According to experts, climate change will result in “millions” of deaths, major European cities being sunken, nuclear war and global environmental riots by 2020…all within the next 5 days.
No, actually this was reported by the Guardian on February 22, 2004.
“Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.”
“A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world,” the report added.
The authors of the report, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, also asserted that “By 2020 ‘catastrophic’ shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war,” causing widespread “crop failure” and “famine.”
Our so-called “climate experts” have been wrong on almost everything, from Paul Ehrlich’s prediction of millions of deaths from famine by the 80’s, to Al Gore’s claim that the Arctic would have “ice free” summers by 2013. So it goes.
Paul Plante says
From The Guardian on Tue 12 Nov 2019 18.00 EST:
America faces an epic choice…
… in the coming year, and the results will define the country for a generation.
These are perilous times.
Over the last three years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth.
This US administration is establishing new norms of behaviour.
Anger and cruelty disfigure public discourse and lying is commonplace.
Truth is being chased away.
But with your help we can continue to put it center stage.
It will be defining year and we’re asking for your help as we prepare for 2020.
Rampant disinformation, partisan news sources and social media’s tsunami of fake news is no basis on which to inform the American public in 2020.
The need for a robust, independent press has never been greater, and with your help we can continue to provide fact-based reporting that offers public scrutiny and oversight.
You’ve read more than 16 articles in 2019, so we hope you can appreciate the Guardian’s choice to keep our journalism open for all.
“America is at a tipping point, finely balanced between truth and lies, hope and hate, civility and nastiness.”
“Many vital aspects of American public life are in play – the Supreme Court, abortion rights, climate policy, wealth inequality, Big Tech and much more.”
“The stakes could hardly be higher.”
“As that choice nears, the Guardian, as it has done for 200 years, and with your continued support, will continue to argue for the values we hold dear – facts, science, diversity, equality and fairness.”
– US editor, John Mulholland
On the occasion of its 100th birthday in 1921 the editor of the Guardian said, “Perhaps the chief virtue of a newspaper is its independence.”
“It should have a soul of its own.”
That is more true than ever.
Freed from the influence of an owner or shareholders, the Guardian’s robust editorial independence is our unique driving force and guiding principle.
We also want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported the Guardian in 2019.
You provide us with the motivation and financial support to keep doing what we do.
We hope to surpass our goal by early January.
Every contribution, big or small, will help us reach it.
Make a year-end gift from as little as $1.
Thank you.
Paul Plante says
The “GREAT STUPID” that is sweeping this land of ours and turning the minds of the American people into a formless mush is no longer confined to the pages of the pulp fiction rag, The Guardian; it has not been elevated up to and enshrined as LAW OF THE LAND here in the United States of America by judicial decree, and here I am talking about the United States Supreme Court which put its stamp of approval on this following horse**** decided November 2016 that is still pending somewhere in OUR federal court system:
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON
EUGENE DIVISION
KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al,
Defendants.
AIKEN, Judge: 1
Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC
OPINION AND ORDER
Plaintiffs in this civil rights action are a group of young people between the ages of eight and nineteen (“youth plaintiffs”); Earth Guardians, an association of young environmental activists; and Dr. James Hansen, acting as guardian for future generations.
Plaintiffs filed this action against defendants the United States, President Barack Obama, and numerous executive agencies.
Plaintiffs allege defendants have known for more than fifty years that the carbon dioxide (“CO;’) produced by burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate system in a way that would “significantly endanger plaintiffs, with the damage persisting for millenia.” First. Am. Comp!
Despite that knowledge, plaintiffs assert defendants, “(b)ytheir exercise of sovereign authority over our country’s atmosphere and fossil fuel resources, … permitted, encouraged, and otherwise enabled continued exploitation, production,and combustion of fossil fuels, … deliberately allow[ing] atmospheric C02 concentrations to escalate to levels unprecedented in human history[.]” Id
Although many different entities contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, plaintiffs aver defendants bear “a higher degree of responsibility than any other individual, entity, or country” for exposing plaintiffs to the dangers of climate change. Id.
Plaintiffs argue defendants’ actions violate their substantive due process rights to life, liberty, and property, and that defendants have violated their obligation to hold certain natural resources in trust for the people and for future generations.
Plaintiffs assert there is a very short window in which defendants could act to phase out fossil fuel exploitation and avert environmental catastrophe.
They seek ( 1) a declaration their constitutional and public trust rights have been violated and (2) an order enjoining defendants from violating those rights and directing defendants to develop a plan to reduce C02 emissions.
Defendants moved to dismiss this action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. Doc. 27.
Intervenors the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum Institute moved to dismiss on the same grounds. Doc. 19.
After oral argument, Magistrate Judge Coffin issued his Findings and Recommendation (“F&R”) and recommended denying the motions to dismiss. Doc. 68.
Judge Coffin then referred the matter to me for review pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636 and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 72. Doc. 69.
Defendants and intervenors filed objections (docs. 73 & 74), and on September 13, 2016, this Court heard oral argument.
For the reasons set forth below, I adopt Judge Coffin’s F&R as elaborated in this opinion and deny the motions to dismiss.
BACKGROUND
This is no ordinary lawsuit.
Plaintiffs challenge the policies, acts, and omissions of the President of the United States, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Transportation (“DOT”), the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”).
This lawsuit challenges decisions defendants have made across a vast set of topics – decisions like whether and to what extent to regulate C02 emissions from power plants and vehicles, whether to permit fossil fuel extraction and development to take place on federal lands, how much to charge for use of those lands, whether to give tax breaks to the fossil fuel industry, whether to subsidize or directly fund that industry, whether to fund the construction of fossil fuel infrastructure such as natural gas pipelines at home and abroad, whether to permit the export and import of fossil fuels from and to the United States, and whether to authorize new marine coal terminal projects.
Plaintiffs assert defendants’ decisions on these topics have substantially caused the planet to warm and the oceans to rise.
They draw a direct causal line between defendants’ policy choices and floods, food shortages, destruction of property, species extinction, and a host of other harms.
This lawsuit is not about proving that climate change is happening or that human activity is driving it.
For the purposes of this motion, those facts are undisputed.
The questions before the Court are whether defendants are responsible for some of the harm caused by climate change, whether plaintiffs may challenge defendants’ climate change policy in court, and whether this Court can direct defendants to change their policy without running afoul of the separation of powers doctrine.
Paul Plante says
Now, let’s be absolutely clear here, people, as to the GAME being played on We, the American People with this above federal court decision which names each and every one of us over the age of 18 as the DEFENDANTS, given that there is no other United States of America to sue than We, the People, this as if we were all a bunch of absolutely witless fools, by the federal court and the Obama administration before Hussein left the White House, to rig a federal lawsuit in such a manner that a federal judge would be forcing us back into the Paris Agreement, because Plaintiffs’ allegation that defendant Obama or the federal government for that matter, had known for more than fifty years that the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate system in a way that would “significantly endanger plaintiffs, with the damage persisting for millennia,” is demonstrably FALSE, which is something any high school student with access to GOOGLE could readily prove!
And yet, the Obama administration let that falsehood stand as truth and fact, which means that Obama TOOK A DIVE, and stood by a patent lie which has now been enshrined as LAW OF THE LAND here in the United States of America, so that today, even though we all know it to be PATENTLY FALSE that Obama and the federal government had known for more than fifty years that the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate system in a way that would “significantly endanger plaintiffs, with the damage persisting for millennia,” nonetheless, we are now forced by this federal court decision to have to believe a GREAT BIG LIE, which takes us to this from that decision, to wit:
Plaintiffs assert defendants’ decisions on these topics have substantially caused the planet to warm and the oceans to rise.
end quotes
That was a softball pitch that the Obama administration could easily have smacked right out of the stadium with the greatest of ease, because while the allegation can be asserted, there is no way the plaintiff’s could ever prove it with factual evidence, and yet the Obama administration kept the bat on its shoulder and let itself be struck out, but who Hussein SOLD OUT with that failure to stand up to this patent nonsense was US, We, the American People who as a result of Obama TAKING A DIVE have been held responsible to climatic harm done to these children plaintiffs, which takes us next to this:
They draw a direct causal line between defendants’ policy choices and floods, food shortages, destruction of property, species extinction, and a host of other harms.
end quotes
And no, people, the truth is, they really didn’t, because that alleged “direct causal line” does not exist, except in their dreams, so that is pure fantasy thinking and horse****, EXCEPT, the Obama administration laid down and merely whimpered like a whipped cur, and let the lie stand as fact and truth, which takes us to this:
This lawsuit is not about proving that climate change is happening or that human activity is driving it.
