In 2013, when Princeton University Professor William Happer co-authored an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that argued that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would promote plant growth and be a net positive for humanity, we here at the Washington Monthly mocked him. The man is clearly bought and paid for.
Happer served as board chair at the Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute, which he spun into a new group, the CO2 Coalition. In 2015, he was caught in a sting accepting payment of $250 an hour, to be funneled through his CO2 Coalition, to write a pro-fossil fuel report secretly paid for by what he thought was Middle Eastern oil and Indonesian coal businesses.
Similarly, Peabody Coal donated $8,000 to Happer’s CO2 Coalition in exchange for his testifying at a Minnesota regulatory hearing on the social cost of carbon. “I told Peabody I’d be glad to write testimony for them,” Happer told ClimateWire in December 2015. “And if they want to pay me, I’d be delighted to take the money for our little coalition.”
He’s also an extremist even by normal climate denialist standards:
Happer has compared the overwhelming scientific consensus that carbon dioxide causes global warming to Nazi “propaganda” and said, “What used to be science has turned into a cult.”
In 2014, he went as far as to claim that “the demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” in an interview with CNBC. “Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews,” Happer said.
So, naturally, President Trump thinks he’s the perfect guy to appoint to head “a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat.”
The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which would be established by executive order, is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. Happer, an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, has said that carbon emissions linked to climate change should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant.
The initiative represents the Trump administration’s most recent attempt to question the findings of federal scientists and experts on climate change and comes less than three weeks after Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats delivered a worldwide threat assessment that identified it as a significant security risk.
Being completely in the bag for the fossil fuel industry isn’t enough to make him the perfect Trump appointee. What makes him perfect is that he got caught in 2015 sting operation accepting money from what he thought were “Middle Eastern oil and Indonesian coal businesses.”
This didn’t prevent Trump from getting him assigned as a senior director on the National Security Council and it isn’t preventing Trump from giving him a high-profile role in attempting to debunk the scientific consensus of the world, the government, and the Pentagon.
No matter how bad you think Trump is, he will always prove that he is worse.
Booman,
Do you ever wonder on how your talents are wasted? There are literally millions to be made by good writers on the other side of the aisle. Get the correct email list, and you could grift forever.
This guy put out his shingle, wrote what they wanted…..and it took him all the way to inside the WH.
Lots of people, including me, thought being associated with this administration would be a career killer, jobs taken by only those taking their last shot. But look at CNN’s latest hire, not even being a racist spokesperson for a racist Attorney General can close the door on 6 figure jobs that allow the grift to continue.
.
I’d rather pose naked for bowling trophies than to be a grifter in the Trump Administration.
Well, now, that’s a pretty weird image.
As a fellow Princetonian and physicist I have to say that Happer’s views on climate science are a huge embarrassment. However, I must add that as far as I can tell he is not in anyone’s pocket, “stings” notwithstanding (since when do progressives engage in Brietbart-level gotcha tactics, anyway? That sort of thing is really problematic on a number of levels). Happer’s just a crank (albeit a brilliant one), similar to , say, Freeman Dyson (another well-known Princeton physicist and climate change denialist; what is it with Princeton physics anyway?). Like Dyson, I think he really believes he’s right and the experts are wrong, because he’s egotistical enough to think he’s smarter than all of them.
It’s bad news for the country that Trump is giving him a platform for his nutty views.
If he follows the route of Trump’s previous appointees he’ll be grifting shortly.
I used to be amazed by the number of obscenely unqualified people that Trump nominated or appointed. I pictured a room filled with crazed rightwingers working the phones feverishly, scouring the country looking under every rock to find the next con man.
Now I just figure there’s no sane candidate for any job in the administration so in this case they just googled ‘climate denier’ and picked from the list.
True story;
I’ve known our Heating and Air Contractor for many years, and have worked on many jobs with him (including my own house). His son helped him all through high school, and then went off to college, when his original major was chemical engineering. He still worked for his dad every summer, and I asked him how it was going. He had decided chemical engineering was not challenging so he switched to physics, and he eventually got his degree. He took a year off before he went for his doctorate, but then at the end of the year, decided to stay with his dads business, where he eventually took over.
So I once asked him;
“When you go out and try to pick up girls, do you tell them you are a physicist, or do you tell them you are a heating and air contractor? One is unbelievable, and the other unimpressive, so which one?”
