By Tom Harris
For years, the left has used the supposed “consensus” on climate science to ram through its agenda unchallenged. That cover is starting to crack.
The taxpayer-funded National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (“NASEM”) recently removed the climate science chapter it developed for the fourth edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence from its website pending an independent review of “the processes used to develop the chapter.” The importance of this move cannot be overstated.
This reference manual is the document that federal judges use to help decide the 1,500+ climate lawfare cases that are currently pending in courts across the U.S. One of these cases, Suncor v. Boulder, is moving forward to oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme court next month.
These cases will decide whether private companies, such as the fossil fuel corporations that legally provide us our fuel, can be blamed for causing climate change and the floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters that left-wing advocates claim climate change has triggered.
Yet, according to The Wall Street Journal, the climate change chapter of this important reference manual relies in part on “the views of progressive climate lawyers” who stand to profit if judges take their side.
The Journal is right. Consider Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. He presented to the National Academies’ Attribution Committee and admitted he was “actively involved” in cases for Sher Edling, the contingency-fee law firm suing oil companies on behalf of two dozen-plus states, counties and cities. The NASEM Attribution Report thanks him in its acknowledgments but never mentions the Sher Edling connection.
Dr. Delta Merner, who runs the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate-litigation shop, sat on the committee for a significant portion of the process too, then quietly left in early 2025. Her name doesn’t appear in the final report at all, even though she helped shape it for years. This is unusual because NASEM typically acknowledges former members who contributed substantially during the study period.
NASEM responding to public backlash by pulling its climate chapter for further review is of great policy significance, particularly at this time and under these conditions, with oral arguments for Suncor forthcoming.
NASEM’s Politicization
Once a relatively obscure congressionally chartered advisory body, NASEM has grown so politicized that it has attracted national attention. Its group of critics has included President Trump, who lambasted the organization for publishing “fraudulent, biased, and misleading Manuals on Climate Change.”
NASEM has also faced heat from a coalition of 25 Republican state attorneys general, who released an open letter to top administration officials and congressional committees calling for it to be stripped of taxpayer funds. The AGs drew particular attention to the “numerous connections between the Report and persons or organizations who filed amicus briefs in Suncor.” One such connection is the Bezos Earth Fund, which helped bankroll the report while also giving $100 million to the Natural Resources Defense Council and $15 million to the Union of Concerned Scientists, both of which filed amicus briefs backing the plaintiffs in Suncor.
The Problem with Attribution Science
So-called “attribution science” generally involves using computer modeling to simulate how an extreme event would have unfolded under pre-industrial climate conditions. Researchers then compare the hypothetical disaster with the real one to determine how human‑caused climate change supposedly affected the event’s likelihood or intensity.
The problem is that models still can’t reliably simulate basic atmospheric dynamics, and many rapid-attribution studies routinely skip peer review entirely. As such, there is nothing scientific or data-driven about assigning a precise dollar figure to the damage caused by one company’s emissions because there is no way to quantify such an amount. In fact, many of the studies the 2026 NASEM Attribution Report leans on rely on climate benchmarks and scenarios that regulators have since abandoned as implausible.
NASEM’s Flip-Flop on Attribution Science
NASEM was aware of the method’s shortcomings when it released its report on attribution science in 2016. In that report, the committee admitted that the question “Was a given observed weather event caused by climate change?” is a “poorly formed (or ill-posed) question that rarely has a scientifically satisfactory answer.”
The about-face—from a cautious, scientific 2016 report to a confident, litigation‑relevant 2026 policy document—came without a clear scientific explanation for the change in confidence. Such an abrupt shift risks further eroding the public’s already fragile trust in scientific institutions, and NASEM was right to order a review, even if only due to significant political pressure.
Ensuring a Fair Review Process
A review, though, is only as good as how it’s run, and so far, NASEM has said almost nothing about how this one will actually work. If the results are going to mean anything, the review needs to meet a few basic conditions.
First, it has to be conducted by experts outside NASEM. NASEM’s own internal guidelines say reviewers shouldn’t be connected to the work product they’re reviewing, so a review of NASEM’s own process run by NASEM insiders fails that test before it even starts.
Second, NASEM needs to say, publicly and in advance, exactly what it’s asking the reviewers to do. What is the scope, the timeline, and the specific questions it wants answered? Without this information, the public has no way to judge whether the final report actually answered anything.
Third, the reviewers themselves have to be named publicly, and none of them can have ties to climate litigation, on either side. That should be an easy bar to clear. If NASEM can’t clear it, that tells you everything.
