William Happer — a physicist and former Princeton professor — already serves on Trump's National Security Council as deputy assistant for emerging technologies; but now he's been promoted to chair of a climate review panel charged with discrediting the National Climate Assessment.
Happer isn't just a garden-variety Trumper: he's a guy with a long track record of comparing the drive to reduce atmospheric CO2 to Hitler's mass-extermination attack on Jews during the Holocaust. He made the comparison first in 2014 and then when questioned about it in 2017, he doubled down, comparing CO2 reduction efforts to "the Soviet extermination of class enemies or ISIL slaughter of infidels."
Happer has clarified his remarks to make it clear that he's not talking about the treatment that climate deniers get from mainstream scientists: he's defending CO2 itself, not people who deny anthropogenic climate change.
Greenpeace once sent undercover agents to Happer who posed as a representatives of "an unnamed oil and gas company in the Middle East" and offered to pay him to deny climate change and promote higher CO2 levels on their behalf, and made the payment conditional on Happer disguising the source of his funding. Happer agreed to take the job. He later told the New York Times that he didn't "think I have anything to be embarrassed about."
Trump climate adviser compared ‘demonization’ of carbon dioxide to Jews’ treatment under Hitler
[Robert Schroeder/Marketwatch]
(Image: Gage Skidmore, CC-BY-SA; Ben Watts, CC-BY; Trump's Hair)
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