Critics contend that a federally supported National Academies report promoting the use of extreme-weather attribution in court cases was shaped by attorneys, advocacy organizations and funders with direct interests in climate litigation.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A new National Academies of Sciences report arguing that researchers can more confidently connect individual extreme-weather events to climate change is drawing criticism over the involvement of climate litigators, advocacy groups and funders that support lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.
The National Academies report states that “major advancements” in climate research now permit “more robust assessments” of the extent to which climate change contributes to particular weather events and their consequences. Its recommendations could provide plaintiffs in climate-related lawsuits with scientific arguments intended to establish responsibility for specific damages.
Critics interviewed or cited by Just the News argue that the report’s development raises questions about whether the institution adequately protected the process from ideological, financial and legal interests. They point in particular to the participation and influence of people directly connected to climate litigation and campaigns seeking to hold oil and gas companies financially responsible for alleged climate damages.
The National Academies says its mission is to produce and communicate advice free from improper influence by sponsors, donors and interested parties. Critics contend that the attribution report did not meaningfully incorporate dissenting perspectives, even though some committee participants and outside presenters had documented connections to organizations advancing climate lawsuits.
The concern is amplified by the institution’s reliance on public funding. Although the National Academies operates as a nonprofit organization, federal contracts provide much of its financial support. The organization received approximately $200 million from federal agencies in 2024, meaning taxpayers helped support an institution whose report may now aid plaintiffs pursuing climate litigation.
Just the News said it contacted the National Academies for a response to the conflict-of-interest allegations but did not receive one.
The controversy also reflects a major change in the public discussion surrounding weather and climate. In 2015, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., was widely labeled a “climate denier” after displaying a snowball on the Senate floor while disputing claims about global warming.
Critics said Inhofe was improperly using a short-term weather event to challenge long-term climate trends. Katie Herzog, writing for the climate activist publication Grist, summarized the argument at the time.
“Climate change is about long-term warming trends, not individual weather events,” Herzog wrote.
For years, climate advocates responded to skeptics who cited blizzards, cold snaps or other isolated events by insisting that weather and climate were not interchangeable. The new National Academies report takes the position that advances in attribution methods can now allow scientists to assess the influence of climate change on particular storms, heat waves, droughts and other events.
The scientific debate has become intertwined with an expanding legal campaign against energy producers. One figure receiving particular scrutiny is Michael Burger, an attorney serving as of counsel to Sher Edling, a law firm involved in climate lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.
Burger delivered a presentation to the National Academies attribution committee in November 2024. During that appearance, he disclosed that he was “actively involved” in Sher Edling’s cases and explained how attribution research could assist plaintiffs pursuing climate claims.
In an earlier Union of Concerned Scientists webinar, Burger described climate litigation as a “key part of the overall solution” to global warming.
His involvement in the attribution report followed a separate dispute over climate material produced for the federal judiciary. Earlier in 2026, the National Academies partnered with the Federal Judicial Center to add a climate science chapter to a reference manual used by thousands of federal judges, potentially including judges presiding over climate cases.
Burger’s work was cited four times in the chapter, including discussions involving climate-litigation frameworks, assigning responsibility, courts’ treatment of climate research and the judiciary’s potential role in addressing claimed climate harms.
The manual did not identify Burger as an attorney affiliated with a firm actively litigating climate cases against energy companies.
A coalition of 27 Republican state attorneys general objected to Burger’s citations and other alleged conflicts they said compromised the chapter’s neutrality. Following the criticism, the Federal Judicial Center agreed to remove the material from its manual.
The National Academies continued to defend the disputed chapter, and it remains included in the organization’s own version of the judicial science reference.
Burger was not the only person associated with climate advocacy who influenced the newer attribution report. Delta Merner, who directs the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate accountability campaign, served directly on the committee that produced it.
That campaign supports expanded climate litigation and policies aimed at reducing or ending the use of fossil fuels. Critics say Merner’s committee role further blurred the distinction between independent scientific review and advocacy designed to advance particular political and legal outcomes.