Fourth, the review has to actually grapple with the specific allegations Roger Pielke Jr. and other legal scholars have raised about who really wrote the chapter and how. NASEM brushed these allegations aside for months. Dodging them again would say everything about how seriously NASEM is taking this.
Fifth, NASEM should commit before the review even starts to specific consequences for whatever it finds, whether that’s retraction, revision, or reinstatement of the chapter. Once the review is done, NASEM should publish its response to every finding, item by item, in public, along with a concrete timeline for fixing whatever’s broken. That’s the same level of disclosure Congress already requires of other NASEM committees whose advice federal agencies rely on, so why shouldn’t the same apply here?
You could call this activism, lawfare, dirty politics, or even a crusade to supposedly save the planet. The one thing you can’t call it is honest, unbiased science. And if NASEM can’t live up to its own name and commit to serious reforms, then it no longer deserves public trust or public funds. Let’s end the games and let real science trump politics once and for all.
This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy
[“These cases will decide whether private companies, such as the fossil fuel corporations that legally provide us our fuel, can be blamed for causing climate change and the floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters that left-wing advocates claim climate change has triggered.“]
If the courts decide against the fuel corporations, then every one of those corporations should –
Some people may well die, but that could be better than our society collapsing from being forced back to the Stone Age.
I would file for bankruptcy the next day, along with ceasing all operations of production, transport, and refining. If the courts want to run the country, then let a bankruptcy judge pick up the pieces and be liable for any future “harm”! I want to see a judge tell shareholders that their stock is worthless and to burn it, tell lenders the sale of capital assets will only bring pennies on the dollar so be prepared for bankruptcy too, and tell consumers that he’s sorry about the supply ramifications of fuel and plastics being decimated. Or, if I was the judge I would tell the plaintiffs that they get no cash infusion, they must buy shares of the company on the open market, and the dividends will be their payment. That way they can decide to buy enough shares to shut down the company and become the bad guys in the whole mess!
Not bankruptcy. Keep the protest honestly based on facts and reality. Bankruptcy may be an inevitable outcome but it hasn’t happened yet. Stop supplying and say why seems to be the better option.
“Some people may well die, but that could be better than our society collapsing from being forced back to the Stone Age.”
Lol, you’re being so paranoid and silly.
Best to analyse the situation and its possible outcomes rationally. Energy is the foundation of a modern society and a principal feature that distinguishes it from the Stone Age. If a perfectly good energy system is destroyed and not replaced, then societal collapse and a return towards Stone Age like conditions is a distinctly possible outcome. Saying so doesn’t look like paranoia to me. I happen to think that unfriendly and destructive takeover and rule by authoritarian regimes such as Xi Jinping’s China is a more probable outcome, but I’ll listen to other arguments if you would like to present them.
Just what evidence do you have that China is ‘unfriendly and destructive’ whereas the USA is ‘friendly and constructive’?
Those outside the US payroll currently believe by a large majority that the opposite is the case, as it is the USA who is always starting foreign wars, occupying foreign nations with military bases and committing genocide on countries which practice free trade not subservient to US fascists (e.g. Libya).
China has lifted the greatest population in history out of poverty and it has not engaged in military warfare outside Asia since the Year dot.
Oh but the USA could say the same…..
One nit. The fuel corporations petition the courts for stop work orders, so stopping is fully compliant legally.
Examine the butterfly effect and then sue the correct butterfly.
That is the essence of attribution science
I have done just that (article has been submitted to WUWT) and I found the butterfly should not be sued. The article does identify the likely guilty party.
supply proof that the butterfly effect has any relevance in the real world rather than in the imagined world of mathematical models
A politicized scientific organization is no longer scientific. It is advocacy. It is staffed by people using their scientific training to rationalize political ends.
Call it advocacy-science. Politics above everything – the trademark of a pure-bred collectivist.
Advocacy-science is intellectual criminality. It is deliberative pseudo-science. It is composed to deceive. The NASEM has reached that stage – the stage of intellectually criminal advocacy-science.
In the manner of all criminals, the intellectual criminals at the NASEM (or the EPA) are passionately self-delusional. They truly believe their actions are justified. As intellectual criminals, their justification is self-assigned high morality.
Likely, most of them are so delusional as to believe their own pseudo-science.
Expecting that a criminal organization will dispassionately investigate and purge its own criminality is a foolish fantasy.
They cannot not change. They will not reform.