For the purposes of this motion, those facts are undisputed.
end quotes
And for the record, those facts in reality are very much in dispute, but because of this federal lawsuit and the duplicity of the Hussein Obama administration, we in the United States of America are now constrained by the federal courts to have to believe a LIE and further, to teach our children and grandchildren that these lies, especially the whopper about the United States Constitution guaranteeing children in America a “healthy climate” as their constitutional right, which is patently ridiculous as a friend of mine with five daughters under the age of 18 who were made aware of this lawsuit by their teachers, and now there is a battle royal going on in his house because he only has a quarter-acre lot to begin with, and each of the daughters, not surprisingly, wants a completely different climate from all the others, and to top it off, the kid next door wants another climate indeed, which is driving this poor guy crazy, trying to figure out how the hell you satisfy your battling daughters who want five different climates on a quarter-acre lot.
Paul Plante says
So, by way of review here, by taking a dive as he did here in this custom-tailored “civil rights” lawsuit which effectively has spawned a brand-new United States Constitution for the Anthropocene generation, those born after the millennium, which Anthropocene Constitution guarantees to those born after the year 2000 the constitutional right to a climate system capable of sustaining their human life, which climate system capable of sustaining their lives is fundamental to a free and ordered society for them, that at the expense of the Holocene generation, those born before 2000, who are because of this court case are now, in the eyes of their children and grandchildren, held to be guilty for causing climate harm to these aggrieved children, which is every single child in the United States of America under the age of 18, Hussein Obama, himself a Marxist committed to the creation of a Social Democratic State here in the united States of America to replace our Republic, has very effectively aided that process by driving a wedge between the children of America, those born after the millennium, who this lawsuit says have had their substantive due process rights to life, liberty, and property violated, they being the Anthropocene Generation; and their parents and grandparents, the Holocene Generation, who have caused their children and grandchildren serious climate harm; thus, effectively placing these aggrieved children under the control of the court, not their parents, which takes us to this sentence from that decision, to wit:
Plaintiffs in this civil rights action are a group of young people between the ages of eight and nineteen (“youth plaintiffs”); Earth Guardians, an association of young environmental activists; and Dr. James Hansen, acting as guardian for future generations.
end quotes
Now, all you parents and grandparents out there who think, foolishly so, in the light of this decision, that you have some type of guardianship over your children, guess again, and focus in on the words “Dr. James Hansen, acting as guardian for future generations,” and then ask yourself this question: Who the **** is Dr. James Hansen, and how did he get court custody over future generations of children in the United States of America?
On what grounds has the federal court made Dr. James Hansen the “guardian for future generations” of children here in the United States of America?
Paul Plante says
To make the demonstration that the allegation of these children plaintiffs in their first amended complaint that “defendants have known for more than fifty years that the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate system in a way that would ‘significantly endanger plaintiffs, with the damage persisting for millenia,’” which is a healthy heap of pure horse**** from straight out of the pages of the hysteria-mongering pulp fiction rag The Guardian, sponsors of the long-running “GRETA SHOW,” which pulp-fiction rag proclaimed to the world on February 22, 2004 that “Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters,” one need do no more than go to the website of the World Meteorological Organization (“WMO”) where one, and this would certainly include not only The Guardian, if it was interested in facts, not hype and hysteria, but high school students, as well, since this is all basic history, readily finds as follows:
Global climate, one scientist recalled, “was considered a very subordinate field compared with synoptic forecasting, atmospheric research, and so forth.”
Some even questioned whether the WMO should continue work in climatology at all.
But in the late 1960s an environmental movement was everywhere on the rise, and officials could no longer ignore global changes.
As a first step, in 1969 the WMO’s Commission for Climatology established a working group on climate forecasts.
Meanwhile the WMO itself passed a resolution calling for global monitoring of climate and atmospheric pollutants, including CO2.
end quotes
Now, given that that federal court decision was written in 2016, more than fifty years earlier that the federal government was alleged to have known for more than fifty years that the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate system in a way that would “significantly endanger plaintiffs, with the damage persisting for millenia,” would be prior to 1966, before anyone knew about CO2, which takes us back to that history, as follows:
Climate was also among the many topics addressed by a Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), established by ICSU officials in 1969 as an international framework for collecting environmental data and for related research.
The SCOPE committee, aware of the CO2 greenhouse problem, promoted the first extensive studies of how carbon passes through bio-geochemical systems.
The first significant conferences where scientists discussed climate change included the topic as just one of several “Global Effects of Environmental Pollution,” to quote the title of a two-day symposium held in Dallas, Texas in 1968.
This path-breaking symposium was followed by a month-long “Study of Critical Environmental Problems” (SCEP) organized at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970.
This led directly to a second, more comprehensive gathering of experts from 14 nations in Stockholm in 1971, funded by an assortment of private and government sources.
The Stockholm meeting focused specifically on climate change — a “Study of Man’s Impact on Climate” (SMIC).
The exhaustive SMIC discussions failed to work out a consensus among scientists who felt greenhouse gases were warming the Earth and those who felt pollution from particles was cooling it.
end quotes
So, if the scientists themselves in 1971, less than 50 years ago, were still arguing about whether greenhouse gases were warming the Earth or whether pollution from particles was cooling it, how is it that the federal court then accepted in 2016 the unsupported and patently allegation of these children that the United States government and Hussein Obama KNEW that carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate system in a way that would “significantly endanger plaintiffs, with the damage persisting for millenia?”
For the answer to that, we need go no further than footnote #3 of that 2016 federal court decision where we find Obama taking his dive, as follows:
Defendants open their Objections to Judge Coffin’s F&R by stating that “(c)limate change poses a monumental threat to Americans’ health and welfare by driving long-lasting changes in our climate, leading to an array of severe negative effects, which will worsen over time.” Fed. Defs.’ Obj. to F&R 1 (doc. 78).
In the 2015 State of the Union address, defendant President Barack Obama declared “(n)o challenge … poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” President Barack Obama, Remarks in State of the Union Address (Jan. 20, 2015).
Paul Plante says
So, recapping events here for those who like it kept real simple, and who doesn’t actually, on February 22, 2004, despite there being no rational basis to support the wild and extravagant charges, The Guardian, a Brit publication that relies on sensationalism and hysteria mongering to sell newspapers, stated thusly:
“Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.”
end quotes
That. of course, is something that The Guardian made up out of thin air mixed with a generous amount of pot smoke from some really good weed being imported into Jolly Olde from Afghanistan, because good old freedom of the press in the United States of America grants The Guardian a license to lie and distort; but nonetheless, eleven years later, in his Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address on January 20, 2015, Hussein Obama, himself an oily and slick Marxist committed to the socialist state here in the United States of America who knows full well the value of hysterical propaganda from The Guardian in inflicting mind-numbing fear on the population at large, and especially the children which makes them tractable and easy to fleece, jumped right on that hysteria-mongering by The Guardian, and he made it part of his address to the nation, as follows:
And no challenge — no challenge — poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. (Applause.)
2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record.
Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.
end quotes
What Hussein fails to mention, and this comes from him being slick and oily, a real smooth operator as the polished Marxists usually are, the glib tongue, is that those records don’t go back all that far, and they certainly do not make a trend, but like The Guardian, as United States president, Hussein Obama himself had a license to spew all the horse**** in the world and never be held to account, which takes us back to 2015, as follows:
I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists; that we don’t have enough information to act.
Well, I’m not a scientist, either.
But you know what, I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and at NOAA, and at our major universities.
And the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe.
The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security.
We should act like it. (Applause.)
And that’s why, over the past six years, we’ve done more than ever to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy to the way we use it.
That’s why we’ve set aside more public lands and waters than any administration in history.
And that’s why I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts.
I am determined to make sure that American leadership drives international action. (Applause.)
In Beijing, we made a historic announcement: The United States will double the pace at which we cut carbon pollution.
And China committed, for the first time, to limiting their emissions.
And because the world’s two largest economies came together, other nations are now stepping up, and offering hope that this year the world will finally reach an agreement to protect the one planet we’ve got.
end quotes
And thereafter, in November of 2016, based on the assertions of Hussein Obama in his January 20, 2015 SOTU that if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe, which sensationalist assertions by Obama were lifted pretty much word for word from The Guardian article in 2004 and subsequent sensationalist progeny, because no responsible scientists are making such hysterical and sensationalist claims, nor is there evidence to support those claims made by the oily and slick Hussein, nor does either The Guardian or Obama require proof to make an assertion, the federal district court in Oregon ruled thusly, which shows the power of persistent political lies here in the United States of America, a truth a committed Marxist like Hussein Obama knows all too well, to wit:
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF OREGON
EUGENE DIVISION
KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al,
Defendants.
