WASHINGTON — A new climate report from the National Academies of Sciences is drawing fire from critics who say it inflates carbon dioxide's role in extreme weather events to serve as a litigation tool rather than a scientific assessment.
Chapter 5 of the report attempts to assign dollar figures to damages attributed to climate change and outlines how courts could apply those figures — giving litigators a ready-made, seemingly authoritative source for damage claims.
The report relies on "counterfactual" model runs that simulate weather patterns as they might have looked without human influence. Critics say that methodology is designed to hand climate attorneys a citable number for settlement demands and court filings.
Defendants in climate lawsuits would face immediate pressure to settle if courts adopt the report's damage framework, critics say, because the figures carry the weight of a National Academies imprimatur.
The core dispute is whether the NAS shaped its scientific findings to align with a legal agenda — and whether courts should treat the report's damage estimates as neutral science or as advocacy dressed in academic language.
