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Latest Rockefeller-Crafted Climate Attribution Study Funded by…U.S. Taxpayers?
April 25, 2025 | Kyle Kohli
Here we go again as the old Rockefeller gang gets back together, pushing another flawed climate attribution study they claim is case “closed” in an overt effort that blurs the line between academic and outright activism to support climate litigation against American energy companies.
In a study published in Nature, researchers from Dartmouth University argue that attribution science – the attempt to link a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions to a specific energy company – should be used not to develop a better scientific understanding of the world, but as a blunt tool in the courtroom. The Dartmouth press release admits that climate cases have been failing because plaintiffs can’t make this connection and that this latest study was designed specifically to remedy that issue:
“But many of these actions are being challenged or slowed in court, partly due to the difficulty in showing that specific climate impacts occurred because of any one company’s greenhouse gas emissions. A new study published … provides a tool for potentially recouping the costs of extreme weather amplified by climate change.
The researchers lay out a scientific framework they say can be used to trace specific climate damages back to emissions from individual fossil fuel companies.” (Emphasis added)
The study also claims that energy companies are somehow responsible for $28 trillion in damages, a figure equivalent to the United States’ entire GDP. This spaghetti on the wall figure is indicative of how unserious this effort is, and, as we’ll dive into later, the faulty methods the authors employed to reach their conclusions.
A quick look at the “Acknowledgements” section of the study also highlights that the authors collaborated with leading figures of the climate litigation campaign, including Michael Burger, who is of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University and Of Counsel at leading plaintiffs firm Sher Edling, Oxford University’s Benjamin Franta, who has produced research designed for litigation, and Richard Heede, a key player at La Jolla and author of his attribution research.
Finally, the study acknowledges support from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth, reaffirming the Rockefeller network’s continued push to attack energy companies. Lee Wasserman, director of the Rockefeller Family Fund told the New York Times that the study supports climate lawsuits and state superfund laws to “make climate polluters pay a fair share,” and the newspaper acknowledged that his organization “helped create the climate superfund law” in Vermont.
As Friedrike Otto, a researcher at Oxford University who has published similar studies, said back in 2021, “event attribution was actually originally suggested with the courts in mind,” this latest attribution study from Dartmouth is just another example of activism disguised as academic research.
And Axios raised issues with the researchers’ assumption that a companies’ emissions automatically lead to liability. In its Axios Generate newsletter, authors of the newsletter argued that assigning “cause” is hardly a scientific concept that can be manufactured by researchers: 2
“Assigning “cause” is hardly just a scientific concept — it’s also a moral, political, and borderline metaphysical question.” (emphasis added)
The newsletter also points out that much of the wealth that has been created in the past few decades didn’t just come out of thin air, but was created by the very companies that the study seeks to punish:
“And fossil fuels have “produced immense prosperity” that is not modeled in the analysis.” (emphasis added)
Most concerningly, the authors even admitted to the New York Times that taxpayer dollars were used to fund their study:
“We believe in openly transparent science, especially since the work was paid for by U.S. taxpayers.” (emphasis added)
Here’s what you should know about the study, which reads less like science and more like a frivolous class-action lawsuit pitch:
1. A made for litigation study
Right off the bat, the study purports to provide a “transparent, reproducible, and flexible framework that formalizes how end-to-end attribution” can be used in litigation.
In other words, the study was designed and published for the purpose of identifying “scientific” methods to punish energy companies via lawsuits and state climate superfund bills. So long to unbiased scientific inquiry.
In fact, a press release issued by Dartmouth College made their goal crystal clear: it describes the study as a “tool for potentially recoupling the costs of extreme weather” and a “scientific framework” that “can be used to trace specific climate damages back to emissions from individual fossil fuel companies.”
This politicization of science doesn’t come as a surprise considering one of the paper’s authors, Justin S. Mankin, has testified in favor of Vermont’s
climate superfund bill and has also presented on a panel hosted by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in March 2025, where the panelists discussed bills designed “to recover costs from large emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) to pay for climate adaptation infrastructure.” As a reminder, ELI has also sponsored the Climate Judiciary project, which has face congressional scrutiny for its efforts “to influence the federal judiciary in its adjudication of climate litigation.”
