“Every additional ton of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions exacerbates plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.” The above is a quote, per the AP, from the ruling of District Judge Kathy Seeley in the Held vs Montana case, in which plaintiffs, all but one legal children, claimed the state’s energy policies were causing them harm by causing climate change.
Irina, I am aware that it has been hot many places in this country. But the heat is not universal. For example, in New England, recent headlines have been about farmers not getting much of a hay crop because it is not sunny enough, and today's headline was about how our local apple crop has been devastated by a late frost. https://www.vnews.com/Haying-Season-Ruined-by-Flooding-51747476
"People are able to scream at the top of their lungs wild proclamations of what may or may not happen or may or may not work because they do so while standing atop the shoulders of those who came before them and actually built everything"
The lights need to go out. Electorates are rewarding zealots, and so electorates shall reap what they sow
Great take as usual, Irina! The Theater of the Absurd is in full swing in my country.
I've been following this case with keen interest myself, and this ruling was not unexpected. And trust that it will be appealed, likely all the way to the US Supreme Court, where it simply will not pass Constitutional muster.
For all his obvious failings, the one thing Donald Trump got right was the current SCOTUS, and it stands as the last bastion of hope and law in the growing tyranny that we all face here in the US.
The US left, however, is hell-bent on either expanding the SCOTUS, of doing away with it since it doesn't suit them, and the next election cycle may hold the key to its future.
The soft tyranny grows harder by the day, and not just locally, but globally.
DICK [aside]. But methinks he should stand in fear of fire, being burnt i' th' hand for stealing of sheep.
JACK CADE. Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hoop'd pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass: and when I am king,– as king I will be,–
ALL. God save your majesty!
JACK CADE. I thank you, good people:– there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.
DICK. The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
JACK CADE. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment, that parchment, being scribbl'd o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings; but I say 'tis the bee's wax, for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.
Aug 17, 2023·edited Aug 17, 2023Liked by Irina Slav
It is simply going to be required to prove, through multiple catastrophes, that the plan to transition to renewable energy sources and excluding nuclear power, is a failing strategy.
How many power outages at hospitals, schools, and government office buildings, police stations, jails, will be necessary to get their attention? How many mass blackouts?
How many people need to die needlessly to get the point across?
but equally as important, those who have cheerled the transition that led to catastrophes need to be held to account as accessories to murder for their willful policies will be the direct cause of all the deaths
But even through the catastrophes, the advocates for these failing policies will lie about the causes of the catastrophes and the media will parrot their lies unexamined. The masses will not see through the lies unless they start asking some questions about the constant barrage of misinformation that has become our popular culture.
See the Feb. 2021 Texas freeze for example. Plenty of folks still holding wind blameless. Texas Leg. allocating $8B to try to get some reliable gas generators built, while ignoring the fact that the money and waste would be unneeded if not for the expensive policies that pushed wind/solar in the first place.
I can never pass up the opportunity to take a shot at MJ and his idiocy. He’s an academic and a civil engineer. He hasn’t a clue. Civil engineers are useful in transmission line construction for taking soil samples. Being an academic, I doubt he could take a soil sample. He sits in his taxpayer funded nest and draws lines on maps. There should be some sort of legal prohibition that would prevent him from even thinking about electricity
How a guy like that gets grant money is beyond me. It is as if people haven’t discovered that he is just a science fiction author who somehow got a job in the Engineering department...
I think back on some of my engineering professors…I was in awe of them at the time. After 40 years in industry I realize the were uniformly educated fools. The closest they came to reality was providing testimony for some lawyer suing real engineers.
I just think the skill set of being a prof and being a practicing engineer are totally different things. I’m one of those weirdos that stuck around for an Engineering PhD, but couldn’t imagine staying in academia after I was done...
Depends. My dad was a professor (mining engineering) but he also had a tonne of hands-on experience before before and during. Teaching and applied work for decades. It's different today, I guess, with all the grants.
I’d probably like your dad. I went to a uni that had a special parking lot for Nobel laureates. Let’s just say nobody had any hands on experience, and nobody seemed to know how an air conditioner worked… good place for theory. Useless for anything practical.
I'm sure you would've liked him. Sad to say he got retired with a sigh of relief because the newer crops of students couldn't care less about what he and everyone else at the university was teaching. Engineering fell out of favour in the 90s. Tide may be turning now, though.
This is really strange, focusing exclusively on theory when it comes to sciences such as engineering.