AIKEN, Judge:
Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC
OPINION AND ORDER
Plaintiffs in this civil rights action are a group of young people between the ages of eight and nineteen (“youth plaintiffs”); Earth Guardians, an association of young environmental activists; and Dr. James Hansen, acting as guardian for future generations.
Plaintiffs filed this action against defendants the United States, President Barack Obama, and numerous executive agencies.
Plaintiffs allege defendants have known for more than fifty years that the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate system in a way that would “significantly endanger plaintiffs, with the damage persisting for millenia.” First. Am. Comp!
Despite that knowledge, plaintiffs assert defendants, “(b)y their exercise of sovereign authority over our country’s atmosphere and fossil fuel resources, … permitted, encouraged, and otherwise enabled continued exploitation, production, and combustion of fossil fuels, … deliberately allow[ing] atmospheric C02 concentrations to escalate to levels unprecedented in human history[.]” Id
Although many different entities contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, plaintiffs aver defendants bear “a higher degree of responsibility than any other individual, entity, or country” for exposing plaintiffs to the dangers of climate change. Id.
Plaintiffs argue defendants’ actions violate their substantive due process rights to life, liberty, and property, and that defendants have violated their obligation to hold certain natural resources in trust for the people and for future generations.
Plaintiffs assert there is a very short window in which defendants could act to phase out fossil fuel exploitation and avert environmental catastrophe.
They seek (1) a declaration their constitutional and public trust rights have been violated and (2) an order enjoining defendants from violating those rights and directing defendants to develop a plan to reduce C02 emissions.
end quotes
Yes, indeed, people, the power of lies, because none of that is based on science, which does not make hysterical and sensationalist predictions!
Pretty incredible from my perspective, but such it is, and even though the world has not yet ended as The Guardian said it would, unfazed by that, they have merely moved the end date out a couple of years to keep the hysteria-mongering and sensationalism going, because it sells newspaper and is good for Democrat party politics in this country.
Paul Plante says
And continuing this truly bizarre story of how lies become truth by being told over and over again, totally undeterred by the fact that what was predicted by The Guardian on February 22, 2004, despite there being no rational basis to support the wild and extravagant charges, that “Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters,” at the conclusion of its article “When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez met Greta Thunberg: ‘Hope is contagious’ – One is America’s youngest-ever congresswoman, the other a Swedish schoolgirl. Two of the most powerful voices on the climate speak for the first time” by Emma Brockes on 29 Jun 2019, this is what The Guardian had to tell us American people, as if we were all totally stupid, and it was our bestest friend ever, to wit:
America faces an epic choice…
… in the coming year, and the results will define the country for a generation.
These are perilous times.
Over the last three years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth.
This US administration is establishing new norms of behaviour.
Anger and cruelty disfigure public discourse and lying is commonplace.
Truth is being chased away.
But with your help we can continue to put it center stage.
It will be a defining year and we’re asking for your help as we prepare for 2020.
Rampant disinformation, partisan news sources and social media’s tsunami of fake news is no basis on which to inform the American public in 2020.
The need for a robust, independent press has never been greater, and with your help we can continue to provide fact-based reporting that offers public scrutiny and oversight.
“America is at a tipping point, finely balanced between truth and lies, hope and hate, civility and nastiness.”
“Many vital aspects of American public life are in play – the Supreme Court, abortion rights, climate policy, wealth inequality, Big Tech and much more.”
“The stakes could hardly be higher.”
“As that choice nears, the Guardian, as it has done for 200 years, and with your continued support, will continue to argue for the values we hold dear – facts, science, diversity, equality and fairness.”
– US editor, John Mulholland
end quotes
My response as an American citizen would be that if The Guardian really is so concerned about lying in American media being so commonplace as it is, especially with respect to this subject of “climate change,” which is spawning its own tsunami of blatant lies and untruths and hysteria-mongering, then it is The Guardian that should stop lying to us and distorting truth and facts, which would be a real good start to putting and end to that real serious problem we all face today – the lies and untruths and distortions rags and hysteria-mongering like The Guardian are feeding us on this subject of climate change.
Paul Plante says
So, what does it take, if one is under the age of 18, to get the necessary standing in federal court to file a civil rights lawsuit against the United States, President Barack Obama, and numerous executive agencies alleging that the defendants have known for more than fifty years that the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate system in a way that would “significantly endanger plaintiffs, with the damage persisting for millenia,” and claiming that despite that knowledge, defendants, “(b)y their exercise of sovereign authority over our country’s atmosphere and fossil fuel resources, … permitted, encouraged, and otherwise enabled continued exploitation, production, and combustion of fossil fuels, … deliberately allowing atmospheric C02 concentrations to escalate to levels unprecedented in human history,” which actions by defendants violated their substantive due process rights to life, liberty, and property, and that defendants have violated their obligation to hold certain natural resources in trust for the people and for future generations?
What harm must be done to these teenagers before finally the courts or somebody will step in to save their future for them?
What type of climatic outrage does it finally take to rouse the federal courts out of their torpor to protect these children from the executive branch of our federal government?
How about this:
II. Standing to Sue
“A threshold question in every federal case is … whether at least one plaintiff has standing.” Thomas v. Mundell, 572 F.3d 756, 760 (9th Cir. 2009) (citation and quotation marks omitted).
Standing requires a plaintiff to allege “such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to warrant [the] invocation of federal-court jurisdiction and to justify exercise of the court’s remedial powers[.]” Warth v. Seldin, 442 U.S. 490, 498 (1975).
To demonstrate standing, a plaintiff must show (1) she suffered an injury in fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the defendant’s challenged conduct; and (3) the injury is likely to be redressed by a favorable court decision. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992).
A plaintiff must support each element of the standing test “with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation.” Id. at 561.
A Injury in Fact
In an environmental case, a plaintiff cannot demonstrate injury in fact merely by alleging injury to the environment; there must be an allegation that the challenged conduct is harming (or imminently will harm) the plaintiff. Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envt’l Servs. (I’OC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 181 (2000).
Plaintiffs adequately allege injury in fact.
Plaintiff Zealand B. alleges he has been unable to ski during the winter as a result of decreased snowpack. Id p.38.
end quotes
Yes, people, that’s it.
The United States government violated the civil rights of plaintiff Zealand B., who is too young to vote for public officials who would be more protective of his rights to plenty of snow on the mountain of his choice, by pursuing harmful policies that make impossible for him to be able to ski, because of decreased snowpack, instead of ending those harmful policies so the poor kid would be able to go skiing, something that as a child here in the United States of America, he is entitled to, and hence, the United States of America, which happens to be all of us over the age of 18, must be held to account by an unelected federal judge in Oregon who has determined that she has the right to set herself up in a custodianship position over our elected officials who have clearly violated this poor kid’s civil rights by failing to provide him with enough snow to ski on.
And no, I am not making that up!
Those words are straight from the Decision and Order of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, Eugene Division in KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al,, Defendants., Aiken, Judge, Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC, decided November 2016, wherein Judge Aiken stated as follows:
“Exercising my ‘reasoned judgment,’ I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.”
end quotes
Said another way based on this decision, the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life for a teenager who wants to be able to ski whenever and wherever with plenty of snow just like he likes it always waiting for him is now fundamental to a free and ordered society, and it is therefore the obligation of the United States government to provide that climate for that child instead of violating his civil rights by denying him that climate.
Paul Plante says
So, staying for the moment with this 54 page Decision and Order of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, Eugene Division in KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al,, Defendants., Aiken, Judge, Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC, decided November 2016, Judge Aiken stated further with respect to what these children were alleging in their civil rights lawsuit against the United States of America, which happens to be all of us over the age of 18 who are citizens of this nation, to wit:
Plaintiffs (the children) allege that “(a)cting with full appreciation of the consequences of their acts, Defendants knowingly caused, and continue to cause, dangerous interference with our atmosphere and climate system.” First Am. Compl. ii 85.
They allege this danger stems, “in substantial part, [from] Defendants’ historic and continuing permitting, authorizing, and subsidizing of fossil fuel extraction, production, transportation, and utilization.” Id. ii 279.
Plaintiffs allege defendants acted “with full appreciation” of the consequences of their acts, id. iiii 278-79, specifically “[harm to] Plaintiffs’ dignity, including their capacity to provide for their basic human needs, safely raise families, practice their religious and spiritual beliefs, maintain their bodily integrity, and lead lives with access to clean air, water, shelter, and food.” Id. ii 283.
In the face of these risks, plaintiffs allege defendants “have had longstanding, actual knowledge of the serious risks of harm and have failed to take necessary steps to address and ameliorate the known, serious risk to which they have exposed Plaintiffs.” Id. if 285.
