After six long months of pressure from state attorneys general, Congress, and even President Donald Trump, the National Academies of Science has finally withdrawn a controversial climate science chapter used to educate the federal judiciary. They removed it while conducting an independent review and it should stay that way because conflicts of interests are obvious.
The chapter was included for the first time in the Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual for Scientific Evidence, co-published alongside the Federal Judicial Center, and was authored and influenced by attorneys who are publicly supporting the plaintiffs in climate litigation against American energy companies. This is a clear conflict of interest and an overt attempt by climate activists to bias judges towards pro-plaintiff interpretations of scientific methods.
Unfortunately, the NAS remains intent on continuing to use flawed processes, and just last month published a climate attribution report where the litigation section was heavily influenced by the same attorney whose fingerprints were all over the judicial training manual.
That attorney is Michael Burger: a legal research scholar at the Columbia Law School, Of Counsel at Sher Edling LLP and counsel of record for the plaintiffs in Honolulu’s active climate lawsuit.
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