You need to ask who funds pure science these days.
Every single funder, governments included, have political agendas. Rockefeller and Gates Foundations are both political. Every oil corporation has ulterior motives.
You want pure science, you need a $100bn endowment fund funding pure science without any political motivations.
I wonder how many people can actually rise above bias when tough choices have to be made??
“NASEM has also faced heat from a coalition of 25 Republican state attorneys general, who released an open letter to top administration officials and congressional committees calling for it to be stripped of taxpayer funds.”
If there is going to be any reform or change here, they need to start with the premise that politics, govt funding and activism all corrupt numerous fields of science to begin with. They should then go forward from there. No one can tell me that climate science is NOT being manipulated and abused with the motivation provided by govt $$$, by opposition to capitalism and by anti-fossil fuel activism. The political clout of the environmental movement also plays an important role here in making it possible.
If taxpayer funding of NASEM is to survive, it must be with severe restrictions on the amount of money it gets and what is done with it. The expenditures must be closely monitored by Congress to ensure that no politics are allowed to muddy the waters. What has already happened to climate science demonstrates that it probably no longer deserves any taxpayer $$$. Medical research should continue.
The ones that open their mouths and complain the loudest about any funding changes are likely the biggest perpetrators of the corruption and abuse. Much of it will likely come from the environmental movement. I just might give them some cheese with their whine. If NASEM does lose their funding altogether, there will be no complaints from me.
NASEM is not directly taxpayer funded by appropriations. It is a consultant that Agencies and Congress hire to do science intensive policy analyses and such, so the taxpayer funds come from the Agencies doing the hiring. They should be enforcing honesty but they have their own agendas.
The National Academies of Science (NAS) has no credibility when it comes to climate science. It was the NAS Charney report of 1979 where the botched mathematical treatment of the greenhouse effect was laid out that got this climate crisis travesty started.
The mathematical treatment of the greenhouse effect was described in a National Academy of Science (NAS) report entitled Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment published in 1979 and chaired by Jule G. Charney. Note 2 under Climate Sensitivity in Wikipedia, confirms the Charney equation, and indicates that CO2 addition increases the top of atmosphere temperature. According to Charney and the mathematical models used to predict significant global warming, doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere causes a global average temperature increase (Delta T) of Q/4sigmaT^3.
DeltaT = Q/4sigmaT^3
Where Q is supposed to be the reduction in radiative heat loss from the top of the atmosphere caused by doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere (radiative forcing); sigma is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (5.67×10^-8W/m2/T^4; and T is the apparent average temperature of the earth as viewed from space, i.e., top of atmosphere (TOA) temperature.
But this equation is merely the first derivative of the energy balance equation of the earth expressed in incremental form.
The energy balance equation between sun, earth and space, where back radiation from space is assumed to be negligible and earth’s emissivity is assumed to be 1.0 is:
Q=sigmaT^4
The derivative of the above equation is:
dQ/dT = 4sigmaT^3
Rearranging the above equation to solve for dT and expressing it in incremental form (DeltaT) yields the Charney equation for the direct effect of doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere (see above). Mathematically, the Charney equation is an approximation of simply adding radiative forcing from CO2 doubling to the energy absorbed by earth. In other words, Charney and the climate modeling community mathematically treat a reduction in heat loss at the top of the atmosphere as an increase in earth absorbed solar energy. This is a clear-cut violation of the first law of thermodynamics. Mathematically, Charney is creating energy from nothing. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere does not increase the amount of solar energy absorbed by earth. In addition, substituting a high temperature heat source for a low temperature heat loss is implicitly a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
This approach results in over predicting the direct warming by CO2 by more than a factor of two when compared to the correct approach of modeling heat transfer through the atmosphere.
As someone who received a MS and PhD in mechanical engineering with an emphasis in the thermal sciences, (thermodynamics and heat transfer) and who has developed and validated thermal models of solar thermal receivers, (Earth is a solar receiver.) I can assure you that the climate models upon which most of the hysteria is based are fundamentally flawed. (I was hired by Sandia Labs to lead solar thermal receiver development, including the development and validation of thermal models, which I did.) Perhaps a national laboratory like Sandia would be more competent in evaluating attribution studies? They deal with nuclear weapons after all, where doing science correctly really matters.
Thanks for your analysis. You should publish a note.
It seems to me, at best, that TOA heat loss per unit TOA area decreases with added CO₂, but total heat loss is unchanged.
