Deadly heatwaves in May smashed records in the UK, France, Spain, and parts of North Africa.
uncertain
heatwaves → smash → Africa
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh saw April temperatures soar to 113-122 degrees Fahrenheit.
asserted
temperatures → see → Fahrenheit
A late spring heat dome in the US marked the hottest March on record, and in a 1,000-year July storm, parts of Texas were left reeling after flash flooding killed multiple people.
asserted
flooding → mark → people
That same month, wildfires in Canada turned skies orange and exposed over 106 million North Americans to hazardous air quality.
asserted
wildfires → turn → quality
In the US alone, catastrophic events from 1980 to 2026 have killed approximately 17,377 people and cost over $3.2 trillion.
asserted
events → kill → trillion
Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry—by far the greatest contributor to global climate change, accounting for approximately 68 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and almost 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions—is holding firm.
asserted
industry → account → emissions
In response to a growing tide of litigation seeking to hold it at least partly responsible for the climate crisis, oil and gas groups and their networks have accelerated their defenses, fighting with their all-too-familiar playbook of discrediting the science linking emissions to extreme weather events such as heatwaves, wildfires, flooding, heavy storms and hurricanes.
asserted
groups → grow → heatwaves
With the help of the Trump administration and industry partners, oil and gas groups have lodged disinformation campaigns targeting specific studies and even individual climate scientists.
asserted
groups → lodge → studies
“How can you show proximate causation in injury?” asked Michael Buschbacher, a partner at Boyden Gray PLLC during an October 2025 Federalist Society panel on climate litigation.
asserted
Buschbacher → show → litigation
He has supported industry opposition to renewable energy mandates, state-level climate liability lawsuits, and SEC climate risk disclosure mandates.
asserted
He → support → mandates
So how do you show that emissions from company X cause injury Y from a hurricane or whatever?”
asserted
emissions → show → hurricane
He then wondered about the consequences of the suits should they be successful.
asserted
they → wonder → suits
“Will they reduce global carbon emissions, or will it just be a payday for contingency fee lawyers and opportunity for virtue signaling from progressive politicians?”
asserted
it → reduce → politicians
A new peer-reviewed study published earlier this month in Earth’s Future suggests that it is possible to demonstrate that “emissions from company X cause injury Y.”
uncertain
emissions → review → injury
It also could potentially provide evidence so industry could be forced to answer for climate impacts.
uncertain
industry → provide → impacts
The new methodological framework has, for the first time, drawn a straight line from single corporate emitters like Exxon or Chevron, or even whole countries like the United States, to specific heatwaves and areas of extreme rainfall.
asserted
framework → draw → rainfall
By running over 150 simulations across 8 different climate models, the study’s author, Christopher Callahan—an Earth systems scientist and assistant professor at Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs—built a statistical model to figure out the relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the odds of extreme heat or rain.
asserted
author → run → heat
He then used real emissions data to calculate the extent to which specific fossil fuel emitters increased the risk of extreme weather.
asserted
emitters → use → weather
study’s results are clear: “There is no level of emissions that does not contribute to changing climate impacts,” Callahan told me.
asserted
Callahan → be → me
“Every ton matters.”
asserted
ton → matter → ?
The implications of this for an industry struggling to contend with the potential consequences of its actions could be dire.
uncertain
implications → struggle → actions
“Climate attribution research seeks to connect greenhouse-gas emissions to specific climate impacts, and increasingly, to particular industries or companies,” wrote Kyle Kohli in Energy In Depth, a blog associated with the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
asserted
Kohli → seek → America
“That makes it especially valuable to climate plaintiffs attempting to overcome one of their biggest legal obstacles: proving causation.”
asserted
it → make → causation
These new findings are part of a growing field of climate science known as source attribution, which examines “whether we can link an individual extreme climate event to any individual emitter who contributed to that event,” Callahan said.
asserted
Callahan → grow → event
By looking at global extreme heat and at specific events like the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave and Pakistan’s extreme rainfall in 2022, for instance, Callahan used climate models to determine what might have taken place without the carbon dioxide released by certain fossil fuel companies and countries.
uncertain
what → look → companies
His conclusions were stark: fossil fuel firms increased the likelihood of the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave by 31 percent and extreme rainfall in Pakistan in 2022 by 7 percent.
asserted
firms → increase → percent
In the past, source attribution studies linked several climate models that were, in Callahan’s words, “computationally difficult,” sometimes taking months to run and requiring vast amounts of computing capacity. “The approach here is attempting to be particularly simple and particularly lightweight,” Callahan explained.
asserted
Callahan → link → capacity
Now, by knowing the proportions between climate change and cumulative emissions, he said, researchers can calculate changes to extreme events based on historical emissions.
asserted
researchers → know → emissions
“What this science tells us is that there is a direct relationship between how much an entity emits and…[the] extreme events that alter people’s lives.”
asserted
that → tell → lives
Source attribution is a subset of the larger, well-established attribution science field, which has helped us understand how much climate change is shaping our world by comparing the climate conditions we face today to a hypothetical Earth devoid of human influence.
asserted
we → establish → influence
In 2004, for example, a team of scientists found that human influence doubled the risk of the 2003 heatwave that had swept Europe.
asserted
that → find → Europe
But source attribution helps answer more granular questions about what specific actions are having what specific effect.
asserted
actions → help → effect
For over half a century, industry has known of and misled the public about its role in human-caused planetary warming, deliberately sowing doubt to undermine scientific evidence.
asserted
industry → know → evidence
Now oil and gas groups are facing a wave of lawsuits.
asserted
groups → face → lawsuits
Over 40 cases in the United States filed by states, municipalities, and tribal governments have been brought against Big Oil since 2017.
asserted
cases → file → 2017
At least five of these lawsuits have entered the discovery phase—marking a turning point that could force oil executives to hand over key documents and testify under oath on what they knew about climate change and when they knew it.
uncertain
they → enter → it
Grist reported in July that the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil lobbying group, stated that one of its top priorities for 2026 was to “stop extreme climate liability policy.”
asserted
one → report → policy
Callahan has no illusions about how his research fits into the current legal and political climate, describing it as “a pretty live question in conversations around climate liability lawsuits.”
asserted
research → have → lawsuits
But how will attribution science play out in a legal context?
asserted
science → play → context
Some experts argue that it will “‘[rock] the courtroom,” while others say key decisions will most likely hinge on legal issues rather than the science itself.
asserted
decisions → argue → science
…and 22 more, not listed.
The Aporia
