrong as or more often than it has been right. The peer reviewed research that has supposedly established the existence of a consensus has been deconstructed and refuted by Heartland each time a new paper making the claim is released. Philosophers of science Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn addressed this fact effectively and dispositively, in my opinion.
In truth, the theory of anthropogenic climate change is composed of at least three distinct, testable, claims: 1) climate change is occurring (regionally or globally); 2) humans are causing it; 3) the impacts are or will be dangerous or even catastrophic to humanity and/or the environment.
Climate change is occurring, regionally if not globally. Some regions aren’t seeing much change from the previous patterns established over the last few periods of 30 years in length – which is the time period over which weather changes are averaged to identify an area’s climate. Climate has, in fact, never been in stasis. It has changed, sometimes subtly, and highly locally, sometimes dramatically and over a large portion of the Earth, with the causes being driven by a mix of internal factors, like ocean currents, volcanic activity, and Milankovitch cycles, and external perturbations, like solar cycles. On this the so-called consensus is strong and probably accurately reflects the truth.
The best evidence suggests that humans, through both landscape alterations and various activities that have released large amounts carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, are likely contributing to present regional and global climate changes. Whether other natural factors or our actions are the primary driver of present climate change is as yet unknown – and the relative roles of human driven change versus other factors in nature, may be different in different regions and over different time periods. On this point, the consensus, is less strong, but the position that humans are the primary drivers of present climate change might be right.
It is on the third testable claim or tenet of the theory of human-caused climate change, that the climate changes we are presently experiencing or soon will be experiencing are catastrophic or represent an existential threat to humanity, where the theory is weakest and the consensus completely breaks down. Most of the claims of disaster are based on inadequate, not fit for purpose, computer models. Their projections are regularly provably false, yet the so-called consensus community clings to them with undying faith, in a fashion not like science but a religion.
When computer models’ forecasts aren’t simply contradictory – like projections of both strengthening and weaking monsoons and large ocean currents – they are most often provably wrong. Indeed, much of the work I do at Climate Change Weekly, demonstrates this.
In just the past few issues of CCW, I have covered research which showed drought was much worse and longer lasting across a vast swath of meso-America than any it has experienced during the present period of climate change. I have also summarized research showing that Greenland’s much hyped ice melt, is much lower, contributing much less to sea levels, than climate models and the alarmists in the media, academia, and government claim it is and should be based on emission trajectories and climate model projections. I’ve also highlighted peer-reviewed research which showed that recent wildfire in parts of the Amazon haven’t been historically unusual, and that corals, contrary to repeated claims, are doing well as the Earth has warmed modestly. In fact, coral colonies have survived and even thrived in much warmer conditions in the past.
And that’s just research discussed in the past two issues of CCW. Across the more than a decade of my writing Climate Change Weekly, and the years under James Taylor’s management before that, CCW has summarized or discussed thousands of peer-reviewed studies and research covering different aspects of the scientific, political, and economic considerations and debates surrounding the present period of climate change. Each of which calls into question one or another aspect of the theory that humans are causing catastrophic climate change – a threat so immanent and dire it would merit quickly ending the use of fossil fuels, foregoing the tremendous life-saving and enhancing benefits their use as made possible.
To be clear, neither the authors of these papers, nor the papers themselves claim to disprove the theory that humans are causing dangerous climate change. No individual paper could. Even the recent Department of Energy report and the comprehensive multi-volume Climate Change Reconsidered reports don’t prove humans aren’t causing climate change, any more than the papers cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports prove that humans are causing dangerous climate change. What the research does prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, is that there is still much unknown about the causes and consequences of the present iteration of climate change, the debate is still open. In addition, what the papers that I write about strongly indicate is that there is no firm evidence that present climate change has been harmful to humans, human societies, or the environment, and may have even produced net beneficial effects. What they also suggest is that the present climate change is not historically unusual, meaning it’s hard to identify a human fingerprint against the background changes nature has made throughout history.
