THE International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
According to Mitchell Anderson writing at Desmog a class action lawsuit was filed last week in the ICC against national governments refusing to act on reducing carbon emissions. The suit was filed by climate activist Danny Bloom who is asking for “US$1 billion dollars in damages on behalf of future generations of human beings on Earth – if there are any”.
Are you thinking this is sure to go nowhere?
Well, remember in September a UK jury cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damages accepting defence arguments that they had a “lawful excuse” when they vandalised the chimney stack because the carbon dioxide emissions from the Kingsnorth power plant are harmful to the environment of the Hoo Peninsula. Under the UK’s Criminal Damage Act 1971 damage is condoned if it will prevent even greater damage.
Furthermore, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Dr James Hansen, flew to the UK to be an expert witness in the trial in support of the activists.
Based on past form, Dr Hansen and many other high profile scientists with impeccable credentials will be lining up to support Mr Bloom.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
James Hansen has impeccable credentials?
This is the same Hansen that couldn’t even carry out simple book keeping from one month to the next which by any definition is as simple as ABC.
BTW he heads up a large team of tertiary educated, group thinking morons to help him in this incredibly difficult task.
One office secretary could have recieved those numbers (some) for October checked them against the previous month, emailed for verification and then posted them or delayed for 24 hours until a proper check was carried out. One office girl, perhaps one days delay, not a problem, so why would this numbskull be an impeccable expert witness?
I wrote “impeccable credentials”. Like it or not Neville, Dr Hansen, with his position, qualifications, and many research papers, could only be considered to have impeccable credentials and make a very credible expert witness.
This class action is nothing more than forcing individuals to behave to a particular way by coercion of a supra-state legal system. It is totalitarianism at its most powerful – where the state, having the monopoly of violence, can force inferior states to act one way or the other.
The AGW was always concerned with establishing a world government. The ICJ in Den Haag is simply its supreme court.
Or let me be my most cynical, what does Danny Bloom hope to do with the $1 billion in damages if it is awarded- invest it and live on the high hog as a custodian?
And States are to be held responsible for crimes against humanity? I thought only individuals could be held to account.
The political left, as we know from our experiences here, are simply barking mad, and very, very dangerous.
Louis:
what does Danny Bloom hope to do with the $1 billion in damages if it is awarded- invest it and live on the high hog as a custodian?
This was my thought as well. Perhaps he might donate it to GISS so that they can employ another office girl.
Jennifer I accept your position but it doesn’t mean that even the high and mighty can’t act like fools, just look at past and recent history.
Louis some of the left are barking mad and very dangerous but they ( and their ideas) are also very, very expensive to maintain.
The billions wasted on AGW plus ( we’re told) the trillions to come would be much better spent on adaptation to fire, flood and drought.
This lack of wisdom or common sense makes me think that the agenda is really entirely different than the stated aims.
Methinks the green movement has a very RED AUTHORITARIAN centre, in fact I’m sure of it.
Listen to yourself Neville. It’s the old fire and brimstone alternative. Some of right’s methods have been very expensive to maintain for real and the money has actually been spent for a poor result – see Iraq. See trillions. And you wonder why we don’t bother listening.
You guys dare to talk about “dangerous” ! LMAO
What’s more hilarious is that you guys try to put everything on Hansen when he’s only one researcher in a large field.
Net result of the Hague court case – gets attention. Is it a good idea. hmmmm…. depends what public reaction is.
The climate of course doesn’t care.
No Luke I’m against the new fire and brimestone fundamentalist religion, that’s my whole point.
I agree the climate doesn’t care, that’s my point again but your side claims we are fundamentally changing the climate artificially for the first time.
We can agree conclusively that the climate has always changed and will always change, but then again you and the other fanatics here don’t really accept that either.
I pointed out that the LIA after a period of ups and downs for nearly 500 years actually ended 100 to 150 years ago and most scientists say we are in a recovery phase, but you couldn’t even accept that simple fact.
All this once again happened naturally without any need for your religious fundamentalism, nature will do what nature will do and only a religious cranky fool would try and stop it.
Danny is the polar cities zealot. Go see what Willis put up at climateaudit.org
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Only one billion dollars? If that is the sum total of the damages, then it is an open and shut case that on economic grounds alone we ought to keep emitting!
“Most scientists” – see how easily the b/s slips your lips. Your LIA “recovery” notion is nonsensical for someone who simply believes climate simply bounces around. Relax in the knowledge that with 6 billion humans on the planet going to 9 billion, that a major climate shift for whatever reason would not be coped with easily.
It’s about risk management and you don’t have any. Your lack of science reason indicates which of us has the big dose of religion. It’s you mate !
I wonder to what extent Hansen’s credentials might become peccable by exploration of his motives and rewards for acting as an adviser to Lehman.
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Lamprey,
So it’s all about risk management is it? Risk of what? It’s the precautionary principle gone beserk and used by those whose wish to enslave us by instilling a fear of the future which then needs to be risk managed.
In case you have learnt in in your BSc. (Hons) – previous climate shifts were associated with mass species extinctions. 97% of all species ever to live on the surface of the earth are fossils.
And the next extinction event will be as unstoppable as the past ones though I suppose some of us would believe it could be stopped.
Pity you never absorbed any of the geology you taught, but that’s the price for an Enid Blyton University qualification.
Well gramps you’re a living fossil – so yes I agree with you.
But obviously you’d never had to design a structure involving climate risk. If you did you’d need some climate type numbers. But of course given you don’t believe in temperature measurement I guess that eliminates anything to do with cooling or heating.
Gee whizz, your incredible new philosophy could revolutionise the futures market – initially invented to assist with managing climate risk.
Golly you’re so smart gramps – tell us an electric universe story again so we can have a little nap.
