A forthcoming report on climate attribution may be laying the groundwork for a confrontation.
Established during the US Civil War to offer guidance to the government, the National Academies of Science have evolved into one of the most esteemed scientific bodies. Its main role is to develop thorough reports on scientific and technological topics, leveraging its capacity to recruit leading experts nationwide.
These reports have not hesitated to address contentious public issues and risk antagonizing influential factions, managing to do so without forfeiting the esteem of the government agencies that finance them. However, this year, there have been growing indications that the Academies’ capacity to steer clear of political controversies has hit its limit. Yesterday, a detailed story from Politico shed light on the rift between the National Academies and Republican lawmakers.
The National Academies is developing an expert report on linking weather events to human-induced climate change, and fossil fuel companies are anxious that it could result in findings of liability in the numerous lawsuits being filed against them.
A clash over climate
In public, the National Academies has been very cautious in its handling of the overt hostility toward science exhibited by the Trump administration. The organization’s president, Marcia McNutt, largely bypassed the attacks in her annual “state of the science” address last year, and continued that strategy this year. Yet this has not kept the organization out of Republican crosshairs.
The trouble, it appears, stemmed from projects launched during earlier administrations. One such project was the creation of the fourth edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. This was created for the Federal Judicial Center to assist judges in addressing scientific matters brought before the courts.
The fourth edition was the first to include a chapter on climate change, but a coalition of Republican state attorneys general raised objections. The chapter featured input from individuals involved in climate damage litigation; rather than viewing this as evidence of expertise, the attorneys general saw it as a sign of partiality. Another point of contention: the chapter treated human-caused climate change as established science (which it is), which they characterized as a lack of impartiality.
The state attorneys general demanded that the Federal Judicial Center remove the chapter, and it quickly complied. However, the National Academies had already posted the original, unaltered report on its website. When the state attorneys general insisted that it follow the Judicial Center’s example, it refused.
At that juncture, Republicans in Congress stepped in. A group of 11 representatives dispatched a letter to the head of the Office of Management and Budget, in which they “respectfully urged” the office’s director to “investigate whether NASEM should be suspended or debarred from all federal funding under your jurisdiction.” Again, the complaint is that they believe there should be some form of affirmative action for the perspectives of those who reject the evidence for human-induced climate change: “Most shocking is that there was no fully independent, meaningful peer review from scientists with differing views on climate science.”
Similarly, members of Congress threatened to probe the National Academies when it arranged an updated climate report at the same time that the Department of Energy had assembled a group of fringe contrarians to produce something suggesting that all those carbon emissions are probably harmless.
The dispute over attribution
Why is there such a commotion about scientific guidance for judges? The Politico article provides context and indicates that matters are likely to escalate.
The core issue is attribution: Can we identify the role of climate change in specific weather events? A few decades ago, this was simply not feasible. But researchers have since developed methods to calculate the likelihood of various events occurring with and without the influence of our greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, it has become evident that some of the most extreme events would not have happened without the warming we have caused.
This clarity has enabled other researchers to link the financial losses from catastrophic weather events to the impact of fossil fuels produced by specific companies. If these studies are widely accepted as valid scientific work, then judges will be obligated to admit them as evidence in any lawsuits against those companies.
Numerous lawsuits have been filed against fossil fuel companies, but most have not succeeded because judges determined that they encroached on policies that needed to be established at the federal level. However, economic damages have long been considered within the purview of the courts, and a direct connection between business practices and damage caused by a storm may be a more challenging accusation to evade.
This is where the National Academies re-enter the picture, as a committee it established during the Biden administration is currently assessing the scientific validity of attribution studies. The oil companies are sufficiently concerned that, as the Politico article details, they have hired third parties to request access to the emails of committee members who work at public universities.
All of this suggests that the battle over this report is set to become fierce, and both the credibility and funding of the National Academies are likely to face sustained assault, which could permanently harm science-based policy in the US. And that would offer yet another demonstration that, when even basic facts can become politicized, trying to avoid becoming a target by claiming “we’re just focused on the science” will not be a successful approach.