Excerpts from The LA Times story:
U.S. Chamber of Commerce seeks trial on global warming
By Jim Tankersley
August 25, 2009
Reporting from Washington
The nation’s largest business lobby wants to put the science of global warming on trial.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.
Chamber officials say it would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.
“It would be evolution versus creationism,” said William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. “It would be the science of climate change on trial.”
The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court.
The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a “waste of time” and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be “frivolous.”
EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency based its proposed finding that global warming is a danger to public health “on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare.”
…
The chamber proposal “brings to mind for me the Salem witch trials, based on myth,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist for the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists. “In this case, it would be ignoring decades of publicly accessible evidence.”
…
The proposed finding has drawn more than 300,000 public comments. Many of them question scientists’ projections that rising temperatures will lead to increased mortality rates, harmful pollution and extreme weather events such as hurricanes.
In light of those comments, the chamber will tell the EPA in a filing today that a trial-style public hearing, which is allowed under the law but nearly unprecedented on this scale, is the only way to “make a fully informed, transparent decision with scientific integrity based on the actual record of the science.”
Read the complete LA Times story here
Website of the US Chamber of Commerce here
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How exactly should we call a country where the scientific opinion would be decided by law? Reminds me the Galileo trial…
First I am not a lawyer; second I am a Canadian. So I am not sure I am competent to make this comment. But it seems to me that it does not matter who the judge is. What matters is who has the burden of proof. Does the EPA have to prove that CO2 is a pollutant, or does the Chamber of Commerce have to prove that it is not a pollutant? I would be grateful, if there is a competent lawyer around, if that question could be answered. I suspect any judge, after hearing the evidence, would be able to rule if the party with the burden of proof has made it’s case.
I would expect there would have to be a concrete definition of the words “threat to human health and welfare.” There then would have to be concrete proof as to the specific causes of the climate change that would be a ” threat to human health and welfare.” Then they would have to prove that human activity creates the specific causes. Then they would have to prove that the government could actually do anything about it.
This is what I would expect but may not get. If the EPA stacks the court then they will have their legal judgement that AGW is true and needs to be adressed by government. How would we fight it then?
Of course the EPA is opposed to a trial! Facts are a climate change advocate’s worst nightmare. The EPA knows that it will lose this trial, and badly. They are not stupid enough to fight a war they know they have no chance of winning. All they have is “peer-reviewed” studies, which in today’s world is now meaningless.
I was interested in the ACU’s allusion to the Scopes monkey trial in part because I’ve just finished re-reading H L Mencken’s classic 1925 reports. This quote seems appropriate in our context:
“If [Scopes lawyers] Darrow, Malone and Hays could make a month’s stumping tour in Rhea county I believe that fully a fourth of the population would repudiate Fundamentalism, and that not a few of the clergy now in practice would be restored to their old jobs on the railroad.”
Quite.
It is, of course, right to say that the courts are not the place to decide on scientific issues but I’d argue that an exception is justified in this case.
It is not the ACU that claims that the “science” of climate modeling is settled and seeks on that basis to pass laws when it is clear to any impartial observer that the science is far from clear. Its members will, however, be expected to meet a significant part of the cost and it seems reasonable that they should be permitted to examine the quality of the science.
To all intents and purposes, not only has this not been permitted but it is being left to unpaid volunteers to audit of the work of dangerous and expensive bureaucracies both in the US and here in the UK.
If the ACU’s action does no more help to undermine claims of the “certainty” of the AGW hypothesis and encourage others to examine the topic with more care, it would IMHO be money well spent.
Nor do i think it’s totally accurate to say that the Scopes trial is a poor precedent. As Mencken explains, Darrow wanted a guilty verdict so the case could be appealed to a higher – and more competent – court . In any case “the whole world has been made familiar with the issues, and the nature of the menace that Fundamentalism offers to civilization is now familiar to every schoolboy”.
That’s something to aspire to.
The healthiest part of society, who do not ask for the help of any government or anybody to solve and overcome the challenges of daily living, those who base their businesses in common sense, otherwise these would not work, who are not paid for imagining any nonsense or openly lying, the entrepeneurs, make this call to reason, and all we can do is to wish them success in this endeavour.
I have to agree with some that I am less than happy with the idea of science being settled in court. Having said that I am even less happy with the doom laden MSM acting as final arbiter.
Perhaps focusing the debate on the shaky foundation of the AGW house of cards might not be a bad thing. Most of the “thousands of peer reviewed AGW papers” referred to by talking heads of one sort or another are just speculation built on those very few foundation cards.
After all if there is no real 0.6C trend over the last C or CO2 is a result of not a cause of warming what exactly do all those “thousands” of papers and the endless speculation mean?
