Guest cross examination by David Middleton
THE PEOPLE V. CLIMATE CHANGE
‘Biggest case on the planet’ pits kids vs. climate change
A pioneering lawsuit against the U.S. government won the right to a trial. But the Trump administration is still asking the courts to cancel it.
BY LAURA PARKER
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 19, 2018
LEVI DRAHEIM IS a nine-year-old science geek. He founded an environmental club as a fourth grader and gives talks about climate change to audiences of grown-ups. His home is on a slender barrier island on Florida’s Atlantic coast, 21 miles south of Cape Canaveral and a five-minute walk from the beach. By mid-century, his sandy childhood playground could be submerged by rising seas. He will be just 42.
Nathan Baring is 17 and a high school junior in Fairbanks, Alaska—120 miles south of the Arctic Circle. He loves cold weather and skis. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Now winter snows that Baring once celebrated as early as August in Fairbanks can hold off until November.
By 2050, Arctic sea ice will have virtually disappeared, and temperatures in the interior, surrounding Fairbanks, will have risen by an additional 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit, altering the boreal forest ecosystem. Nathan will be 50.
“I can deal with a few days of rain in February when it’s supposed to be 40 below,” he says. “But I can’t deal with the idea that what my parents experienced and what I have experienced will not exist for my children. I am a winter person. I won’t sit idly by and watch winter vanish.”
Baring and Draheim so lack confidence that they will inherit a healthy planet that they are suing the United States government for failing to adequately protect the Earth from the effects of climate change.
[…]
The kids’ lawsuit was joined by acclaimed NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who began studying climate change in the 1970s and whose granddaughter, Sophie, is among the 21 young plaintiffs.
[…]
Last fall, U.S. District Court Judge Anne Aiken agreed with the youths’ claim.
[…]
“I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society,” Aiken wrote. “Just as marriage is the foundation of the family, a stable climate system is quite literally the foundation of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”
[…]
“I can deal with a few days of rain in February when it’s supposed to be 40 below”
–Nathan Baring, 17
That’s refreshing… A teenager who can handle a few days of rain in February.
“I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.”
–U.S. District Court Judge Anne Aiken
How in the HELL can anyone have a “right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life”? What’s next? The right to friendly plate tectonics? The right to non-lethal bolides?
Somebody better sue Milankovitch to prevent this from happening again…
Why not sue the Federal government for failing to protect us from That 70’s Climate Science Show…
Maybe Jimbo Hansen can sue the climate for defying his model…
Same goes for the folks at Remote Sensing Systems…
They should have very solid cases against the climate.
While they’re at it, the climate kiddies sue everyone who benefited from consuming all of these fossil fuels instead of freezing and starving in the dark…
Then we can counter-sue them for trying to deprive us of our right to not freeze and starve in the dark.
Better yet, sue these people for failed predictions…
- In 1865, Stanley Jevons (one of the most recognized 19th century economists) predicted that England would run out of coal by 1900, and that England’s factories would grind to a standstill.
- In 1885, the US Geological Survey announced that there was “little or no chance” of oil being discovered in California.
- In 1891, it said the same thing about Kansas and Texas. (See Osterfeld, David. Prosperity Versus Planning : How Government Stifles Economic Growth. New York : Oxford University Press, 1992.)
- In 1939 the US Department of the Interior said that American oil supplies would last only another 13 years.
- 1944 federal government review predicted that by now the US would have exhausted its reserves of 21 of 41 commodities it examined. Among them were tin, nickel, zinc, lead and manganese.
- In 1949 the Secretary of the Interior announced that the end of US oil was in sight.
If we’d run out of fossil fuels back then, the climate kiddies and Judge Aiken wouldn’t be worried about being deprived of their right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life.
The reality is that climate change has been going on for eons and will continue to go on whether mankind is here or not. Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change that we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. The party to litigate is Mother Nature. Lots of luck collecting on a judgement against Mother Nature.
An Obama oooops moment!
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/barack-obama-left-australia-swinging-in-the-breeze-over-air-strikes-kevin-rudd-20181022-p50b9d.html
I’m just wondering how you are supposed to survive in -40 degrees without fossil fuels.