Which brings us to a recent paper published in Geological Review, a peer-reviewed publication of the Polish Geological Institute. This paper argues that presently ongoing climate change is likely natural in origin, with little human contribution, with the amount and rate of warming less severe or steep than other periods of warming during the Holocene. The author writes,
Cyclical climate change is characteristic of the Holocene, with successive warmings and coolings. A solar forcing mechanism has steered Holocene climate change, expressed by 9 cooling phases known as Bond events. There is reliable geological evidence that the temperatures of most warming phases in the Holocene were globally higher or similar to that of the current warming period, Arctic sea ice was less extensive and most mountain glaciers in the northern hemisphere either disappeared or were smaller. During the African Humid Period in the Early and Middle Holocene, much stronger summer monsoons made the Sahara green with growth of savanna vegetation, huge lakes and extensive peat bogs. The modern warming is part of a climatic cycle with a progressive warming after the Little Ice Age, the last cold episode of which occurred at the beginning of the 19th century. Successive climate projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are based on the assumption that the modern temperature rise is steered exclusively by the increasing content of human-induced CO2 in the atmosphere. If compared with the observational data, these projected temperatures have been highly overestimated.
Will the claims in this paper prove correct? I don’t know, but I do know that it adds to a massive and growing body of literature which calls into question both the causes of current climate change and the potential impacts. The science isn’t settled, it almost never is, regardless of the claims of those who cling to the idea of consensus.
Sources: Climate Change Weekly; Climate Change Weekly; Geological Review; No Tricks Zone
Climate Lawsuits Continue to Fizzle Out
Climate lawsuits continue to find it rough going in the U.S. court system.
Recently, the Baltimore Sun reported that the Maryland Supreme court seems likely to uphold the state’s lower court’s ruling that Baltimore, Annapolis, and Anne Arundel County can’t sue oil companies under state law for the supposed climate damages the peoples’ use of their products are causing. Judges in California, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and South Carolina have thrown out lawsuits against the industry on similar or related grounds.
During oral arguments, Maryland’s Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical that the plaintiffs’ case was cognizable under state law since it was a national/international problem, one that, if anything, should be addressed by Congress.
Under questioning by the court the plaintiffs’ attorney, Vic Sher of Sher Edling, was unable to cite specific examples of disinformation produced by the companies or to provide evidence indicating that if oil companies had warned Marylanders of the dangers of climate change that such warnings would have produced tangible positive impacts locally, or that it would have dissuaded them from using fossil fuels. Nor could he explain how, being a global problem, Maryland law could countenance the sweeping global claims the issue raises.
“It seems like your theory of injury and your relief are all tied and necessarily depend on interstate and international emissions,” Justice Brynja M. Booth said during oral arguments.
The court noted that the lower court’s analysis seemed correct, as stated in the trial court when the lawsuit brought by Baltimore was dismissed: “[t]he Constitution’s federal structure does not allow the application of state law to claims like those presented by Baltimore. … The Supreme Court of the United States has held that state law cannot be used to resolve claims seeking redress for injuries caused by out of state pollution.”
Meanwhile a similar lawsuit in Puerto Rico claiming oil companies violated federal racketeering statutes was dismissed for the second time in federal court.
Private plaintiffs in Puerto Rico sued claiming that major oil companies, such as Chevron, Exxon, and Shell, were partly to blame for 2017’s destructive hurricane season, culminating in the long-lasting damage caused by Hurricane Maria. A similar case brought by 37 municipalities was dismissed in Puerto Rico in September. That court never reached the merits of the case, instead ruling that the statute of limitations to bring such a lawsuit had passed.
Judge Aida M. Delgado-Colon followed the path set by the September case, calling it a “copycat lawsuit” and dismissing it on the same grounds.
“The Court sees no reason why it should depart from the thoughtful statute of limitations analysis performed by its sister court in the Municipalities’ case,” Judge Delgado-Colon wrote.
“The federal court in Puerto Rico correctly dismissed San Juan’s climate lawsuit as time-barred, because the underlying issues have been publicly known for many years,” Theodore Boutrous Jr. of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, counsel for Chevron, said after the ruling.
Sources: Legal Newsline; Energy In Depth
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H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
