This is quite something. Darn those Canucks. As we saw with his defense of eco-vandals in England, I wonder if Dr. James Hansen will rush to The Hague to testify for this one? And if by some furthest stretch of the imagination, this lawsuit is successful, what then? Will Pachauri use the spoils to whittle down the number of lifetimes if will take to erase his own carbon footprint? I wonder if Danny Bloom is related to omnipresent blog commenter, and Sierra Club representative, Steve Bloom? BTW Steve, we are still waiting, over a year now for your answer.
NOTE: The article below is reposted in entirety from the blog Northward Ho(t) The opinions are those of the author of that blog, Mitchel Anderson, not of myself nor of any WUWT contributor. – Anthony
Ballsy.
That is perhaps best word to describe a class action lawsuit filed this week in the International Criminal Court in The Hague in Holland against national governments refusing to act on reducing carbon emissions.
The suit was filed by climate activist Danny Bloom who is asking for “US$1 billion dollars in damages on behalf of future generations of human beings on Earth – if there are any”
No Joke
The lawsuit is specifically seeking damages from “all world leaders for intent to commit manslaughter against future generations of human beings by allowing murderous amounts of fossil fuels to be harvested, burned and sent into the atmosphere as CO2, causing possible apocalyptic harm to the Earth’s ecosystem and the very future of the human species.
The point of the suit of course is not to wring money out of carbon emitters, but to embarrass the legions of laggard governments in advance of upcoming international climate negotiations next month in Poland. According to Bloom, the legal action “is about trying to protect future generations of mankind, humankind, and a positive judgment in this case will help prod more people to take the issues of climate change and global warming more seriously. We fully intend to make all world leaders of today responsible for their actions in the present day and age.”
This case is a legal long shot no doubt, but Bloom’s team said “”it’s up to the court to decide whether this case has any merit. We fully expect the court to agree to at least hear the case and make a responsible and measured decision later.”
It would also be the first case of its kind to seek to act on behalf of future generations for the irresponsibility of their ancestors. The need to put world leaders on the hot seat is very real. International climate talks like the one happening next month in Poland have happening for over a decade yet global emissions just keep climbing. A recent report showed that in spite of international commitments, carbon emissions of 40 industrialized countries rose by 2.3 percent between 2000 and 2006.
That said, those countries that signed Kyoto saw their overall emissions fall by 17% below 1990. The disgraceful outlier among those nations is Canada, whose emissions ballooned by over 20% in spite of having ratifying Kyoto. Canada’s Prime Minister Harper has called Kyoto a “mistake” and he seems openly contemptuous of such international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. Mr. Harper is of course not alone in the responsibility for Canada’ terrible climate change record. The Canadian public recently handed him another mandate in a general election.
Back to Mr. Bloom. His lawsuit seems directly targeted towards such irresponsible nations like Canada that have refused to take this issue seriously. If he wins, Bloom is planning to donate the $1 billion in damages to the Nobel winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Godspeed Mr. Bloom.
OT but has anyone seen this:
http://news.smh.com.au/world/over-200-whales-trapped-in-canadian-ice-20081122-6eas.html
Bring on AGW and save the narwhal.
The only way any of this makes sense is if AGW is a mechanism for imposing increased control. It has nothing to do with science or reality, even if the AGW guys were 100% right and we are going to drown in saltwater in 20 years they don’t have the scientific goods to demonstrate it. This makes it a bunch of over hyped nonsense.
If the future climate is unknown from a science standpoint then we need to look elsewhere for the explanation of the reaction. The world governments all deep down have the same motives – control. They have systematically funded weak science and marketing to create an impression of doom. If you think about it, it doesn’t take a big planned out conspiracy for that statement to be true.
Who’s using whom. Are the scientists using the government or is the government using the scientists? — Some of both I think.
Scenario #1: Judge kicks it out of court on a technicality, but because the science is not addressed, the advocates spin the story and the headlines to their advantage, perhaps along the lines of; “There is no doubt that the science is settled but this action by the Court was a simple technicality. We’re preparing to resubmit after the Polish Climate conference. If the countries of the world take the needed extraordinary actions then, we were certainly reconsdier our lawsuit.”
Scenario #2: Court decides to hear the case. This is where the projections get interesting.
Does each of the defendant ‘world leaders” mount a defense individually or somehow, collectively? What if Russia and China don’t show up? Do the U.S, U.K, and Australia show up together? Does Canada say ‘”take a hike”? What about the EU countries that are facing huge Kyoto fines and are trying to back off curbs due to economics?
The fact (??) that the world leaders are defendants introduces a huge uncertainty, since they would probably bring in their hand picked experts and they may defend themselves by explaining their massive new programs. Would Obama bring in Hansen and Trenberth and Gore and say; “Yes we’re trying. The U.S. will lead the way. Look to the messiah for redemption?”.
A good outcome in the long run is if the science is presented and the catastrophic AGW crock is finally lowered to the level of being a highly speculative theory that feeds off the nugget of scientific evidence that CO2 causes some warming (is that even that solid?)
Startling news from NASA.
Water Vapor Confirmed as Major Player in Climate Change
November 17, 2008
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=35952
Is it necessary to prove the case, or is arm waving hysterics OK.