As I understand the canonical explanation, the decreased 15μ mean free path means the TOA radiative surface is at higher altitude. This in turn means that the radiative surface has greater area.
So, the rate of heat loss per unit area declines, but the total rate of loss is unchanged. This likely means any change in tropospheric sensible heat will be pretty much undetectable.
Does that seem generally correct to you?
Thanks.
Added CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere reduce radiative transfer from the earth’s surface to the TOA. It can not change the TOA temperature. It increases the location of the TOA, slightly, but not its temperature. This is all factored into the radiative forcing, 4W/m2 reduction assumed by Charney.
But heat is transferred from earth’s surface by radiation and convection. This is a mixed heat transfer problem.
The average radiative heat transfer from earth’s surface to space is about 64W/m2 and is modelled as sigmaTs^4 -sigmaTsky^4, where Ts is average surface temperature and Tsky is the average sky temperature.
Surface emission from an average surface temperate of 288K is 390W/m2 and implies an average global sky back radiation of 326W/m2. (390-326) = 64W/m2
Assuming a radiative forcing of 4W/m2 for doubling CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere leads to an average global sky back radiation of 326+4 = 330W/m2
Note that this acctually treats radiative forcing as a reduction in heat loss from the TOA like it is supposed to!
But convection between earth’s surface and the TOA also responds.
With convection accounting for 99W/m2 of the 163 W/m2 of the heat absorbed at earth’s surface, and a temperature difference of 33K between earth’s surface and the TOA, we can estimate a global convective heat transfer coefficient (Hc) of 3 W/m2
99W/m2 = HcW/m2/K(288-255)K
Hc= 3W/m2/K
This means both convective and radiative transfer will respond to the reduced radiative transfer through the atmosphere.
The energy balance equation after doubling CO2 concentrations is:
163 = 3(T2 – 255) + sigmaT2^4 – (326+4)
where T2 is the average surface temperature after doubling CO2 concentrations.
Iteratively solving for T2 yields a temperature increase of only 0.47K vs 1.06K calculated by Charney.
The fact that the TOA location shifts upward in the 15micron range is factored into the 4W/m2 radiative forcing assumed by Charney.
So you think I should submit a paper on this analysis? Any suggestions where?
Disappointing. 326 W/m² implies a sky temperature of 275 K, which is 20 K too high.
The analysis is 100% radiative transfer, which ignores that energy transfer in the troposphere is overwhelmingly collisional.
It doesn’t seem likely, therefore, that the radiative increased mean free path plays much part in energy transfer, or has any significant impact on the altitude of the radiative surface.
Harold The Organic Chemist Says:
ATTN: SMN
RE: Carbon Dioxide Does Not Cause Warming of Air;
Please go to the late John L. Daly website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse at:
http://www.john-daly.com. From home page go to end and click on
“Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map” click on “Australia”. There is shown a list of stations. Click on “Adelaide”.
The chart shows a plot of the annual mean temperature from 1857 to 1999. In 1857 concentration of CO2 in dry air was ca. 280 ppmv (0.55 g CO2/ cu. m. of air), and by 1999 it had increased to 368 ppmv (0.72 g CO2/cu. m. of air), but there was no corresponding increase in air temperature in this port city. Instead there was a slight cooling that begin in ca. 1940. In 1857 annual mean temperature was 17.4° C and by 1999 it had declined to 16.7° C.
To obtain more recent Adelaide temperature data, I went to:
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/adelaide/average-temperatur-by-year. The Thi and Tlo data are displayed in table from 1887 to 2025. The computed Tav for 2025 was 17° C. Since temperature measurement error is
+/- 0.1° C, it is concluded that there has been no warming for 169 years.
At the Mauna Loa Obs. in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in dry air is currently 429 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has a mass of 1,290 g and contains a mere 0.84 g of CO2 at STP. This small amount of CO2 in air can have no effect on weather and climate. Please note and never forget how very little CO2 there is in the air.
The above empirical data and calculations and the over 200 charts at John Daly’s website falsify the claims by the corrupt IPCC and the unscrupulous collaborating scientists that CO2 cause global warming and climate change and show that the equilibrium climate sensitivity is zero.
NB: If you have the chart for Adelaide on screen, click on the back arrow to return to the list of stations. Clicking on the back arrow again displays the “World Map”. Be sure to check all the charts for Oz and the essays at the end of the home page.
In the URL, there is a typo: temperatur should temperature
More junk from NASEM:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/09/06/manual-for-judges-saying-how-science-works-is-very-wrong-on-climate-science/
Their Congressional Charter should be revoked.
