Climate experts are raising alarms about potential bias in the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report after the appointment of Dr. Friederike Otto to a lead authorship role. Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London, has openly acknowledged that her field of “event attribution” science was developed “with the courts in mind,” raising concern the IPCC’s traditionally neutral assessments could be hijacked by climate litigation supporters.
Who is Dr. Otto?
Dr. Friederike Otto is best known for co-founding World Weather Attribution (WWA) in 2014, alongside Climate Central. WWA specializes in “rapid attribution” studies released in the immediate aftermath of heatwaves, floods, and hurricanes, claiming to quantify how much more likely or intense such events became due to human-caused climate change.
As EID documented previously, WWA is funded by the Bezos Earth Fund, a nonprofit that has also funded a Yale University program to develop communications tactics around extreme weather events in an “emotional, human, and individual” manner, rather than “abstract scientific descriptions.”
Otto is currently a Senior Lecturer at Imperial College’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, itself funded by major philanthropic foundations like the Grantham Foundation that have long been tied to climate litigation.
Litigation at the Core
For more than three decades, the IPCC has been recognized as the gold standard in climate science, with a reputation for careful, methodical analysis, which clearly sticks to scientific consensus. The body has been known for reporting climate science as it is, often frustrating activists by refusing to overstate findings to achieve a specific legal outcome.
With Dr. Otto’s appointment this August, that reputation is now under scrutiny. Otto, in an interview after her appointment, explained the IPCC is particularly important because of its history of being cited in court:
“[Otto] points to the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion on climate change as an example of the significance of the IPCC’s work.
“Published last month, the opinion cites the IPCC dozens of times and has been described as a ‘turning point in international climate law’ that could shape major legal decisions on climate change.”
Otto has openly admitted over the years that attribution science was “originally suggested with the courts in mind,” and that she often speaks with attorneys about how to leverage her research. E&E News reported in 2019:
“Friederike Otto, a climate expert at the University of Oxford and lead scientist at the World Weather Attribution project, said she talks ‘a lot with lawyers’ about how attribution science could be used as a litigation tool.”
Her attribution findings have already been cited in a variety of lawsuits, like those in Multnomah County Oregon, Boulder, Colorado, and the sprawling RICO case in Puerto Rico that was recently thrown out by a federal judge.
In 2021 Politico wrote a profile of Otto, calling her the “climatologist who put climate science ‘on the offensive’” and noted that she “works closely with lawyers using WWA research to develop lawsuits.”
More recently this year, Otto sat down for an interview with Rolling Stone, who noted that she is a “highly-respected scientist who is willing to go beyond data and numbers into the realms of politics and policy.”
Furthermore, Otto admitted that litigation isn’t designed purely to obtain damages, but also to force energy companies to change what forms of energy they produce:
“These lawsuits are important to just hold these companies accountable. Ultimately, it’s about getting them to change their business model.”
Experts Concerned Otto’s Activist Goals Could Produce Biased Findings
In Dr. Otto’s most recent book published this year “Climate Injustice: Why We Need to Fight Global Inequality to Combat Climate Change,” she blames Western institutions for global climate change, arguing the effects of greenhouse gas emissions are best understood as a product of racism, colonialism, and sexism.
That framing may sound tailor made for courtroom battles and political campaigns, but experts argue it is far removed from the mainstream consensus that has made the IPCC an authoritative source for climate science.
Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. of the American Enterprise Institute, and a long-time professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, warned in an August editorial that Otto’s appointment suggests the IPCC has been taken over by “zealots” who bend science, risking the body’s traditional neutrality:
“In a press release, [Otto] explains that her leading role means that she has ‘a lot of opportunity to shape the structure and focus of the chapter’ in the UN’s report.
“Scientific assessments are supposed to accurately reflect the underlying peer-reviewed literature, and not to be shaped by the inclinations of its leaders — that’s how politics slips in.”
At New York Climate Week this September, Energy Secretary Chris Wright took direct aim at Otto’s field of attribution science during a high profile interview with the New York Times’ David Gelles. Wright argued that attribution studies were more politics than science:
“Attribution science is not science. You can’t draw a long-term slow trend to an event … Attribution science, that’s people reaching for something because the problem is if that was true, we would see an increase in accumulated cyclonic energy … We haven’t. We would see a rise in landfalling hurricanes in the United States … We haven’t.”
Wright went further, citing Pielke Jr., himself a former IPCC author, as a researcher attacked simply for presenting data that did not match the activist narrative:
“Roger Pielke Jr., the world’s leader on extreme weather, a longtime IPCC author … he’s been criticized and attacked for just publishing the data. So, this is an example of the politics. Most people are not in some grand conspiracy, but if you’re honest and sober about climate change to politicians, to media, that’s a bit of a threat. It kind of gets in the way of a political movement.”
Earlier this summer, the Cato Institute’s David Kemp argued rapid attribution studies like those at WWA are shifting the field away from scientific rigor, and overstate certainty to capitalize on extreme weather events:
“Yet, this discipline’s focus appears to be shifting from measured inquiry to a tool for persuasion. The WWA, for instance, emphasizes rapid analysis—often completed within days or weeks of an event—to seize public and political attention while the event is fresh in people’s minds.
“This trend toward science as a communication tool raises concerns about its usefulness and rigor. The push for quick, definitive answers may overshadow the uncertainties inherent in attribution studies, prioritizing a compelling narrative over a fully substantiated one.”
Moreover, the Breakthrough Institute, a centrist think tank, pointed out in January that “selection bias” in Climate Central’s attribution work disproportionately studies events likely to show climate signals, while ignoring extremes with weaker or inconclusive links, which can skew conclusions:
“Climate Central’s headline on their study was ‘Climate change increased wind speeds for every 2024 Atlantic hurricane,’ but this headline would be more accurate if it was immediately followed by ‘…if we focus exclusively on those aspects of climate which we know intensify hurricanes (sea surface temperatures) and ignore or downplay those aspects of climate change which would work to diminish hurricanes.’
“Are these Choice Biases in event type and methodology an accident? There are many reasons to believe they are not.
“The research paper itself spells out that the motivation of the study is to ‘connect the dots’ between climate change and hurricanes because ‘landfalling hurricanes with high intensities—can act as ‘focusing events’ that draw public attention” and that ‘Increased attention during and in wake of storms creates opportunities for public and private discourse around climate and disaster preparedness.’”
Breakthrough argued that this selection bias, a feature of WWA’s climate attribution research, needs to be “fought against” to give the field more credibility.
BOTTOM LINE: Placing an advocate of litigation-driven science at the helm of the IPCC’s extreme weather chapter risks turning the world’s most trusted climate referee into an arm of climate litigation.
The question now is whether the IPCC will continue to “call it straight,” or allow its credibility to be weaponized in global courtrooms.
