After being stymied in Congress and  state legislatures, climate alarmists have been increasingly forced to take their cases to the courts and justify their claims with dubious “research.”

“The times they are a-changing,” in particular in the context of “climate” policies and initiatives. And they are not changing favorably for the ideological opponents of fossil fuels, that is, the climate alarmism industry. It now is being forced increasingly to pursue its goals in the courts, which are the least democratic branch of government.

For an ongoing illustration of this reality, look no further than the ongoing case of County of Multnomah v ExxonMobil Corporation et. al., in which Multnomah County, Oregon, has accused a long list of fossil energy producers of responsibility for the 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and for a number of (asserted) heat-related deaths.

That this allegation is preposterous is not the focus here; suffice it to point out that application of the US Environmental Protection Agency climate model shows that the global temperature effect of greenhouse gas emissions from all US natural gas and petroleum systems is about 0.009°C. That impact is not detectable given the normal variability — about 0.1°C — of the surface temperature record.

Critiquing Roger Worthington’s “Research”

Instead, let us focus on the disingenuous use of “research” by Roger Worthington, the plaintiff attorney in that case. Worthington introduced as evidence two studies published in Nature while failing to disclose to the court that he had helped to finance this research, suggesting that he may have been able to influence the published analysis and conclusions. Moreover, Worthington retained an expert, Daniel Swain, who submitted a declaration in support of the plaintiff’s position that relied on the Nature study that Worthington had financed.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Benjamin Souede — who recently presided over a hearing on this matter — was not amused, saying, “I just want to say it clearly, it is not acceptable to submit a declaration by an expert that is based in part on a reliance on a scientific article that plaintiff’s counsel helped to fund without pointing out to the Court that that is so.”

More pointed observations from Judge Souede include,  “Let’s now talk about fraud for a moment. Is it not an inference that is available to a reasonable person that perhaps at the very least the reason that attorney would have helped sponsor that article is to help that attorney’s case somewhere down the road and, further, is it not an available reasonable inference that the attorney might well have tried to shape or influence the conclusions of that study separate and apart from fabricating anything but simply that attorney would have helped to steer that inquiry and the resulting report in some way?” He added that, “no lawyer in the history of American jurisprudence thought it appropriate to submit an expert declaration relying on an article that the plaintiff’s lawyer helped buy.”

The case of Worthington is not the first time that climate plaintiffs’ attorneys have been caught demonstrating unprofessional conduct and ethical malfeasance. Nor is it likely to be the last. In December, Hagens Berman — a law firm that filed a proposed class action climate suit representing Washington State homeowners — was referred to the Department of Justice by a federal judge in Pennsylvania for “misconduct bordering on criminal” in a different set of litigation.

The Causes and Consequences of Climate Lawfare

With the deeply negative economic effects of climate policies — rising energy costs, reduced employment opportunity in important economic sectors and in the aggregate,  serious environmental damage, and massive taxpayer costs — becoming ever-more blatant, political support for such policies has declined sharply.

That is why it can surprise no one that Congress has never enacted a law implementing an explicit reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, such policies have been promoted through (futile) taxpayer support for unconventional energy, federal funding for numerous private and lower-level government climate initiatives, regulations promulgated by executive agencies, private (by foundations in particular) financial support for environmental organizations, and litigation against fossil energy producers.

The Trump administration has promoted sharp reductions in climate grants. Its “energy dominance” and deregulation agendas have ended the regulatory approach. The recent rethinking of climate issues by prominent former supporters of such policies suggests the prospect of a long-term decline in financial support for many large environmental organizations.

For those organizations, that leaves climate lawfare as the major remaining prospective source of their livelihoods, and such niceties as honesty are proving decidedly secondary for climate litigants desperate for dollars. There will be intensified efforts to influence academic “research,” as an example from Oregon State University illustrates, and more funding of such “research” by plaintiff attorneys.  There are likely to be more studies published in formerly serious journals based upon dubious methodologies and erroneous data; an example is the recent study of the economic effects of anthropogenic climate change retracted by Nature because of problems with the underlying data so severe that only political bias explains how it passed muster with the original reviewers.

Just as dishonest “research” will infect the legal system, it will do the same to other policymaking bodies as well. Thus does the dishonesty of Worthington and his ilk harm far more than the interests of honest businesses selling legal products honestly. It is a menace to our economic system writ large; accordingly, it must be strongly suppressed.  Judge Souede’s sharp observations were necessary and appropriate. But they are not sufficient in terms of the scrutiny necessary for the insidious relationship between the trial bar and so-called climate research.

About the Author: Benjamin Zycher

Dr. Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on energy and environmental policy. He is a former senior economist at the RAND Corporation, a former adjunct professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the California State University Channel Islands, and is a former senior economist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.  He served as a senior staff economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, with responsibility for energy and environmental policy issues. Dr. Zycher has a doctorate in economics from UCLA, a Master in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from UCLA.

Image: Shutterstock/SOMKID THONGDEE

The post Climate Lawfare Descends to New Depths appeared first on The National Interest.