William Happer, a National Security Council adviser who tried unsuccessfully to create a federal panel to attack climate science, plans to leave the White House.
Excerpt from this New York Times story:
William Happer, the White House architect of a stalled plan to attack the established science of climate change, is leaving the Trump administration on Friday, according to three people familiar with his plans.
Dr. Happer, a physicist who gained notoriety by claiming that the greenhouse gases contributing to warming the planet are beneficial to humanity, and for likening attacks on fossil fuels to “the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler” in a 2014 interview, serves on the National Security Council as President Trump’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies.
His signature effort at the White House was a plan to establish a panel to question the scientific consensus that climate change is overwhelmingly caused by humans and is a growing threat to national security. The effort was blocked by other senior White House and administration officials, including members of the military and intelligence communities.
Dr. Happer also tried to edit scientific facts about climate change in testimony to Congress from a State Department intelligence analyst. His suggestions, first reported by The New York Times, included objecting to the phrase “tipping point” to describe when the planet reaches a threshold of irreversible climate change.
“‘Tipping points’ is a propaganda slogan for the scientifically illiterate,” Dr. Happer wrote in a margin comment captured by track changes in working documents. “They were a favorite of Al Gore’s science adviser, James Hansen.”
The White House and a spokesman for the National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment, and Dr. Happer did not respond to an email seeking comment on Wednesday.
