About putting the things in the right perspective, here one very funny tale (it seems true unfortunatley!) about legal effects of global warming issue.

Finally it looks is not a case we have a ratio engineers vs lawyers about 1:50. Look at what they're producing. Will they ever go to work? And will we ever wake up a bit?

Have fun.

The Plaintiff's Bogus `Victims'

The plaintiffs cited six individuals as having already been `harmed' by climate change and were facing further harm in the future.

Presumably these people will appear as witnesses if the case is ever heard in court. Five of these `victims' are, surprise, surprise, members of Greenpeace and/or Friends of the Earth. One of them was even a Greenpeace employee. It is worth summarising the `harm' that the lawsuit claims they have suffered.

Get the tissues ready because these stories are really heart-rending in their tales of human tragedy.

Dr Phillip Dunstan is a professor of biology at Charleston, and a member of Friends of the Earth. He mostly researches coral and blames alleged degradation of corals on `climate change' (presumably over-fishing and water pollution were not even considered by him). He claims that the loss of coral diminishes his `opportunities for biological research'. How sad.

His principal recreation is scuba diving off the Florida Keys, and he claims climate change is hurting his recreation. Many people in the world are lucky just to eat, but we are expected to feel sorry for Dunstan because his `recreation' is spoiled. And how exactly does Dunstan get to the Florida Keys from Charleston? Perhaps a gas-guzzling SUV? Whatever means he uses to get there, both by road to get to Florida and by boat to get to the reefs, we can be absolutely sure his `recreation' emits more greenhouse gases than most of us do in several months.

Dunstan is also building a home on low-lying land near Charleston and he is worried about sea level rise, so much so, that instead of just selling the property and building on higher ground, he is elevating his house at additional expense, and even bemoans the likely increase in insurance premiums he imagines he will pay due to fear of sea level rise. Tip for Dunstan - U.S. real estate prices are high. Just sell up and build somewhere else. There might even be a handsome profit in doing so.

Pam and Jessie Williford are members of both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and are retired, living near Raleigh, North Carolina. They own a block of land on low lying ground and intend to build a house there in a few years. But now they fear sea level rise and claim they would never have bought the land 25 years ago had they known there might be flooding. So now they are faced with spending extra money to make the house flood proof.

Must the government pay `damages' to them? There is a better solution - they could just do the intelligent thing and sell the block for a handsome profit (after 25 years ownership too!) and go build somewhere else.

Arthur and Anne Berndt are farmers in Vermont, producing Maple Syrup. They are both members of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. They fear that maple trees might migrate north and leave them with no more maples from which to produce their syrup.

If the maples really did migrate north, the Berndts could always do what other farmers have done since time immemorial when climate shifts and changes in market forces occur - grow something else.

Melanie Duchin is an employee and member of Greenpeace, working in Anchorage, Alaska. She blames local outbreaks of spruce bark beetle on `climate change', something which `harms' her recreational hiking activities in the area. Time for the violins.

But Ms Duchin has the ultimate ace to set her apart as a `victim' of climate change. She does regular trips to the Arctic coast of Alaska for `personal recreation', and intends to do so on an annual basis. Climate change in the Arctic will, she claims, diminish her `recreational and aesthetic enjoyment' of the Arctic.

But think about Ms Duchin's predicament for a moment. She herself is contributing directly to the very climate change she claims hurts her self-indulgent `recreation'. To get from Anchorage to the Arctic and back every year requires transportation - and that runs on fossil fuels, such as aviation fuel.

So the very act of her going a thousand miles to the Arctic and then back again every year amounts to a significant emission of greenhouse gases on her part. While she demands the right to consume fossil fuels in an annual recreational trip to the Arctic, she would deny access to such fuels for people in developing countries whose needs would be much more pressing than mere `recreation'.

Perhaps she should sue herself on the very same legal grounds that she is suing the U.S. government.

Conclusion

Will American courts even agree to hear this lawsuit? If they do, the case will be heard in Washington DC, at the very epicentre of the U.S. legal and political system. That's fully in keeping with the Greenpeace strategy of extracting maximum media publicity. For the U.S. courts to allow themselves to become bit players in this political pantomime would only diminish their credibility.

In terms of the case itself, the science underpinning `climate change' is by no means as settled as the plaintiffs seem to imagine. Quite apart from the claims about global warming (the magnitude of which is hotly disputed), the lawsuit bases itself primarily on the alleged impacts this climate change would have. There is no consensus in the scientific community as to what these impacts might be, some even viewing the prospect as beneficial (such as the fertiliser effect of carbon dioxide). Yet the case is based entirely on a claim that the impacts would be both real and universally harmful.

It is to be hoped that this case may provide an opportunity for the claims about global warming and its possible impacts to be tested and cross-examined in a public forum, free from the restraints of in-house peer review and the censorship of dissenting views which goes with it.

by John L. Daly
31 August 2002