In a letter to Trump administration officials, 22 state attorneys general have called for an investigation into the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) and the possible suspension and debarment of federal funding following last month’s publication of its deeply-biased climate science attribution report that attempts to lay the foundation for climate lawsuits against American energy companies.
The Daily Caller exclusively reported on the letter, writing that:
“The dispute centers in part on the growing role of ‘attribution science,’ which researchers use to assess how climate change influences the likelihood or severity of individual extreme-weather events. … NASEM’s report itself acknowledged potential legal applications for the science, according to the letter.”
As Energy In Depth highlighted ahead of NAS’s release, the report was heavily influenced by Michael Burger, the Executive Director of the Sabin Center at Columbia University and Of Counsel at Sher Edling. Burger seemingly attempts to play the role of neutral academic scholar, while inherently standing to benefit financially as an attorney seeking to leverage the report for cases he and his firm are actively litigating.
The attorneys general point out this blatant conflict-of-interest:
“The Report’s Acknowledgments section thanks Michael Burger without mentioning that Burger is ‘Of Counsel’ for the Sher Edling law firm. Sher Edling is contingency counsel in over 25 climate cases and stands to benefit substantially from a Report propping up their claims.
“Burger also co-wrote an amicus brief in Suncor, and a complaint in Honolulu’s climate litigation, using climate attribution theories that the Report directly supports.”
The attorneys general also write that because of Burger’s involvement, the report’s clear motivations to lay a critical scientific foundation for climate lawsuits, and it’s timing ahead of U.S. Supreme Court arguments in Boulder’s lawsuit in October, the Trump administration should consider withdraw of funding for NAS:
“As President Trump and AGs have noted, bias designed to aid one side in litigation warrants suspension or debarment of federal funds. … The facts set forth below concerning the Report’s content, funding, and timing supply ‘adequate evidence’ of misconduct sufficiently ‘serious or compelling’ to affect NASEM’s ‘present responsibility.’”
An Activist Report
During a 2024 meeting with the climate attribution report authors, Michael Burger gave a presentation titled “Use of Attribution Science in Legal Contexts” and disclosed that he was “actively involved” in Sher Edling’s cases.
Instead of raising concerns about conflicts of interest, given that Burger stands to financially benefit from climate litigation that the NAS’s report could support, one of the NASEM committee members, Deepti Singh, specifically asked Burger what the committee could “do better” to help “inform litigation.”
Burger was not even the first activist litigant to be involved in the report. Delta Merner, who leads the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate Accountability Campaign also served on the NAS committee guiding the report’s development until January 2025, a point that was never disclosed in the report’s acknowledgements.
This report was also largely funded by organizations that have supported activist groups pushing climate lawsuits. As the attorneys general’s note, the NAS report relied on funding from various climate litigation supporters, including those who submitted briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the Boulder climate lawsuit.
“Each of the Report’s three funders is connected to climate litigation. Bezos Earth Fund . . . also gave $100 million to the Natural Resources Defense Council . . . to ‘accelerate climate action’ and $15 million to the Union of Concerned Scientists . . . , both of which submitted amicus briefs in support of plaintiffs in Suncor.”
O.H. Skinner also pointed out that activist funding of the NAS report is only the most recent example of a decades-long effort to shape public policy through the courts in a coordinated, well-funded campaign:
“[Activists] have built a huge dark-money-fueled apparatus to boost and support this lawfare and they don’t want to see this manual changed.”
It’s not only activists that paid for this report; the NAS gets most of its funding from government grants. As Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the Center Square, the NAS should not be allowed to use taxpayer funding to further activist litigants’ political goals:
“The National Academies took taxpayer money and used it to manufacture a scientific-sounding basis for climate lawsuits courts have already rejected, then timed a follow-up report to help plaintiffs in the Suncor case while locking out any rebuttal.”
NAS Already Conceded Once
Amid criticism from President Trump, members of Congress, and state attorneys general, NAS issued a statement earlier this month agreeing to remove the climate science chapter of the fourth edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, while it investigated the processes used to develop the report. In that August 7 statement, NAS conceded:
“That chapter [on climate science] has received considerable scrutiny” and the “NAS has determined that questions about the processes used to develop the chapter warrant an independent review.”
Questions remain. Why did the NAS decide to remove the climate science chapter of the reference manual but not the litigation section of the climate attribution report? The same processes allowed Michael Burger, clearly an “interested party,” to heavily influence both reports. It’s time to ask how activist litigants were able to infiltrate the NAS and why NAS funding must be threatened before they make any attempt to comply with their own policies.
Bottom Line: Attorneys general from across the country recognize that NAS must not be allowed to flout its own conflict of interest policies, allowing activists and clearly “interested parties” to shape what should be unbiased, scientific reports.
