(AFP) – A leading US science body will launch a major report Thursday on how precisely specific extreme weather events can be tied to climate change, a growing research field underpinning billion-dollar lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), independent nonprofit institutions operating under an 1863 charter signed by president Abraham Lincoln, will publish “Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts,” their first update on the topic in a decade.
“Since 2016, attribution science and applications have rapidly advanced, making this new study a timely assessment of the current scientific understanding and capabilities for extreme event attribution,” NASEM said on its website. Ahead of its publication, Republican lawmakers have sought to cast doubt on the authors’ work — sending, for example, a letter in April to the president of NASEM alleging bias and demanding details on the authors’ professional ties.
Separately, Republican Senator Ted Cruz and others have introduced the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act,” a bill that would block climate damage lawsuits from proceeding in court, in a move critics call a de facto immunity shield for fossil fuel companies. Dozens of such lawsuits are working their way through courts across the country. In one example, Multnomah County in Oregon is suing fossil fuel giants including BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil for more than $51 billion for pollution that fueled a deadly 2021 heat dome in the Pacific Northwest during which hundreds died.
In another, Boulder County and the City of Boulder are suing ExxonMobil and two Sunco entities in a case that will be heard in front of the US Supreme Court this fall.
– Rise of rapid analysis – Attribution science seeks to untangle how much human-caused climate change shaped a specific heat wave, storm, or flood, and its findings now shape litigation and policy. The field first emerged in the 1990s and gained credibility as the UN’s climate panel incorporated the work into its assessments. It is now more visible than ever thanks to the rise of rapid analysis studies that can detect the signature of global warming on disasters within days, rather than years.
The nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says it expects a coordinated campaign to target both the report and its individual authors. “The Academies have released reports on all types of different scientific developments and advances. I’m not aware of any that have been subject to this level of scrutiny,” Carly Phillips, a senior scientist who works on climate litigation issues for UCS, told AFP. She added that it comes “on the heels of this growing number of attacks on attribution science specifically by the fossil fuel industry and its allies.”
According to Politico, the coordinated offensive includes records requests sent to public universities where some panel members work, including the panelists’ internal communications, made by the conservative-tilted opposition research firm Argus Insight. While Republicans in Congress have introduced an immunity bill, President Donald Trump’s administration has sued states pursuing such actions and sought to kill “Climate Superfund” laws in New York and Vermont that require polluters to pay into a fund used for climate damages.
– Issam Ahmed and Manon Jacob
© 2024 AFP