In sum: plaintiffs allege defendants played a unique and central role in the creation of our current climate crisis; that they contributed to the crisis with full knowledge of the significant and unreasonable risks posed by climate change; and that the Due Process Clause therefore imposes a special duty on defendants to use their statutory and regulatory authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Accepting the allegations of the complaint as true, plaintiffs have adequately alleged a danger creation claim.
At the motion to dismiss stage, I am bound to accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true.
Plaintiffs have alleged that defendants played a significant role in creating the current climate crisis, that defendants acted with full knowledge of the consequences of their actions, and that defendants have failed to correct or mitigate the harms they helped create in deliberate indifference to the injuries caused by climate change.
They may therefore proceed with their substantive due process challenge to defendants’ failure to adequately regulate CO2 emissions.
Paul Plante says
And what we are witnessing here with this 54 page Decision and Order of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, Eugene Division in KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants, Aiken, Judge, Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC, decided November 2016, is a clear case of the liberal “living constitution” interpretation in action in that like a new island emerging from the sea, or a new star appearing in the firmament above our heads, a brand new Constitutional right which has never existed prior to this, to the detriment of us older people in this country who now stand accused of aiding Barack Hussein Obama to willfully violate that new Constitutional right for those under the age of 18 in the United States of America, to wit:
A. Infringement of a Fundamental Right
When a plaintiff challenges affirmative government action under the due process clause, the threshold inquiry is the applicable level of judicial scrutiny. Witt v. Dep’t of the Air Force, 527 F.3d 806, 813 (9th Cir. 2008).
The default level of scrutiny is rational basis, which requires a reviewing court to uphold the challenged governmental action so long as it “implements a rational means of achieving a legitimate governmental end[.]” Kim v. United States, 121F.3d1269, 1273 (9th Cir. 1997) (quotation marks omitted).
When the government infringes a “fundamental right,” however, a reviewing court applies strict scrutiny. Witt, 527 F.3d at 817.
Substantive due process “forbids the government to infringe certain ‘fundamental’ liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided, unless the infringement is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest.” Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 302 (1993) (emphasis in original).
Resolution of this part of the motions to dismiss therefore hinges on whether plaintiffs have alleged infringement of a fundamental right.
Fundamental liberty rights include both rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution and rights and liberties which are either (1) “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” or (2) “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty.” McDonald v. City of Chicago, Ill., 561 U.S. 742, 767(2010).
The Supreme Court has cautioned that federal courts must “exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field, lest the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause be subtly transformed into” judicial policy preferences. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720 (1997) (citation and quotation marks omitted).
This does not mean that “new” fundamental rights are out of bounds, though.
When the Supreme Court broke new legal ground by recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, Justice Kennedy wrote that:
“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times.”
“The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights … did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.”
“When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed.” Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 2598 (2015).
Thus, “(t)he identification and protection of fundamental rights is an enduring part of the judicial duty to interpret the Constitution … [that] has not been reduced to any formula.” Id. (citation and quotation marks omitted).
In determining whether a right is fundamental, courts must exercise “reasoned judgment,” keeping in mind that “(h)istory and tradition guide and discipline this inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries.” Id.
The genius of the Constitution is that its text allows “future generations [to] protect … the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning.” Id.
In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 152-53 (1973), the Court exhaustively chronicled the jurisprudential history of the fundamental right to privacy – another right not mentioned in the text of the Constitution.
Roe’s central holding rests on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. at 153.
But the Court also found “roots” of the right to privacy in the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, and the Ninth Amendment. Id. at 152.
Similarly, in Obergefell, the Court’s recognition of a fundamental right to marry was grounded in an understanding of marriage as a right underlying and supporting other vital liberties. See 135 S. Ct. at 2599 (“(I)t would be contradictory to recognize a right to privacy with respect to other matters of family life and not with respect to the decision to enter the relationship that is at the foundation of the family in our society.” (citation and quotation marks omitted)); id. at 2601 (“(M)arriage is a keystone of our social order.”).
Exercising my “reasoned judgment,” id at 2598, I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.
Just as marriage is the “foundation of the family,” a stable climate system is quite literally the foundation “of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.” Id (quoting Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190, 211 (1888)); cf Minors Oposa v. Sec’y of the Dep’t of Envt’l & Natural Res., G.R. No. 101083, 33 I.L.M. 173, 187-88 (S.C., Jul. 30, 1993) (Phil.) (without “a balanced and healthful ecology,” future generations “stand to inherit nothing but parched earth incapable of sustaining life.”).
Plaintiffs do not object to the government’s role in producing any pollution or in causing any climate change; rather, they assert the government has caused pollution and climate change on a catastrophic level, and that if the government’s actions continue unchecked, they will permanently and irreversibly damage plaintiffs’ property, their economic livelihood, their recreational opportunities, their health, and ultimately their (and their children’s) ability to live long, healthy lives.
Echoing Obergefell’s reasoning, plaintiffs allege a stable climate system is a necessary condition to exercising other rights to life, liberty, and property.
In this opinion, this Court simply holds that where a complaint alleges governmental action is affirmatively and substantially damaging the climate system in a way that will cause human deaths, shorten human lifespans, result in widespread damage to property, threaten human food sources, and dramatically alter the planet’s ecosystem, it states a claim for a due process violation.
To hold otherwise would be to say that the Constitution affords no protection against a government’s knowing decision to poison the air its citizens breathe or the water its citizens drink.
Plaintiffs have adequately alleged infringement of a fundamental right.
end quotes
And thus, like gay marriage in America, a new Constitutional right for those under 18 who are demanding the federal government provide them with the climate they demand, when they demand it, has been created by this unelected federal judge appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton.
And based on that newly created Constitutional right for those under 18 here in the United States of America, according to Judge Aiken, the Plaintiffs ask this Court to “order Defendants to cease their permitting, authorizing, and subsidizing of fossil fuels and, instead, move to swiftly phase out C02 emissions, as well as take such other action necessary to ensure that atmospheric C02 is no more concentrated than 350 ppm by 2100, including to develop a national plan to restore Earth’s energy balance, and implement that national plan so as to stabilize the climate system.”
In other words, according to this federal judge, not only has a new Constitutional right been established, but at the same time, ma new Constitutional duty has been imposed on the federal government, that duty being to provide the children of America with the climate each of them feels they are entitled to, when they want it, which takes us back to these words from the ju7dge, as follows:
Plaintiffs have alleged a causal relationship between their injuries and defendants’ conduct.
At this stage, I am bound to accept those allegations as true.
Plaintiffs allege that over the 263 years between 1751 and 2014, the United States produced more than twenty-five percent of global C02 emissions. First Am. Compl. para.151.
end quotes
Yes, people, not only has our Constitution been changed by judicial decree, but our history has been, as well, given that according to this federal court judge, and she would know our nation’s history better than any of the rest of us, the United States of America have been in existence since 1751, not 1776 as we older people in this nation previously thought, and you know?
Why not have it be 1751 instead of 1776?
Does it really make a difference?
Paul Plante says
Staying for the moment with this 54 page Decision and Order of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, Eugene Division in KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants, Aiken, Judge, Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC, decided November 2016, which decision, actually written not by the unelected federal judge, but according to footnote 1 was a creation out of whole cloth by student externs who worked on each stage of the preparation of the opinion, from initial background research to final copy edits, with Judge Aiken formally acknowledging the real authors of the decision as Daniel Bodden (University of Kentucky), Elizabeth Jacklin (University of Oregon School of Law), Ann Richan Metler (Willamette University College of Law), James Mullins (University of Washington School of Law), Jessy R. Nations (University of Washington School of Law), Lydeah Negro (Lewis & Clark Law School), and Eleanor J. Vincent (University of Oregon School of Law), is a clear case of application of the liberal “living constitution” interpretation in action, in that like a new island emerging from the sea, or a new star appearing in the firmament above our heads, a brand new Constitutional right which has never existed prior to this has been created, to the detriment of us older people in this country who now stand accused of aiding Barack Hussein Obama to willfully violate that new Constitutional right for those under the age of 18 in the United States of America, as an American citizen born after WWII, who today is a grandfather, I find this following statement from that decision to be incredible not only in the fact that these children suing Hussein Obama for gross negligence which borders on criminal conduct on his part and the type of misdemeanors and high crimes that would constitute impeachable offense were they committed by someone else who are obviously quite confused as to when the United States of America did or did not exist as a legal entity are making it, but that it managed to sail right by Obama’s lawyers, who never challenged it, perhaps like Obama not knowing any better, leaving the falsehoods to stand as fact, to twist and warp the minds of young people in America today by giving them a false history of our nation, to wit:
Plaintiffs allege that over the 263 years between 1751 and 2014, the United States produced more than twenty-five percent of global C02 emissions. First Am. Compl. para.151.
