White House physicist sought aid of rightwing thinktank to challenge climate science

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

White House physicist sought aid of rightwing thinktank to challenge climate science

William Happer contacted Heartland Institute, one of the most prominent groups to dispute that fossil fuels cause global heating

Oliver Milman in New York and agency
Fri 14 Jun 2019 16.40 BST Last modified on Fri 14 Jun 2019 16.52 BST

A member of the Trump administration’s National Security Council has sought help from advisers of a conservative thinktank to challenge the reality of a human-induced climate crisis, a trove of his emails show.

William Happer, a physicist appointed by the White House to counter the federal government’s own climate science, reached out to the Heartland Institute, one of the most prominent groups to dispute that burning fossil fuels is causing dangerous global heating, in March.

In the messages, part of a group of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Happer and the Heartland adviser Hal Doiron discuss Happer’s scientific arguments in a paper attempting to knock down the concept of climate emergency, as well as ideas to make the work “more useful to a wider readership”. Happer writes he had already discussed the work with another Heartland adviser, Thomas Wysmuller.

The emails from 2018 and 2019, received by the Environmental Defense Fund and provided to the Associated Press, also show Happer’s dismay that Jim Bridenstine, the Nasa administrator, had come round to accepting the science of climate breakdown.

In May 2018, an exchange between Happer and Heartland’s Wysmuller called Bridenstine’s change of heart “a puzzle” and copied in the Nasa administrator to urge him to “systematically sidestep” established science on temperature increases and sea level rise that the duo call “nonsense”.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/14/white-house-physicist-sought-aid-of-rightwing-thinktank-to-challenge-climate-science

[bitterross]

1. This would be news if it DIDN'T HAPPEN

That it happened under this administration is not surprising.

[redstatebluegirl]

2. They are terrified, if Birdenstine can see the light others will as well.

They need the oil money, the KOCH money, so they have to stop this.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Emails: Trump official pressed NASA on climate science

https://apnews.com/4ec9affd55a345d582a4cc810686137e

Emails: Trump official pressed NASA on climate science
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Once a skeptic about climate change, Jim Bridenstine came around to the prevailing view of scientists before he took over as NASA administrator. That evolution did not sit well with a Trump environmental adviser, nor a think-tank analyst he was consulting, according to newly disclosed emails that illustrate how skepticism of global warming has found a beachhead in the Trump White House.

“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.”

It cannot be discerned whether it was Happer or Wysmuller who put that pressure on the new NASA chief. Their exchange is included in emails from 2018 and 2019 that were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund under the federal Freedom of Information Act and provided to The Associated Press.

But the emails show that Happer, who was then advising Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, kept up the pressure after he joined the National Security Council late last year.

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