Trump hires a denier that compares climatology to "Nazi propaganda" – ThinkProgress



[ad_1]

President Donald Trump has just been appointed William Happer for the key position of "Senior Director of Emerging Technologies" at the National Security Council.

But Happiness literally believes that more carbon pollution "would to be a benefit to humanity, as he wrote in a 2013 Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "In Defense of Carbon Dioxide".

So much to find someone who understands that perhaps the most crucial emerging technologies for the security of America and all of humanity. involve reducing carbon pollution. Unfortunately, this continues the trend of this administration ceding the largest job creation sector of the next decades – clean energy – for the Chinese and the Europeans, who are putting tens of billions of dollars on it.

Happer, a theoretical physicist from Princeton, is one of the most extreme deniers of climate science.

"This is George Orwell. These are the "Germans are the master race. Jews are the scum of the earth. "It's this kind of propaganda," Mr. Happer told the Daily Princetonian in 2009. "Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and every time you breathe out, you breathe out 4% air. Carbon dioxide: To say that it is a pollutant only disturbs my spirit, which was science has become a cult. "

In 2014, he told CNBC: "The demonization of carbon dioxide is like the demonization of poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is an advantage for the world, just like the Jews.

So what exactly are his qualifications for being a top presidential adviser on "emerging technologies" at the National Security Council?

His only strength is that he was director of the Office of Energy Research of the Department of Energy (DOE), chaired by George H. W. Bush. But that was a quarter of a century ago, and DOE's "Energy Research" program focuses primarily on long-term basic research (such as high-energy physics) as opposed to more applied research on energy. emerging technologies.

Since then, Happer has drifted further and further away from scientific reality to become a fossil fuel-based scientific denier.

For many years he was chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute's board of directors, funded in part by the Koch brothers to promote the denial of climate science. The Institute closed its doors in 2015 and has essentially reopened under the name "Coalition CO2", which promotes the benefits of more CO2 and spreads climate misinformation.

He also writes and co-signs anti-scientific editorials of the Wall Street Journal. In 2012, for example, he co-authored a document that has been debunked by three dozen climate scientists – co-signers have been described as "Cardiac Dentists".

According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal editorial, pro-CO2 widely criticized by Happer, "In the era of people and water and food shortages in some areas, it's amazing that aid workers are not asking for more dioxide of atmospheric carbon ".

This myth has been largely debunked (see, for example, Skeptical Science). Yes, more CO2 can help plants to grow if they also receive more water and other nutrients. But more CO2 is a disaster for humans, as billions of people are currently living in areas that are flooded or turned into pots of dust or become too hot for humans when temperatures rise due to carbon emissions. she herself recognized it last November.

The reality is that Happer knows little about emerging technologies or the real threats to US national security, but he knows a lot about the rejection of climate science. And, unfortunately, this seems to be the only qualification you need to join the Trump team these days.

[ad_2]
Source link