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Science paves way for climate lawsuits
David Adam and Afua Hirsch
London
Guardian
Tuesday, Dec 09, 2008
People affected by worsening storms, heatwaves and
floods could soon be able to sue the oil and power companies they
blame for global warming, a leading climate expert has said.
Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford University, said a breakthrough
that allows scientists to judge the role man-made climate change
played in extreme weather events could see a rush to the courts
over the next decade.
He said: "We are starting to get to the point that when
an adverse weather event occurs we can quantify how much more
likely it was made by human activity. And people adversely affected
by climate change today are in a position to document and quantify
their losses. This is going to be hugely important."
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Allen's team has used the new technique to work out whether global
warming worsened the UK floods in autumn 2000, which inundated
10,000 properties, disrupted power supplies and led to train services
being cancelled, motorways closed and 11,000 people evacuated
from their homes - at a total cost of £1bn.
He would not comment on the results before publication, but said
people affected by floods could "potentially" use a
positive finding to begin legal action.
The technique involves running two computer models to simulate
the conditions that led to extreme weather events. One model includes
human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, the second assumes
the industrial revolution never happened and that carbon levels
in the atmosphere have not increased over the last century. Comparing
the results pins down the impact of man-made global warming. "As
the science has evolved this is now possible, it's just a question
of computing power," he said.
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