Federal Judicial Center removes climate science chapter after Republican pressure

The Federal Judicial Center, the research and education agency of the US judicial branch, removed an entire chapter on climate science from the fourth edition of its Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence after receiving a letter of complaint from Republican state attorneys general in late January. The manual, prepared in collaboration with the National Academies of Science, serves as reference material for judges unfamiliar with scientific topics that appear in court cases. The climate chapter, written by two Columbia University authors, stated that human activities have unequivocally warmed the climate and that human influence on ocean warming is extremely likely. The attorneys general objected to treating these findings as established facts rather than contested positions in litigation. Their letter argued the document should not declare only one scientific view as within the boundaries of sound knowledge, though the manual applies this standard to multiple scientific topics. The Federal Judicial Center has now agreed to remove the entire climate chapter, despite the Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan's foreword still referencing it. The deleted chapter has been preserved by the RealClimate blog.