In case you missed previous coverage, there’s a particularly loathsome environmental adviser named William Happer now serving as president of the Trump regime’s National Security Council. In an interview a decade ago, Happer, a former Princeton physics professor, trashed the work of climate scientists with this gem:
“This is George Orwell. This is the ‘Germans are the master race. The Jews are the scum of the earth.’ It’s that kind of propaganda” [...] “Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that’s a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.”
Happer still believes this grotesque gibberish. He’s still trashing climate scientists. And according to the Associated Press, emails uncovered via an FOIA request by the Environmental Defense Fund show that he wasn’t happy with one-time science-denier Jim Bridenstine’s change of mind after he took over as NASA administrator. Happer pressured him to change or eliminate climate-change references on NASA websites and other materials, something the space agency has not done. The emails show that Happer discussed the matter with Hal Doiron and Thomas Wysmuller, both advisers at one of the nation’s most aggressive attackers of climate science and scientists, the Heartland Institute, which has received funding from Koch Industries and other fossil fuel sources. Ellen Knickmeyer and Seth Borenstein report:
“Puzzling,” says the May 2018 exchange between William Happer, now a member of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, and Thomas Wysmuller of the Heartland Institute, which disavows manmade climate change. Their exchange calls scientifically established rises in sea levels and temperatures under climate change “part of the nonsense” and urges the NASA head — who was copied in — to “systematically sidestep it.” [...]
In February, he emailed NASA deputy administrator James Morhard, relaying a complaint about NASA’s websites from an unidentified rejecter of man-made climate change. “I’m concerned that many children are being indoctrinated by this bad science,” said the email that Happer relayed. (Happer’s own message was redacted from the records obtained by the environmental group.)
As noted here earlier this year, Happer is coordinating the Presidential Committee on Climate Security. Its role: Attack the findings of the vast number of scientists who say average global temperatures are rising as a result of human activities that release prodigious quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Happer obviously isn’t the only member of the Trump team that the AP mischaracterizes as climate “skeptics.” They’re rejectionists engaged in disinformation and they are plentiful. And, whether they believe their claims that the climate crisis is a “hoax” or they’re just opportunists who don’t care about the climate except as a means to line their pockets hardly matters, the consequences of their actions are the same. If they continue to get their way, they’ll deliver us and future generations to catastrophe. Unlike just a few years ago, in addition to the ever-growing grassroots efforts to end the influence of these charlatans, scientists who previously were reticent about getting entangled in politics are challenging the rejectionists:
Academic experts denounced [Happer’s] continued involvement with groups and scientists who reject what numerous federal agencies say is the fact of climate change. “These people are endangering all of us by promoting anti-science in service of fossil fuel interests over the American interests,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. [...]
“We have concerns that there appear to be attempts by a member of the National Security Council to influence and interfere with the ability of NASA, a federal science agency, to communicate accurately about research findings on climate science,” said Rush Holt, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advance of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.
This is just one of scores of government arenas that will require a serious house-cleaning come 2021. It should not be forgotten that just booting Trump out of the Oval Office won’t be enough of a corrective. He didn’t invent the anti-science Republican agenda; he’s just been carrying it out.