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