Attribution science itself has legal origins, according to one of the field’s leading figures. World Weather Attribution, or WWA, is among the most prominent organizations attempting to calculate how human-caused warming may have changed the likelihood or intensity of individual weather events.
“Unlike every other branch of climate science or science in general, event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind,” WWA co-founder and climatologist Friederike Otto told Politico in 2019.
Otto later said during a Concordia University interview that the discipline formed part of a legal strategy intended to provide plaintiffs suing oil companies with scientific support for their claims.
Opponents have challenged both the methodology and the way attribution findings are presented. Climate researcher Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has compared World Weather Attribution’s conclusions to alchemy, the ancient practice that claimed to transform ordinary metals into gold.
Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, has argued that attribution research disproportionately examines damaging outcomes allegedly intensified by warming while overlooking possible effects that could make some weather events less destructive.
Lomborg cited examples such as increased evaporation potentially reducing the severity of certain droughts or warmer conditions moderating a cold snap. He argues that focusing primarily on damaging events produces conclusions aligned with the interests of litigants seeking compensation from fossil fuel companies.
Pielke has also documented what he considers overlapping institutional and financial conflicts within the committee in his “The Honest Broker” Substack.
The committee’s listed sponsors include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the Bezos Earth Fund and a private donor who serves on the board of Climate Central, a climate advocacy organization.
Climate Central helped establish and initially housed World Weather Attribution in 2014. The Bezos Earth Fund finances WWA, and a WWA representative served on the National Academies committee responsible for the report.
“The failures of scientific integrity here are profound, obvious, and completely out in public,” Pielke wrote.
The Bezos Earth Fund was created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. Post climate reporter Shannon Osaka appeared in the report’s acknowledgments after giving the committee a presentation titled “How do journalists portray extreme events and climate change?”
Criticism of the report has extended beyond researchers and conservative public officials. The Wall Street Journal editorial board accused the National Academies of constructing the report in a way that could advance climate litigation while failing to disclose Burger’s professional interest in those cases.
“The report omits that Mr. Burger is a counsel at the law firm Sher Edling, which has led the litigation raid on fossil-fuel producers,” the editorial board wrote.
Before the report was released, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee sent a letter to Dr. Marcia McNutt, who was then president of the National Academies, warning that committee members “are affiliated with nonprofits that support climate accountability lawsuits, raising the appearance of impropriety and member bias.”
The House committee said the participation of individuals with financial or institutional interests in particular scientific conclusions appeared inconsistent with the National Academies’ own conflict-of-interest rules.
Lawmakers proposed oversight protections similar to those required under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Such safeguards are designed to promote representation of differing scientific views, public access to committee proceedings and scrutiny of the evidence underlying official conclusions.
President Donald Trump addressed the broader dispute in a Truth Social post, focusing on the climate chapter prepared for the federal judiciary.
“The Academy has been run by Radical Left Dumocrats who, it turns out, published fraudulent, biased, and misleading Manuals on Climate Change,” Trump said.
The legal significance of the attribution report could soon be tested in a major case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Boulder, Colorado, and other local governments filed a climate lawsuit seeking to hold energy companies liable under state tort law for alleged climate-related damages.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments during the first week of its October 2026 term on whether such claims may proceed in state courts. A ruling favoring the energy-company defendants could affect similar litigation throughout the country.
Organizations and individuals concerned that climate settlements could raise energy prices or establish climate policy through court rulings rather than elected legislatures are submitting briefs supporting the defendants.
Critics say the timing of the National Academies report may make it especially useful to plaintiffs as the Supreme Court considers the Boulder case and the future of state-level climate claims.
Whatever the justices ultimately decide, the dispute has intensified questions about whether scientific institutions can maintain public confidence while working with advocates and litigators seeking specific policy or courtroom outcomes.
Public trust in scientists and positive views of science have already been declining, according to polling. Critics warn that dismissing concerns about undisclosed interests and excluding competing scientific perspectives could deepen that erosion even if the National Academies continues to defend the report’s findings.
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