I'm saddened that Montana, where I've enjoyed backpacking in the Beartooth Range, has a judge and court that would go along with such victimhood nonsense, which should have been thrown out of court. Thank you for pointing out that much of the argument's basis was from one man's (MJ, or Mark Jacobsen) "science" that was questioned by 21 other scientists. Good research!
Such lawsuits are threats to public well-being, interfer with inter-state commerce, in effect ban legal products, negatively impact the national economy and security, etc. and should be challenged, in State and Federal courts, using the US Commerce Clause.
There are too many underemployed lawyers in the US and this is the perfect thing to keep them getting a paycheck! And these kids (probably kin of the above mentioned lawyers) really are the victims here- they can only get a new iPhone every OTHER year these days.
Seriously though, the more absurd this gets, the more all of this will come crashing down. I’m pretty certain that the folks involved in these lawsuits have never been outside, because MT is a gorgeous state in which to go camping, fishing, hiking, etc.
Save the receipts, after a couple of blackouts it will be clear what the root cause was.
The ruling is an example of how easy it is to get a judge to buy into BS science data. Of course, we should exclude all judges with Math, engineering & science backgrounds. My experience has been that those groups are generally mutually exclusive. More science types should fall on their swords & go to law school, with a goal of becoming a judge. If only we could be so lucky.
Got an Aerospace degree. Spent three years at NASA. Got a law degree. Went right back into engineering. Should have done more research before going into law. Still, it has it's uses and at the time it was cheap -- a few thousand a year.
Later went back and added an EE. Liked soldering and circuits as a kid. Should have started with the EE degree. But the Moon Landing took hold of me as a child....
Anyway, I like building things. Practicing law is almost the antithesis of building things.
Your article truly is prescient, a view of what is to come. The theatre of the absurd is playing out before our eyes, due to the death of reason. Yes, the destruction of language is the destruction of thinking and it inevitably will cost us dearly. The price of putting those who are insane in charge spells the end of civilization.
There is a history lesson here, as our problems run far deeper than this ruling by this Montana judge. She's just trying to find a logical theme in the information that prosecutor and defendant have laid before her. Ed Berry shows that neither side presented a reasoned argument to the judge. A link is here, https://edberry.com/held-v-montana/
Another interesting parallel is shown in a book by Timothy Sandefur, "The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski." For younger readers, the popular 1973 BBC series, 'The Accent of Man' by Jacob Bronowski was his attempt to cure a bad philosophy with good science. That society is crazier than ever, shows how little success he's had so far.
Not quite on topic, but I found this today while researching the background behind a chart I have posted multiple times on Twitter showing large temperature swings over 500,000 years (5 ice ages and 5 similar high temperatures). “Therefore, not just greenhouse gas emissions over the last 200 years may have stopped us from going into a new ice age, but it is greenhouse gas emissions for the last 5000 years that have collectively helped to steer us away from the next ice age.” https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=113523#ref11
In other words most people alive today would not be around to comment on climate change if mankind’s cumulative activities had not stopped and reversed an incipient ice age. Things that make you go hmmmm.
Irina, you say it so well here, “ Five years from now, a lot of people, including a lot of young people, will wonder what happened and why climate change hasn’t “stopped”. Also, why is there no electricity to charge the phone to be used to share red maps on social media. Because this is what happens when you kill science and reason, and forget the meaning of words.”. It’s going to be epic in a few years when those working on feelings and not science get let down. Meanwhile the Chinese and possibly the Indians are looking at this insanity and laughing.
will the plaintiffs need to prove that Montana's emissions are the cause of their alleged injuries? That seems an awfully high bar given that whatever Montana's total emissions are, they are dwarfed by China's and India's. can 0.005% of emissions be blamed for something?
Dr. Wielicki here on substack did an analysis of the contribution Montana currently makes to GHG globally based on the claims from this ruling. .000084%. Judge was an idiot.
Irina, I am aware that it has been hot many places in this country. But the heat is not universal. For example, in New England, recent headlines have been about farmers not getting much of a hay crop because it is not sunny enough, and today's headline was about how our local apple crop has been devastated by a late frost. https://www.vnews.com/Haying-Season-Ruined-by-Flooding-51747476
Apples
https://www.vnews.com/Orchard-Loss-Following-Late-Spring-Freeze-51966124
It's like a rainy coast (say Ireland) around here, but our crops aren't expecting this weather.