1. Do these guys have sufficient insurance to pay for ‘the costs of the trial’, if it is thrown out as ‘wilful misuse of the legal process for political ends’?
2. If not, should they be required to deposit a bond to ensure that they are not simply wasting time and EU taxpayers’ money in erroneous litigation?
3. What evidence will they be presenting?
4. Who will be opposing them?
5. Have they already bought the judge?
6. Can you BE an ICC judge if you are not buyable?
Another silly publicity stunt masking as a call for justice.
Putting aside such silly pettiness, what I found most interesting in this post was the link to Grilling the Data along with its own link to Raising Walhalla. This got me to thinking of that volunteer data entry project aka Anthony’s Army. Haven’t heard anything since early August. Is it still a go and you’ve just been overwhelmed with other things and it has been set aside for now or has it been canceled?
“Though the Court is affiliated with the United Nations, George Soros largely directed the lobbying campaign that led to the Court’s creation in 2002-2003.”
http://www.larouchepub.com/pr/2008/080715soros_owns_icc.html
“George Soros: Economic Hit-man for the British Oligarchy”:
http://www.larouchepac.com/files/pdfs/080618_soros_dossier.pdf
The “Best” Of Al Gore 1992-2007:
http://www.larouchepub.com/eirtoc/site_packages/2007/al_gore.html
Pierre Gosselin said….
“Brian Johnson,
0.27% sounds small, but it accumulates over the years. Indeed CO2 concentrations have gone up from 280 ppm to about 387 ppm over the last 100 years or so.”
BJ wonders
If the manmade 0.27% accumulates over the years what does the other 99.73% do? How do you separate [Not using the anthro word] man made CO2 from the natural version?
When 5000 ppm CO2 was the norm how did the earth, climate and the creatures thereon survive? And why was in some of that period, the Earth frozen stiff?
My greenhouse has CO2 at 1300 ppm approx and the plants love it!
Sorry PG but computer guesses do not do it for me. Predictions are not facts. And so far, predictions are laughably, hysterically, very wide of the mark. Hansen, GISS, Gore et al.
From the content pof the article posted above.
“That said, those countries that signed Kyoto saw their overall emissions fall by 17% below 1990.”
From the Article linked to by the wird ‘fall’ iin the above sentence.
“For the smaller group of industrialized countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol setting reduction targets, emissions in 2006 were about 17 percent below the Protocol’s 1990 base line, but they still grew after 2000.
The pre-2000 decrease stemmed from the economic decline of transition countries in Eastern and Central Europe in the 1990s. ”
Which countires, iirc, made some useful cash by selling their unused carbon credits (unused because the western parts of Europe and elsewhere bought in, shut down and then funded the re-development of the infrastruture and industrial complexes) to countries like Denmark (yep, that Denmark, the one with all the windmills) who were worried about being ‘fined’ for missing their emissions targets.
So the quoted article is really about lying with statistics as much as publicising ‘theatre’. I wonder how many other lies might be presented in court should it get that far? But then will this court care? One sometimes wonders with these ‘International’ courts, given the decisions they arrive at.
Still, at least Danny has the decency to admit that his ‘action’, and presumably everything and everyone who supports it, is merely ‘theatre’ and so should be of little or no consequence in the scheme of things.
Trivialising life – that would make a good subject for Reuters to follow-up on.
Another waste of precious time and money to draw attention to something that is not based in reality. That being said, bring on the debate in open court. Hopefully , the judge will see to it that both sides are given equal time, and both sides allowed the best representation possible. BTW, have you heard Gordon Lightfoot’s new song, ” The Wreck of the Stephane Dion” ?
Narwhal whales trapped in Arctic ice after being led astray by Algore’s global warming hoax.
At least 200 narwhal whales in Canada’s Arctic, trapped by winter ice and facing starvation or suffocation.
http://news.smh.com.au/world/over-200-whales-trapped-in-canadian-ice-20081122-6eas.html
Hi, I’ve been trying to get this wikipedia (Effects of Global Warming) to be a little less biased: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming
These are the edits I made: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effects_of_global_warming&diff=prev&oldid=251291938
As you can see, none of my edits were controversial, but were reverted because they removed some of the alarmism from the article. If we work together, we can get this article to more accurately represent the truth. Remember, there is strength in numbers.
The article is horribly biased in places and in others downright wrong.
Michael Crichton is smiling at this.
Traveling to Mauna Loa next week. I want to take some CO2 measurements with the family, while on vacation.
Before we all go off the deep end and good ol’ Danny Boy counts his chicks before they’ve hatched, does anyone know whether this court has actually pronounced itself competent and to have jurisdiction to rule in the matter? It is quite possible the court will simply dismiss the case as frivolous.
Should the case proceed, it seems likely to me that the court would have to consider all relevant information brought before it, which no doubt would include last year’s ruling by the High Court in the United Kingdom to the effect that Al Gore’s propaganda movie, The Inconvenient Truth, contained 9 outright falsehoods and 3 gross misrepresentations. The “defendants” will no doubt also remind the court of tabulations compiled by respected scientists such as Roger Pielke Sr which demonstrate beyond any discussion how the IPCC systematically refused to consider any peer reviewed study that did not fit it’s AGW “working hypothesis. And the list goes on.
