Climate E-mail Scandal Will Shape Litigation

December 1, 2009 – FLAG Communications Weekly

A still developing, major story involves the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, where scientists have been shown by disclosed e-mails and computer programs to have manipulated global warming research. The revelations of debased science have far-reaching implications for all sorts of climate-related litigation. Consider the public nuisance suit by eight states against utilities, Connecticut v. American Electric Power. In its opinion that the states could sue, the Second Circuit noted the litigation was based on "reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to support the States' claims of a causal link between heightened greenhouse gas concentrations and global warming" (Page 7). Those reports are now suspect.

As Declan McCullough of CBS News summarized in "Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails”: “In global warming circles, the CRU wields outsize influence: it claims the world's largest temperature data set, and its work and mathematical models were incorporated into the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report. That report, in turn, is what the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged it ‘relies on most heavily’ when concluding that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health and should be regulated.” For a searchable database of the CRU documents, go here.