Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

The science used to attribute extreme weather events to climate change has advanced remarkably in recent years, allowing policy makers, judges, and the public to see clear links between disasters and the fossil fuel emissions driving climate crisis. Now, as the links become clearer, oil and gas lobbyists are scrambling to shield the industry from a wave of lawsuits and state laws seeking to hold profiteers accountable for the damage that burning fossil fuels causes to communities and public health.

Developed over the course of three years by a panel of experts, the National Academies of Sciences published a report on July 16 updating and expanding on a landmark 2016 review that found climate attribution science had made “great strides” in explaining the increasing frequency of extreme weather such as heat waves, floods, extended droughts, and wildfires in the context of climate disruption caused by humans. The link between global warming and individual violent storms is less clear — but not in the tropics, where warming ocean temperatures are known to likely intensify hurricanes and cyclones.

The report found improvements over the past decade in datasets and model simulations that scientists use to determine whether climate change made an extreme weather event more likely or intense. Scientists are also improving the accuracy of “storyline event attribution,” which focuses on whether climate disruption shaped the physical processes leading up to a damaging event.

Uncertainties remain, but the report from one of the nation’s most trusted research institutions affirms that scientists can reliably link specific disasters to oil and gas emissions, according to Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign.

“For years the fossil fuel industry has argued in court that climate change is just too global and too complex to connect specific harms to individual polluters, but in recent years attribution science has changed that,” DiPaola said in an interview. “This report only confirms that this field has matured into an incredibly rigorous scientific discipline, and it gives courts stronger evidence to evaluate the real-world consequences of fossil fuel pollution.”

Republicans Want to Punish Canada for “Exporting” Its Wildfire Smoke Into the US

More than 40 cities and states have filed lawsuits against major fossil fuel companies for climate-related damages. The specifics vary, but in many cases the plaintiffs argue that companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and BP engaged in deceptive advertising by failing to inform the public about research linking the burning of fossil fuels to the climate crisis. Lawsuits filed by California, Maine, New Jersey, and multiple municipalities also argue that air pollution is a “public nuisance” under state laws.

“It does not decide these cases, but the [National Academies] report makes it more difficult for the industry and its lawyers to argue........

© Truthout