A joint staff report from the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Commerce Committee published in October exposed, in part, activists’ effort to train judges in plaintiff-favorable climate liability research via the Environmental Law Institute.

Now, the activists and donors have their eye on another institution that can be used to launder plaintiff-friendly research through seemingly respectable channels: the National Academy of Sciences.

NAS has set up a new committee to assess climate attribution science, which seeks to attribute extreme weather impacts to climate change, and in some instances, draw a causal line from specific companies’ historical emissions to localized weather events.  

The committee is in part funded by the Bezos Earth Foundation and by a wealthy board member of Climate Central. But billionaire funding is just the start of activist influence. It is comprised of over a dozen researchers, most of whom hail from academic institutions – except one member from the Rockefeller-funded Union of Concerned Scientists.  

Read more on EID Climate here.