Have politics finally come for the National Academies of Science?

The issue is one of attribution: Can we detect the cause of climate change in individual weather events? A few decades ago, that simply wasn’t possible. But researchers have since developed tools that allow them to determine the probability that different events would occur with and without the influence of our greenhouse gas emissions. And so it has become clear that some of the most extreme events simply wouldn’t have occurred without the warming we’ve driven.

That clarity has allowed other researchers to tie the financial damages from catastrophic weather events to the influence of fossil fuels produced by individual companies. If those studies are widely accepted as valid scientific work, then judges will be compelled to admit them as evidence in any lawsuits against said companies.

There have been a number of lawsuits filed against fossil fuel companies, but most have not succeeded because judges have decided that they impinged on policies that needed to be set on the federal level. But things like economic damages have long been considered the domain of the courts, and a direct connection between business practices and damage caused by a storm may be a harder accusation to dodge.

Those instances are where the National Academies come in again, as a committee it formed during the Biden administration is in the process of evaluating the scientific standing of attribution studies. The oil companies are concerned enough that, as the Politico article details, they’ve hired third parties to file for access to the emails of committee members who work at public universities.

All of which suggests that the fight over this report is going to get intense, and both the credibility and funding of the National Academies is likely to come under sustained assault, which may permanently damage science-based policy in the US. And that would provide yet another demonstration that, when even basic facts can become politicized, trying to avoid becoming a target by saying “we’re just focused on the science” will not be a successful strategy.