By David Wojick
Quick action by a coalition of states has saved the American judicial system from being presented with a huge hunk of climate alarmism in the guise of guidance. Sounds like a lot. and it is.
The story starts with a massive judicial tome called the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. This 1600 page manual is designed to give federal and state judges a basic introduction to scientific issues that frequently show up in their courts.
The manual has been produced since 1994 by a federal judicial branch agency called the Federal Judicial Center. It is reported to be widely used and cited by both state and federal courts.
The Judicial Center just produced the fourth edition of the manual which promptly hit the fan. It contained a new 100 page section called the “Reference Manual on Climate Science,” which was pure alarmism.
Especially egregious was a long sub-section titled “Climate Change Detection, Attribution, and Projections.” Attribution here refers to claims to know just how much of a specific nasty weather event was caused by anthropogenic global warming.
This absurd concept of attribution is the core of the climate hoax. But the manual presents attribution as settled science. Judges are encouraged to accept absurd attribution claims as expert knowledge.
The combined state and federal court systems presently include many trillions of dollars worth of climate change damage lawsuits, all based on attribution claims. These attribution claims are the central issue in the damage lawsuits so it is breathtakingly wrong for the Manual to take a strong (and wrong) position on them.
Fortunately, the states quickly jumped in and objected to this obviously wrong interference with judicial procedure.
Led by West Virginia, a coalition of 27 State Attorney’s General sent a strong letter of protest to the head of the Federal Judicial Center asking that the entire Reference Manual on Climate Science be withdrawn.
As of this writing, the West Virginia Attorney General just received this reply from the Federal Judiciary Center Director:
“In response to your letter dated January 29, 2026, I write to inform you that the Federal Judicial Center has omitted the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Fourth Edition.”
The climate junk is out. Reason wins! There is likely to be pushback from alarmists but the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court chairs the Center’s Board and he is not much pushable.
West Virginia’s letter is also signed by the Attorney’s General of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.
Here are two excerpts from the letter to give you the gist of the primary issue:
“….the Fourth Edition places the judiciary firmly on one side of some of the most hotly disputed questions in current litigation: climate-related science and “attribution.” Such work undermines the judiciary’s impartiality and places a thumb on one side of the scale. It does so even as these issues are pending before the Supreme Court and other parts of the federal judiciary.”
“….the authors offer unsolicited, ex parte expert opinions on matters that they recognize are directly at issue in ongoing suits. In several places, for instance, the authors dismiss any suggestion that climate science is too speculative or uncertain to justify relief. They do so even though those concerns present one of the central problems in climate-related cases (and even though certainty is an essential element of expert admissibility standards).”
The entire letter is well worth reading.
Perhaps this is a step in the direction of ridding the courts of all these frivolous climate lawsuits. Let’s hope so. In any case, well done West Virginia!
>> This absurd concept of attribution is the core of the climate hoax.
I am not sure why that concept is absurd.
I am the first to acknowledge that right now climate science and climate models are nowhere near the required precision and often the measured data of an event is not good enough for a clear Attribution.
Also many past studies in that field are a joke and might serve as an example how not to do math!
I strongly believe there is something to learn from the fact that the latest high-sensitivity global climate models produced warming trends which are unrealistic and outside the confidence intervals of older global Climate Models.
There is something wrong with the newest high CO2-sensitivity models as well as the confidence interval calculation (which vastly identical then and now.. which a new extra element of circular reasoning and cherry-picking after fact by nowadays trying to weight model results based on how close they are to measurements.. a comparison which already wrongfully entered the process beforehand when the models were tuned)
But the current technical impossiblity aside believe the idea of attribution is a good one, but of course we would need an open debate what is not attribution like the complete work of F. Otto seemingly lacking proper uncertainty estimates..
“I am not sure why that concept is absurd.”
The absurdity, as I would identify it, is in the implied claim to have isolated the computed increase in IR absorbing power of rising CO2 as the cause of a reported warming trend on land and in the oceans. It is not reasonable to have ever supposed so in the proper context of dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation. The influence of the minor static radiative effect (i.e. the GHG “forcing”) is vanishingly weak in comparison, leaving no physical reason to expect a perceptible result.
More here. Lorenz described the concept. ERA5 computes it as the gridded hourly “vertical integral of energy conversion.” I encourage all skeptics of climate alarm to more fully appreciate the implications.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PDJP3F3rteoP99lR53YKp2fzuaza7Niz?usp=drive_link
F. Otto seems to be the M. Mann of hockey-stickism for weather events.
She and Greta can see CO2 in weather events. Or so they claim. There is no evidence supporting their claims.
She and Greta present their opinions as established facts. They are not. They are personal opinions, and are not established science.
She and Greta see what they expect to see, not what is really there.
