Guest “ROTFLMFAO!!!” by David Middleton
Climate Litigation Has a Big Evidence Gap
Climate-related lawsuits don’t often quantitatively link the defendant’s greenhouse gas emissions to the impacts on the plaintiff. Better lines of communication between climate scientists and climate lawyers could help bridge that gap.By Kimberly M. S. Cartier 23 July 2021
Climate change has found its way into courtrooms around the world more and more often in recent years: Plaintiffs have brought more than 1,500 cases of climate litigation since 1986, and an increasing number of cases are filed each year.
[…]
Eos
And every single one of them to reach a judicial decision has failed in the only nation that actually matters… But the authors think that… “Better lines of communication between climate scientists and climate lawyers could help bridge that gap”…
The article refers to a paper in Nature Climate Challenge (Stuart-Smith et al., 2021, pay-walled). While the full text is not available, some of the authors wrote this smarmy little gem for Carbon Brief:
28 June 2021
Guest post: How attribution can fill the evidence ‘gap’ in climate litigation
In November 2015, a Peruvian farmer and mountain guide, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, launched a pioneering bid for climate justice in a German court more than 10,000km from his home in the Andean city of Huaraz.
[…]
However, cases that seek damages for the impacts of climate change – like Lliuya’s – have largely been less successful.
In our new study, published in Nature Climate Change, we find that the evidence used in these cases often does not reflect the most recent advances in climate science.
[…]
Based on our analysis, we identified three areas where attribution science research could address gaps in the evidence provided to lawsuits on climate change impacts.
First, evidence linking the emissions of individual entities – such as countries or companies – to specific impacts of climate change demonstrates how defendants’ emissions contribute to harms.
Second, researchers can provide a more complete assessment of how climate-related hazards interact with plaintiffs’ vulnerability and exposure to help identify the legally relevant causes of losses.
Finally, attribution studies show how an event of given magnitude was made more likely to occur, and/or how an event of given probability was made more intense. In some settings, the numbers for these two approaches to conducting attribution can be sensitive to the exact definition of the hazard. Attribution science can help to identify these sensitivities and lead to a more robust causal argument overall.
[…]
Carbon Brief
Blather is not evidence, at least not in US courts… Case dismissed. Nothing in this vapid nonsense addresses this:
STANDING TO SUE
US DOJ
The “case or controversy” clause of Article III of the Constitution imposes a minimal constitutional standing requirement on all litigants attempting to bring suit in federal court. In order to invoke the court’s jurisdiction, the plaintiff must demonstrate, at an “irreducible minimum,” that: (1) he/she has suffered a distinct and palpable injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct; and (3) it is likely to be redressed if the requested relief is granted.
#Exxon Knew
Variations of this image from a 1978 Exxon presentation appear in most, if not all, nuisance climate lawsuits in US courts:
Here’s the same graph with HadCRUT4 NH overlaid on it:
Way back in 1978, Exxon knew what we all know today… The climate models aren’t worth schist.
References
Cartier, K. M. S. (2021), Climate litigation has a big evidence gap, Eos, 102, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO161031. Published on 23 July 2021.
Stuart-Smith, R.F., Otto, F.E.L., Saad, A.I. et al. Filling the evidentiary gap in climate litigation. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01086-7
Is Nature a science magazine?
If you call this science?
Madakumbura, G.D., Thackeray, C.W., Norris, J. et al. Anthropogenic influence on extreme precipitation over global land areas seen in multiple observational datasets. Nature Communications. 12, 3944 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24262-x
“Using machine learning methods that can account for these uncertainties and capable of identifying the time evolution of the spatial patterns, we find a physically interpretable anthropogenic signal that is detectable in all global observational datasets. ….Machine learning-based methods for the detection of anthropogenic influence (DAI[detection of anthropogenic influence]) have been shown to overcome the reliance on trends and are even capable of detecting the human influence from weather data on a single day………there is a lag in the emergence of the anthropogenic signal in extreme precipitation. This delay is likely due to larger internal and intermodel variability in extreme precipitation. “
And the judge might read—“Several caveats of the machine learning-based detection method should be noted.”
“ Machine learning-based methods for the detection of anthropogenic influence (DAI[detection of anthropogenic influence]) have been shown to overcome the reliance on trends”
That right there should be case dismissed.