end quotes
Now, because they are children who are not responsible for their actions in the eyes of the law, they can allege and assert that blatant falsehood with impunity, and the federal court let them do just that, which takes us to this:
Plaintiffs do not object to the government’s role in producing any pollution or in causing any climate change; rather, they assert the government has caused pollution and climate change on a catastrophic level, and that if the government’s actions continue unchecked, they will permanently and irreversibly damage plaintiffs’ property, their economic livelihood, their recreational opportunities, their health, and ultimately their (and their children’s) ability to live long, healthy lives.
end quotes
Nowhere is there any proof to support these wild and sensational and extravagant charges that the federal government has caused “climate change on a catastrophic level,” but since these are children, and the purpose of this case was to create a whole new family of constitutional rights for children in America, the enforcement of which will keep swarms of lawyers in bidness for years to come, vindicating the civil rights of new generations of American children when they look out the window and see a climate out there that they don’t like, which is a sure sign the federal government is guilty of failing to protect them, that incredible claim was allowed by the Court and the Obama administration to sail right through, as was this:
Plaintiffs allege defendants have violated their due process rights by “directly caus[ing] atmospheric C02 to rise to levels that dangerously interfere with a stable climate system required alike by our nation and Plaintiffs[,]” First Am. Compl. ~ 279; “knowingly endanger[ing] Plaintiffs’ health and welfare by approving and promoting fossil fuel development, including exploration, extraction, production, transportation, importation, exportation, and combustion,” id. ~ 280; and, “(a)fter knowingly creating this dangerous situation for Plaintiffs, … continu[ing] to knowingly enhance that danger by allowing fossil fuel production, consumption, and combustion at dangerous levels,” id. ~ 284.
end quotes
Except according to a 2007 scientific paper by James “Jimmy” Hansen, who was a part of this lawsuit as a guardian for future generations of American children, the conclusion was that CO2 levels above 450 ppm were considered dangerous.
And according to a NASA article entitled “A Year in the Life of Carbon Dioxide” September 6, 2014 – September 6, 2015, we are not at or near that level, nor is that carbon dioxide uniformly distributed or at a constant level, to wit:
Since the beginning of the industrial age, the global concentration of CO2 has increased from roughly an average of 280 parts per million to an average of 400 parts per million.
One recognizable pattern over the year is the annual uptake and release of carbon as each hemisphere passes through the seasons.
In the winter, carbon dioxide levels are at their peak in the northern hemisphere, when there is little plant or phytoplankton growth to offset emissions from human activities and natural sources.
At the same time, CO2 concentrations drop in the southern hemisphere, which is bathed in summer sunlight and heat.
The pattern reverses as the hemispheres change seasons.
According to the new measurements, atmospheric CO2 changes by 8 to 12 parts per million (2 to 3 percent) from winter through the “spring drawdown” in the northern hemisphere.
Over the course of a year, it is also clear that CO2 levels are generally higher over the northern hemisphere — where there are more people and more emissions — than in the southern hemisphere.
Both phenomena are well known to scientists, but OCO-2 now lets us see those patterns more clearly.
end quotes
But notwithstanding, these are children making these claims, afterall, so we should not be bullying them by actually demanding some objective proof of their assertions in their complaint which allege that “(t)he present level of C02 and its warming, both realized and latent, are already in the zone of danger,” and “our country is now in a period of carbon overshoot, with early consequences that are already threatening and that will, in the short term, rise to unbearable unless Defendants take immediate action[.],” especially when those assertions by the children are totally refuted by actual scientific evidence, and here, I point to a paper entitled “NASA Releases New CO2 Data, Refutes Conventional Wisdom – Analyses of a set of NASA data shows that water vapor greatly amplifies global warming, and carbon dioxide doesn’t mix in the atmosphere as quickly as assumed” by Ucilia Wang dated December 15, 2009, which gives us some real science, as follows:
SAN FRANCISCO — NASA has released the first-ever set of carbon dioxide data based only on daily observations by a satellite instrument, a new tool that will help researchers study climate change and improve weather predictions.
The data came from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) that NASA launched aboard its Aqua spacecraft in 2002.
Since then, AIRS has amassed information about carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water vapor, methane and temperatures in the mid-troposphere (see multimedia presentations).
The mid-troposphere is about three to seven miles above the Earth’s surface.
For carbon dioxide, AIRS measures and tracks its concentration and movement as it moves across the globe.
Observation data is critical for scientists to validate their models or adjust them to better predict the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the weather and climate.
The data have already refuted a long-held belief that carbon dioxide is evenly distributed and do so fairly quickly in the atmosphere once it rises from the ground, said Moustafa Chahine, the science team leader of the AIRS project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco Tuesday.
“Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, carbon dioxide is not well mixed in the mid-troposphere,” Chahine said.
“You can see the jet stream splitting the carbon dioxide clump.”
AIRS data shows instead that carbon dioxide, which has seen its rate of increase accelerating from 1 part per million in 1955 to 2 parts per million today, would require about two to three years before it blends in, he said.
The atmosphere currently has about 400 parts per million.
How well and how quickly carbon dioxide blends in is important for understanding how much and how long carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere and affects the climate before some of it is scooped up by Earth’s natural scrubbers, such as the ocean.
And by extension, that knowledge would be crucial in determining what humans must do to minimize their emissions or use technologies to capture and sequester their carbon dioxide pollution before it escapes into the atmosphere.
Chahine said several climate models have assumed an even distribution because researchers didn’t have adequate data to show how the carbon dioxide is vertically transported through the atmosphere.
“The data we have now will help researchers improve their models’ vertical transport,” Chahine said.
end quotes
But, hey, people, these are children, so really, should we expect them to know any of these things?
For if they did, and if the Obama administration had bothered to challenge them they wouldn’t have this federal lawsuit in their favor, and so, they would be deprived of this new civil right in America for children under the age of 18, and what a shame that would be, alright!
Paul Plante says
Not surprisingly, the group behind this KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants lawsuit have a nice, glossy website which starts out as follows:
SECURING THE LEGAL RIGHT TO A SAFE CLIMATE
AND A HEALTHY ATMOSPHERE FOR ALL PRESENT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS
donate now
Leading the game-changing, youth-driven, global climate recovery campaign to secure the legal right to a stable climate and healthy atmosphere.
end quotes
Yes, people open up your wallets and pour your hard-earned money into this children’s crusade to secure their constitutional right to a stable climate, and then sit back and wait for it to happen.
And while you are waiting for the federal government to finally get off the pot and provide these children with the stable climate everybody now knows they are entitled to, ask yourself this question of what exactly is a “stable” climate, and exactly how is the federal government going to provide each child in America with the climate they personally feel they are entitled to?
Consider this from that lawsuit, to wit:
II. Standing to Sue
“A threshold question in every federal case is … whether at least one plaintiff has standing.” Thomas v. Mundell, 572 F.3d 756, 760 (9th Cir. 2009) (citation and quotation marks omitted).
Standing requires a plaintiff to allege “such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to warrant [the] invocation of federal-court jurisdiction and to justify exercise of the court’s remedial powers[.]” Warth v. Seldin, 442 U.S. 490, 498 (1975).
To demonstrate standing, a plaintiff must show (1) she suffered an injury in fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the defendant’s challenged conduct; and (3) the injury is likely to be redressed by a favorable court decision. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992).
A plaintiff must support each element of the standing test “with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation.” Id. at 561.
The most recent allegations of injury appear in the supplemental declaration of plaintiff Jayden F., a thirteen-year-old resident of Rayne, Louisiana.
Jayden alleges that at five o’clock the morning of August 13, 2016, her siblings woke her up. Decl. Jayden F. 5 Sept. 7, 2016 (doc. 78).
She stepped out of bed into ankle-deep water.
By the end of the day, Floodwaters were pouring into our home through every possible opening.
We tried to stop it with towels, blankets, and boards.
The water was flowing down the hallway, into my Mom’s room and my sisters’ room.
The water drenched my living room and began to cover our kitchen floor.
Our toilets, sinks, and bathtubs began to overflow with awful smelling sewage because our town’s sewer system also flooded.
Soon the sewage was everywhere.
We had a stream of sewage and water running through our house. Id p8.
With no shelters available and nowhere else to go, the family remained in the flooded house for weeks. Id p10.
The floodwaters eventually receded, but the damage remains: the carpets are
soaked with sewage water. Id p.12.
The water-logged walls must be torn down to prevent the growth of black mold. Id
The entire family sleeps together in the living room because the bedrooms are uninhabitable. Id p.15.
