By Bruce M. Everett, Ph.D.

May 8, 2025

Climate activists insist that (1) the narrative of catastrophic warming is rigorously formulated and beyond refutation and (2) oil and gas companies are global villains that should be brought to account for their sins. The recently published Nature article “Carbon Majors and the Scientific Case for Climate Liability” by Christopher W. Callahan and Justin S. Mankin, both at Dartmouth College at the time this article was prepared, makes no effort to demonstrate the validity of the catastrophic climate hypothesis but offers instead a blueprint for plaintiffs to sue oil companies over climate damage. Their proposal is essentially a rehash of all the major climate fallacies.

Before analyzing the article’s proposal in detail, a key point is needed for context. The words “science” and “scientific” appear 44 times in this report, but as is often the case with climate activists, the term is misused. Science is one thing and one thing only – the testing of hypotheses against empirical evidence. Climate activists often try to substitute the concept of “consensus” for “science”. Consensus means only that a self-selected group of people hold a certain opinion. Consensus does not become science by the holding of meetings or the publishing of reports.

A similar problem occurs with the term “peer reviewed.” Peer review was originally a process by which scientific articles were evaluated by disinterested parties to determine if the authors’ methodology and data management were rigorous. Today, articles on climate are reviewed only by other climate activists who screen for ideological purity. The term “peer-reviewed” appears eight times in the article. Neither “consensus” nor “peer review” establishes scientific rigor.

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