A MLA that has learned to divinate noise. Welcome to the Dark Ages.
BS on Machine Learning. Basically I can train an AI to recognize a cat everytime I show it a dog. It will then recognize every new dog as a cat. Train the AI to recognize extreme percipitation as an antropogenic signal and it will do so everytime.
Literally Garbage In = Garbage Out
An extreme case of correlation taking precedence over causation.
It appears that the authors of this paper have fine tuned the Mannian techniques for data selection. Mann simply used a computer program to select data which matched his preconceived idea of what the data should show. Now they are training AI to do this task. We have now reached a much higher level of sophistication in our cherry picking.
LOL @ “machine learning,” which does exactly as it is told by the “programmers” and tells you nothing about the real world, whatsoever.
More like toliet paper rag
It was
It used to be one of the bigs, a paper in Nature was fantastic for one’s career. The same for Science. Those days are long gone now thanks to CAGW-clowns.
There is an Op Ed in this weekend’s WSJ about an interview with Matt Ridley. In it, Ridley differentiates Science as a philosophy from science as an institution.
Nature is a “science as an institution” magazine.
…turtles all the way down.
“Attribution science” is an oxymoron.
Consider the massive global collaboration involved to tease out the upward trend in the red line in the lower chart. Without that effort, there would be no trend.
And then the obvious question for both charts – how was global temperature measured in 1850.
Third question, rather than a change in temperature, what was the claimed global temperature in 1850! If you ask ten data keepers for that, you will get 10 different answers that will range over 10 degrees.
“Better lines of communication between climate scientists and climate lawyers could help bridge that gap”…
Been involved in a few commercial negligence suits as both suer and suee.
It’s really a game of bluff poker between the lawyers.
In the end, neither side gets what they’re after.
(Of course the lawyers always come away with overflowing wallets regardless of any actual judgments)
I believe the lawyers are, in most cases, acting pro brono.
If they win Im sure that pro Bono would be out the door and said law firm would be in charge of the ‘winnings’
It’s the old “you only pay if you win” type of “pro-bono”.
That would be “contingency,” not pro-bono. Pro-bono means “without charge,” i.e., not getting paid. This is something law firms do for a tax write-off/look how nice I am virtue signaling only.
Which lawyers, Prosecuting or Defending? At any rate the prosecution is 0 for 1500 for a reason; Depending on bafflegab…
“Machine learning-based methods for the detection of anthropogenic influence (DAI[detection of anthropogenic influence]) have been shown to overcome the reliance on trends”
is easily shown to be A – a plea to ignore the FACTS of equal or greater droughts floods tornadoes hurricanes and fires and rates of SL rise in the past, and when the CO2 defender demonstrates that B – 410 PPM CO2 grows about 18 percent more food globally with ZERO additional water or land required, and that if the earth was magically transformed back to 280 PPM CO2, millions would starve and WWIII would be a likely outcome, then any rational judge must dismiss.
Oh, and it is also easy to demonstrate that CO2 warming is MIA. The tropospheric hot spot, the signature of CO2 caused warming, is simply not there, and overall tropospheric warming trends are 1/3rd of predicted, happen mostly at night, and are mostly beneficial.
When do the poor get to prosecute the alarmists for making their winter heat and summer AC unaffordable and unreliable? The Texas victims should sue the – – – off of the politicians and wind generators that failed horribly.
That lawsuit, in a rational world, is winnable. ( goose meet gander)
“then any rational judge must dismiss.”
I think you’ve just found the weak link in the chain. Sadly there are a few too many non-rational judges in the field.
The tap dance from the musical “Chicago”.
Nature a science magazine like the Grauniad is a Newspaper or Michael Mann is a Scientist.
Please, that is Pennsylvania State University Distinguished University Professor Michael E Mann to you.
And below par Solid State Physics student who flipped to an easier discipline
Reply: distinction is in the mind of the beholder. It is absent in mine.
And father of the “Mann made” temperature increase.
A state pen “resident” professor?
Should be, based on the economic damage that he and his cohorts have caused.
That would be a sweet lawsuit – Texas families who lost someone due to “renewable” caused blackouts should sue the “climate scientists” whose misinformation and hype led directly to government coddling of the worse-than-useless wind and solar “power” (NOT) sectors, without which the Texas February 2021 blackout doesn’t happen.
Short hand – the “Data Creep.”
