{"id":389808,"date":"2025-07-19T19:52:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T17:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=389808"},"modified":"2025-07-19T19:53:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T17:53:01","slug":"exposed-from-climategate-to-courtroom-how-climate-activists-tip-the-scales-of-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=389808","title":{"rendered":"EXPOSED: From Climategate to Courtroom \u2013 How Climate Activists Tip the Scales of Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s not mince words: What\u2019s been unearthed in this Fox News expos\u00e9 \u201cUnearthed chat sheds light on cozy ties between judges, climate activists, raising ethical concerns<\/a><\/strong>\u201d is nothing less than a blueprint for how climate activists have sought to quietly \u201ccapture\u201d the American judiciary, in a style remarkably reminiscent of the infamous Climategate affair of 2009, which we first broke here on this very website<\/a>. If Climategate was the exposure of insular groupthink, manipulation, and data gatekeeping in the scientific community, what we\u2019re seeing here is the systematic application of those tactics\u2014this time, targeting the judges who ultimately decide climate-related lawsuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the center of this latest scandal is the Climate Judiciary Project<\/a> (CJP), an initiative launched in 2018 by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI)\u2014itself a left-wing nonprofit flush with activist funding, some of it allegedly traceable to China. CJP\u2019s mission? To provide what it calls \u201cauthoritative, objective, and trusted education on climate science, the impacts of climate change, and the ways climate science is arising in the law.\u201d What this means in practice is quietly coaching judges on the \u201cconsensus\u201d climate narrative, prepping them to be more sympathetic to creative activist litigation\u2014then, lo and behold, those very same funders bankroll the lawsuits that land before these freshly-indoctrinated judges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Senator Ted Cruz aptly put it: \u201cThis is like paying the players to play and paying the umpire to call the shots the way you want\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article lays out the mechanics: in September 2022, CJP launched a \u201clistserv\u201d\u2014an email group with direct, ongoing communication between CJP leaders and judges nationwide. By July 2024, there were 29 members, including at least five sitting judges. The forum, innocuously called \u201cJudicial Leaders in Climate Science,\u201d included private sharing of climate lawsuits, congratulatory messages for activist wins, and guidance for other judges on how to run similar programs in their states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Delaware judge even posted a private YouTube link to a presentation giddily predicting climate lawsuits could one day bankrupt the fuel industry, with the explicit warning: \u201cPlease do not forward or use without checking with me. I suspect that goes without saying, but the powers that be will be happier that I said it.\u201d The closed-door, chummy dynamic is obvious\u2014and telling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is nothing more than indoctrination masquerading as education<\/em>.<\/strong> CJP and its defenders, of course, insist their purpose is purely educational and objective. They claim their curriculum is \u201cfact-based and science-first, grounded in consensus reports and developed with a robust peer review process\u201d. But let\u2019s be real: what\u2019s passed off as neutral \u201cclimate education\u201d is heavily slanted to reinforce a specific worldview, presenting worst-case climate scenarios as settled science, and framing any dissent or nuance as heresy. The program even encouraged judges to go through CJP\u2019s prepackaged \u201cClimate Science 101\u201d and \u201cClimate Litigation 101\u201d courses, and send feedback to help make them even more effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a distinctly unseemly aspect here: the very people training the judges are often also involved in crafting and arguing the lawsuits that appear before those same judges. The ELI and CJP\u2019s \u201cexperts\u201d include university professors and lawyers who have filed numerous amicus briefs in climate litigation. The potential for bias isn\u2019t just present\u2014it\u2019s the entire point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s not sugarcoat it: what we\u2019re witnessing is an effort to purchase not just favorable coverage in the press or within academia, but to buy the rulebook and the referees themselves. In the wake of Climategate, we saw how a tight circle of activists could warp the scientific process by excluding dissenting voices and manufacturing consensus. Now, the same techniques\u2014gatekeeping, narrative control, the selective sharing of \u201cevidence\u201d\u2014are being applied in a backdoor campaign to ensure judges are only exposed to the \u201cright\u201d sort of climate science and litigation logic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a method that could be described as \u201cjudicial capture,\u201d and Senator Cruz was absolutely correct to raise alarm bells. The CJP\u2019s program, far from being an innocuous continuing education effort, is a systematic campaign to get judges to \u201cset aside the rule of law, and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parallels to Climategate are striking:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n