Shitstain's Sciencey Panel To Decide IF Global Warming Is A Security Threat; Led By Heritage Hack

[hatrack]

The White House is working to assemble a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post, a conclusion that federal intelligence agencies have affirmed several times since President Trump took office. The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which would be established by executive order, is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. Happer, an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, has said that carbon emissions linked to climate change should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant.

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It is unclear how much support Happer’s initiative has inside the administration: Deputies from more than a dozen agencies have been invited to attend a meeting on the topic on Friday in the White House Situation Room. Several agencies declined to comment on the matter this week, including the NSC, the Pentagon, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Happer, who worked at the Energy Department under George H.W. Bush and joined the White House in September to work on “emerging technologies,” is not formally trained as a climate scientist. He developed a national reputation for his work on laser technology used in missile defense and on the interactions between light and atoms. He has sat on the boards of two advocacy groups that have questioned whether global warming poses a serious risk, the CO2 Coalition and the George C. Marshall Institute. Last March, when asked in connection with court proceedings whether he had received money from the fossil fuel industry, Happer said he had been given somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 from Peabody Coal to testify before a Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearing.

During a December 2016 energy and climate policy summit sponsored by the conservative Heritage Foundation, Happer explained that the CO2 Coalition aimed to counter the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant because it is the primary driver of recent climate change. “I like to call this the CO2 anti-defamation league,” he said, gesturing to a slide, “because there is the CO2 molecule, and it has undergone decade after decade of abuse, for no reason. “We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant,” he said. “It’s not a pollutant at all. .?.?. We should be telling the scientific truth, that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/white-house-readies-panel-to-assess-if-climate-change-poses-a-national-security-threat/2019/02/19/ccc8b29e-3396-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.e94137d59236

[TreasonousBastard]

1. OK, Happer is professor emeritus, which could mean...

a distinguished retired academic imbued with great wisdom and learning, or maybe an octogenarian with memory problems.

Either way, his expertise was in things like transforming mirrors and light, leading to better MRIs and other good stuff. He is not an idiot, but has no expertise in climate science. Not exactly like asking a famous heart surgeon about installing solar panels, but not that far away.

I found lots about him, thanks to the interwebby thing, but this blog kind of wraps it all up. Each of the listed posts are fairly short and interesting, even fun, reading.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/William_Happer_blog.htm

A typical post:

Personally, I have little interest in the legality of making CO2 a "pollutant" or not. I'm quite sure different people here have their own perspective on this, but to me whether we call it a "pollutant" or a "banana" doesn't change its physical properties: CO2 is a strong greenhouse gas, and it is important in impeding how efficiently our planet loses radiative heat to space. We don't often think of CO2 as a "pollutant" on Venus, yet it still allows the planet to support temperatures well above the melting point of lead or tin.