Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt is proceeding with a plan to conduct a debate among scientists within the agency to refine the government’s understanding of the climate change phenomenon.

E & E News reported on Friday:

U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is leading a formal initiative to challenge mainstream climate science using a “back-and-forth critique” by government-recruited experts, according to a senior administration official. The program will use “red team, blue team” exercises to conduct an “at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science,” the official said, referring to a concept developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations. “The administrator believes that we will be able to recruit the best in the fields which study climate and will organize a specific process in which these individuals … provide back-and-forth critique of specific new reports on climate science,” the source said.

The original suggestion to use a “red team, blue team” approach to climate science appeared in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by physicist Steven Koonin in April. Pruitt first endorsed that approach on Breitbart News Daily, the weekday morning show hosted by Breitbart News from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. on Sirius XM channel 125.

As Breitbart News’ John Hayward reported earlier in June:

What the American people deserve is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2,” he said. “There was a great article that was in the Wall Street Journal about a month or so ago called ‘Red Team, Blue Team’ by Steve Koonin, a scientist, I believe, at NYU. He talked about the importance of having a Red Team of scientists and a Blue Team of scientists, and those scientists get into a room and ask, ‘What do we know? What don’t we know? What risk does it pose to health in the United States and the world, with respect to this issue of CO2?’” “The American people need to have that type of honest, open discussion, and it’s something that we hope to help provide as part of our leadership,” said Pruitt.

Critics are apparently concerned that Pruitt’s program will give too much prominence to skeptical views, according to E & E News.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.