Posted on 07/07/2022 5:39:29 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Probably you think that the justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court must be among the most intelligent people in the country. Granted, the mainstream press spends a lot of time denigrating the intelligence of the conservative justices. But surely then, the liberal justices must be really, really smart.
Consider Justice Elena Kagan. She was the Dean of the Harvard Law School. Then she became the Solicitor General of the United States. That’s the person in charge of arguing the government’s positions in the Supreme Court. You need to be really smart to do that job. So if you’re looking for someone who can teach you the thinking processes of the very smartest of the smart, there is no one better to look to than Elena Kagan.
With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at Justice Kagan’s dissent on behalf of the three liberal justices in the case of West Virginia v. EPA that came out just last week. That’s the case where the six conservative justices held that EPA lacked the authority under existing statutes to transform the electricity-generation sector of the economy. In my last post, I already quoted in full the second paragraph of Justice Kagan’s dissent. The first couple of paragraphs of an opinion are where a judge normally tries to encapsulate the essential gist of the argument, the reasoning that will capture the reader’s attention and immediately convince him of the rightness of the judge’s thinking. So let’s look at that paragraph again:
Climate change’s causes and dangers are no longer subject to serious doubt. Modern science is “unequivocal that human influence”—in particular, the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide — “has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Sixth Assessment Report, The Physical Science Basis: Headline Statements 1 (2021). The Earth is now warmer than at any time “in the history of modern civilization,” with the six warmest years on record all occurring in the last decade. U. S. Global Change Research Program, Fourth National Climate Assessment, Vol. I, p. 10 (2017); Brief for Climate Scientists as Amici Curiae 8. The rise in temperatures brings with it “increases in heat- related deaths,” “coastal inundation and erosion,” “more frequent and intense hurricanes, floods, and other extreme weather events,” “drought,” “destruction of ecosystems,” and “potentially significant disruptions of food production.” American Elec. Power Co. v. Connecticut, 564 U. S. 410, 417 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). If the current rate of emissions continues, children born this year could live to see parts of the Eastern seaboard swallowed by the ocean. See Brief for Climate Scientists as Amici Curiae 6. Rising waters, scorching heat, and other severe weather conditions could force “mass migration events[,] political crises, civil unrest,” and “even state failure.” Dept. of Defense, Climate Risk Analysis 8 (2021). And by the end of this century, climate change could be the cause of “4.6 million excess yearly deaths.” See R. Bressler, The Mortality Cost of Carbon, 12 Nature Communications 4467, p. 5 (2021).
In other words, Justice Kagan has fallen hook, line and sinker for a preposterous end-of-days story of climate doom. She has totally failed to distinguish a kernel of bona fide scientific learning from ridiculous scare stories peddled by charlatans.
She starts off with a citation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which contends that human emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide “has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” I would call that proposition highly debatable, but assume it is true. Nothing about that statement quantifies the warming that has occurred as a result of human activities, or establishes that it is a problem, let alone a crisis.
And then it’s on to the apocalypse. “If the current rate of emissions continues, children born this year could live to see parts of the Eastern seaboard swallowed by the ocean.” Huh? Where does that come from? It’s from an amicus brief submitted by all of six people calling themselves “climate scientists.” The leader is one Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton — a charlatan if ever there was one.
This is no more than a wild and unsupported scary prediction designed to frighten the unsophisticated. Oppenheimer has been peddling these things for decades. Oppenheimer first became famous for his apocalyptic sea level rise predictions way back in 1988, when he and fellow alarmist James Hansen appeared at a June 23 hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that many credit for getting the climate scare ball rolling. At that hearing Oppenheimer was relatively modest with his predictions of doom:
This increase in global temperature causes a concomitant rise in global sea level as ocean water expands and land ice melts. Global mean temperature will likely rise at about 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit per decade and sea level at about 2.5 inches per decade over the next century. These rates are 3 to 6 times recent historical rates.
Oppenheimer’s prediction of accelerating sea level rise has proved completely wrong over the intervening 34 years. The observed rate in areas without rising or subsiding land is approximately 4 inches per century, about 15% of what Oppenheimer predicted.
Shortly after the 1988 hearing, Hansen gave an interview to journalist Bob Reiss, where Reiss quoted him making the following prediction for 20 years out, that is, 2008:
"The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water," Hansen said. "And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won't be there. The trees in the median strip will change."
