Several state attorneys general have joined in a campaign to prosecute energy companies for “misleading investors” on global warming.

These A.G.s claim a conspiracy, implying that investors are unaware that climate changes may impact investments, and have committed to using the power of the state to prove it.  In November 2015, ExxonMobil was targeted by New York State attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman, who is pursuing a strategy based on claimed similarities to the way tobacco companies were found guilty in 2006 of suppressing their own research showing tobacco being both harmful and addictive.

Virginia A.G. Mark Herring joined five other A.G.s and former vice president Al Gore in the goal of determining “whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public on the impact of climate change on their businesses.”  Herring is also a supporter of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP).

When scientific argument fails its cause, governmental legal prosecution becomes Plan B.  “Attorneys general and law enforcement officials around the country have long held a vital role in ensuring ... the progress we have made,” according to Gore.  That is the “inconvenient truth” of governmental dogma.

Claiming disastrous climate change related to human activities, alarmists disregard eons of natural climate variations.  Climate change is a vague term and is often undefined.  No student of history denies that the climate changes.  These A.G.s posturing as legal determiners of scientific truth join the current vogue to label variations in some idealized concept of an unchanging “normal” climate (the Goldilocks Climate) as a disaster.  The evidence is otherwise: sea level rate of rise remains about 7 inches per century, droughts are cyclical, tornadoes are less frequent and less deadly, fewer hurricanes are hitting the U.S., and even the polar bears are thriving.  Global temperatures have plateaued for 18 years even as CO2 levels have increased 10 percent (the recent El Niño caused an expected temperature spike).

Virginia’s A.G. Herring supports the EPA’s CPP proposal, estimated to reduce global warming a mere 0.01 degrees Celsius.  EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, asked if she considers 0.01 degrees a significant contribution to halting climate change, said, “No.”  It is the righteous feeling and thought that count, not the actual change achieved.  Progressives base their actions on emotional satisfaction, not scientific analysis.

The tidewater/Hampton Roads/Norfolk, Virginia coastal areas are cited as a source of justification for climate control legislation.  Rising sea levels secondary to climate change are targeted as the driving force of coastal flooding.  Such dogmatic political posturing ignores the findings of scientists at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.  Dr. John Boon reported that “the good news is that absolute sea level in Chesapeake Bay is rising only about half as fast as the global average rise rate.  The bad news is that local subsidence more than makes up for it.”  Coastal flooding is a disaster, but it results from land sinking secondary to ongoing geological forces, not climate change.

Folklore law strategy for the lawyers: “1. If the facts are against you, argue the law.  2. If the law is against you, argue the facts.  3. If the facts and the law are against you, yell like hell”...to which one can now add forget the facts, forget the law, and “sue into submission.”

Charles G. Battig, M.S., M.D., Piedmont Chapter president, VA-Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE).  His website is www.climateis.com.