The study also spends the majority of its time focusing on heatwaves. Why? Because “an Oregon county has sued several fossil fuel companies for amplifying the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave and its resulting economic and health costs.” But as climate researcher and former NOAA chief scientist Ryan Maue pointed out, the Oregon county’s claims have plenty of issues:
“The claims are fantastical. I’m not a lawyer (yet), but I can see from the climate science ‘facts’ presented that the suit will blow up on the launchpad…[A] different approach to climate attribution – there are several – finds the climate change impact amounts to only 10% of the magnitude of the heat dome event.” (Emphasis added)
Finally, the study primarily focuses on five energy companies without providing any reasoning for doing so. In reality, climate change is caused by innumerate sources of emissions, including a variety of industries, governments, and billions of individuals. Still, even this selective analysis points out that foreign state-owned entities like Russia’s Gazprom and Saudi Aramco, are more responsible for damage than American entities.
2. Well-known litigation proponents aided in the study’s development
Notably, the authors acknowledge that pro-litigation environmental activists assisted with the report, including Michael Burger, who is Of Counsel at Sher Edling and the Executive Director of Sabin Center for Climate Change at Columbia University.
As a reminder, Sher Edling is the main plaintiffs’ firm supporting climate lawsuits, and is currently under Congressional investigation for its dark money funding. If the goal of this study wasn’t already clear, directly crediting an attorney at Sher Edling makes it clear as can be that it was designed to enable attacks on American energy producers.
Burger appears to be doing everything he can to help gin up “science” to support climate liability suits lately, given that he also presented to the National Academy of Science last year, where he discussed attribution science and failed to disclose that he was supporting plaintiffs in climate cases.
The study also thanked Jessica Wentz from the Sabin Center. Wentz has previously co-authored studies aimed at assigning liability to energy companies for climate change, and has even encouraged the use of legal tools to seek “accountability” from individuals, such as executives or other representatives of energy companies.
Finally, the study also gave a shout-out to Richard Heede from the Climate Accountability Institute for his assistance with “emissions data.” Heede, the creator of the Carbon Majors Database, has faced significant criticism for overestimating companies’ emissions, pulling unreliable data dating back as far as 1776, and receiving money from anti-energy billionaires like the Rockefellers.
Remarkably, despite disclosing connections to environmental activists and plaintiffs’ lawyers, the study authors still declared “no competing interests.”
3. The study focuses on Scope 3 emissions
Once again, the study attempts to blame energy producers for Scope 3 emissions, a measurement that estimates emissions created by endproduct use. For example, when you fill up your gas tank and burn that fuel, you’re generating Scope 3 emissions. Multiply that by 8 billion people on that planet, and it’s clear why Scope 3 represents the lion’s share (88 percent) of emissions catalogued in the study.
The problem with using this measurement is that Scope 3 emissions are not under individual companies’ control, and they also reflect the needs and desires of consumers. It makes no sense that companies should be held liable for the emissions caused by the lawful (and essential) use of their products around the world.
Scope 3 emissions estimates are widely seen to be unreliable. Fidelity’s Chief Legal Officer, for example, told the Securities and Exchange Commission that Scope 3 data is “speculative, nascent, unreliable, and there are no current standards to ensure consistent and comparable data.”
This “mainstream” Scope 3 data is bad enough to begin with. Making matters worse, the Nature study relies on convoluted Scope 3 emissions estimates produced by Richard Heede, whose Rockefeller-funded methodology doesn’t align with internationally-recognized standards.
Heede’s Frankenstein measurements have received significant criticism. For example, in 2022, PolitiFact pushed back against Heede’s headlinegrabbing attribution data:
“Research that accurately compares the total global emissions to the data collected from the 100 most-polluting corporations worldwide does not exist yet…We rate this claim False.”
Bottom line: This study from Dartmouth isn’t academic research, it’s more transparent activism from the Rockefeller network and their close allies designed specifically to attack the American energy industry in the courtroom and another desperate attempt to rescue the faltering litigation campaign.