I’m Going To Sue Scientists Who Gave Me Apoplexy Over Claims Of Climate Liability

The peer-reviewed paper is “Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability” by Christopher W Callahan and Justin S Mankin in Nature, a paper doubtless written using electricity provided by “major fossil fuel” companies, which these researchers say are “culpable” for “harming” (their word) the world to the tune of “trillions in economic losses”. This is thus like an academic shooting students on the quad while writing the paper “The scientific case against gun violence.”

This paper caused me grief, a medical injury. I wanted to spit. I suffered. I had torments. There was a certain amount dyspeptic seething. This paper is responsible. This makes me a victim, and thus eligible to sue. Apoplexy attribution science proves this. Any lawyer-reader might want to consider how we can win substantial damages from this.

Everything that went wrong with this paper started in its first sentence: “Once climate attribution emerged as a field of inquiry, scholars both scientific and legal raised questions about whether climate liability claims could be pursued through common law.” I bet. I can see the hands rubbing together from here. That “trillions” they so loosely toss around must be causing dangerous priapic surges in lawyers calculating percentage fees.

I have written two papers showing why so-called climate attribution studies must not be trusted or used to make any important decision, like who to squeeze for “climate harms.” They are here and here. They are simple, but not too simple, so here, without any of the technicalities, are the main points.

In order to attribute a current weather event to “climate change”, one must have two skillful, unbiased, calibrated (all these terms having certain mathematical definitions) climate models, one of the climate as it is now, in its supposed changed condition, and one of the climate as it would have been had it not undergone any change.

Next step is to calculate the probability of an observed event, conditional on the first “climate change” model, and then again on the “no change” model. If the probability of the event on the “climate change” model is larger than in the “no change” model, then this is evidence whatever caused “climate change” might have caused this event, made it more likely, or increased its strength, or the like.

But if either model is not skillful, or both do not make good predictions, or are not calibrated, then the attribution is worthless. As in of no worth. Too, if the probabilities are not directly estimated from the models, and are themselves modeled (a new model using the climate models as input) and only stated in terms of their parameteric uncertainty, the attribution is worthless (this is highly technical and explained in the papers; point is that most attribution claims fall into this category).

The “climate change” model can at least be checked. Maybe have been. None of them are good enough to tell small events with the required accuracy needed for attributing events like storms. Plus we have observed, outside of models, in the real world, that severe weather, like hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and so forth, are not increasing in fact. Which is how we know that the “climate change” models that make these predictions are not good enough.

Worse, the “no change” model can never be checked, because the atmosphere it assumes is, by modelers’ own admission, fictional. There is thus no way to know with certainty whether that model is accurate, calibrated, or skillful.

Worst is that if you want to blame something besides just “carbon” (the foolish shortening of carbon dioxide), you have to have a third counterfactual model which states what the changed climate would have been like were this blamed source, like fossil fuel companies, removed. There is also no way to know with certainty whether this model is good.

Worsterer still is this: “We could perform these simulations with a coupled Earth system model, but such models are opaque and computationally expensive”. The authors instead use models of the climate models, because, hey, why not. They rant on about the “consensus” in attribution “studies”, which is all the justification they need. This is like reasoning: everybody else is making the mistake, so we’ll make it, too. This is a far from uncommon argument.

It’s not that probabilities cannot be computed in poor- or unchecked-model scenarios, because probabilities can always be computed conditional on any assumptions anybody cares to make. It’s that the information conditioned on is suspect or known to be wrong. And should not be used in the transfer of trillions of dollars, no, nor even a fraction of that.

I am not the only one making complaints about attribution research. Attributions made by scientists for the same events are known to be all over the map, some blaming the event on “climate change” and some not. This immediately proves attributions cannot be trusted. But even if, as hasn’t happened, all scientists agree on a particular attribution, it is not proof the attribution is accurate. All those technical model qualities need to be demonstrated first, and haven’t been.

There’s a lot more to it than this simple summary, so if you want to know more, please read the papers linked above, and the references given. Here, you may take it that no claim of attribution has any practical value.

They have, however, terrific academic value. Think of all the papers one can publish blaming every ill in the world on “climate change”! What a career maker! For you and I, dear reader, have seen every evil in the world attributed to “climate change”. Even our authors today: “If such extremes could be linked to climate change, the logic goes, injured parties could seek monetary or injunctive relief through courts.”

Leave aside the depressing idea that courts are the place to decide science, and focus on what is missing. The authors studiously ignore any good electricity has done. Which is both immoral and asinine, however justifiable it may be in the law. “More than 100 climate-related lawsuits have been filed annually since 2017; many more will come”, they gleefully write.

If we want to sue for bad things, besides my indigestion, we might accuse fossil fuel companies for providing the energy required that allowed the miserable existence of these authors.

Lastly, the singular failure of scientists, indeed even their hersterical hostility, to deny any examples of good coming from changes in the climate proves this field is bereft of commonsense.

I refuse, and you, too, ought to refuse, and all judges ought to refuse, to take any of this nonsense seriously.

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