On June 10 and 11, Columbia Climate School and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law co-hosted their second conference on Attribution Science and Climate Law. Over two days of panels and presentations, scientists and legal experts discussed the implications of climate change attribution science—a branch of research that examines the causal links between human activities, global climate change and the impacts of climate change—which underpins many recent lawsuits seeking to hold polluters and corporations responsible for climate-related harms.
The idea for the conference arose from an ongoing collaboration between Sabin Center executive director Michael Burger; Sabin senior fellow Jessica Wentz; and Columbia Climate School professor Radley Horton. In early 2020, they co-published an article, The Law and Science of Climate Change Attribution, which provides an overview of attribution research and its application in legal settings. According to the article: “Attribution science is rapidly evolving…and so too is its role in the courtroom and in policymaking. Armed with a growing body of evidence linking increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to specific 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 said that over the last two to three years, the planet has seen global average surface temperatures “close to or above 1.5 degrees C above pre‑industrial levels, hinting at the possibility of higher climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases than [previously] thought.”
According to Horton, attribution science has made significant advances over the past decade. He added that the conference’s attendance of over 500 people from 35 countries, online and in person, was indicative of a growing interest in the field. However, he warned that “there are entities that don’t want to see discussion of this topic.” Some, he said, are trying to dismantle and disrupt the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and other systems for observing the ocean, “which are critical to this type of science.”
NCAR has powered advances in the field through improvements in its own functionality such as increased computing power, finer model resolution and expanded use of satellite data. The Trump administration has threatened to shutter the center, though “a preliminary injunction, a key legal tool, is preventing the most serious disruptions at NCAR,” Horton said.
From a legal standpoint, Horton said, recent years have seen a marked increase in the number of lawsuits seeking to hold governments and corporations accountable for failing to take action on climate change. Climate change attribution science plays a central role in many of these, he said, but so far has failed to hand the lawyers a smoking gun.
In his keynote, Michael Gerrard, Sabin Center founder and faculty director, said that Sabin’s global Climate Litigation Database currently 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. Insufficient science has not been the problem as courts in the U.S. and around the world “have readily accepted science without dispute. The obstacles have been legal.”
One such obstacle is the Trump administration’s repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding. Both Gerrard and Wentz mentioned the repeal, which de facto prohibits the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Numerous legal challenges are underway, and they “may well get to the Supreme Court, though probably not for a year or two,” Gerrard said.
Many presenters touched on a range of humanitarian subjects. 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. And 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 the changes wrought by global warming.
Yet it was clear that the bridge between science and law is being built under hostile fire. The day two plenary, “Defending Science in the Current Political Climate,” underscored that notion. 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 all described how climate researchers have faced lawsuits, aggressive open‑records requests, and proposals to dismantle federal research programs. They warned of a growing “brain drain” as early‑career scientists weigh the personal costs of staying in the U.S.
Participants noted that the Sabin Center’s Silencing Science Tracker documents the attempts to censor, defund or sow doubt about climate research.
Attribution science helps reveal the human fingerprints on the climate emergency, which only sharpened general frustration over the obstacles cited above. But there was still hope in the room. 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.
See the full program and speaker bios here.