Four data sets and questionable model of the atmosphere on trial might return a focus that has long gone missing in the endless speculation and reading of entrails.
Adjudicating science in a court of law is a very bad idea. Were our justice system able to render a finding available in Scotland, “Not Proven”, there might be some merit to the idea.
Hard evidence in this subject seems “hard” to come by, so the proceedings would likely devolve into contentious testimony.
Whom do you believe?
It is unfortunate that peer review has served us so badly. When “peers” are technically weak in the disciplines in which the fallacies of many of these papers reside, we get faulty science.
The orthodox popularity of the theories, and that is all they are, that human CO2 emissions will very soon provoke an unrecoverable climate disaster would be even more difficult to defuse if some court were to find the theories credible.
What is going to be the standard? Preponderance of evidence or beyond resaonable doubt? The judge? Lance Ito, Royce Lambetrh, Solomon? It’ll take longer than all of O.J.’s trials combined–meanwhile the machine of gov’t rumbles on.
JimB (03:10:17) : To paraphrase your words:
“MAN-MADE or HUMAN-CAUSED or C02-AND POLITICALLY ENHANCED AND INDUCED…GENERALIZED STUPIDITY AND THE CONSCIOUS PROMOTION OF IGNORANCE AND DECADENCE FOR THE WELFARE OF JUST A FEW”
I’m not seeing that the GCMs would be admissable. IMO, based on the facts (available good data), the evidence is for miniscule A in AGW or cooling for that matter. CO2 driven climate change shouldn’t get out of the starting blocks in court.
The political reality will be that the precautionary principle will be invoked regardless of the facts based on the “coulds,” “maybes,” and “possiblies.” That’s because the trial wouldn’t be about cost vs benefit.
I still voted yes in the poll because it would be nice to have a public demonstration of the paucity of cold hard climate facts that could stand up in court vs all of the speculative “in conclusion this study indicates that ‘X’ might possibly cause ‘Y’ (please send more grant money)” papers that we have now.
Though it would be fine entertainment, I don’t think a trial will solve anything. The loser of this trial would naturally claim that the outcome was “rigged” by biased judges who have their hands in the pockets of either Big Oil or the Big Green Movement. The only judges worthy enough–unbiased enough–to hear this case are Time and the Climate Record. We’ll have to wait a while for a summary judgement, I’m afraid.
The act of bringing Anthropogenic Global Warming before a judge for critical analysis would be the end of the argument.
Comparing an AGW trial to the recent District of Columbia v. Heller gun control trial shows what the results would be. The arguments for gun control could not stand up the reasoned, well documented case for the private ownership of guns. The emotion based arguments, cherry picked data, and preposterous, inconceivable, hypothetical scenarios that carried the gun control movement for years collapsed without a sound or even a bounce.
I think it will all hinge on how it comes to trial in the first place.
The Scopes trial came about because the scientist was arrested. The whole debate came as a result of that.
Similarly, the US CoC will have to wait until the EPA actually take action under the new rules. If they try and ask for a judgment as to whether the EPA can be allowed to adopt the new rules, then I’m not sure what the outcome would be.
I’ve submitted it to Reddit (Should I have asked first?), so if the story doesn’t get buried, it will be interesting to see the comments there.
One big trial now to save a lot of smaller ones later on.
The idea that this is onlyabout “climate change” and thus about a tautology seems misplaced. The L.A. Times story does mention “climate change” but also talks of global` warming and rising temperatures, so despite the code words, the chamber might be able to focus the effort, and everyone knows what this is about.
Other quotes…
The EPA is having none of it, calling a hearing a “waste of time” and saying that a threatened lawsuit by the chamber would be “frivolous.”
EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency based its proposed finding that global warming is a danger to public health “on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare.”
Environmentalists say the chamber’s strategy is an attempt to sow political discord by challenging settled science — and note that in the famed 1925 Scopes trial, which pitted lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a courtroom battle over a Tennessee science teacher accused of teaching evolution illegally, the scientists won in the end.
Is this a hearing or a trial? It might be interesting to see how EPA actually based its findings–in fact the EPA may not even know, themelves, until data and methods are released entirely. Sowing political discord, indeed!
This trial is a necessary step and the timing is almost perfect.
Regulation of CO2 by the EPA is the second front of the fight against the climate madness.
If the Waxman Bill is defeated in the US Senate, EPA will enforce reductions of gases, CO2 emissions (and five other gases) through the Clean Air and the Clean Water Act which will lead to a massive Government Organization and a witch hunt on all CO2 emitters, effecting the lives of us all.
The legal basis for this was created by the Obama Administration on April the 17th when it declared that CO2 and five other gases were a danger to human health and the environment.
