From the DAILY SCEPTIC
by Chris Morrison
The old ladies of Switzerland have had their day in the sun – treble Factor 50s all round – but the real plaudits for the recent idiotic climate change verdict from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) belong to the elite billionaire paymasters behind lawfare activists such as Greenpeace and Client Earth. Greenpeace bankrolled the Swiss ladies and Client Earth supplied some of the legal arguments. The case is likely to throw a spotlight on the role that a few moneyed forces are playing in using the judicial system to enforce their insane Net Zero collectivisation on populations around the world. In Europe, the billionaires, who happily fund XR vandals as well as high-earning lawyers, are seeking to redefine the meaning of democracy. In the United States, as we shall see, extensive judge grooming is being undertaken to help the judiciary come to the correct political verdicts in the growing number of climate lawfare cases.
In its way, the ECHR verdict that politicians should somehow protect citizens from alleged human-caused climate change was a punishment beating handed down after a 2021 referendum in Switzerland rowed back on Net Zero. Jessica Simor KC represented the Swiss women and frequently acts for Client Earth. After the verdict she noted: “In Switzerland it’s particularly problematic because they have referendums… the people decided they didn’t want it. This is something that comes up all the time… the conflict between this idea of democracy as entailing… rights which matter irrespective of what the majority decides.”
The stupidity of the ECHR verdict need not detail us for too long since it has been widely discussed elsewhere. But it is surely relevant that most bad weather events have shown little discernible rise in frequency over the last 100 years, while mortality from these events has dropped by 99%. Quite why the United Kingdom is a member of this cultural dead-end of a court with its ‘jurists’ defining law to open borders and save us from the weather is a mystery, but again it need not detain us at this point. Suffice to say it suits Greenpeace, Client Earth and Jessica Simor KC to have a tame, like-minded body of legal social justice warriors to agree on their elite view of what matters, irrespective of how people actually vote.
Condemnation of the ECHR verdict has been widespread, with Net Zero Watch stating that climate catastrophism now represents a clear and present threat to the rule of law and democracy. Director Andrew Montford noted an astonishingly broad interpretation of existing human rights laws that had alarming parallels with what was seen in 1930s Germany. “The judicial activism of the European Court looks very much like the judicial activism under National Socialism,” he added.
As we have seen with attempts to groom journalists and politicians to catastrophise the weather and promote Net Zero, the same wealthy names crop up again and again. So it is with the growing number of lawfare outfits. Greenpeace bankrolled the Swiss case and it collects cash from wealthy donors and foundations around the world. It seeks to remove hydrocarbons from human energy supplies and it is against nuclear energy. It is not clear how the old ladies of Switzerland will survive winter when the wind stops blowing and the sun doesn’t shine in their icy mountain redoubt.
Client Earth has been heavily supported by the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the activist vehicle of Sir Christopher Hohn, one time paymaster of eco-vandals and law-breakers Extinction Rebellion. Hohn is a big contributor to another funder, the European Climate Foundation. Contributions are also forthcoming from green billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Jeremy Grantham, while even the British taxpayer chips in with a contribution from the Foreign Office. Quite why the British Conservative Government is helping to fund an operation that is likely to sue it in the courts is, of course, another mystery.
But if it is bad enough in Europe, climate lawfare is rapidly escalating out of control in the United States. Numerous actions against oil and gas companies are ongoing in a judicial system that is more obviously political than its European counterparts. It might not be surprising to learn therefore that billionaires through their tax-efficient foundations are attempting to re-educate judges around the idea that the climate is collapsing due to the action of humans, and in particular the wicked actions of those that supply 80% of industrial society’s current energy needs.
Washington D.C.-based Environmental Law Institute is backed by billionaire foundation money and, according to Influence Watch, it received $500,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to set up the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP). According to Influence Watch, by May 2023 more than 1,000 judges have participated in the CJP program, which includes 13 curriculum modules. According to the CJP website, the goal is to provide “neutral, objective information” to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation”.
Needless to say, neutral and objective are not words that spring immediately to mind when examining some of the detailed curriculum notes. Misinformation is particularly rife in a module that suggests individual weather events can be attributed to longer term changes in the climate. The judges are told that it is now possible to use attributions techniques to link individual human-caused weather events to climate change. It is not, it is junk science from computer models and since any ‘results’ are unfalsifiable, they fail the first test of the true scientific process. The best known ‘attribution’ service is called World Weather Attribution and is partly funded by Jeremy Grantham. Despite this, CJP claims bizarrely that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change couldn’t hold the view that human influence has warmed the planet without the many attribution analyses that are said to underpin it.
The distinguished science writer Roger Pielke Jr. is unimpressed with weather attribution work, noting: “I can think of no other area of research where the relaxing of rigour and standards has been encouraged by researchers in order to generate claims more friendly to headlines, political advocacy and even lawsuits”.
Paymaster Larry Kramer, President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is more supportive: “With the growth in climate related litigation, judges need this kind of education to be prepared to weight scientific evidence and make better informed decisions.”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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