Climate Science on Trial

In the rush to turn data into verdicts, science trades curiosity for convictions.

A new frontier is opening in climate science: litigation-ready research. It’s a rich field as more scientists turn from observation to prosecution. That should trouble everyone who still believes science should pursue facts, not verdicts.

It clearly bothers some academics. In a cautionary article written for the advocacy-adjacent journal npj Climate Action, University of Cambridge environmental systems analysis professor Ulf Buntgen argues that “climate science and climate activism should be separated conceptually and practically”. Ironic, then, that the same journal should publish an Australian-led paper that leans unapologetically into activism.

The paper’s lead author is Australian National University climate scientist Nerilie Abram and the research was part-funded by iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest’s philanthropic Minderoo Foundation.

The purpose of the research is explicit. The paper notes that “Scientific progress in quantifying and attributing climate change consequences is underpinning litigation claims worldwide” but identifies a gap, the need to link individual fossil fuel projects directly to human and planetary harm to put pressure on decision-makers.

The researchers’ solution looks simple and elegant. The paper uses a method that links how much the planet warms to how much carbon dioxide we release.

In geekspeak this is called Transient Climate Response to CO2 Emissions (TCRE). It attributes about 0.45C of planetary warming for every 1000 billion tonnes of carbon released, with a likely range between 0.27C and 0.63C. The method does not define a lower limit because the greenhouse effect runs all the way down to the molecular level.

So simply wind the numbers down to any known quantity of carbon dioxide and every fossil fuel project is in the gun.

As a case study, the authors chose Woodside’s recently approved Scarborough gas project.

Here, let’s note that Forrest has called Scarborough “Australia’s biggest carbon dioxide bomb”. “This project is going to last at least 50 years and it will destroy the environment around us,” Forrest said. “This death race to the finish of oil and gas is a death race for human­ity if we let them get away with it.”

A Minderoo Foundation spokesman said the paper formed part of its Lethal Humidity research program but stressed the proposal had been developed independently by the ANU and that the foundation had no role in shaping or reviewing the work.

Meanwhile, back at the research, the authors have run the sums on Scarborough’s emissions through to 2100. “The best estimate is that the 876 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from this project will cause 0.00039C of additional global warming, with a 66-100 per cent likelihood of causing between 0.00024C and 0.00055C,” the paper says.

This is a vanishingly small number. Natural temperature swings are hundreds of times larger each year. And the paper doesn’t mention that if any of this gas replaces coal, global emissions would fall.

Never mind. Now we need to fill some body bags. Here the authors pluck one study on heat and cold-related deaths in Europe and another that defines the so-called human climate niche to make the leap into epidemiology.

The second paper says pre-industrial humans thrived where the mean annual temperature was around 11C to 15C, with regions above 29C representing the extreme upper limit of habitability.

The human climate niche paper relies on the most extreme emissions scenario, now widely regarded by modellers as unrealistic. And it ignores the reality that burning fossil fuels has allowed people to flourish in every climate on Earth, from the Arctic Circle to Singapore. In the pre-industrial world, inside or outside the so-called niche, life was mostly nasty, brutish and short.

Blinkers on and ploughing ahead, the paper delivers its headline-hunting conclusion. It calculates that by 2100 Scarborough would kill an additional 484 Europeans and that 516,000 people would be exposed to “unprecedented heat” and 356,000 people (213,000-504,000 likely range) would be left outside the human climate niche.

The paper got the headlines it was hunting, as most of the media typically regurgitated it enthusiastically and without question. “Emissions linked to Woodside’s Scarborough gas project could lead to at least 480 deaths, research suggests” was The Guardian’s take.

The Guardian is right about the deaths being only a suggestion, because dig deeper into the report and the numbers change once those people not being killed by cold weather are counted.

That’s significant, because the paper on European climate-related deaths notes “we estimated an annual excess of 130,228 deaths attributed to cold and 13,589 attributed to heat”. Scientists call a tenfold difference an order of magnitude.

In the swings and roundabouts of temperature, Abram et al calculate a net loss of 118 additional lives by 2100. In fact, by the authors’ own model, it’s possible that more people will live than die – up to 161 fewer deaths – depending on how reduced cold-related mortality offsets heat-related deaths. And most will be over the age of 80.

So, Scarborough is about to kill, or save, about two elderly Europeans each year from the time it kicks off until 2100. Seriously.

Lest we forget, if every gas plant in the world were shut tomorrow, billions would starve. We feed the world’s crops with synthetic fertiliser made by drawing nitrogen from the atmosphere, using gas as both the feedstock and the fuel. There is no scalable alternative, nor is one on the horizon.

Surely it isn’t too much to ask that such an intelligent group reflect on how they came to live in the most privileged niche in human history.

Every comfort they enjoy depends on the concentrated energy of fossil fuels. The dirty little secret is they condemn the source of their prosperity while devouring it, a moral vanity made possible only by the abundance they feign to reject. It is time they lived their faith and spent just one day without anything derived from coal, oil or gas.

But let’s stay in the model land of make-believe, and run the scientists’ numbers over their benefactor’s businesses. Using the paper’s own arithmetic and assumptions, if Fortescue’s reported Scope 3 emissions of roughly 269 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2024 continue unchanged to 2100, its cumulative total would be more than 23 times larger than Scarborough’s. That translates to about 2750 net European deaths by 2100. No wonder its owner lies awake at night dreaming of green hydrogen.

Forrest is also the owner of Squadron Energy, which is building a liquefied natural gas import terminal at Port Kembla. It will need to get gas from places identical to Scarborough. Let’s assume Port Kembla processes 500 terajoules of gas a day from 2026 to 2100. That is roughly 768 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or about the same as Woodside’s Scarborough project. Under the paper’s formula that makes Port Kembla a theoretical killer of about 100 to 125 elderly Europeans by 2100.

Both of Forrest’s companies danced around the questions this column asked.

A Fortescue spokesman explained all the many things the company was doing to cut emissions and ended: “We encourage Woodside to do the same: stop expanding fossil fuel production and start investing in solutions that drive emissions down, not up.”

Expanding fossil fuel production is exactly what Squadron Energy is doing.

A Squadron spokeswoman said gas was essential to support the grid when the wind dropped or sun set and added the Port Kembla terminal would “provide an immediate, flexible supply of LNG to ensure Australia’s east coast has reliable energy during the transition”.

On the west coast the Forrest empire ignores its own sins and demands chastity from others. On the east it screams “but not yet”.