Jayden alleges the storm that destroyed her home “ordinarily would happen once every 1,000 years, but is happening now as a result of climate change.” Id p.2.
end quotes
And here we are, back to the fact that these are children filing these complaints, not adults, so we cannot hold these children to account for truthfulness as if they are adults, because they are not – they are just children, so if they say without any proof that the storm which destroyed this child’s home “ordinarily would happen once every 1,000 years, but is happening now as a result of climate change,” then like their claim that over the 263 years between 1751 and 2014, the United States produced more than twenty-five percent of global CO2 emissions, we adults simply have to accept it as true, even if all the evidence to the contrary shows it is actually quite false.
Consider the article “Hurricanes: History” by Barbara McCarragher, where we are informed of the following high school history on hurricanes and Louisiana, where this little girl lives in a town called Rayne, a city in Acadia Parish, Louisiana, known as the “Frog Capital of the World,” to wit:
Hurricane Katrina may be the most memorable storm in New Orleans history, but its trajectory across the Pelican State was far from unique.
Louisiana was hit by 49 of the 273 hurricanes that made landfall on the American Atlantic Coast between 1851 and 2004.
On average, one major storm crosses within 100 nautical miles of New Orleans every decade (King, 2006).
end quotes
Notwithstanding, we are to believe that what happened to this poor little girl who happens to live in a federal flood zone never happened before in Louisiana, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, this storm would not have happened but for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because everybody knows these types of serious storms never happened before the United States started pouting all that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
As to Rayne being in a flood zone, a review of federal government records provides as follows:
FEMA
Flood Insurance Study: city of Rayne, Louisiana, Acadia Parish; Federal Emergency Management Agency, Federal Insurance Administration, 1980
end quotes
But of course, this little girl is only 13, so she would be totally unaware of something that happened before she was born, especially since it was in the last century way back in 1980.
So, please, people, open your wallets wide and send your hard-earned dollars to Our Children’s Trust, a law firm, of course, so that finally, they can put an end to these hurricane that have been striking the coast of Louisiana since time immemorial so that finally this little girl can have the stable climate without hurricanes that she was born entitled to as a young American and thanks to your efforts, the world for her can finally be made right:
Reach out to our team in the following ways:
• press@ourchildrenstrust.org – For all media and press inquiries.
• organizing@ourchildrenstrust.org – For all organizing and partnership inquiries.
• development@ourchildrenstrust.org – For all donation and fundraising inquiries.
• info@ourchildrenstrust.org – For all remaining inquiries.
Paul Plante says
And if what is going on here, fundraising by this law firm Our Children’s Trust, an American nonprofit organization based in Oregon that has filed several lawsuits on behalf of youth plaintiffs against governments, arguing that they are infringing on the youths’ rights to a stable climate system, based on the false premise and false promise that these lawyers with the aid of a compliant federal judge in Oregon can actually control the climate to make it “stable” for these children, something the climate has never been, is not reprehensible and obscene, nothing is or ever will be.
Talk about warping and twisting the minds of vulnerable children so lawyers can line their pockets in exchange for a pocketful of mumbles such are false promises, all lies and jests, but still, these children hear what the lawyers wants them to hear, and they disregard the rest, including actual history which has the United States of America coming into existence at the earliest 1776, not 1751, which history includes the fact that since 1776, nowhere in what became the United States of America has there ever been one climate that was “stable,” a nonsense term, and as we see in the Notes on the State of Virginia, a book written by Thomas Jefferson who completed the first version in 1781, and updated and enlarged the book in 1782 and 1783, even in Virginia in the time of Jefferson, the climate of Virginia where he was located was hardly stable.
In fact, if one goes to a travel site on the internet and asks for what the climate of Virginia is, this is the answer one gets, to wit:
Virginia’s climate is humid, sub-tropical, enjoying pleasantly hot summers and relatively mild but crisp winters, with moderate rainfall throughout the year.
Average coastal temperatures in July and August rarely exceed 90°F (32°C), while in winter there is often snow.
The mountainous areas in the west of the region provide welcome respite from the higher temperatures of summer.
end quotes
If one then asks for the climate of New York, one gets this:
The climate of New York state is generally humid continental, while the extreme southeastern portion of the state (New York City and Long Island area) lies in the warm humid subtropical climate zone.
Winter temperatures average below freezing during January and February in much of New York state, but several degrees above freezing along the Atlantic coastline, including New York City.
Seasonally, summer-like conditions prevail from June to early September statewide, while areas in far southern New York and New York City have summer conditions from late May through late September.
Cold-air damming east of the Appalachians leads to protracted periods of cloud cover and precipitation east of the range, primarily between the October and April months.
Winter-like conditions prevail from November through April in northern New York, and from December through March in southern New York.
On average, western New York is much cloudier than points south and east in New York, much of it generated from the Great Lakes.
The significant urbanization within New York city has led to an urban heat island, which causes temperatures to be warmer overnight in all seasons.
Annual precipitation is fairly even throughout the year across New York state.
The Great Lakes region of New York sees the highest annual rain and snow amounts in New York state, and heavy lake-effect snow is common in both western and central New York in winter.
In the hotter months, large, long-lived complexes of thunderstorms can invade the state from Canada and the Great Lakes, while tropical cyclones can bring rains and winds from the southwest during the summer and fall.
Hurricane impacts on the state occur once every 18–19 years, with major hurricane impacts every 70–74 years.
An average of ten tornadoes touch down in New York annually.
end quotes
So exactly which of these climates are these lawyers promising these children, one has to wonder.
As to Notes on the State of Virginia, it originated in Jefferson’s responding to questions about Virginia, posed to him in 1780 by François Barbé-Marbois, then Secretary of the French delegation in Philadelphia, the temporary capital of the United Colonies.
Widely considered the most important American book published before 1800, Notes on the State of Virginia is both a compilation of data by Jefferson about the state’s natural resources and economy, and includes this following on climate, to wit:
“A change in our climate however is taking place very sensibly.”
“Both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged.”
“Snows are less frequent and less deep.”
“They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two, or three days, and very rarely a week.”
“They are remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance.”
“The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year.”
“The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now.”
“This change has produced an unfortunate fluctuation between heat and cold, in the spring of the year, which is very fatal to fruits.”
“From the year 1741 to 1769, an interval of twenty-eight years, there was no instance of fruit killed by the frost in the neighbourhood of Monticello.”
“An intense cold, produced by constant snows, kept the buds locked up till the sun could obtain, in the spring of the year, so fixed an ascendency as to dissolve those snows, and protect the buds, during their developement, from every danger of returning cold.”
“The accumulated snows of the winter remaining to be dissolved all together in the spring, produced those overflowings of our rivers, so frequent then, and so rare now.”
end quotes
For the record, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, around the year 1780, the CO2 concentration was about 280 ppm, and according to actual science as opposed to, lawyer science, which can be anything they want it to be, when they want it to be, prior to the Industrial Revolution, natural climate variations caused atmospheric CO2 to vary between about 200 ppm during ice ages and 300 ppm during the warmer periods between ice ages, so the global warming Jefferson was seeing in his time was not due to all these “forcings” from CO2 the lawyers are claiming have got us way over into carbon overshoot, which requires an unelected federal judge in Oregon to take control of the federal government in order to “stabilize” the climate for these children by judicial decree, to wit:
CONCLUSION
Throughout their objections, defendants and intervenors attempt to subject a lawsuit alleging constitutional injuries to case law governing statutory and common-law environmental claims.
They are correct that plaintiffs likely could not obtain the relief they seek through citizen suits brought under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, or other environmental laws.
But that argument misses the point.
This action is of a different order than the typical environmental case.
It alleges that defendants’ actions and inactions – whether or not they violate any specific statutory duty have so profoundly damaged our home planet that they threaten plaintiffs’ fundamental constitutional rights to life and liberty.
A deep resistance to change runs through defendants’ and intervenors’ arguments for dismissal: they contend a decision recognizing plaintiffs’ standing to sue, deeming the controversy justiciable, and recognizing a federal public trust and a fundamental right to climate system capable of sustaining human life would be unprecedented, as though that alone requires its dismissal.
This lawsuit may be groundbreaking, but that fact does not alter the legal standards governing the motions to dismiss.
Indeed, the seriousness of plaintiffs’ allegations underscores how vitally important it is for this Court to apply those standards carefully and correctly.
Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law, and the world has suffered for it.
As Judge Goodwin recently wrote:
(T)he modern judiciary has enfeebled itself to the point that law enforcement can rarely be accomplished by taking environmental predators to court. …
The third branch can, and should, take another long and careful look at the barriers to litigation created by modern doctrines of subject-matter jurisdiction and deference to the legislative and administrative branches of government.
Alfred T. Goodwin, A Wake-Up Call For Judges, 2015 Wis. L. Rev. 785, 785-86, 788 (2015).
“A strong and independent judiciary is the cornerstone of our liberties.”
