What better endorsement could skeptics ask for? – Anthony
by Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post
The justices of the United States Supreme Court this week became the world’s most august global warming sceptics. Not by virtue of their legal reasoning – the global warming case they decided turned on a technical legal issue — but in their surprising commentary. Global warming is by no means a settled issue, they made clear, suggesting it would be foolhardy to assume it was.
“The court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon-dioxide emissions and climate change,” reads the 8-0 decision, delivered by the court’s acclaimed liberal, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The court decision noted that the Environmental Protection Agency itself had “Acknowledg[ed] that not all scientists agreed on the causes and consequences of the rise in global temperatures,” before suggesting readers consult “views opposing” the conventional wisdom. Specifically, the justices’ recommended reading was a superb profile of Princeton’s Freeman Dyson, perhaps America’s most respected scientist, written in the New York Times Magazine, March 29, 2009.
Freeman, an unabashed skeptic, believes that carbon dioxide, rather than being harmful, is both necessary and desirable, arguing that “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
Somewhat in the same vein, Justice Ginsburg notes carbon dioxide is necessary and ubiquitous, and thus shouldn’t be the target of indiscriminate attacks. “After all, we each emit carbon dioxide merely by breathing,” she notes, repeating a point that Dyson couldn’t have said better himself.
To see exactly what the Supreme Court said in its remarkable American Electric Power v. Connecticut decision, click here.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers.
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See also:
Freeman Dyson: speaking out on “global warming”
Freeman Dyson on Heretical Thoughts and Climate Change
Wow. Thanks for this, Anthony.
The CAGW boys have had a hard time bulldozing Prof. Dyson. James Hansen huffs that Dyson “doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” and other AGW stalwarts say he doesn’t know jack about climate, but Dyson knows models and their limitations — and in fact worked for Alvin Weinberg’s pioneering multidisciplinary climate studies group at Oak Ridge, and also did climate studies for the JASON defense advisory group.
Wikipedia has some of the details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Career
One of my scientific heros.
Cheers — Pete Tillman
Consulting Geologist, Arizona and New Mexico (USA)
The justices did not recommend reading Dyson. After extensively quoting the EPA’s assessment of the dangers of CO2 emissions there is a footnote for contrasting views. The statement “After all, we each emit carbon dioxide merely by breathing,” was not made in the context of CO2’s greenhouse effect, if was merely pointing out that we cannot regulate all sources of CO2.
You may recall the Supreme Court ordered the EPA under Bush to stop ignoring the science. Now this is finally happening.
Who’d a thunk the Supremes had this much collective wisdom? Is this a leap year? Am I on Candid Camera? You’re dissing me, right? It’s April First, that’s it, it’s April First!
The Supreme Court, recognizing the climate debate for the quagmire that it is, have completely absolved themselves from the issue. The Court unanimously declared that the climate issue is not judicial, but rather regulatory / legislative and placed the millstone of greenhouse gasses around the neck of the Environmental Protection Agency. The next time there is a confrontation about emissions affecting climate, the money quote from the Supreme Court will be “Not my problem.”
Wow, what a revelation. There is some sanity after all given the mindless edicts of the EPA. Yay!
What? Don’t tell me sanity has broken out on the SC. Has anyone fact checked this to see if it is real?
Wow!!
Of course this means absolutely nothing to this administration, other than to push their agenda (via regulations) even harder and faster.
You know, you really shouldn’t quote mine half a sentence to try and twist it. The entire sentence:
“Acknowledging that not all scientists agreed on the causes and consequences of the rise in global temperatures, id., at 66506, 66518, 66523-66524, EPA concluded that “compelling” evidence supported the “attribution of observed climate change to anthropogenic” emissions of greenhouse gases, id., at 66515.”
Oh. That.
Do you suppose Jill Singer believes the U. S. Supreme Court justices and Freeman Dyson should all be gassed with carbon monoxide?
The SCOTUS only gets burned ONCE!
From 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/washington/03scotus.html
They put it right back in the EPA’s lap.
It is sad day when the judiciary has to defend science by demanding that climate science is far from settled. This should have been done by the various academic science organizations, but as we all know they have become cowardly in their duty to preserve truth in science.
Freeman is a Free Thinking Man, thank goodness for that.
Wow. So now the right to be a climate “denier” is protected by legal precedent in the US. Team AGW won’t like that.
This is why Warmists generally avoid debates or the courts.
And a unanimous decision to boot! The US court system is the best hope of the developed world to stop the CAGW madness.
Music to my ears; in fact, I hear a symphony.
alGore said the science is settled. The court is correct in relagating this to the EPA. The EPA has not been given authority to regulate interstate commerce and create taxes.
My favorite part is that the EPA has DETERMINED the consequent dangers of greenhouse gas emissions to be:
“increases inheat-related deaths; coastal inundation and erosion caused by melting icecaps and rising sea levels; more frequent and intense hurricanes, floods, and other “ex-treme weather events”
I guess that means the EPA’s models are infallable.
This really wasn’t a remarkable decision. It is a straight federalism decision, the EPA has the power to regulate the emission of carbon dioxide and so preempts any right under federal common law for the states to regulate CO2 emissions. Pretty straightforward decision. This is not a technical legal issue, rather it goes to the heart of the American Federal system.
Solomon severely mischaracterizes the decision in his piece. Rather he hangs his whole interpretation on the contents of a single footnote and a sentence in made in passing about the absurdity of regulating every point source of CO2 through a permitting process.
Mike said: “The justices did not recommend reading Dyson.”
Rationalization: (mathematics) the simplification of an expression by eliminating radicals without changing the roots of the equation.
What the justices _actually_ wrote was:
“Acknowledging that not all scientists agreed on the causes and consequences of the rise in global temperatures, … EPA concluded that “compelling” evidence supported the “attribution of observed climate change to anthropogenic” emissions of greenhouse gases.”
And to say they recommend reading the profile of Freeman Dyson is a stretch. In a tiny footnote, they note that article as an example of views opposing the EPA’s – and 98% of climate scientists, it’s worth noting.
The Supreme Court has not cast doubt on climate science. That’s spin.
climatide,
Where did your “98%” number come from? A proctologist?
Prof Freeman Dyson was a peer of Prof Richard Feynman, who said that Dyson should have shared the Nobel Prize for synthesizing and reducing to practice the Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonaga solutions to the renormalization problems of quantum electrodynamics, but the Nobel prize for Physics is limited to three recipients.
Read some Freeman Dyson comments on computer climate models here.
Translation: “Pay no attention to that opinion on scientific incompleteness!! Politically this was a win for our side! Repeat after me, it’s all about the science, except when it isn’t!”
Other than reserving the right to review future EPA rulemaking to ensure that it is not “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law”, SCOTUS decided there is no remedy available to plaintiffs as any (hypothetical) federal common law has already been displaced by Congress delegating the CO2 emissions rule-making power to EPA. This decision also effectively binds individual states.
However, this is not all good news as SCOTUS is still clearly expecting EPA to take active steps to regulate CO2 emissions (as under Massachusetts v EPA) – albeit that questions such as the core science, the costs of mitigation and any consequent health and environmental impacts are to be determined by the EPA administrator (or by POTUS as her boss), subject to further review. However SCOTUS may take different line in future cases if Congress later votes (for example) to de-fund EPA, or to exclude CO2 emissions from the rule-making power.
The real battle therefore still remains over the science: how much (more than purely minimal) warming is caused by increased atmospheric CO2, both initially and after delayed feedbacks. However, until the science issues become absolutely clear, SCOTUS may well again decline to get involved by accepting EPA arguments that the contingency principle should apply.