On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that it had obtained a document suggesting that the Trump administration is considering combining two areas where it has consistently dismissed expert conclusions: climate change and intelligence analysis. While the intelligence community has consistently accepted that climate change creates security risks for the United States, the document suggests that Trump will circumvent its advice by setting up an advisory committee in an effort headed by a retired professor noted for not accepting the conclusions of the scientific community.

The document is a National Security Council discussion paper, and it suggests using an executive order to set up a Presidential Committee on Climate Security. The committee would provide advice to Trump on the current climate and its future changes and how those affect the national security of the US.

Adversarial

Normally, these functions are provided by the scientific community and the intelligence community, respectively. But these parties have been giving Trump evidence that he's not interested in accepting.

On the science side, this is exemplified by the administration's response to the National Climate Assessment prepared by the scientific community. The administration pushed up its release in order to get it out on the Friday of a holiday weekend in the hope that it would attract little attention. When that didn't work out, the administration went on the attack against its own report, including lying about its contents.

The intelligence community, which has been skeptical of Trump's initiatives toward Russia and North Korea, has been met with similar resistance from the administration. Toward the end of January, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats gave testimony that highlighted views that were radically different from those favored by Trump. The threats to national security that he discussed included those posed by climate change. Since then, rumors have swirled that Coats is likely to be fired

Given this backdrop, it's no surprise that the document suggests the new committee will be "adversarial."

Finding a role for Happer

The full quote around "adversarial," however, is a bit odd. The Post quotes the document as saying "these scientific and national security judgments have not undergone a rigorous independent and adversarial scientific peer review to examine the certainties and uncertainties of climate science, as well as implications for national security."

That's false with regard to the scientific assessments, which include discussions of uncertainty. And it's a misunderstanding of peer review, which isn't meant to be an adversarial process intended to poke holes in results.

The misunderstanding of the science is explained by the involvement of former scientist William Happer, who is reported to be spearheading the effort. While Happer made significant contributions to optics for astronomy, the end of his research career has left him with time to go on a crusade against climate science. In that capacity, he's prone to making basic scientific errors and launching into political attacks. He's called the field "so-called science" and "a cult" and said of his fellow scientists, “It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant."

That approach to climate science naturally made him a contender for heading Trump's Office of Science and Technology Policy. The scientific community dodged that bullet, having a respected meteorologist (the impeccably named Kelvin Droegemeier) tapped to lead the OSTP. Happer then somehow found a home on the National Security Council, putting him in position to launch this new effort, which closely follows his earlier advocacy of a "red team" attack on climate science at the EPA. That effort was ultimately rejected, leaving the Trump administration in the odd position of technically accepting climate science's conclusions but not actually believing or doing anything about them.

According to the Post, agencies have been asked to send representatives to the White House to discuss the initiative on Friday.