Also in Vermont USA, a local sweet corn farmer told me Monday that his harvest was a few weeks late due to the lack of heat.
Interestingly, I'm living on a lake in the west coast of Canada and there are many years that the water has been warmer than it is today.
That's why they went from global warming to climate change, to cover all weather changes, as if there have never been changes before.
I had a conversation yesterday where I said this
"People are able to scream at the top of their lungs wild proclamations of what may or may not happen or may or may not work because they do so while standing atop the shoulders of those who came before them and actually built everything"
The lights need to go out. Electorates are rewarding zealots, and so electorates shall reap what they sow
Regrettably, I think you're right.
We are in complete agreement, Bash.
Great take as usual, Irina! The Theater of the Absurd is in full swing in my country.
I've been following this case with keen interest myself, and this ruling was not unexpected. And trust that it will be appealed, likely all the way to the US Supreme Court, where it simply will not pass Constitutional muster.
For all his obvious failings, the one thing Donald Trump got right was the current SCOTUS, and it stands as the last bastion of hope and law in the growing tyranny that we all face here in the US.
The US left, however, is hell-bent on either expanding the SCOTUS, of doing away with it since it doesn't suit them, and the next election cycle may hold the key to its future.
The soft tyranny grows harder by the day, and not just locally, but globally.
Honestly, I don't see anything soft about it.
I hear you you. Sadly, you folks in the EU are a decade or two ahead of us here in the States, but we're trying our level best to catch up!
If Joe Biden wins a second term, we might just pass you...
DICK [aside]. But methinks he should stand in fear of fire, being burnt i' th' hand for stealing of sheep.
JACK CADE. Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny: the three-hoop'd pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass: and when I am king,– as king I will be,–
ALL. God save your majesty!
JACK CADE. I thank you, good people:– there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.
DICK. The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
JACK CADE. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment, that parchment, being scribbl'd o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings; but I say 'tis the bee's wax, for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.
It is simply going to be required to prove, through multiple catastrophes, that the plan to transition to renewable energy sources and excluding nuclear power, is a failing strategy.
How many power outages at hospitals, schools, and government office buildings, police stations, jails, will be necessary to get their attention? How many mass blackouts?
How many people need to die needlessly to get the point across?
We are going to find out......
but equally as important, those who have cheerled the transition that led to catastrophes need to be held to account as accessories to murder for their willful policies will be the direct cause of all the deaths
But even through the catastrophes, the advocates for these failing policies will lie about the causes of the catastrophes and the media will parrot their lies unexamined. The masses will not see through the lies unless they start asking some questions about the constant barrage of misinformation that has become our popular culture.
See the Feb. 2021 Texas freeze for example. Plenty of folks still holding wind blameless. Texas Leg. allocating $8B to try to get some reliable gas generators built, while ignoring the fact that the money and waste would be unneeded if not for the expensive policies that pushed wind/solar in the first place.
I can never pass up the opportunity to take a shot at MJ and his idiocy. He’s an academic and a civil engineer. He hasn’t a clue. Civil engineers are useful in transmission line construction for taking soil samples. Being an academic, I doubt he could take a soil sample. He sits in his taxpayer funded nest and draws lines on maps. There should be some sort of legal prohibition that would prevent him from even thinking about electricity
How a guy like that gets grant money is beyond me. It is as if people haven’t discovered that he is just a science fiction author who somehow got a job in the Engineering department...
I think back on some of my engineering professors…I was in awe of them at the time. After 40 years in industry I realize the were uniformly educated fools. The closest they came to reality was providing testimony for some lawyer suing real engineers.
I just think the skill set of being a prof and being a practicing engineer are totally different things. I’m one of those weirdos that stuck around for an Engineering PhD, but couldn’t imagine staying in academia after I was done...
Depends. My dad was a professor (mining engineering) but he also had a tonne of hands-on experience before before and during. Teaching and applied work for decades. It's different today, I guess, with all the grants.
I’d probably like your dad. I went to a uni that had a special parking lot for Nobel laureates. Let’s just say nobody had any hands on experience, and nobody seemed to know how an air conditioner worked… good place for theory. Useless for anything practical.
I'm sure you would've liked him. Sad to say he got retired with a sigh of relief because the newer crops of students couldn't care less about what he and everyone else at the university was teaching. Engineering fell out of favour in the 90s. Tide may be turning now, though.
