NY Times Seems Upset That A Climate Skeptic Will Be Included In A Climate Change Panel

Resident Warmist Coral Davenport highlights why the media is not trusted: this is an opinion piece masquerading as a straight news story. She also manages to highlight that ‘climate change’ believers are not happy with using science

White House Panel Will Study Whether Climate Change Is a National Security Threat. It Includes a Climate Denialist.

President Trump is preparing to establish a panel to examine whether climate change affects national security, despite existing reports from his own government showing that global warming is a growing threat.

According to a White House memo dated Feb. 14, Mr. Trump’s staff members have drafted an executive order to create a 12-member committee, which will include a White House adviser, William Happer, whose views are sharply at odds with the established scientific consensus that carbon dioxide pollution is dangerous for the planet.

The memo casts doubt on multiple scientific and defense reports concluding that climate change poses a significant threat to national security, saying they “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.”

The effort to establish the panel appears to be the latest step by the Trump administration to question the science of climate change, as Mr. Trump rolls back Obama-era regulations on planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plants. It also appears to be the latest example of Mr. Trump’s propensity to ignore the findings and recommendations of his own intelligence and defense officials.

If you’re relying on “consensus”, you’re talking about politics, not science. Science is testable and replicable. It isn’t looking into crystal balls, er, computer models, and prognosticating the future. Science is skeptical. Nor is carbon dioxide a pollutant. Thinking it is is anti-science.

At least to some extent, the matter may not entirely be in Mr. Trump’s control. Congress added language to the annual defense policy bill it passed with bipartisan support in late 2017 stating that climate change “is a direct threat to the national security of the United States and is impacting stability in areas of the world both where the United States Armed Forces are operating today, and where strategic implications for future conflict exist.”

The bill, which Mr. Trump signed into law, specifically required the Pentagon to produce a report on climate change’s impact on military installations and encouraged department leaders to consider the effects of climate change when planning for current and future missions. The report was issued last month.

Is climate change a danger? Of course it is. Changes to the climate can always have good points and bad points. The question here, though, is not any dangers, but causation. And the Cult of Climastrology cannot prove scientifically that mankind is mostly/solely responsible.

Critics of the effort to create the new panel, which was first reported by The Washington Post, pointed to the inclusion of Dr. Happer, a Princeton physicist who serves on the National Security Council as Mr. Trump’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies. Dr. Happer has gained notoriety in the scientific community for his statements that carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas that scientists say is trapping heat and warming the planet — is beneficial to humanity. The memo did not name other officials to be appointed to the panel.

Yes, that stuff called “plant food” is apparently Bad or something.

Anyhow, the rest continues to look more like it was published by Mother Jones or MoveOn.org rather than a the “paper of record.”