What is attribution science? The critical climate research that Big Oil would rather you didn’t believe in
Climate science has been clear for decades: Since at least the 1950s , oil and gas companies have known that their fossil fuels release planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. And we’ve known that those emissions cause dangerous planetary impacts like the melting of our ice caps, rising sea levels, and “potentially serious environmental damage worldwide,” as one 1968 study…
Attribution science is a relatively new branch of climate research, which aims to establish a direct link between human activities, specifically fossil fuel emissions, and the resulting climate change impacts. This field has been gaining momentum over the past two decades, as scientists have developed more sophisticated models to quantify the relationship between emissions and various climate phenomena.
The concept of attribution science first emerged in the early 2000s, when researchers began to investigate the role of human influence on extreme weather events, such as the deadly European heat wave of 2003. Since then, the field has expanded to include various subsets, such as event attribution, trend attribution, source attribution, and impact attribution.
Event attribution focuses on determining the role of climate change in specific instances of extreme weather, while trend attribution examines the long-term human impact on global climate patterns. Source attribution, a more recent development, aims to quantify the emissions contributed by individual companies over their lifetime, providing a clearer picture of corporate responsibility.
Impact attribution, on the other hand, looks at the social and economic consequences of climate change's extreme impacts, such as increased deaths from heatwaves. This area of study is crucial for climate litigation, as it provides the scientific evidence needed to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their role in climate change and the resulting damages.
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