These words, spoken by Oregon Senator Mark 0. Hatfield, are etched into the walls of the Portland United States courthouse for the District of Oregon.
The words appear on the first floor, a daily reminder that it is “emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury, 5 U.S. at 177.
Even when a case implicates hotly contested political issues, the judiciary must not shrink from its role as a coequal branch of government.
I ADOPT Judge Coffin’s Findings & Recommendation (doc. 68), as elaborated in this opinion.
Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss (doc. 27) and Intervenors’ Motion to Dismiss (doc. 19) are DENIED.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Dated this 16th of November 2016.
Aiken, Judge.
Paul Plante says
“In an extensive country, it will of course be expected that the climate is not the same in all its parts.”
“It is remarkable, that proceeding on the same parallel of latitude westwardly, the climate becomes colder in like manner as when you proceed northwardly.”
“This continues to be the case till you attain the summit of the Alleghaney, which is the highest land between the ocean and the Missisipi.”
“From thence, descending in the same latitude to the Missisipi, the change reverses; and, if we may believe travellers, it becomes warmer there than it is in the same latitude on the sea-side.”
end quotes
That, of course, was United States president Thomas Jefferson making those remarks in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” in 1781 about the indisputable fact that in the United States of America, there is no such thing as a “stable climate,” nor is there a such a thing as a climate that is common to all places in the United States of America.
So what can we then say when we are confronted with the following from the conclusion to the 54-page decision in KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants, to wit:
A deep resistance to change runs through defendants’ and intervenors’ arguments for dismissal: they contend a decision recognizing plaintiffs’ standing to sue, deeming the controversy justiciable, and recognizing a federal public trust and a fundamental right to climate system capable of sustaining human life would be unprecedented, as though that alone requires its dismissal.
end quotes
Recognizing a fundamental right to climate system capable of sustaining human life would be unprecedented precisely because it is impossible for the federal government, or a district court judge in Oregon, for that matter, who is engaging in judicial legislation, making new laws and rights from the bench, and thereby usurping the responsibilities of the legislative branch and executive branch, to provide such a climate!
So, why didn’t the Obama administration simply make that point to the judge, instead of laying down and taking a dive and allowing this lawsuit to continue, which only serves to further warp and twist the minds of these young people in America who now believe that they have a constitutional right to the climate they desire, which the federal government has a duty to provide to them?
Consider the statements of the various child litigants in the lawsuit, to wit:
“I believe that climate change is the most pressing issue my generation will ever face, indeed that the world has ever faced.”
“This is an environmental issue and it is also a human rights issue.”
end quotes
Except the truth is that the earth does not give a damn about human rights, and climate change has been going on for literally thousands of years, so it is hardly the most pressing problem the world has ever faced, given that the earth’s changing climate is probably the only real constant we have in life.
And then we have this dramatic statement, to wit:
“Our government refuses to protect our basic rights to life.”
“If those we have put in power aren’t protecting our necessities, what purpose are they serving?”
end quotes
That, of course, is hysteria, which takes us to this, to wit:
“Our federal government has not been held accountable for their gross failure to protect the life and the future life on this earth, forcing us children to take drastic actions to procure the needed motivation in order to save life on this planet.”
And this:
“I want my government to understand that climate change is real, changes are happening right now, and things aren’t going to get better on their own.”
“Climate change should be the government’s first priority.”
end quotes
Personally, I feel sorry for these children that they have been so misled by these lawyers, the federal judge, and the Obama administration which bears the greatest responsibility for warping and twisting the minds of these children so that they actually think the federal government can change the climate of the United States of America at will.
Paul Plante says
Third, the panel held that plaintiffs’ claimed injuries were not redressable by an Article III court.
Specifically, the panel held that it was beyond the power of an Article III court to order, design, supervise, or implement the plaintiffs’ requested remedial plan where any effective plan would necessarily require a host of complex policy decisions entrusted to the wisdom and discretion of the executive and legislative branches.
The panel reluctantly concluded that the plaintiffs’ case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large.
end quotes
Those words are from the majority Decision of the United States Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit in the matter of Juliana at al. v. United States et al., filed January 17, 2020, effectively, for the moment, anyway, shutting down that insane idea that has been drilled into the heads of these gullible children being exploited by these lawyers that a federal judge actually has the power to not only control the earth’s many micro-climates, itself an absurd idea, but further, to grant them as individuals the climate they want, when and where they want it, which is even more absurd.
But as we can see from the VOX article entitled “21 kids sued the government over climate change. A federal court dismissed the case. Plaintiffs in the Juliana v. US lawsuit alleged the government violated the rights of young people to a safe climate” by Umair Irfan on Jan. 17, 2020, the insanity is far from over, to wit:
Andrea Rodgers, a senior attorney at Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit backing the youth who filed the lawsuit, described the decision in an email as “unprecedented and contrary to American principles of justice.”
Her organization has vowed to appeal the ruling in the coming weeks.
end quotes
Which itself is an incredibly stupid or naïve statement, given that the “American principles of justice” do not guarantee to children the climate they want, when they want it, nor do American principles of justice have any control whatsoever over the microclimates of the earth, which aren’t stable and never really have been.
As the climate expert H.H. Lamb stated in the seminal “Climate, History and the Modern World,” 2d. edition:
Most generations of mankind in most parts of the world have regarded climate as an unreliable, shifting, fluctuating thing, sometimes offering briefly unforeseen opportunities but at other times bringing disaster by famine, flood, drought or disease — not to mention frost, snow and icy winds.
end quotes
But today, we have these lawyers convincing children that now, it really doesn’t have to be that way, and the reason it was that way was because of all the carbon dioxide emitted by the United States of America since 1751.
Today, according to the crap these lawyers are jamming into the heads of these gullible children, the federal judges in America have the power to not only make the earth and its climate come to heel on command, but further, to make it lie down and do tricks, as well.
What horse****, but then, we are dealing with lawyers here, and that is their product they have for sale to the unsuspecting and gullible in the world.
As to what “climate” actually is, Lamb defines it thusly:
By climate we mean the total experience of the weather at any place over some specific period of time.
end quotes
That is what climate is and that is all that climate is, so when we hear of federal judges controlling the climate for these children, they are actually going to take control of the total experience of weather at any place over some specific period of time, that being at least the lifetime of these children, and who, besides The Guardian and these lawyers believes that?
And then in that same VOX article, we have this:
However, District Court Judge Josephine Staton thought otherwise and did not mince words in her dissent.
“It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses,” she wrote.
“Seeking to quash this suit, the government bluntly insists that it has the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation.”
end quotes
And speaking of irony, that statement about the government not only bluntly insisting, but actually having the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation brings us back in time to the Cape Charles Mirror thread “Op-Ed: Should Sonia Sotomayor resign in disgrace?”
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/op-ed-should-sonia-sotomayor-resign-in-disgrace/
where we find clearly stated the source of the absolute and unreviewable power of the government to destroy the Nation – it comes from federal judges like Sonia Sotomayor who are put in office by politicians like Hussein Obama to protect that corrupt power by crushing citizens like myself who would dare to challenge it with facts, not hysteria as was the case here.
Paul Plante says
And speaking of the insanity not only not being over, but instead being accelerated at what might be blinding speed which is going to further warp and twist the minds of America’s youth who are already suffering psychological problems because of all the hype and hysteria about “climate change,” and the end of the world coming, we have this addition to the hysteria from the January 17, 2020 dissent in Juliana v USA of Josephine Laura Staton, a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California who obtained a Juris Doctor in 1986 from Harvard Law School and who on February 4, 2010, was nominated to the federal bench by Hussein Obama, a chief defendant in Juliana, to wit:
In these proceedings, the government accepts as fact that the United States has reached a tipping point crying out for a concerted response — yet presses ahead toward calamity.
It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses.
Seeking to quash this suit, the government bluntly insists that it has the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation.
end quotes
When she refers to the “government” there, she is referring to Hussein Obama.
Continuing on with the hysteria that is destroying the minds of America’s children, she states:
My colleagues throw up their hands, concluding that this case presents nothing fit for the Judiciary.
On a fundamental point, we agree: No case can singlehandedly prevent the catastrophic effects of climate change predicted by the government and scientists.
But a federal court need not manage all of the delicate foreign relations and regulatory minutiae implicated by climate change to offer real relief, and the mere fact that this suit cannot alone halt climate change does not mean that it presents no claim suitable for judicial resolution.
Plaintiffs bring suit to enforce the most basic structural principle embedded in our system of ordered liberty: that the Constitution does not condone the Nation’s willful destruction.
