International Lawfare - ORIGINAL CONTENT

The IPCC Summary for Policymakers asserts that climate change is causing more frequent and more intense extreme weather events, including tropical cyclones, tornadoes, droughts, floods and heat waves; and, that climate change is increasing the loss and damage these events cause. These assertions are repeated frequently by the US Secretary General, other members of the UN Secretariat and numerous national leaders. The UN Secretary General combines these assertions with a variety of hyperbolic descriptions of the current situation. Interestingly, these assertions regarding causation are not supported by the analyses of IPCC Working Group I. However, they are widely accepted and repeated by the global media.

The UN and numerous of its member nations have requested that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rule on the legal obligations of governments regarding reducing CO2 emissions to limit the climate change they are accused of causing. While an ICJ ruling would be advisory in nature, it would likely be “played up” by the UN secretariat and the media as requiring “greater ambition” on the part of global governments to reduce CO2 emissions. Nations failing to adhere to the ICJ ruling would likely be accused of Ecocide and subjected to additional lawfare.

Extreme weather events have occurred throughout history. The loss and damage they cause has increased over time, largely as the result increasing infrastructure investment, land use changes and GDP growth. Roger Pielke, Jr. and others have determined that when loss and damage from extreme weather events are adjusted for growth in GDP, the trend lines are flat or slightly negative, indicating that climate change is not exacerbating the effects of the weather events.

Tropical cyclones are an interesting case in point. While there is a defined “tornado season” during which they normally occur, we do not know when a disturbance will occur, whether a particular disturbance will develop into a tropical depression, tropical storm or hurricane/typhoon. We also do not know the track a particular storm will follow or whether it will eventually make landfall and, if so, at what intensity. These uncertainties make it effectively impossible to identify and quantify the extent to which any particular storm might have been affected by climate change, though the purveyors of Attribution Analysis assert that they are able to do so. The damage caused by a storm is a function of its intensity, its track and the value and durability of the infrastructure in its path.

Flooding is another interesting case. Flooding can result from heavy precipitation and/or from storm surge associated with storms offshore. Each conversion of landscape (exposed soil) to hardscape (buildings, parking lots, roads and sidewalks, etc.) increases the runoff resulting from heavy rains and increases the geographical extent of storm surge. The likelihood of flooding increases if facilities to handle runoff are not expanded as the percentage of hardscaped surface increases.

Numerous Pacific Island nations have expressed concerns about the potential effects of rising sea levels. However, sea level has been rising since the trough of the Little Ice Age, prior to the increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The rate of rise of sea level has not increased as the result of climate change according to the tide gauge records. The area of most of these islands has increased or remained stable as sea level has increased.