Climate scientists, environmental campaigners, and national security experts were not optimistic on White House proposal to create a “presidential committee on climate security.” The adviser behind the plan is William Happer, an accomplished 79-year-old Princeton University physicist, who recently became Trump’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies on the National Security Council. Happer holds the view that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming, is beneficial for the planet. The new presidential committee’s prime task will be to evaluate, through an adversarial process, the robustness of the main conclusions of the latest National Climate Assessment and the climate findings in the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
By Andrew Revkin, National Geographic, February 22, 2019
