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?

I think we’ll leave it at this point and wait for any further clarification in the rants from our favourite useful idiot.

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.

It would have been nice if made reference to my post on WUWT. ;-)

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.

One would think that would be for history to decide…

“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.

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.