When the City and County of Boulder, Colo. and San Miguel County sued energy companies back in 2018, they did so based on the fact that these companies were responsible for damages related to climate change that had to be picked up by the taxpayer. Just a week before the lawsuit was filed, a study was released “summariz[ing] potential climate impact costs for Boulder County.” That report was written by Dr. Paul Chinowsky, founder of Resilient Analytics and a professor at the University of Colorado.

This particular study was specifically prepared for Boulder County and rounded up the potential price tag of climate change costs in the area through 2050. On Boulder County’s Climate Lawsuit FAQ website, they cite the study several times as justification for bringing the suit forward.

Now, one year later, in what seems like a similar trend, Chinowsky and Resilient Analytics are back, this time writing additional reports on how much climate change will cost cities in Florida and elsewhere. These new analyses claim to lay out the facts of the “bare minimum” of coastal defenses that cities will need to “prevent chronic flooding and inundation over the next 20 years.” It also came out just before Boulder Mayor Suzanne Jones is set to testify before the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in an event at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

However, far from a clear-eyed examination of the current situation, this new project purports to accurately predict the future and reveals that Chinowsky and Resilient Analytics are working hand in hand with the anti-energy groups promoting liability lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. Which raises the question—was Chinowsky working with these groups all along?

Resilient Analytics Partnering With Pro-Litigation Groups

Resilient Analytics hit the headlines again in June with the release of a new report predicting that Florida would face $76 billion in costs resulting from impacts of climate change before 2040. The report estimated that $400 billion worth of seawalls would be needed to protect the entire U.S., though Chinowsky admitted on a press call that seawalls are “not necessarily the best alternative in every place,” but that he applied this single option for the sake of simplicity.

Perhaps this is why the report cites conclusions without explaining how they were reached. The math is hard when imaginary disasters are involved.

The report breathlessly worried that Florida would be “the most heavily impacted state” if global warming caused sea levels to rise and launched a new website which allows users to investigate their local costs of adaptation. It paints a bleak picture of “knowingly bankrupt[ing] hundreds of communities,” which are being “swallowed up by the sea.”

By releasing the report targeting the coastal United States, Resilient Analytics appears to be trying to reuse the playbook that worked in Boulder and Boulder County.

In fact, the report does little to hide the fact that it was written to help activist city governments bring lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. The report was co-written by the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), a dark money non-profit that “supports litigation and advocacy” to force energy companies to pay the costs of adapting to climate change. Indeed, its list of recommendations for addressing climate change begins and ends at suing energy companies – a strategy that has succeeded exactly zero times. (Some cities, perhaps realizing the folly of climate liability litigation, have pursued other methods of addressing climate change by reducing emissions and energy use while taking steps to prevent flooding.)

CCI has been trying to sell this approach in Colorado for a while. This spring, CCI hosted a panel at the University of Colorado Law School that focused on “Holding Fossil Fuel Companies Liable for Climate Change Harms in Colorado.” The blatantly skewed event only invited proponents of the climate lawsuits, including David Bookbinder of The Niskanen Center, Jon Goldin-DuBois of Western Resource Advocates and Marco Simons of EarthRights International, and Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, the Director of Climate Science for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). In fact, two of the speakers—Bookbinder and Simons—represent Boulder in the lawsuit.

As public scrutiny of the climate liability lawsuits has increased, other activists have been pressured to disclose their involvement. Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change, is now quoted with an acknowledgement that she has provided pro-bono consulting for “some of the municipalities,” as is her fellow environmental law professor, Sean Hecht.

So far, Chinowsky hasn’t gotten the transparency memo.

This wouldn’t be new. CCI does not disclose its donors, though it admits to receiving support from most of the major environmentalist donors. Executive Director Richard Wiles admitted when questioned by reporters that major anti-fossil fuel foundations like the Rockefeller Family Fund and MacArthur Foundation funded the report. The Rockefeller Family Fund, together with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has bankrolled nearly every aspect of the climate litigation campaign.

Additionally, projections in the report were calculated by Climate Central, Wiles’ former employer. Representatives of Climate Central attended the infamous La Jolla conference and conducted key studies cited in the climate lawsuits brought by Sher Edling.

New Report Raises More Questions About Old Report

By releasing the national report, activists appear to be trying to repeat the playbook they used in Boulder. The Colorado lawsuits relied on data from a report written and researched by the very same Resilient Analytics.

The Boulder County government says it paid $14,000 for the study from Resilient Analytics. The same study was later highlighted in background materials released to try to explain Boulder’s lawsuit to the public .

In all these cases, the study was presented as the work of an unbiased research firm, rather than the work of an ally to and participant in the climate litigation campaign. Now, with the release of the national report, the activists are trying to take their push from the mountains to the seashore and cities like Fort Lauderdale and Miami. So far, these cities have decided not to pursue lawsuits, but the latest report shows that climate activists haven’t given up on them yet.