The problem for anyone suing for global warming related damages is that said plaintiff relies on fossil fuels. In fact, the demonstrated benefits of fossil fuels outweigh the harms by orders of magnitude.
So far, the benefits vs. harms of fossil fuels haven’t been a deciding factor in any lawsuits however in one prominent case the judge indicated that he thought the question to be extremely important. link So, that’s available if necessary.
Of course ‘they’ can produce an expert witness to say anything they require but the problem is that the defense can easily refute whatever BS they spout and make them look like a blithering idiot. I would dearly love to see (self-admitted fraud by adverse inference) Dr. Mann face cross examination. That ain’t going to happen because he clearly knows better than to voluntarily enter a court of law.
He lost his interest in law suits when he couldn’t win a suit against Mark Steyn- even Dr after, what is it now, 9 years or more! Dr. Mann couldn’t get any evidence he could show in court.
Did the Peruvian farmer actually have to travel to court in Germany? If so he would have shot himself in the foot by contributing to his own problem.
Tsk. As if a native American peoples person would do such a hypocritical thing!
I’m sure he crafted a vessel out of sustainable tools and materials and sailed there.
The case was really about German lawyers taking on power generator RWE using coal and greenhouse gases melting the Andes glaciers thus causing floods for said Peruvian mountain dwellers.
Guess who wasn’t keeping an eye on the flooding on their own back yard
He doesn’t speak German either, so will have misunderstood the lawyer.
No he wouldn’t – because (A) There is no such “problem,” it is purely imaginary; and (B) See (A).
About 10 years ago (or so), the Communication majors saw a chance to get some of the gravy train, and posited that the failure of climate scientists getting their way was because they weren’t communicating properly. Now we see that lawyers are losing case at court because the climate scientists aren’t communicating with them well enough, or in a timely fashion.
I just thought that the climate scientists had communicated their ideas on CAGW / CCC just fine to me – and I saw it to be rubbish.
I think its a polite way of saying that the plaintiffs need to find better testifying whores if they ever want to win one of these cases. If they ever get this far the plaintiffs are going to have one tough time in the damages phase of the case. Exactly what are the damages ?
Marc, the damages are fiscal poverty, disease and death!!!
All due to over expensive and failed heat and cooling when desperately needed, because a bunch of idiot politicians funded windmills and solar, and closed coal and NG.
The point is, there are real harms. In areas like Texas could the citizens sue the failed wind and solar generation companies along with the politicians that promoted them? If not, why not. The harms they received are real and predicted and predictable.
And there is the case of the high-rise residential building in England with the flammable refrigerant and plastic insulation (to prevent global warming) that became a deadly raging inferno.
Or it could be the Oroville Dam, California emergency spillway which was not going to be needed because global warming would result in no more big rain – that bad decision based upon CAGW almost devastated 175,000 people.
Damages?! Hell, where is proof of causation?! Without that, we don’t even get close to “damages.”
These lawsuits are all about getting “activist judges” (aka “idiots”) to “accept” AGW bullshit as fact without evidence, then piling on from there.
Communication has nothing to do with the problem, as you well know.There are only so many ways to polish a turd, but in the end the sniff test will always remind you of what you’ve got. I’ve been following this goat rodeo for 50 years now and the only thing that has changed is how strident the scare mongers have become.
Stridency is presumed to be a workable strategy in court. Unfortunately for the claimants most judges would throw them out for delays.
Spot on.
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell” ~Carl Sandburg~
Now we see that lawyers are losing case at court because
the climate scientists aren’t communicating with them well enough, or in a timely fashionit’s a bunch of bullshit and they have no case.Fixed it for you.
If we could just get the data to fit.
Just give it to Thomas Karl for a little Karlization
Perhaps he will point his finger at it and go ” Na na na na na na” and tease it a little
Huaraz was flooded by Lake Palcacocha overflowing back in 1941 when human emissions were insignificant.
According to Wiki: ‘since the glaciation of the Little Ice Age, Earth has lost more than 50% of its glaciers’ and ‘… this increase in glacial lake formation also indicates an increase in occurrence of glacial lake outburst flood events caused by damming and subsequent breaking of moraine …’.
Outburst floods are a natural event from time to time, Señor Lliuya may be more successful suing Huaraz authorities for their reluctance to find the necessary funds to carry out relatively simple drainage works to lessen the risk.