So viewed, plaintiffs’ claims adhere to a judicially administrable standard.
end quotes
There is where we are, people – it is now a matter of the willful destruction of the United States itself, and nothing less, as we can see by returning to that dissent as follows:
And considering plaintiffs seek no less than to forestall the Nation’s demise, even a partial and temporary reprieve would constitute meaningful redress.
Such relief, much like the desegregation orders and statewide prison injunctions the Supreme Court has sanctioned, would vindicate plaintiffs’ constitutional rights without exceeding the Judiciary’s province.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
I. As the majority recognizes, and the government does not contest, carbon dioxide (“CO2”) and other greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions created by burning fossil fuels are devastating the planet. Maj. Op. at 14–15.
end quotes
Now, right there, we in here in the Cape Charles Mirror who are daring to disbelieve any of this, and to question it, have just been made into heretics there, with that statement by this federal judge that carbon dioxide (“CO2”) and other greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions created by burning fossil fuels are devastating the planet.
Whether that is true or not, by judicial decree, it is now true, and woe to us who think or can prove otherwise.
Getting back to that dissent:
According to one of plaintiffs’ experts, the inevitable result, absent immediate action, is “an inhospitable future . . . marked by rising seas, coastal city functionality loss, mass migrations, resource wars, food shortages, heat waves, mega-storms, soil depletion and desiccation, freshwater shortage, public health system collapse, and the extinction of increasing numbers of species.”
Even government scientists project that, given current warming trends, sea levels will rise two feet by 2050, nearly four feet by 2070, over eight feet by 2100, 18 feet by 2150, and over 31 feet by 2200.
To put that in perspective, a three-foot sea level rise will make two million American homes uninhabitable; a rise of approximately 20 feet will result in the total loss of Miami, New Orleans, and other coastal cities.
So, as described by plaintiffs’ experts, the injuries experienced by plaintiffs are the first small wave in an oncoming tsunami — now visible on the horizon of the not-so-distant future — that will destroy the United States as we currently know it.
end quotes
So, are we who dare to question then next going to be accused of being for the destruction of the United States as we currently know it?
Will that require us to be punished for thinking heretical thoughts along the lines of that is unscientific bull****?
Will we need re-education at hard labor to correct our flawed thinking?
Getting back to the dissent:
What sets this harm apart from all others is not just its magnitude, but its irreversibility.
The devastation might look and feel somewhat different if future generations could simply pick up the pieces and restore the Nation.
But plaintiffs’ experts speak of a certain level of global warming as “locking in” this catastrophic damage.
Put more starkly by plaintiffs’ expert, Dr. Harold R. Wanless, “(a)tmospheric warming will continue for some 30 years after we stop putting more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.”
“But that warmed atmosphere will continue warming the ocean for centuries, and the accumulating heat in the oceans will persist for millennia” (emphasis added).
Indeed, another of plaintiffs’ experts echoes, “(t)he fact that GHGs dissipate very slowly from the atmosphere . . . and that the costs of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere through non-biological carbon capture and storage are very high means that the consequences of GHG emissions should be viewed as effectively irreversible” (emphasis added).
In other words, “(g)iven the self-reinforcing nature of climate change,” the tipping point may well have arrived, and we may be rapidly approaching the point of no return.
Despite countless studies over the last half century warning of the catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, many of which the government conducted, the government not only failed to act but also “affirmatively promote(d) fossil fuel use in a host of ways.” Maj. Op. at 15.
According to plaintiffs’ evidence, our nation is crumbling — at our government’s own hand — into a wasteland.
In short, the government has directly facilitated an existential crisis to the country’s perpetuity.
end quotes
So, I guess afterall the Guardian was really right – the world is ending.
And the hype and hysteria beat goes on!
Incredible is all I can say.
Paul Plante says
“Here and now, the plaintiffs submit undisputed scientific evidence that their distinct and discrete injuries are caused by climate change brought about by emissions from fossil-fuel combustion.”
That is a statement of Josephine Laura Staton, a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California who obtained a Juris Doctor in 1986 from Harvard Law School which is found in Footnote 9 at p.49 of the 17 January 2020 Decision of the United States Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit in the matter of Juliana at al. v. United States et al., and it is patently false!
In point of fact, the plaintiffs, all children, did not submit undisputed scientific evidence that their distinct and discrete injuries were caused by climate change brought about by emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, because their supposed “evidence” was never challenged, and their claims that their “injuries,” such as one little boy pouting and throwing a sulk because he couldn’t go skiing because he didn’t like the snow conditions, they weren’t what he feels himself entitled to, or a little girl who lives in a flood plain denoted as such by the federal government because flooding is historically common there, were caused by emissions from fossil-fuel combustion are highly disputed.
Or were, until this unelected federal judge turned science on its ear, and instead, has made science subject to judicial decree, so that even if a claim is factually false, it really is true because a federal judge said it was, which is a travesty of justice here, as well as making the very concept of “science,” the aim of which is to build true and accurate knowledge about how the world works, into nothing more than a mockery.
Talk about warping and twisting the minds of America’s youth, this burst of sheer hysteria and outright falsehood from this federal judge takes the cake!
Good-bye sanity and rationality in the United States of America and welcome benighted ignorance by judicial decree.
Paul Plante says
Plaintiffs submit ample evidence that there is a discernable “tipping point” at which the government’s conduct turns from facilitating mere pollution to inducing an unstoppable cataclysm in violation of plaintiffs’ rights.
Indeed, the majority itself cites plaintiffs’ evidence that “atmospheric carbon levels of 350 parts per million are necessary to stabilize the climate.”
end quotes
Those are statements of Josephine Laura Staton, a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California who obtained a Juris Doctor in 1986 from Harvard Law School which are found at p. 56 of the 17 January 2020 Decision of the United States Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit in the matter of Juliana at al. v. United States et al., and the second statement about “atmospheric carbon levels of 350 parts per million are necessary to stabilize the climate” is an opinion that does not have a scientific basis of support.
My basis for making that observation is a communication between myself as a professional engineer, and Dr. Howard Diamond, the Climate Science Program Manager at NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory last September, to wit:
On 9/23/2019 3:25 PM, Paul Plante wrote:
Another point is that when an engineer doing HVAC design looks in standard references for NORMAL background air, the figure given ranges from 250 – 350 ppm, with no whiff of hysteria, whatsoever, that the world is going to come to a cataclysmic end in 10 or 12 years, as we are being told today, and in answer to the question “What is the safe top limit of the amount of co2 for Earth?”, it is in short that no one knows the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 while the generally accepted maximum safe figure is 350 PPM.
Does that agree with your science?
On 9/23/ 2019 at 3:47 PM, Howard Diamond wrote:
As for what a generally maximum number, yes, the generally accepted maximum safe figure has been pegged to 350 ppm.
That level was chosen for practicality as well as the fact that that level is generally pegged to result in about a 1°C increase which was considered much better than projections right now that take us well above that limit.
Yes, we are only at 0.8°C at this point, but again, from my previous information, the oceans have not quite kicked in yet.
So, is 350 ppm the best safe top limit?
Well, it’s probably as close as is practical short of going back to the pre-industrial average of 280 ppm.
end quotes
So, the truth is that we really do not know what a safe limit is, given all the uncertainty factors involved, and anyway, and this according to NOAA, the global AVERAGE atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2018 was 407.4 parts per million (ppm for short), with a range of uncertainty of plus or minus 0.1 ppm, so we are way past the 350 ppm the children and the federal judge desire, and here it must be noted that it is an AVERAGE value of CO2, not an absolute value, which means that to get an average of 400, you would have say, 600 ppm in one place, and 200 ppm in another, which adds up to 800, and divide by 2 and there you have an average of 400.
And that averaging of CO2 takes us to this from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, to wit:
350 – 1,000 ppm: typical level found in occupied spaces with good air exchange.
1,000 – 2,000 ppm: level associated with complaints of drowsiness and poor air.
2,000 – 5,000 ppm: level associated with headaches, sleepiness, and stagnant, stale, stuffy air.
end quotes
So we can see that in any normal indoor environment, CO2 levels are considerably higher than 350.
And there are other places on earth where very little CO2 is emitted, since for CO2 to be emitted, there has to be some sort of combustion process to create it.
So all those low CO2 values end up being averaged with high readings from certain locations with high values, and now we have an average of a little over 400 ppm.
That CO2 generation is not at all uniform, all we need do is go to Wikipedia under Climate of New York, where we have as follows:
Greenhouse gas emission is low on a per capita basis when compared to most other states due to the extensive use of mass transit, particularly across New York City.
end quotes
But, hey, what am I talking about here – facts and reality are so passe, and the hot new thing is hysteria, so I am definitely far behind the times here, believing in Holocene era science and rational thinking in the Anthropocene era, where rationality has departed the planet to be replaced by mindless hysteria and insanity.