AGW On Trial?
Apologies for two Global Warming Cooling Changing Stuff posts in a row, but you knew it had to come sooner or later:
For years, leading plaintiffs’ lawyers have promised a legal assault on industrial America for contributing to global warming.
So far, the trial bar has had limited success. The hurdles to such suits are pretty obvious: How do you apportion fault and link particular plaintiffs’ injuries to the pollution emitted by a particular group of defendants?
Today, though, plaintiffs’ lawyers may be a gloating a bit, after a favorable ruling Friday from the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, which is regarded as one of the more conservative circuit courts in the country.
The suit was brought by landowners in Mississippi, who claim that oil and coal companies emitted greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming that, in turn, caused a rise in sea levels, adding to Hurricane Katrina’s ferocity.
For a nice overview of the ruling, and its significance in the climate change battle, check out this blog post by J. Russell Jackson, a Skadden Arps partner who specializes in mass tort litigation. The post likens the Katrina plaintiffs’ claims, which set out a chain of causation, to the litigation equivalent of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
At first sight, this looks like just another meaningless and hysterical law suit, but, think about this for a moment. The plaintiffs are going to have to provide actual, factual, relevant, and meaningful evidence, and actually debate the merits of man made global warming in the public eye. The defence will be able to provide relevant, factual, and meaningful evidence, such as the “no warming in the last 10 years” information, all in the public eye. If the climahysteric plaintiffs lose, this could be a major slap in the face for the AGW movement.
Al Gore has been challenged to debate after debate after debate, yet, refuses to engage in one. The Washington Posts’ Andrew Freeman chickened out on a debate with Climate Depot’s Marc Morano. The US Chamber of Commerce called for a climate trial, and, rather than anyone taking them up on it, they were demonized. Lord Monckton has offered to debate any climate alarmist, and none will take him on. Perhaps this trial will shed some reality on the situation, and finally put to rest the notion of anthropogenic climate change. Until they bring it back up in a few years, of course.
“How do you apportion fault and link particular plaintiffs’ injuries to the pollution emitted by a particular group of defendants?”
Easy. just do what asbestosis victims did in the UK where they only have to show that each of their former employers might have been responsible for his/her condition and are therefore jointly and severaly liable to pay out compo ( rightly, in my view ).
Was chatting with a Met Office girly the othe day. She gives lectures to Uni kids about climate change n stuff. I suggested that some people say there has been no Global Warming since 1995, in fact it’s been cooling.
” No, that’s just wrong ” says she.
” Oh, it’s a lie is it ? “
“Well that is why we now talk about Climate Change rather than Global Warming because sometimes the effects will lead to cooling like here in UK where we have suffered 3 poor summers in a row…” LMFAO
I predict that in about 30 years time..if not sooner, people will look back and think that those in powerful decision-making positions were complete lunatics for falling for the ‘cliimate change’ scam. I also believe that a lot sooner than 30 years, all the useless wind turbines will be redundant. Am I a scientist? No. Do I have any evidence? No. But then neither does Al Bore who isnt a scientist either and makes squillions out of the global warming scam. I am just a normal man who thinks pragmatically. We need nuclear stations and tell the greenies to foxtrot oscar and go and live in the Faeroe Islands if they dont like it.
I agree thespecialone; our evil leaders are now so hopelessly in thrall to the myth of Climate Carnage whose bandwaggon they jumped upon hoping to use it for neverending taxation just as the public realise what a load of rubbish it all is and the more we realise it the louder their panic scares become.
It will take a very brave ( or sensible ) mainstream politician to point out, ” hold on, this is all aload of old boll*x “.