The White House won’t proceed anytime soon with creating a panel to challenge climate change science, indefinitely postponing the controversial proposal until after the 2020 election.

The White House, through the National Security Council, was considering creating a panel of scientists to scrutinize the consensus view that man-made climate change is harming national security.

William Happer, a National Security Council senior director and climate change science skeptic, has been pushing the idea for months, but it faced significant opposition within the government, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Happer is a physicist, rather than a climate scientist, who gained notoriety by once declaring that the "demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler."

"It's clear that there is considerable opposition to this kangaroo climate panel idea from within the White House, across the Administration and in Congress, including the Defense Department, the intelligence community and the science agencies, and that it's now dead on the vine,” Frank Fernia, co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security, which opposed the plan, told the Washington Examiner.

The National Security Council declined to comment on the delay of the panel.

The plan for the climate skeptic panel was to first to investigate the science underlying the National Climate Assessment, completed by U.S. government researchers across 13 federal agencies and released in November 2017. That assessment concluded that climate change is already affecting the country and is caused by humans.

It would then have used the findings of the science review and apply it to national security policy.

The national security and intelligence communities within the U.S. government have said that climate change threatens national security.

Judith Curry, a scientist who was considering participating in the panel, said it appeared the Trump administration was not pursuing a good-faith effort to scrutinize climate science.

“A serious examination of the National Climate Assessment and its implications for national security would be a very good idea,” Curry, former head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, told the Washington Examiner. “I'm not at all sure that this is what the White House had in mind. Personally, I'm not interested in participating in a politicized assessment.”

Myron Ebell, a senior fellow at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, said while President Trump has been receptive to the idea, some of his advisers have warned him the project could damage his reelection campaign by turning off swing voters who worry about his handling of environmental issues.

Trump delivered a speech Monday defending his environmental record, despite never mentioning climate change. His administration has continued to press on with an agenda of reducing Obama-era regulations intended to reduce carbon emissions that cause climate change.

“What I have been told is that Happer’s climate review has been put on hold indefinitely, which I interpret to mean that it’s dead,” Ebell, who formerly led Trump’s EPA transition team, told the Washington Examiner. “Opponents of the Happer effort were successful in delaying its launch to urge that the White House needed to shore up support with certain types of voters concerned about environmental issues and that they could do this by dropping controversial initiatives (like critically reviewing climate science) and instead talking up the administration’s environmental accomplishments.”

Republican senators and lawmakers close to Trump have also been urging him to moderate his approach to climate change.

“I would encourage the president to look long and hard on the science, admit the science is real, and come up with solutions that do not destroy the economy like the Green New Deal,” said Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina senator, at a press conference Wednesday where he and other Republicans announced the creation of a new caucus intended to showcase the party’s new innovation-centric approach to reducing emissions. “I am tired of playing defense on the environment. We will win the solution debate, but the only way to win is admit you have a problem.”

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, another Republican close to Trump, said the president’s pro-environment speech Monday shows the success of a lobbying effort by lawmakers like himself who want the party to take climate change seriously.

“You can see the positive impact that Senator Graham, myself and others in the administration have had on the president,” he said at the press conference Wednesday.

Other Republicans said Trump is right to postpone the climate skeptic panel and begin to talk about environmental issues, but argue his rhetoric alone is insufficient.

“It’s clear the president and the dministration are nervous about the politics of the environment,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Florida who introduced a carbon tax bill last year. “If this is the beginning of a broader shift toward a rational, science-based approach to climate policy, that would be welcome. However, until the president recognizes the urgent need to reduce carbon pollution, swing voters who are concerned about this issue will not take him seriously. “