A scientific report faces unusual pressure
A forthcoming study on the relationship between corporate emissions and extreme weather has become the focus of a coordinated conservative campaign that could affect billions of dollars in climate litigation.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is preparing a report on extreme weather attribution, the field that measures how human-caused climate change influences the likelihood or intensity of individual disasters.
Lawyers and researchers following the issue say attempts to discredit the report could weaken its authority before courts begin relying more heavily on attribution studies in lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.
Emails and records are being scrutinized
The pressure campaign includes public records requests seeking hundreds of emails and internal documents from scientists involved in the National Academies panel.
At least nine requests were submitted to public universities by Argus Insight, an opposition research firm founded in 2023 by former Trump administration aides and a former Axios reporter.
The firm requested communications involving panel members, National Academies officials, researchers and lawyers working on climate accountability cases.
The heightened scrutiny has already affected the committee. Two people left the original 15-member panel, according to people familiar with its work.
The legal stakes are substantial
Attribution science could become an important tool in lawsuits accusing oil, gas and coal companies of contributing to costly and deadly climate disasters.
A 2022 financial industry analysis estimated that fossil fuel producers could face cumulative losses exceeding $100 billion under the most severe litigation scenario.
Since then, more than a dozen additional climate cases have been filed. One lawsuit alone seeks more than $51.5 billion in damages and adaptation funding following a deadly heat wave.
Alice Hill, a former federal prosecutor and California judge who worked on climate policy in the Obama White House, said the effort appears intended to keep attribution research out of court and protect fossil fuel companies from liability.
Science can now examine individual disasters
Researchers were once reluctant to connect a specific hurricane, drought or heat wave with climate change.
That has changed as models and observational data have improved. Scientists can now estimate how global warming altered the probability, duration or severity of an individual event, sometimes within days of the disaster.
Some studies also calculate the share of economic losses associated with greenhouse gas emissions. These advances allow plaintiffs to argue that particular sources of pollution contributed to specific harms.
The National Academies could influence judges
The National Academies was created by Congress in 1863 to advise policymakers on difficult scientific questions. Its reports often carry substantial institutional credibility.
The organization previously reviewed attribution science about a decade ago and found strong evidence that human-caused warming had intensified heat waves and cold extremes. It also found evidence of possible effects on drought and heavy rainfall.
The current panel was launched in 2023 after the National Science Foundation provided nearly $100,000 for the review. Other sponsors include NOAA, the Bezos Earth Fund, the Heising-Simons Foundation and investment banker Robert Litterman.
The report could influence whether judges allow attribution evidence to be presented at trial. Under the Daubert Standard, courts assess whether scientific methods have gained sufficient acceptance and reliability before juries can hear them.
Republican lawmakers demand records
Representative Brian Babin, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, raised concerns about the project in an April letter to the National Academies.
He said the report was likely to affect major litigation and policy decisions and requested records concerning the panel’s creation and the selection of its members.
The letter was also signed by Republican Representatives Rich McCormick of Georgia and Scott Franklin of Florida.
Campaign finance records reviewed by E&E News show that Babin’s campaign and political action committee have received more than $480,000 from the oil and gas industry since 2014.
Industry-linked groups attack the panel
The American Enterprise Institute and other organizations with financial ties to the fossil fuel industry have publicly questioned the panel’s independence.
On the day of its private orientation meeting in November 2024, AEI scholar Roger Pielke Jr. accused the National Academies of engaging in hidden advocacy on behalf of climate lawsuits.
He pointed to the involvement of researchers affiliated with the Union of Concerned Scientists and the World Weather Attribution Consortium, whose leaders had supported climate litigation.
Government Accountability & Oversight, a group funded in part by the foundation of coal executive Joseph Craft III, promoted Pielke’s article as a damaging exposé.
Tax records also show that AEI received funding from the American Petroleum Institute and the Craft foundation, although AEI says its scholars work independently.
Two panel members depart
Georgetown Law professor Monica Sanders resigned during the panel’s first public meeting in November 2024.
Sanders, an expert in disaster law and a former Republican congressional staff attorney, said she feared that conservative groups and the incoming Trump administration would target the committee with records requests or legal discovery.
She was also consulting on an international climate case and worried that her legal work could become entangled with the panel’s activities.
Another member, Delta Merner of the Union of Concerned Scientists, was removed in January 2025, the same day an oil industry website accused the committee of being filled with activists seeking to damage the energy industry.
The website, Energy in Depth, is operated by the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
A landmark case relies on attribution research
Extreme weather attribution already plays a central role in a lawsuit filed by Oregon’s Multnomah County against more than a dozen fossil fuel companies.
The county, which includes Portland, is seeking approximately $51 billion for damages and preparations following the June 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome.
The event killed 69 people and pushed temperatures to 116 degrees Fahrenheit, about 40 degrees above average.
The complaint cited a peer-reviewed study concluding that the heat wave would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate pollution.
Legal experts say conclusions supported by respected scientific institutions could be persuasive to juries, provided judges permit the evidence to be introduced.
Trump supports the industry in court
Climate liability lawsuits remain one of the most serious legal risks facing fossil fuel companies during Donald Trump’s second term.
His administration has tried to prevent states from pursuing such cases and has filed legal motions supporting the oil industry.
The administration has also rolled back environmental regulations, expanded access to federal lands and waters for extraction, halted federal tracking of costly disasters and moved to close a leading climate research center.
Republican lawmakers and several conservative states are separately pursuing proposals that would protect fossil fuel companies from climate liability claims.
The industry has delayed trials
Oil companies have relied heavily on procedural and jurisdictional arguments to delay climate cases or prevent them from reaching trial.
These strategies have largely succeeded so far, and the companies have persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to examine whether federal law prevents state and local governments from bringing the lawsuits.
If more cases proceed to their underlying claims, the credibility of attribution research and the scientists producing it will become increasingly important.
Researchers fear intimidation
Some scientists say records requests are designed to find private comments that can be removed from context and used to challenge their credibility.
Kevin Smiley, a sociology professor at Louisiana State University and a panel member, said he did not know his emails had been searched and provided to Argus until a reporter contacted him.
The firm received hundreds of pages of documents, including presentation slides, meeting materials and briefing documents from closed sessions.
One agenda asked how the study could contribute to the application of attribution science in litigation, language that critics could use to portray the report as advocacy rather than research.
Climate researchers recall an earlier campaign
The concern resembles the controversy that followed the 2009 release of emails from climate researchers at Britain’s University of East Anglia.
Climate skeptics claimed the messages showed scientists manipulating evidence, although subsequent reviews rejected those accusations.
University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said the current effort appears designed to intimidate researchers and discourage them from discussing the legal implications of their work.
Mann, who previously won a defamation case against two conservative bloggers, said the objective is to discredit individual scientists and warn others against becoming involved.
The report could reshape climate lawsuits
The National Academies says the panel is following its normal independent process, including scientific review, and will publish its findings once that work is complete.
Its conclusions could strengthen the scientific foundation of climate liability cases by showing whether specific emissions can be linked with particular disasters and financial losses.
That possibility explains the intense attention surrounding what would otherwise be an obscure scientific committee.
For fossil fuel companies, the question is not merely whether climate change worsens extreme weather. It is whether courts may eventually identify the companies whose emissions contributed to the damage and require them to help pay the cost.
