15 Years

Since 2011, CSLDF has helped climate and other scientists defend against government and institutional censorship, fight industry-funded attacks, and stand up for scientific and climate progress.

Protecting and Defending Science since 2011

We would not have been able to successfully stand alongside scientists without the help of our many supporters, volunteers, and friends over the years. With your help, we have:

15 Years of Defending Climate Science: A retrospective of our work protecting the scientific endeavor

Over the past fifteen years, the attacks on climate science and scientists have evolved: from the early days of doxxing prominent individual scientists to a widespread, insidious, and calculated strategy to dismantle academic freedoms and undermine the truth.

A growing number of targets

What began as individual attacks on prominent climate scientists like our first client, Dr. Michael Mann, has shifted to broader attacks on anyone whose work aims to shed light on the truth of the climate crisis.

This includes researchers who provide technical information to judges deciding climate cases, scholars developing legal strategies to hold fossil fuel companies accountable, and researchers in fields such as climate policy and health.

Emboldened Attacks

For decades, non-government actors have attempted to silence climate scientists by using death threats and other scare tactics, tactics which are still being used.

Emboldened by the current administration, groups are also now better organized, employing a wider range of legal tactics to undermine and harass a broad array of individuals working on addressing the climate crisis. With the growing online mis/disinformation environment, individual bad-faith actors can now more easily target scientists.

Abusing the legal system

While attacks on climate science are varied, two legal strategies are increasingly being misused against climate scientists to distort and undermine their research.

FOIA and Open Records Requests: The federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state open records laws were designed to ensure government transparency, allowing the public to access documents related to government-funded activities.

Anti-science groups misuse these laws to harass researchers, demanding troves of (sometimes personal) emails, soaking up time and their institution’s resources, sometimes publishing thousands of emails without context – all with an end goal of intimidating, discrediting, and exhausting researchers.

Defamation: Defamation laws are meant to prevent knowingly false statements from harming someone’s reputation or discrediting their work. But anti-science groups have weaponized defamation claims, threatening lawsuits to try to prevent scientists from speaking out about climate change and other hot-button research areas – and to punish those who do so.

CSLDF’s Response

Since our founding, CSLDF has developed deep knowledge of how to defend against the legal tactics used by anti-science forces. We remain the only organization offering free legal counseling to publicly and privately employed or funded climate scientists. Our caseload has increased year over year, as have our partnerships with scientific and higher education organizations, and our legal expertise has now been put to work for more than 430 scientists.

Over the years, we have built a responsive, proactive suite of free educational programs to help scientists avoid legal pitfalls. One of our core convictions is that when climate scientists understand their legal rights and responsibilities, they are better positioned to fight abuses and protect critical research and scientific inquiry. Visit csldf.org/resources to access our free library.

The final element of our work has been to push policy reforms to prevent future attacks on science and ultimately protect the scientific endeavor. We have urged stronger protections for science and scientists at the federal and state levels by providing legislative testimony, submitting regulatory comments, and working directly with policymakers. We also shine a light on political interference in science through our work on the Silencing Science Tracker, a database that tracks government efforts to restrict, censor, and misrepresent science since the November 2016 election.

As part of our reflections on 15 years of service, we have asked our board members, friends, and long-standing staff for their insights into what they've learned on the frontlines of defending climate science.

Co-founding this organization has shown me how tight-knit and supportive the climate science community is. We didn't get our first foundation grant until years into the organization; CSLDF was built through years of volunteer hours and small donations from the climate science community. Those hours of time and $10, $25, and $100 checks are what created this organization.

Joshua Wolfe

Co-founder

Attacks on science have evolved over the years. Initially, we saw attacks on the veracity of the research, claiming that climate change was fake news. And while that still happens - President Trump has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax” - we are now more likely to see attacks attempting to shut down efforts to educate or provide information. The current generation of attacks largely centers around whether scientists have acted “appropriately” in communicating about their science and the implications.

Lauren Kurtz

CSLDF Executive Director

The need for the services of CSLDF has remained constant during our 15-year history. While government-based attacks on climate science and climate scientists lessened during administrations supportive of climate action — the Obama and Biden administrations — attacks from other sources continued unabated. As long as the profits of the richest and most powerful industry in world history — the fossil fuel industry — are threatened, these attacks will continue.

Dr. Jeff Masters

Meteorologist & Co-founder, Weather Underground

2011

CSLDF created to help defray the legal costs of an ideologically-motivated lawsuit against climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann.

2014

After Dr. Mann’s legal victory, CSLDF incorporated as a 501(c)(3) with five board members, and hired our first staff member.

2015

CSLDF files its first amicus brief, in support of protecting climate scientists from bad-faith lawsuits.

2016

In response to the first Trump administration, and the rapid growth in the need for our services, launched a new educational series of legal Pocket Guides for scientists.

2017

Hired our first full-time staff attorney to meet the growing demand for our services.

2018

The Silencing Science Tracker, a joint project with the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, launched to document anti-science attacks by the Trump administration.

2020

Model Scientific Integrity Policy launched to help scientists understand how research institutions and federal agencies approach scientific integrity. New, more robust website launched with a comprehensive resource library.

2022

In a growing misinformation environment post pandemic, successfully defended scientist against defamation suit for correcting videos monetizing climate lies.

2025

To meet the ever increasing need from scientists, grew our legal team, adding a second staff attorney and two project attorneys.

2026

New Silencing Science Tracker launched, making it easier to track the second Trump administration’s anti-science efforts.