This is really strange, focusing exclusively on theory when it comes to sciences such as engineering.
I think civil engineers are useful in many other areas as well but this does not seem to be the case here.
I'm saddened that Montana, where I've enjoyed backpacking in the Beartooth Range, has a judge and court that would go along with such victimhood nonsense, which should have been thrown out of court. Thank you for pointing out that much of the argument's basis was from one man's (MJ, or Mark Jacobsen) "science" that was questioned by 21 other scientists. Good research!
Such lawsuits are threats to public well-being, interfer with inter-state commerce, in effect ban legal products, negatively impact the national economy and security, etc. and should be challenged, in State and Federal courts, using the US Commerce Clause.
There are too many underemployed lawyers in the US and this is the perfect thing to keep them getting a paycheck! And these kids (probably kin of the above mentioned lawyers) really are the victims here- they can only get a new iPhone every OTHER year these days.
Seriously though, the more absurd this gets, the more all of this will come crashing down. I’m pretty certain that the folks involved in these lawsuits have never been outside, because MT is a gorgeous state in which to go camping, fishing, hiking, etc.
Save the receipts, after a couple of blackouts it will be clear what the root cause was.
You mean there are still rivers left in Montana? Shocking.
“A River Runs Through It” indeed. (Sorry for the terrible 90s joke- I couldn’t resist)
I thought it was excellent, plus I haven't seen the movie but now I will. 🙂
The ruling is an example of how easy it is to get a judge to buy into BS science data. Of course, we should exclude all judges with Math, engineering & science backgrounds. My experience has been that those groups are generally mutually exclusive. More science types should fall on their swords & go to law school, with a goal of becoming a judge. If only we could be so lucky.
Got an Aerospace degree. Spent three years at NASA. Got a law degree. Went right back into engineering. Should have done more research before going into law. Still, it has it's uses and at the time it was cheap -- a few thousand a year.
Later went back and added an EE. Liked soldering and circuits as a kid. Should have started with the EE degree. But the Moon Landing took hold of me as a child....
Anyway, I like building things. Practicing law is almost the antithesis of building things.
Your article truly is prescient, a view of what is to come. The theatre of the absurd is playing out before our eyes, due to the death of reason. Yes, the destruction of language is the destruction of thinking and it inevitably will cost us dearly. The price of putting those who are insane in charge spells the end of civilization.
There is a history lesson here, as our problems run far deeper than this ruling by this Montana judge. She's just trying to find a logical theme in the information that prosecutor and defendant have laid before her. Ed Berry shows that neither side presented a reasoned argument to the judge. A link is here, https://edberry.com/held-v-montana/
Another interesting parallel is shown in a book by Timothy Sandefur, "The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski." For younger readers, the popular 1973 BBC series, 'The Accent of Man' by Jacob Bronowski was his attempt to cure a bad philosophy with good science. That society is crazier than ever, shows how little success he's had so far.
The path back to reason is a long, hard slog.
Thanks for the link, Garret!
I see Ceausescu getting into his helicopter screaming to the enraged mob "I tried to save you from the choking airs!!"
Not quite on topic, but I found this today while researching the background behind a chart I have posted multiple times on Twitter showing large temperature swings over 500,000 years (5 ice ages and 5 similar high temperatures). “Therefore, not just greenhouse gas emissions over the last 200 years may have stopped us from going into a new ice age, but it is greenhouse gas emissions for the last 5000 years that have collectively helped to steer us away from the next ice age.” https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=113523#ref11
In other words most people alive today would not be around to comment on climate change if mankind’s cumulative activities had not stopped and reversed an incipient ice age. Things that make you go hmmmm.
Irina, you say it so well here, “ Five years from now, a lot of people, including a lot of young people, will wonder what happened and why climate change hasn’t “stopped”. Also, why is there no electricity to charge the phone to be used to share red maps on social media. Because this is what happens when you kill science and reason, and forget the meaning of words.”. It’s going to be epic in a few years when those working on feelings and not science get let down. Meanwhile the Chinese and possibly the Indians are looking at this insanity and laughing.
will the plaintiffs need to prove that Montana's emissions are the cause of their alleged injuries? That seems an awfully high bar given that whatever Montana's total emissions are, they are dwarfed by China's and India's. can 0.005% of emissions be blamed for something?
Dr. Wielicki here on substack did an analysis of the contribution Montana currently makes to GHG globally based on the claims from this ruling. .000084%. Judge was an idiot.