About 80% of the earth’s “climate” is water, ice and snow. Will there be an analyses of the oceans, mountains, deserts, swamps and jungles? In the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system there many hundreds of climates in the world. It would take a large team of investigators quite a long time to analyze all these climates. After the assessment is done, what will be done with the results?
Okay, but it’s going to take a Manhattan Project to unravel and check all the pub mill antiscience pulp. That’s on top of the other Manhattan Project spending already consumed for agenda science. Cold fusion and space mining are looking better all the time as NAS priorities.
The climate fraud at NASEM is not new. The corruption started in the 1950s when climate science began the transition from the analysis of weather trends to ‘big science’ that required major government funding. In 1956 Gilbert Plass conducted the first radiative transfer calculations on atmospheric CO2 using a computer (MIDAC). He calculated that a doubling of the CO2 concentration in a dry atmosphere (no water vapor) would produce an increase in the downward long wave IR (LWIR) flux at the surface of 8 W m-2 (Watts per square meter). He then assumed, incorrectly, that his calculations could be applied to a fictional ‘equilibrium average climate’ and claimed that the surface temperature of the Earth would increase by 3.6 °C. [When water vapor is included, the increase in the CO2 flux is halved].
His CO2 induced temperature increase was accepted without question by both Roger Revelle (Scripps) and Bert Bolin (IPCC). In 1957 Revelle hired Charles David Keeling to work at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and start the CO2 monitoring program. He also hired Harmon Craig to work on isotope analysis. Around this time, the technology for deep drilled ocean sediment and ice cores had improved so that these cores could be used for paleoclimate analysis. Wallace Broecker at Columbia University was a leader in ocean sediment core analysis. The launch of the first Russian sputnik satellite in 1957 started the push for weather satellites that included radiometers to measure the Earth’s Radiation Budget. Verner Suomi played a major role in the development of these radiometers. Then in 1959, Jo Smagorinsky hired Syukuro Manabe to work on weather and climate models at the US Weather Bureau.
These people became members of the National Academy of Sciences and played a major role in promoting the myth of global warming so that they could maintain their research funding. All of the early NAS climate reports reached the conclusion that ‘we need money for further research’. There were seven influential climate reports published by the NAS (National Research Council, NRC) between 1966 and 1983: 1) “Weather and Climate Modification Problems and Prospects: Final Report of the Panel on Weather and Climate Modification” [NRC/NAS, 1966] 2) “Understanding Climate Change: A Program for Action” [NRC/NAS, 1975], 3) “Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics” [NRC/NAS, 1977], 4) “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment” [NRC/NAS, 1979], otherwise known as the Charney Report 5) “Economic and Social Aspects of Carbon Dioxide Increase”, otherwise known as the Schelling Report [NRC/NAS, 1980] 6) “Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Second Assessment” [NRC/NAS, 1982]
“Changing Climate” [NRC/NAS 1983]. Global warming was included in the earlier 1965 PSAC Report, Appendix Y4, Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, (President’s Scientific Advisory Committee, Restoring the Quality of our Environment). The 1979 Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Report The carbon dioxide problem: Implications for policy in the management of energy and other resources, was also influential in promoting the global warming fraud.
A partial list of the contributors and/or overseeing committee members for the seven NRC/NAS Reports from 1996 to 1983 and the contributors to the 1965 PSAC Report and the 1979 CEQ Report are also shown in Table 1 (attached as figure). This is 17 years of climate fraud at NAS – before the IPCC was even established.
And Plass’ work was strictly confined to radiative transfer. He didn’t include collisional thermalization at all in his calculations.
So, his entire model was for an Earth in an alternative universe, where molecules don’t convert vibrational energy to KE when they collide.
The full list of the 1979 Charney Study Group:
Jule G. Charney, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chairman
Akio Arakawa, University of California, Los Angeles
D.James Baker, University of Washington
Bert Bolin, University of Stockholm
Robert E. Dickinson, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Richard M. Goody, Harvard University
Cecil E. Leith, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Henry M. Stommel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Carl I. Wunsch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
I read with great interest about Roy’s account of the origin of the greatest scientific fraud in recent human history. In 1988 the IPCC was formed and continued to expand this fraud which has inflicted great damage to the economies of the UK, Germany, Australia, the EU countries, and the states of New York and California. When will this fraud end?
“Was a given observed weather event caused by climate change?”
Was the cart pushing the horse?
Exactly.