EPA’s endangerment findings, despite massive scientific input stating opposite conclusion followed the ridiculous findings of the Obama Administration.
The threat of EPA regulating emissions could influence the upcoming vote by the US SENATE in favor of the Waxman Bill, as unchallenged EPA would pose a much bigger threat to the economy.
In this perspective the Chamber of Commerce initiative comes right in time.
Hopefully they wil come up with the right arguments to make their case and win it.
GeoS (00:36:56) :
Didn’t help with DDT did it? The judge ruled in favour of DDT – the science being totally sound. But what did the EPA do? Banned DDT and how many people died and still die as a consequence.
check the facts:
DDT is a persistent poison – it does not quickly break down to safe compounds.
Mosquitoes breed rapidly and DDT resistant strains were developing. To continue to spray DDT to eradicate the non resistant mosquitoes would be pointless. Why poison the world eradicating fewer and fewer mosquitoes
From 1952:
http://www.ajtmh.org/cgi/content/abstract/1/3/389
http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/control_prevention/vector_control.htm
Resistance to DDT and dieldrin and concern over their environmental impact led to the introduction of other, more expensive insecticides. As the eradication campaign wore on, the responsibility for maintaining it was shifted to endemic countries that were not able to shoulder the financial burden. The campaign collapsed and in many areas, malaria soon returned to pre-campaign levels
an interesting bit:
http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_07_02_a_ddt.htm
DDT killed some and not other bugs leading to bed bugs ! etc.
In Malaysian villages, the roofs of the houses were a thatch of palm fronds called atap. They were expensive to construct, and usually lasted five years. But within two years of DDT spraying the roofs started to fall down. As it happened, the atap is eaten by caterpillar larvae, which in turn are normally kept in check by parasitic wasps. But the DDT repelled the wasps, leaving the larvae free to devour the atap.
In Greece, in the late nineteen-forties, for example, a malariologist noticed Anopheles sacharovi mosquitoes flying around a room that had been sprayed with DDT. In time, resistance began to emerge in areas where spraying was heaviest. To the malaria warriors, it was a shock. “Why should they have known?” Janet Hemingway, an expert in DDT resistance at the University of Wales in Cardiff, says. “It was the first synthetic insecticide. They just assumed that it would keep on working, and that the insects couldn’t do much about it.”
DDT was abandoned not because of greenies but because:
it was becoming ineffective
It was killing other beneficial bugs.
the money dried up
It was being improperly applied
Hmm Dalai Lama might be a universally respected judge?
It would be very interesting to see Christopher Monckton against James Hansen. Pure joy.
However, you may do things slightly differently over there. Here, well it’s a bit like the old “Yes Minister” & Public Enquiries. You never hold one unless you are certain of the outcome beforehand so that no minister is held accountable & has to fall on their sword! So often is the case the Govts here tie the brief/remit up in knots so that the desired questions cannot be asked as they a labelled as irrelevant or inadmissible as outside the scope of the inquiry! Frequently it is civil servants who become accountable or the departments they’re in are, so that individuals do’t have to go. So I say you do need an unbiased judge or panel (tribunal?), a wide remit so that as much evidence as possible can be introduced, & the UN/IPCC held to account. Piers Corbyn et al have to date still not received a response from Ban Ki Moon for about a year now, neither to my knowledge has Dr Puchauri responded similarly to the NIPCC’s letter. The time is now. Go for it you have everything to gain.
On reading the responses here, it is clear that some are opposed to the idea because science cannot and should not be resolved in a court of law. This is true as a statement of philosophical intent. But that is not what this debate is about.
The EPA has already stated its intent to use the LAW to the detriment of the chambers own members. It is therefore surely encumbent upon the chambers to bring what is effectively a counter suite. The only way this can be done is by bringing the science into the courtroom. If the chamber took no action then would they not be in dereliction of duty to their own members?
I voted NO. This is dumber than the Scopes trial. Do you really want the outcome to rest in the hands of one person?
Already they twist words….. Climate Change instead of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
“EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan said the agency based its proposed finding that global warming is a danger to public health “on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare.”
It’s not Climate Change that is at issue…. but the purported Anthropogenic effect that is supposed to cause that threat to human health and welfare.
Twisty little so and so’s…. It will be a great show if the Chamber of Commerce can get this to trial…. It will make damn good copy and TV.
I can just picture Al Gore taking the stand while it snows outside the courtroom. Bring it on!
I would be all for this if it would shut you guys up. But when you lost, you’d just move on to other tactics.
Oh, and it’s hilarious that the CoC VP is saying it would be evolutionism vs creationism. Does he not know he’s the creationist in that equation? I wonder what Uncommon Descent thinks of AGW.