U. of Penn Law Professor Examines Climate Change Claims

I follow with interest the debate over climate change, generally on sites like Watts Up With That, now the most popular science blog on the web, but don't take as much time as I should to link with them. In part that's because they tend to be somewhat technical in nature, and I can't verify myself what they are saying. However, there was a recent posting that is right down the alley of any environmental legal blog, an article by Jason Scott Johnston, the Robert G. Fuller, Jr. Professor and Director, Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School titled Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross-Examination. This is a legal analysis of many of the claims made on behalf of climate change advocates, and it appears that when climate change science is scrutinized, it looks nothing like science, and a lot like religion. I suspect that, when climate change advocates are exposed to cross examination by capable attorneys, they will be unable to defend their opinions.



Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post summarizes it better than I:

A cross examination of global warming science conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Law and Economics has concluded that virtually every claim advanced by global warming proponents fail to stand up to scrutiny.

He found that the climate establishment does not follow the scientific method. Instead, it “seems overall to comprise an effort to marshal evidence in favor of a predetermined policy preference.”

The cross-examination, carried out by Jason Scott Johnston, Professor and Director of the Program on Law, Environment and Economy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, found that “on virtually every major issue in climate change science, the [reports of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and other summarizing work by leading climate establishment scientists have adopted various rhetorical strategies that seem to systematically conceal or minimize what appear to be fundamental scientific uncertainties or even disagreements.”

Professor Johnson, who expressed surprise that the case for global warming was so weak, systematically examined the claims made in IPCC publications and other similar work by leading climate establishment scientists and compared them with what is found in the peer-edited climate science literature. He found that the climate establishment does not follow the scientific method. Instead, it “seems overall to comprise an effort to marshal evidence in favor of a predetermined policy preference.”

Financial Post
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe the author of The Deniers.