News

Actions

Washington Post: White House plans to assemble group of scientists to re-evaluate climate science conclusions

Posted at 6:02 PM, Feb 24, 2019
and last updated 2019-02-24 18:02:31-05

The White House is planning to assemble an “ad hoc group” of scientists to re-evaluate the federal government’s current conclusions about climate science and the negative impact of fossil fuels, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The Post, citing conversations with multiple unnamed administration officials, said that the group “would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem.”

The group would include researchers from within the government, the paper said. The “ad hoc group” would differ from a formal advisory committee because it would not be required to abide by the same amount of public disclosure.

According to the paper, the plan, which is not finalized, was discussed at a meeting Friday with several high level administration officials in which attendees “debated how best to establish a group of researchers that could scrutinize recent federal climate reports.”

The paper said the proposed panel “will not be tasked with scrutinizing recent intelligence community assessments of climate change.”

The Post also noted that the group is a revised version of another group that the White House was recently mulling.

Last week, the paper reportedthat the administration was considering creating a committee tasked with studying whether climate change poses a national security threat.

Citing planning documents related to the committee, the Post said that it would have been led by William Happer, a National Security Council official and climate change skeptic who once compared the “demonization” of carbon dioxide to the treatment of Jews under Adolf Hitler.

This week, several hearings on climate change will take place before congressional committees, including one before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science with Neil Jacobs, an assistant secretary at the Department of Commerce and Michael Freilich, a NASA official.