Climate claims easy to defeat on science alone

On Aug. 14, Montana Republicans lost the Held v Montana (HvM) climate lawsuit, as I predicted in June 2022 based upon how AG Knudsen was failing to prepare to defeat HvM.

The judge did not make a biased decision, as AG Knudsen now claims. The judge properly used the evidence presented in the trial. The Supreme Court will agree with the judge.

Montana lost because Knudsen did not defend against the plaintiffs’ climate claims.

Worse, before the trial began on June 12, Assistant AG Michael Russell stipulated, “for the purposes of trial, there is a scientific consensus that earth is warming as a direct result of human GHG emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels."

Knudsen gave away the farm. He caved on climate and gave the Democrats control of Montana’s mining, energy, economy, and education.

Knudsen’s stipulation reduced the trial to the issue of whether the Montana Constitution prevails over the legislature. But he presented no evidence that the legislature prevails over the Constitution. He could have asked a constitution expert to argue that point.

Knudsen used two witnesses from the State to describe how they processed applications for mining and energy production. But “how” Montana processes these applications does not prove the Constitution authorizes the process.

HvM makes unconstitutional the 2023 Republican bills SB 557 and HB 971 that the legislature intended to assure the legislature had power over the Constitution.

In 2011, I won this exact same lawsuit in 10 days on climate alone in Montana’s Supreme Court. The court’s decision set a Montana precedent that “climate science is not settled” enough to support the plaintiffs’ claims.

Knudsen did not reference this 2011 Montana Supreme Court decision and precedent to dismiss or defeat HvM as he should have. My 2011 win saved Montana billions of dollars per year. AG Knudsen reversed these savings.

For Held v Montana, I would have organized a team of climate experts who would have destroyed the plaintiffs’ pseudoscience, and saved Montana and America from the climate fraud.

As an example, the plaintiffs assume human CO2 emissions cause all the CO2 increase.

To justify that assumption, they claim the half-life for human CO2 in the atmosphere is hundreds or thousands of years while the half-life for natural CO2 is 2.4 years.

So, we ask the plaintiffs’ experts, “How is this possible when human and natural CO2 molecules are identical?”

Duh? Both human and natural CO2 have a half-life of 2.4 years according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And IPCC’s carbon cycle says human CO2 is only 8% of today’s atmosphere, not 33% as the plaintiffs’ experts assume.

Carbon-14 data show the percent of human CO2 in the atmosphere is about zero.

The COVID pandemic reduced human CO2 emissions by about 20% for a year. But the CO2 level continued to increase undisturbed by the dramatic decrease in human CO2 emissions, showing human CO2 does not control the CO2 level.

The bottom line is IPCC’s own data show nature, not human CO2, causes the CO2 increase. This negates all the plaintiffs’ damage claims. Checkmate.

There is much more evidence that the plaintiffs’ climate beliefs are delusions. This illustrates my point that HvM was easy to defeat on the science alone.

Knudsen should lose his law license because he did not ethically represent the defendants who are the people who voted for him.

HvM will go down in history as the trial where Montana Republicans censored climate truth and gave Democrats control of Montana’s mining, energy, economy, and education.

Ed Berry lives in Bigfork.