Scientists Tally Oil Majors’ Climate Damage With Eye on Courts

Over the last decade, scientists have rapidly developed the field of climate attribution research, teasing out the role played by global warming in individual natural disasters. Meanwhile, their ways of tracking a single emitter’s influence on temperature or sea-level rise have grown more sophisticated, as research into climate economics has advanced.

The result is that it’s now possible to quantify the climate damages caused by each of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, according to a paper published last week in the journal Nature. Those calculations could be brought as evidence in court.

“This has long been articulated by ...