If it’s their right to have a hospitable to human life planet.. wouldn’t it help their cause to have less -40 degree days? And more rain days?
“I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” (and a providing for a free and ordered society is the job of the Feds ….)
–U.S. District Court Judge Anne Aiken
Let’s go with this. So, all we need to do, is show by preponderance of evidence, that given the existing regulations that are in place, there will (or will not) continue to be a climate system capable of sustaining human life. And the Judge thinks trial evidence is necessary for this assessment?
And the spin-off. If I am stuck in Fairbanks and I can’t afford the heating oil necessary to sustain human life, isn’t it then the responsibility of the Federal Government to to either give me winter’s supply of oil, or a plane ticket to Florida, or provide me with a “climate system capable of sustaining human life”?
It strikes me as ironic, in a world in which the Federal Registry weighs in the multiple tons, that anyone can speak of a “free society”.
“free and ordered society”
One of these things is not like the other…
So far as I can tell, their climate will be no different than ours – but….if it’s not sustainable where they live, they can always MOVE.
Forget suing these brats. SHUT OFF ALL FOSSIL FUELS TO THEIR SCHOOLS AND HOMES. Give them exactly what they want.
Exactly. If the plaintiffs, their families and their lawyers cannot demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that they do not use fossil fuels for anything, including travelling to court, the case should be dismissed forthwith.
It’s like this on a continental scale kiddies-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/from-snow-to-43c-australia-set-for-24-hours-of-wild-weather/ar-BBOL7oG
but they tell me some grownups are trying to fix the weather for the whole globe for you but at your age I’d strongly advise sticking with Father Xmas, the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
How can you fix the weather when it is naturally occurring?
David,
In future graphs showing Hansen’s 1988 predictions, you should consider correcting the Scenarios B and C to reflect the fact that the hypothetical volcanic eruption did not take place in 2015 as assumed by Hansen.
How could he have possibly botched a volcanic eruption prediction?
/SARC
An activist judge with an agenda.
Looks to me like we’re making the arctic more habitable, not less. Can I not sue these people for my costs incurred in supposedly making that happen?
We would save tremendous quantities of fuel by halving the value of earth gravity.
And collect considerably more solar energy by doubling the Planck constant.
Time to act Your Honor, Humanity has the right to be governed by greener laws of physics!
Abolish old reactionary corrupt by big oil physics !
Really rather sad using children to push a scam .
The climate models used to justify the biggest farce in history
have been proven to grossly overstate actual warming . Pushing a false narrative that is scientifically preposterous is fraud . Tens of thousands die every year from a lack of heat stemming from government imposed policies . Fuel poverty is planned mass genocide, which after all is the real objective of the virtue signalers .
The charlatans that have perpetrated this mass extermination knew exactly what they were doing and need to be held accountable .
“Maybe Jimbo Hansen can sue the climate for defying his model…”
and
“Scenario A is “business as usual.” Scenario C is where humans basically undiscover fire in 1999.”
No
It was the other way around – his scenarios did not fit his “model”.
The RCP we followed fell between C and B
Hansen was using GISS Ts (no SST’s … were not available in ’88)
That plot is also of GISTEMP (includes SSTs) and as land is warming quicker, it is a cooler index.
NS quote from here….
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/30/analysis-of-james-hansens-1988-prediction-of-global-temperatures-for-the-last-30-years/
“Hansen’s atmospheric model covered the whole ocean, whereas GISS Ts doesn’t, quite. So it could be argued that the right measure lies somewhere between. I think that was Hansen’s view. But at the time, Hansen used GISS Ts in his comparison. There were no indices at the time using SST.”
And from Nick’s website …
https://moyhu.blogspot.com/2018/06/hansens-1988-predictions-30-year.html
“What the showing of combined temperature records shows is that Hansen’s 1988 prediction is about as good as it could be, because it sits within the scatter of modern records. The difference between GISS Ts and GISS land/ocean is comparable to the difference between GISSlo and scenario B.
As a check on my active plot above, here is RealClimate’s rendition of the case for GISS land/ocean with the same scenarios:
This is the correct graph using GISTEMP, and not the one shown above.
Also you ignore other forcings that Hansen included (other GHGs).
They fell below what his scenarios projected.
Methane fell well below in particular.