At Columbia and the Sabin Center, more than 500 attendees across 35 countries heard how climate attribution science is reshaping lawsuits—and why researchers say the field is being targeted.
Flooding doesn’t wait for a courtroom calendar, and neither does the argument at the heart of climate attribution science: that human activity leaves identifiable fingerprints on the climate impacts people live with.
On June 10 and 11. Columbia Climate School and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law held their second conference on Attribution Science and Climate Law. bringing scientists and legal experts together to debate how causal links between human activity. global climate change. and climate impacts are increasingly used in litigation. The stakes weren’t abstract. Over two days of panels and presentations. the conference made one thing hard to miss—work that underpins accountability claims is also drawing pushback.
The idea for the conference grew out of a collaboration involving Sabin Center executive director Michael Burger. Sabin senior fellow Jessica Wentz. and Columbia Climate School professor Radley Horton. In early 2020. the three co-published The Law and Science of Climate Change Attribution. an overview of attribution research and how it applies in legal settings. The piece warned that attribution science is rapidly evolving—and so is its role in the courtroom and in policymaking—pointing to an emerging pattern: armed with evidence linking increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to harmful impacts. plaintiffs are pursuing more ambitious claims against governments and emitters for their contribution to. or failure to take action on. climate change.
In his opening remarks, Horton put a recent physical reality behind the field’s urgency. Over the last two to three years. he said. global average surface temperatures have been “close to or above 1.5 degrees C above pre‑industrial levels. ” suggesting the possibility of higher climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases than previously thought.
Horton also described how quickly attribution science has moved over the past decade. and he framed the conference’s scale as another sign of momentum. Attendance of over 500 people from 35 countries—online and in person—was, he said, indicative of growing interest. Then came the warning that hung over the room.
“There are entities that don’t want to see discussion of this topic,” Horton said. Some, he added, are trying to dismantle and disrupt the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other systems for observing the ocean, which he said are critical for this kind of science.
NCAR’s contributions. Horton said. have come through improvements in its own functionality. including increased computing power. finer model resolution. and expanded use of satellite data. He also addressed the political threat facing that infrastructure: the Trump administration has threatened to shutter the center. though Horton said “a preliminary injunction. a key legal tool. is preventing the most serious disruptions at NCAR.”.
That fight over observation systems—data, computing, modeling—sat alongside a second conflict: whether courts will convert attribution into liability. From a legal standpoint. Horton described a sharp rise in lawsuits seeking to hold governments and corporations accountable for failing to take action on climate change. Attribution science plays a central role in many of these cases. but. so far. he said. it has failed to hand lawyers a smoking gun.
If attribution hasn’t produced courtroom verdicts on its own, legal obstacles have been the limiting factor.
In his keynote. Michael Gerrard—founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center—offered a detailed sense of how litigation has multiplied. Sabin’s Climate Litigation Database tracks more than 3,600 climate lawsuits in 62 countries, including dozens in the U.S. “So far. there has not been a single court decision anywhere in the world that imposes financial liability for any country or company solely because of its greenhouse gas emissions. ” Gerrard said.
He argued that “insufficient science has not been the problem,” saying courts in the U.S. and around the world have readily accepted science without dispute. “The obstacles have been legal,” he said.
One legal barrier highlighted by Gerrard and Wentz was the Trump administration’s repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. Gerrard and Wentz pointed to the effect this has had: it de facto prohibits the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Numerous legal challenges are underway. and Gerrard said they “may well get to the Supreme Court. though probably not for a year or two.”.
The conference also carried a humanitarian register, not just a legal one. Robbie Parks of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health spoke on climate change–attributable tropical cyclone exposure and human health. Jason Rohr of the University of Notre Dame discussed how climate change is reshaping schistosomiasis transmission across Africa. Ju-Ching (Wendy) Huang from National Cheng Kung University explained how attribution studies can improve regulations governing land‑use planning. infrastructure. and adaptation by ensuring that the assumptions embedded in codes. permits. and flood maps reflect changes wrought by global warming.
Yet the mood shifted again on day two, when the bridge between science and law was discussed under pressure. The day two plenary. “Defending Science in the Current Political Climate. ” brought together Rachel Rothschild from the University of Michigan Law School; Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M (who led the science community’s pushback to the Department of Energy’s release of a controversial 2025 report); Delta Merner from the Union of Concerned Scientists; and Lauren Kurtz from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. Their message was that climate researchers have faced lawsuits, aggressive open‑records requests, and proposals to dismantle federal research programs.
They also warned about a growing “brain drain” as early‑career scientists weigh the personal costs of staying in the U.S. Participants, during the discussion, noted that the Sabin Center’s Silencing Science Tracker documents attempts to censor, defund, or sow doubt about climate research.
Standing in the middle of those conversations—attribution science on one side. legal and political resistance on the other—the conference’s central tension became unavoidable: attribution can describe how humans shape climate risks. but the path from evidence to accountability is blocked by court timelines. statutes. and the institutions that generate the underlying data.
Still, hope wasn’t absent.
In the final session, Douglas Kysar, a professor of law at Yale, closed the conference with a Knicks-inflected rallying cry: “We’re down 29 points in the second half. It’s time for a comeback, New York.” Judging by the mood in the room, many attendees left believing that comeback is still possible.
The full program and speaker bios were also made available.
climate attribution science climate law NCAR accountability lawsuits EPA Clean Air Act Endangerment Finding Silencing Science Tracker