The Climate Attribution Law reaches a new bass with the demand for heat waves 2021: are we going with that?

In another theatrical act of the law against the fossil fuel industry, Misti Leon has launched a lawsuit for unfair death against seven oil and gas companies, claiming that they were responsible for the tragic death of their mother, Juliana Leon, during the heat wave of the northwest of the Pacific 2021. The legal argument? That the anthropogenic emissions of these companies directly caused the heat wave and, therefore, the death of their mother. This demand, announced on May 29, 2025Mark a new chapter in the current campaign to litigate the weather.

The idea that any heat wave, or any isolated climate event can be placed at the foot of specific industrial actors stretches credulity. But this is not about evidence. It is about building a politically useful narrative. The heat wave 2021, which in fact brought record temperatures to the region, is now being used as a legal ram against energy producers. But the scientific scaffolding behind this statement is remarkably hollow.

The event in question occurred in June 2021, when temperatures in the northwest of the Pacific increased more than 108 ° F. Juliana Leon died in her vehicle in a suffocating day in Ferndale, Washington, with a broken air conditioning and lowered windows, a tragic circumstance exacerbated by her recent bariatric surgery and greater heat vulnerability. The demand alleges that the oil companies did not warn the public about the dangers of climate change and actively sowed doubts about the “consensus” about global warming. However, none of this explains why individual risk factors, personal decisions and public climate warnings do not play any role in the plaintiff’s logic. It is a raw scapegoat operation disguised as justice.

In the scientific front, demand is based on a distorted interpretation of the “science of climate attribution”, a flourishing field that tries to assign the probabilistic fault of weather events to human activities. Immediately after the heat wave, NOAA analysts called him a “1,000 -year -old event”, with some attributing his occurrence to man -made climate change. But the most rigorous follow -up told a different story.

A 2024 study published in Nature communications It makes it clear that the 2021 event challenged conventional climate modeling. The authors describe the heat wave as an atypical statistical and dynamic, so extreme that it exposed the fundamental weaknesses in the current modeling frames. Specifically, their simulations could not reproduce an event of similar magnitude under standard greenhouse gas forcing scenarios. Study notes:

“We find that analyzed models cannot simulate events as extreme as heat wave 2021. This discrepancy questions its ability to evaluate the frequency and drivers of such events with precision.”

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wefo/39/2/waf-d-23-0154.1.xml

This is not a support from the science of attribution: it is a direct accusation of its limitations.

Even the World Climate Attribution Group (WWA), generally anxious to draw a straight line between emissions and extreme weather, admitted that this particular heat wave exceeded the capacities of its models. They came to speculate on unknown feedback mechanisms, an admission that the scientific community does not completely understand what happened, much less why. The authors of the natural document went further, calling the event a “black swan”, a unique chaotic driven by atmospheric randomness that CO₂ levels.

But nuances are not useful when building a climate morality game. On the other hand, demand combines correlation with causality, which implies that the presence of emissions means guilt for each and every one of the associated climatic ends. The plaintiff’s lawyers want it in both directions: they claim that the event would not have happened without climate change and simultaneously argue that climate change simply worsened it. Which is it? As the meteorologist Ryan Maue pointed out with irony: “You cannot discuss both. Elija One.”

Equally problematic is the attempt of the demand to set responsibility in oil companies for not advertising the dangers of climate change. This ignores the elephant in the room: the forecasts for the heat wave were precise, publicly and well publicized. The National Meteorological Service issued timely warnings. If there was a failure, it was not conscientious. Juliana Leon tragically found a lethal environment, but the immediate causes: Lack of A/C, Personal health risks and direct exposure) do not involve Exxonmobil or Chevron.

This demand is emblematic of an increasing trend in climate litigation: ignore uncertainties, simplifies science and vilelys an industry. Like him The Sabin Center Law for Climate Change Documents happilyMore legal cases are aimed at fossil fuel companies, not for direct environmental damage, but for their alleged ideological breach. “Misinformation”, “denial” and “deception” are the new grievances.

What is at stake here is not compensation or justice; It is control. These demands are policy formulation tools by other means. Unable to approve green green style reforms legislatively, climatic activists are resorting to court to impose de facto regulations through responsibility judgments. If you succeed, this demand could open the door to infinite statements, each who blames oil producers for everything, floods to freezing.

Do not be wrong: the death of Juliana Leon is a tragedy. But exploit it as a Cudgel in the non -scientific crusade of climatic attribution is an abuse of science and law. If the courts give credit to such spurious reasoning, they will not only sanction junk science, they will encourage it.

This is the law dressed in climatic robes, and it is time to call it as it is: a cynical and opportunistic campaign built not on facts, but in fervor.