How can you win a case where by definition the liability is to something that does not exist? Could the Jews have sued Hitler in the 1930s for he was going to do them in the 1940s? Obviously a political stunt surely the court will see it as waste of time and impose appropriate penalities. If not then surely the world is totally mad.
Lamprey
What new philosophy? If this is what you think I wrote, then you have a serious problem of english comprehension.
No one designs a structure for climate risk – we do design buildings to withstand cyclones and earthquakes, but climate?
And to baldly state that I don believe in temperature measurement is 100% wrong.
Sadly you seem to be a product of our state education system, one of John Dawkin’s incomprehensibles, in which intellectual incest seems rampant.
From the webstite of the International Criminal Court:
“Who can initiate (criminal) proceedings?
Proceedings before the ICC may be initiated by a State Party, the Prosecutor or the United Nations Security Council. ”
http://www.icc-cpi.int/about/ataglance/faq.html#faq5
“The Prosecutor may start an investigation upon referral of situations in which there is a reasonable basis to believe that crimes have been or are being committed. Such referrals must be made by a State Party or the Security Council of the United Nations, acting to address a threat to international peace and security. In accordance with the Statute and the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, the Prosecutor must evaluate the material submitted to him before making the decision on whether to proceed.
In addition to State Party and Security Council referrals, the Prosecutor may also receive information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court provided by other sources, such as individuals or non-governmental organisations. The Prosecutor conducts a preliminary examination of this information in every case. If the Prosecutor then decides that there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation, he will request the Pre-Trial Chamber to authorise an investigation.”
Danny Bloom hasn’t filed a lawsuit. He did sent a letter to the Prosecutor of the ICC kindly requesting to initiate criminal proceedings against governments around the world (which is probably not possible). Individuals can not initiate criminal proceedings.
“money has actually been spent for a poor result”
One would think that would be for history to decide…
Gee gramps – I wonder how dam yields and water allocations calculated. Off you go now – back to the nursing home.
Luke: “Gee gramps – I wonder how dam yields and water allocations calculated. Off you go now – back to the nursing home.”
Calculated by seeing what happened in the past and using that as a basis for computing storage. SMEC noted droughts averaged 7 years and like good engineers, an extra error was used to make it a conservative estimate, hence 9 years. Lance Endersbee describes it in his book, A Voyage of Discovery. We don’t need computer models to do this unless one is in teh business of selling computer modelling software, and then that would make you even more of a shonk.
And you forget the political interference in the process which is the cause of all the strife in the first place.
And really who cares what you write, apart from here with your pseudonymic instances of interlocutory fame, you appear to be a nobody. Heavens in Ender has a public personnae – but you? A nobody.
Alden Whitman,
It would have been nice if made reference to my post on WUWT. 😉
Well gramps – you do remember some things despite your idiotic behaviour. So engineers and scientists make climate risk assessments on infrastructure design based on climate data do they.?Well well – gramps has finally said something sensible. Sure they don’t do it on the basis of an electric universe?
But hang on – you’ve been telling us that you can’t measure climate. So how can you possibly do it if you can’t measure the climate. Gee ….. hmmmm …
And gramps – after you’ve built your hypothetical dam work out how the operators might devise the operating rules or an irrigator might do a business plan for his bank.
Then work out what you’d have to start thinking is suddenly all this started to unravel and supply starts to become erratic.
You’re going to have a lot of trouble with the maths as your advancing stupidity seems to prevent you grasping simple concepts like deciles and anomalies.
No don’t bother helping – just sit in the Sun in your wheel chair. Somebody else will do it.
Lamprey: ” you can’t measure climate”
I think we’ll leave it at this point and wait for any further clarification in the rants from our favourite useful idiot.
Reuters picked up the story here from your blog I think. It is now internatinal news, and people can discuss the merits of the lawsuit, pro or con.
Friday, November 28, 2008
REUTERS: US$1 billion lawsuit against world leaders for global warming
http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/11/28/sue-world-leaders-1-billion-for-global-warming/
Aaron Gray-Block reports from Reuters today:
Tags: Environment, climate treaty, crimes against humanity, global warming, greenhouse emissions, international criminal court…James Lovelock, James Hansen, Mark Lynas, Fred Pearce, Tim Flannery, Sharon Astyk, James Howard Kunstler
AMSTERDAM — In a global stunt, a U.S. environmental activist is poised to lodge a $1 billion damages class action lawsuit at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against all world leaders for failing to prevent global warming.
Activist and blogger Dan Bloom says he will sue world leaders for “intent to commit manslaughter against future generations of human beings by allowing murderous amounts of fossil fuels to be harvested, burned and sent into the atmosphere as CO2″.
He intends to lodge the lawsuit in the week starting Sunday, Dec. 6.
The prosecutor’s office at the ICC, the world’s first permanent court (pictured below right) for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, says it is allowed to receive information on crimes that may fall within the court’s jurisdiction from any source.
“Such information does not per se trigger a judicial proceeding,” the prosecutor’s office hastened to add.
The question is: will or should the prosecutor take on the case?
One might argue in defence that world leaders are in fact trying to impose climate-saving measures. In Vienna last year, almost all rich nations agreed to consider cuts in greenhouse emissions of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Talks on a new climate treaty will be held in Poznan, Poland, from Dec. 1-12.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. Climate Panel, says the cuts are needed to limit temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, an amount seen by the EU, some other nations and many environmentalists as a threshold for “dangerous” climate change.
Granted then that there is growing consensus that climate change poses a real threat, is it not only world leaders who are failing to prevent global warming?
Perhaps the global collective of individuals, governments and industry is to blame and the ICC lawsuit a valid publicity stunt in the constant battle to raise awareness and prompt action?
Because it’s action we need — and now, right?