Frivolous and sensation seeking it certainly is.
I don’t trust international bodies to do the right thing in these situations. The Hague will find a finding that benefits the Hague by giving it more international clout…. It will be interesting…. But it wont be a debate on the science of climate… It will be an exercise in socialism.
“Danny Bloom is related to omnipresent blog commenter, and Sierra Club representative, Steve Bloom? BTW Steve, we are still waiting, over a year now for your answer.”
While we are talking about the Blooms. I didn’t get an answer from mr Bloom to my questions here either 😉
http://forums.accuweather.com/index.php?s=10b220b697c4fed82f126a3a4bb0e6cf&showtopic=6854&view=findpost&p=176979
If Danny doesn’t get his billion dollars I can give him a job shoveling snow.
This is backwards.
It should be OUR SIDE bringing the “lawsuit”, for the incredible harm these AGW fanatics are attempting to bring to future generations, dooming them to a world without proper heat or transportation, a world where you can only have power when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. A world where the financial well-being of first-world countries has been undermined and damaged by rumors and ridiculous assumptions. The recent insane oil-price spike was influenced by these people, and cheered by them.
Hansen and Gore should be on the DEFENSE, explaining why they think it’s okay to fudge numbers, fabricate trends, alter scientifically recorded records, panic young children and keep them awake with nightmares, defend vandals, and all the other horrific things they have been encouraging.
At least when I was a kid and having nightmares about nuclear war, there was a REASON for it: thousands of manmade nuclear ICBMs pointed back and forth across the NH is a much more tangible threat than the output from faulty and incomplete computer models.
In Canada, the ridiculous goof that signed into kyoto (chretien) thought it was about cleaning up polluted water and preventing acid rain. Current Prime Minister Stephen Harper has done what all governments should be doing: shoved it far into the background, and done his best to tame the previous government’s panic-mongering misinformation campaign.
Danny, Danny, Danny . . . murderous amounts . . . CO2.
Last week there was a symposium in Monterey on gray whales. Over the past couple of years, the gray whale count has plummeted with a distinct reduction in calf counts in San Ignacio Lagoon. The symposium was convened to explore the possibility of a climate change influence on those numbers. The conveners were both NMFS scientists with PhDs, one from the National Marine Mammal Lab and the other from the NOAA home office in Silver Spring, who invited all sorts of other scientists from paleontologists to climatologists among the cetologists. The essence of the matter became apparent from the Alaskan and Canadian biologists — the reduced ice from 2005 – 2007 increased the prime foraging grounds in the High Arctic such that the whales spent more time feeding. The results was a distinctly higher calf count for those years. The birth timing remained the same, but because so much extra time was spent feeding in the north, the calves were born north of the traditional calving/breeding grounds and counted up there.
We who presented on the historical climate pointed out the hundred year and thousand year spans when the Arctic was ice free for at lease part of the year, giving the grays a vector for crossing populations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. A genetic study indicated that the peak population of gray whales occurred at a time when the Arctic was ice free (during the Eemian Interglacial).
Danny Boy, have you noticed the human population explosion that occurred during the late 20th Century warming? Do ya think warmer might mean facilitating life rather than murdering?
I am wondering whether is not just a joke.
I have quickly reviewed the Rome Statute. In my opinion the ICC only has jurisdiction on persons and not governments. The ICC might try to prosecute government officials, but ….
Who are the victims? Unborn are not individuals and in principle do not have any rights.
The Court’s jurisdiction is further limited to events taking place since 1 July 2002. Furthermore, IMHO the Court can only rule on events which already have happened and not which may happen in the future.
In principle, the Court is only complementary. A case may be admissible if the investigating or prosecuting State is unwilling or unable to genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution. I am not aware that any of the 106 States have even started considering to prosecute individuals.
I believe it is just a publicy stunt, like we will see more of these kind coming months.
That said, those countries that signed Kyoto saw their overall emissions fall by 17% below 1990.
Is it really a lot of fun to lie?
What’s with “those countries that signed Kyoto saw their overall emissions fall by 17% below 1990” ? (I assume he means ‘ratified’)
I thought Europe was over the 1990 level along with everyone else.
Filing a lawsuit for what ‘might’ happen? I ‘might’ run over Al Gore’s foot. Probably not, but it could happen. Can he sue me? In advance? The Python crew couldn’t have thought of anything this far out.
I think a counter suit is in order, one that is actually serious. Climate alarmism has prompted governments to foster a bio-fuels policy that has lead to starvation of 30 million people and pushed hundreds of millions more into poverty. Real people, real suffering, real time. Suits ought to be filed on behalf of the real victims as opposed to possible victims if a computer models is correct. How about suits about loss in habitat for the orangatang in Indonesia as the forest where they live are converted to orchards for palm oil production. What about the loss of fishing grounds in the Gulf of Mexico due to increased dead zones from fertilizer run off from making bio-fuels. There is a long list of real consequences from climate change “solutions” and its about time the alarmists are held accountable.