Obviously, that one did not age well.
Here is another Oppenheimer prediction of environmental apocalypse, this one from 1990:
[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots. … [By 1996] the Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers. … The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.
With this kind of past success, it’s hard to believe that Oppenheimer would still venture to try to make any predictions at all. And note that Oppenheimer’s prediction of parts of the East Coast getting “swallowed” is not a fact that somehow was proved in a lower court, or that is any part of what is called the “record” of the case that is before the Supreme Court. It is just a wild and unsupported assertion in an amicus brief from a guy with a history of wild and unsupported alarmist climate predictions that have proved completely false.
But Justice Kagan asserts this as a key part of her main argument as to why EPA must be given the latitude to close all coal and natural gas power plants.
The basic thought process is, start with a kernel of reality that may be somewhat concerning, and allow yourself to get scared into suspending all critical thinking and responding with crazed over-reaction. You may have noticed the same kind of thought process informing the work of our health authorities during the Covid epidemic. Those people weren’t Supreme Court justices, but they were also mostly people of seemingly high intelligence and with fancy academic pedigrees. It seems that the “smarter” a person is — at least as measured by our conventional criteria — the more likely that person is subject to this approach to problems.
UPDATE, July 6: Perhaps I should also mention two more decisions decided by the same 6-3 majority, Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS in August 2021 (denying application to vacate stay of CDC’s nationwide supposedly Covid-based eviction moratorium) and NFIB v. Department of Labor in January 2022 (granting stay of OSHA’s Covid-based vaccine mandate). The NFIB dissent by Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan has no lead author, but starts off in the way these justices do these things:
Every day, COVID–19 poses grave dangers to the citizens of this country—and particularly, to its workers. The disease has by now killed almost 1 million Americans and hospitalized almost 4 million.
Maybe only the blue states will be under water. They probably are under water in debt.
Easy: don’t.
The perfect post for liberal thought.... a blank post !! KUDO’s
As my elders used to say, “They can pour piss out of a boot.”
Putin will sell oil and gas to any country willing to pay for it - and he has massive amounts to sell. That’s why the US and European governments decided that he needs to go.
That’s it, that simple. And it explains our reaction to Ukraine. Bummer, though, it hasn’t gone their way.
Well not exactly. California is absolutely flush with cash.
There is no legal basis in the quoted text. It is all based on authority and smug superiority. “Because I said so.”
The real point is that Breyer, whom I knew briefly many years ago, is a doctrinaire lefty. Not stupid, just delusional. Kagan and the “Wise Latina” are affirmative action ciphers. Back when people thought they knew what a “woman” is, those two were pushed through the system, even though neither is all that bright (Sotomayor is actual quite dim), well informed, or capable of serious critical thought. These are dominant characteristics of Clinton/Obama/Biden judges and appointees. Of course, it’s not the case that Republican presidents always appointed truly capable people, but the percentage of people who should be Walmart greeters instead of judges and high level bureaucrats appointed by Dems is far higher.
“Climate change’s causes and dangers are no longer subject to serious doubt.”
Her first sentence is opinion, not fact. That pretty much waters down her entire summation.
“the six conservative justices”
Make that two conservatives, three middle-of-the-roaders, and then there’s Roberts.
“But surely then, the liberal justices must be really, really smart.
“Consider Justice Elena Kagan.
“She was the Dean of the Harvard Law School.”
Well, there’s your explanation.
Great article, by the way.
Ping
Her arguments are POLITICAL, NOT LEGAL.
Political viewpoint have no place on SCOTUS. NONE!
She should resign, and run for some political office where she can be voted in by people who support her political views.
Good luck with that.
SHE HAS NO BUSINESS BEING A JUDGE OF ANY KIND!
What stocks does she own?.
Kagan’s opinion sounds like she is testifying as to the facts rather than applying the law. I think she is confusing her role as a judge with a desire to be a witness on behalf of respondent gubmint. Sotomayer does not even try to put up the pretense that she is a judge in her constant desire to serve as a witness for the administration.
What’s really sad is there isn’t a speck of legal argument in that paragraph at all. And that’s what Kagan is supposed to be doing, evaluating legal arguments, not vomiting up science fiction stories.
Dumb title...
Leftist judges only “feel”...
Name one that could, actually, “think”...
The issue is never the issue. The Revolution is always the issue.
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