I have to wonder if ‘attribution’ has an older, deeper root that explains the lack of homework one now sees and experiences in many areas. Human nature often exhibits jumps to conclusion whether based on past experience or not. It has come up in logic and science as long as they have existed, and continues to need education and elaborate fixing in many different ways. Attributing some thing, including using coincidences, can be true, but requires great care and realization that life is often making and correcting mistakes. It helps to realize this before you act.
It seems attribution has a long history of religious applications.
Can’t explain a natural phenomenon, attribute it to Zeus, Jahova, or pick your favorite diety.
“often the measured data of an event is not good enough for a clear Attribution.”
Please list one instance where a reasonable person would be forced to admit attribution.
Every morning the temperature increases after sunrise.
I see. You attribute warming to solar forcing, as the CO2 concentration did not change from the previous night. Maybe you have something there!
Not universally true. I have seen many a day grow cooler than the previous night.
Lacking knowledge of all the factors contributing to any instantaneous measurement or trend makes direct attribution, at best, risky.
My fault, my question reads to vaguely. I’d meant:
Please list one instance where a reasonable person would be forced to admit attribution of that instance with the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s Atmosphere.
I’v been hearing about AGW since I saw a Boston WGBH public television show 40 years ago. There must be _some_ big, obvious, inarguable incident in the past 40 years. Maybe I don’t know about it because I haven’t watched public television in 30 years.
Editorial note : I read your comment as being mostly critical of the application of “attribution” in the domain loosely labelled “climate science”. I do not understand why it has received so many downvotes.
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“But the current technical impossiblity aside believe the idea of attribution is a good one …”
The problem isn’t with the generic idea of “attribution”.
It is with the specific “application” of statistical methods that results in media headlines with generic formats along the lines of
“Scientists say [ recent extreme weather event ] was caused by climate change”
or
“Scientists say [ recent extreme weather event ] was made N times more likely by (anthropogenic) carbon [ NB : should read “CO2″ … ] emissions”
Roger Pielke Jr. wrote about this issue more forcefully, and eloquently, than I could on this subject in an article titled “Climate Fueled Extreme Weather” back in July 2024 (direct link 1), which included :
He later went on to write a series of (8 or 9 ?) “Weather Attribution Alchemy” articles, the fifth one of which directly asked the question “Is Single Extreme Event Attribution Even Possible?” (direct link 2).
That article includes the following, to me, astute observations / conclusions :
“It is certainly possible to assess observational data and determine that a change in the statistics associated with weather and climate phenomena has been detected and to identify the relative contributions of multiple causal factors underlying that change, including the emissions of greenhouse gases.
Climate change is not a cause of extreme weather any more than a change in a baseball player’s batting average causes home runs.”
.
There is a difference between “the concept of attribution” and the version implemented by the WWA … or, as you put it, “the complete work of F. Otto” … that is rapidly amplified by many “mainstream / legacy” media outlets each time they issue a press release.
“I do not understand why it has received so many downvotes.”
Agreed.
Thank you.
I have been saying for a long time that a statistical average cannot cause anything.
You missed the point.
This is not about science, where asking questions is encouraged (or should be).
This is about how judges run trials and providing a manual that is explicit on how those trials shall be conducted goes so far afield of the Constitution, no amount of CO2 emissions reduction could return the courts to a fair and unbiased condition.
You also missed the sentence in the prior paragraph that sets a definitive context for the sentence you quoted.
“Attribution here refers to claims to know just how much of a specific nasty weather event was caused by anthropogenic global warming.”
More good news.
“West Virginia’s letter is also signed by the Attorney’s General of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.”
I notice that my formerly red State of Colorado isn’t on that list. Make Colorado Red Again.
Same for Virginia which I can see out my window.
The good news is that it is gone.
The bad news is that ‘they’ even tried to make it so, in obvious violation of the clear judicial ‘rules’ concerning the purpose and intent of RMSE—enabling all those officially protesting states to get an easy repeal/revision.
We must remain vigilant. The left’s creative efforts to chip away at the foundational edges are relentless. Examples include ongoing climate lawfare now falsely based on public nuisance doctrine, and now claiming arresting illegal aliens ‘requires’ a judicial order under the ‘liberty interest’ doctrine—despite a new SCOTUS ruling to the contrary.
The problem is that public nuisance doctrine is well established—but almost certainly inapplicable to future climate change as there is no present or past nuisance. The problem is that ‘liberty interest’ based on the 5th and 14th A due process clauses as applied to ‘persons’ is well established, but almost certainly inapplicable to criminal illegal aliens or those non-criminal aliens subject to a final order of deportation—they already got due process.
Yes that this wildly alarmist Manual got included shows how deeply entrenched alarmism still is. The battle for truth is far from over. It is barely diminished.
Bigger problem: Who is being paid a salary to write that garbage?
So, given the Supremacy Clause, the cure is Federal Law that declares CO2 is innocent.
A Presidential Pardon is insufficient.