Irony alert over German lawyers concerning themselves with Andean floods ok
Hey relax, all we have to do to win climate law suits is present the evidence. After 1500 law suits, this is as far as they’ve got?
Actually, sceptics have won every single formal debate with the scientists because they have no evidence that can withstand scrutiny. That is why clisci stopped debating with sceptics. That is why BBC, CNN and the rest of the colluding media won’t invite sceptics on climate programs. Interviewers are left with their mouths hanging open and they have been communicated with by the ‘best’.
I’m sure Iawyers would require evidence of the kind the scientists were were unable to provide in the debates.
There just isn’t any evidence whatsoever, unless you want to present the Great Greening, expansion of forests, wild habitat and burgeoning harvests, on less land because of anthropo carbon dioxide emissions courtesy of the fine folks at Exxon, Mobil, etc. It IS the only palpable evidence of Anthropo CC.
“sceptics have won every single formal debate with the scientists because they have no evidence that can withstand scrutiny. That is why clisci stopped debating with sceptics. That is why BBC, CNN and the rest of the colluding media won’t invite sceptics on climate programs.” And that is why corporate board members cannot afford to specify which scientific authorities they ostensibly rely on for their corporation’s Co2 abatement policies and financial “investment”: the board members have supposedly enforceable fiduciary obligations to act reasonably in the interests of shareholders, and those officers do not have, on balance, any adequate scientific grounds [ie. scientific grounds which they claim to support their decision], for their slaughtering of shareholders’ funds; while they refuse to admit the [suspected] truth that their Co2 abatement policies and financial support are based on political factors. Deceit?? By our top Boards? Whodathunkit? And the complicity of our supine regulatory “authorities” – ‘business as usual’ there, too.
There just isn’t any evidence whatsoever, unless you want to present the Great Greening, expansion of forests, wild habitat and burgeoning harvests, on less land because of
anthroporising carbon dioxide levelsemissionscourtesy of the fine folks at Exxon, Mobil, etc. It IS the only palpable evidence ofAnthropo CCCO2 influence on anything.Fixed it for you.
This is actually a good sign that they have gotten desperate.
‘the most recent advances in climate science’
This must be the first time I learn that there are such ‘advances’.
“New, improved spin.” Brought to you by so-called “climate science.”
How was the HadCRUT4 data overlaid and on the graphic shown? It appears to be on a different baseline.
The Exxon cartoon didn’t have a defined baseline. It was a cartoon derived from publicly available literature reviewed by the authors of the presentation.
The baseline of HadCRUT4 (1961-1990) falls right on the 0 °C line on the Exxon cartoon. So no adjustments of HadCRUT4 were required to directly overlay it on the cartoon.
Court cases are not only decided by ratio, proof or laws, but also by humans called judges.
In Europe many of these like to please the Establishment who handpicked them and therefore go with the flow, the CC Con-sensus.
palpable injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant;
======!
Illegal conduct. Cancer and thermostats are not in the same league.
Global warming causes cancer? Lawsuit at 11.
That is why I have never understood why minors were granted standing in suits they brought over possible future harm when they didn’t even have the right to borrow money to mortgage a property that might possibly be destroyed by future extreme weather that may or may not be a response to anthropogenic CO2!
Sometimes communication in court requires a little “show and tell”.
I used to work for an expert witness in toxic tort air pollution cases, and some of the opposing experts went to the trouble of expressing pollutant concentrations in nanograms per cubic meter, which made them seem impressive due to the numbers in the hundreds or thousands.
The expert witness had a transparent cube made out of plexiglass, which was one meter on a side, and had two people carry it into court. He also had a tiny cube made which was one millimeter on a side.
When an opposing witness would read concentrations off in thousands of nanograms per cubic meter, during his rebuttal he would bring the 1-meter cube into the center of the courtroom, then have the tiny 1-mm cube passed around to members of the jury using tweezers, saying “if this was filled with water, it would weigh 1,000 nanograms. A concentration of 1,000 nanograms per cubic meter is this much pollutant in that much air (pointing to the large cube). Just so everyone is clear, 1,000 nanograms per cubic meter is an extremely low concentration.”
Sometimes that demonstration alone was enough to incite plaintiffs to settle!
Sorry I didn’t read ask the responses so some one might have brought this up, you don’t need facts just the correct judge or judges