Panel will study whether climate change is national security threat

WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump is preparing to establish a panel to examine whether climate change affects national security, despite reports from his own government showing human-caused global warming is a growing threat to the nation’s economy, health and security.

According to a White House memo dated Feb. 14, Trump’s staff members have drafted an executive order to create a 12-member committee, which will include a White House adviser, Dr. William Happer, whose views are at odds with the established scientific consensus that carbon dioxide pollution is dangerous for the planet. The memo attempts to cast doubt on multiple scientific and defense reports that have already concluded climate change poses a significant threat to national security. The efforts to establish the panel appears to be the latest step by the Trump administration to play down or distort the established scientific consensus on the effect of climate change, as Trump rolls back Obama-era climate change regulations.

Critics of the effort to create the new panel pointed to the inclusion of Happer, a Princeton physicist who serves on the White House National Security Council. Happer has gained notoriety in the scientific community for his statements that carbon dioxide is beneficial to humanity.

The memo cast doubt on the multiple scientific and defense reports concluding climate change poses a significant threat to national security, saying the reports “have not undergone a rigorous independent and adversarial peer review to examine the certainties and uncertainties of climate science, as well as implications for national security.”

Scientists defended the research. “The link between climate science and national security has been closely studied for over a decade at the highest levels of the U.S. government — by scientists, the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, and all those studies have made a strong case that various aspects of climate change have an effect on national security,” said Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton.