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POLITICS
Meet The Ostriches Under Consideration For Trump’s Anti-Science Climate Panel
The list includes people who have called climate science a “cult” and claimed Earth benefits from burning fossil fuels.
By
Chris D’Angelo
02/26/2019 05:45 AM ET
|
Updated 4 days ago
In its ongoing attempt to discredit decades of climate science, the
Trump administration is reportedly reaching out to some of the most seasoned deniers on the circuit to join a new panel to present an alternative take on
climate change.
As The Washington Post first reported Sunday, the administration is
recruiting scientists and researchers to challenge the scientific consensus that climate change is an immediate crisis driven by the world’s addiction to fossil fuels. At the top of the committee’s target list will be the
National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report that scientists from 13 federal agencies released in November.
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That report, which President
Donald Trump said he doesn’t believe, concluded that planetary warming “could increase by 9°F (5°C) or more by the end of this century” without dramatic emission reductions.
The goal of this Presidential Committee on Climate Security will be to conduct “adversarial scientific peer review” of climate science, E&E News
reported Monday, citing a leaked White House memo. For anyone who has followed the
Republican-led effort to cast doubt on the climate crisis, the names that have emerged as possible panelists will be familiar.
Many have appeared at the congressional hearings Rep.
Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the former chair of the
House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, organized to peddle climate misinformation and his own anti-science views.
Trump’s
reported pick to lead the panel is
William Happer, a retired Princeton physics professor with
no expertise in climatology. E&E noted that those under consideration also include
Judith Curry, a former professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville; and Richard Lindzen, a retired MIT professor.
Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center, told HuffPost that the early list of candidates would indicate that the White House has opted to turn to folks in academia rather than representatives of climate denial think tanks. Though that might make it seem like they have more credibility, all bring “different flavors of denial,” Davies said.
“These guys’ arguments are only held in high regard amongst a very small club of climate deniers,” he said. “They are not included in mainstream thinking about climate science. And they variously attack the temperature record or the modeling.”