(The Center Square) – Twenty-two state attorneys general are questioning taxpayer funding of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine amid what the AGs call the group’s “sham”-like “independent review” of its much debated reference manual’s climate science chapter that was removed due to public concerns of political bias.
The attorney’s general sent a letter to a number of federal agencies as well as Congress calling out the funding.
Executive director of Alliance for Consumers O.H. Skinner told The Center Square that “the National Academies has a history of bias that will not be forgotten just because it’s feigning an ‘independent’ review of the controversial climate science chapter.”
“The attorneys general are right to question [the National Academies’] federal funding and seek a charter review,” Skinner said.
CEO of the American Energy Institute Jason Isaac told The Center Square that “the National Academies took taxpayer money and used it to manufacture a scientific-sounding basis for climate lawsuits courts have already rejected, then timed a follow-up report to help plaintiffs in the Suncor case while locking out any rebuttal.”
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Suncor v. Boulder County Commissioners on Oct. 5. The Colorado case challenges whether Boulder officials can sue energy companies for millions of dollars in damages over greenhouse gas emissions.
“Calling their own secret internal review ‘independent’ is a punchline,” Isaac said, referring to the National Academies.
“Federal agencies shouldn’t need another minute to cut off funding to an organization laundering climate activism through the National Academies’ name,” Isaac said.
NASEM has not yet responded to The Center Square’s request for comment.
The 22 state attorneys general expressed concern that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) independent review of its recently removed climate science chapter “appears to be a sham, as demonstrated by NASEM’s secrecy around all aspects of the review process.”
The state attorneys general noted that a similar coalition of AGs “previously called for federal agencies to cut NASEM’s funding based upon its biased climate-attribution chapter…in a judicial reference manual, because the chapter was designed to help plaintiffs in active climate cases.”
NASEM refused to withdraw the chapter at the time, however, the officials wrote, despite the Federal Judicial Center doing so.
“Now, over five months later, after presidential criticism and increasing public scrutiny, NASEM has temporarily removed the Chapter from its website for an ‘independent review’ of the ‘processes used to develop the chapter,’” the attorneys general’s letter said.
“A truly independent review would appoint an external panel; use reviewers who are not activists, litigation participants, or NASEM employees; publish the review process and findings; identify the review’s scope; and ensure the review’s scope addresses the material criticisms of the Chapter,” the letter said.
The letter noted that the climate chapter in question has been found by critics to be in possession of many misquotations, contradictions, and was in good part ghost-written by “climate plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Burger” as well as possessed other ties to climate funders, activists and litigation participants.
“NASEM’s destruction of its own credibility in the Chapter and its response to criticism, combined with NASEM doubling down on propping up climate plaintiffs’ litigation theories by issuing another biased report” that the attorneys general later detail “warrant debarment or suspension by federal agencies.”
“Organizations that abuse taxpayer money to prop up political causes for the benefit of donors should not receive federal agency grants,” the letter said.
Led by state attorneys general from Nebraska, West Virginia, Montana, and Tennessee, other officials signing the letter to Congress and 18 various federal agencies and committees include those from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
Skinner told The Center Square that “climate lawfare is a critical tool for trial lawyers and woke activists to weaponize the courts to push policy through lawfare.”
“These activists have built a huge dark-money-fueled apparatus to boost and support this lawfare and they don’t want to see this manual changed,” Skinner said.
“As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments in the Suncor case, neutrality needs to be restored, and the radical left-wing apparatus behind these cases questioned at every turn,” Skinner said.
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