I'll Sue Ya! (If You Breathe....)

It appears that if the AGW faithful can't get their way via treaties and legislation, they'll do an end around and use the courts to force the issue that even tough AGW theory appears to either seriously flawed or outright fraudulent. I have no doubt at some point they'll sue you for breathing and exhaling CO₂. (Oh, okay. Laugh now. But just wait until it happens. Then we'll see who's laughing.)

Fresh from the fiasco in Copenhagen and with a failure in the U.S. Senate looming this coming year, the climate-change lobby is already shifting to Plan B, or is it already Plan D? Meet the carbon tort.

Across the country, trial lawyers and green pressure groups—if that's not redundant—are teaming up to sue electric utilities for carbon emissions under "nuisance" laws.

A group of 12 Gulf Coast residents whose homes were damaged by Katrina are suing 33 energy companies for greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly contributed to the global warming that allegedly made the hurricane worse. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and seven state AG allies plus New York City are suing American Electric Power and other utilities for a host of supposed eco-maladies. A native village in Alaska is suing Exxon and 23 oil and energy companies for coastal erosion.

Never mind that there's not one bit of verifiable proof carbon emissions have any relation to any of these things. They'll still take up the battle cry of “I'll Sue Ya!” But then, that's the way the folks like this have always worked, forcing their minority view on the rest of us by bypassing the legislative route and going right to the courts. And they'll justify it by telling us they're doing it “for our own good.” What's worse is that they actually believe it!!

The faithful figure they have non-denominational, gender-neutral, non-judgmental G*d/G*ddess on their side, which gives them leave to employ any means to achieve their ends. (Hmm. That sounds familiar. Where have we heard that before? Somewhere in the Middle East, if I'm not mistaken...)

I do have to admit to surprise when I found that an actual, non-name-calling unemotional debate actually took place in the comments, somewhat lost in the noise of the faithful constantly linking to or copy/pasting discredited “proof”, as if that's all that's needed to 'win' the debate. But all it is is repetition of talking points and nothing else.

One of the debates I mentioned started with this comment by Paul Drallos (edited to remove a few references to previous comments that were not germane to the topic, though the full unedited comment can be seen at the link):

As a physicist with more than 20 years experience of modeling hydrodynamic systems, I can tell you that there are many, many things wrong with the computer-climate models.

Where to begin? Even the AGW people don't contend that CO2 is the dominant climate forcing agent. It is well known that water vapor is much, much stronger. However, in their models, the IPCC has hard-wired into their codes that water vapor responds with a positive feedback to small temperature changes due to CO2. But this is wrong. Actual measurements show that water vapor acts with negative feedback to small temperature changes and does not amplify CO2's effects.

It is insane to say, as Buzz claims, that the pre-human record is irrelevant. By studying the pre-human or early civilization record provides a mechanism for identifying natural behaviors. This is essential for distinguishing natural from alleged non-natural behaviors.

The widespread agreement on how our temperature compares with the last few millennia is that there have been periods of much warmer and much cooler temperatures - Unless one fudges the data as the CRU has unquestionably done. (See the CRU computer codes instead of the emails for incontrovertible documentation of this.)

And Buzz, you are completely wrong about "hide the decline". It has *everything* to do about historical temperature fluctuations. The tree-ring data was used as a temperature proxy (for determining the historical temperature before thermometer data was available.) The problem with the proxy data was that it diverged from thermometer data when thermometer data was available. That means that the proxy data was *not* reliable. The act of "hiding the decline" was an unethical ruse to cover-up the obvious failure of the tree-ring data as a reliable temperature proxy.

I believe Paul has hit the highlights in regards to the theory of AGW and where it fails.

The followups between Paul and another commenter, Buzz Belleville, give a reasonable back and forth, though Buzz does tend to focus on a single dimension (carbon dioxide) as the only driver of climate change. It is in this area where I believe he falls short in his understanding of the semi-chaotic mechanism that is our global climate system.

As the saying goes, Read The Whole Thing.