He said;
“Neither. I tell them I am a car mechanic. It works the best.”
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Funny! Auto mechanic? I wonder how much data he’s collected on how well different jobs work.
Hmmm…
I am also a fellow Princeton graduate alumni, though my subject was chemistry.
I am unclear whether Happer is truly a crank or some linear combination with a large component of dishonesty. Some of the things he is quoted as saying about meeting Trump, when he was under consideration for science advisor (thank God for small mercies), is not proof but pretty strong circumstantial evidence that he is dishonest!
If you are blinded by your own biases and ignore massive evidence when civilization is at stake, you don’t qualify as brilliant. This is inexcusable.
Whatever else he may have done in the past, he’s now associated with Trump, and he’s done this by choice. That doesn’t sound too brilliant either.
. . . work here!
You offer no evidence that Happer “is not in anyone’s pocket”.
Meanwhile, the “sting” you dismiss (without offering anything in support of the validity of your dismissal, either — i.e., is there something omitted or misleading about Booman’s characterization of it that makes it not what it seems as described?), taken at face value, does look like evidence Happer is in someone’s pocket.
Regardless, I trust we can all agree that a climate-denialist crank (at best!), even if “not in anyone’s pocket” is about the worst imaginable appointment to the position in question?
You’re right. My opinion only. I don’t know happer personally, but I do know dyson and I’ve met enough scientists like them to have an opinion about why they hold crank positions like this. It’s not usually about money, it’s about their egos. Sometimes associated with age induced reduction in mental faculties. I will note that hopper didn’t personally accept money in the sting , he asked for his pay to be donated to some climate denial organization he supports.
As for sting operations, I don’t like them, period. My opinion, that’s all.
It is ego/jealously. The leading climate scientist is Michael Mann. He is a Yale physics grad. Princeton cannot let Yale have all the spot light.
I can certainly understand. That being said, it’s also true that not all sting operations are like O’Keefe’s, who has been basically trying to create, in his very clumsy way, what amounts to deep fake video without the technology, or many of the FBI’s, who have put vast resources and long hours into creating villainous scapegoats out of hapless harmless non-white people. Here is a summary, with links to documentation, of Greenpeace UK’s operation; you can judge for yourselves. (The climate denial organization Happer designated as beneficiary: he’s on the board. He’s also affiliated with Cato.)
well, at least that’s a question historians will never have to discuss again. GWB and Hoover and Buchanan and A Johnson can fight it out for second worst. Trump is to “worst” like Secretariat was to racehorses.
Just to keep things surreal, “Happer” is the name of the oil executive played by Burt Lancaster in Local Hero.
What is the point of this “Presidential Committee on Climate Security”? Yes, they can take evidence from all the climate denialists they like, and use it as a smoke-screen but it would probably be better for Trump to just ignore the subject altogether.
They will issue their “report”; it will be widely mocked and attacked by everybody, and in the end it will accomplish nothing and be denounced as a “white wash.”
It reminds me of the White Paper the Reagan Administration’s infamous “White Paper” on El Salvador. The NYT immediately issued articles debunking it’s “obvious errors.”
In this case, it will inevitably invite more blowback than support. In the end it will be seen as more political propaganda. Those who want to believe Global Warming is a myth invented by Al Gore won’t need the paper, and those who don’t won’t be convinced. It will have ZERO practical significance any more than those crackpot studies funded by the tobacco lobby “proving” that cigarette smoking doesn’t cause cancer.
Payola for professors? Perhaps there is a kickback from all the incompetents hired/appointed. I think too little attention is paid to the Don’s profound greed and that of the grifters he hires.
This is more of the endless revenge against Obama and his legacy that is one of the animating forces of this hideous administration.
“Commenting on Happer’s suitability for the White House position, Karoly said: “Usually you would select a scientist with a strong peer-reviewed publication record in the area of interest. But he has not published a single peer-reviewed article on climate change in his career. That would suggest he does not have the credentials. I would argue that he does not have the appropriate experience, or the demonstrated capabilities, to be engaged in this sort of position.”
How did he get tenure?
He is a physicist, he has no formal climate science training, nor has he published any peer reviewed papers on climate science. He has published an op ed on C02. I can’t find that he’s tenured, but even if he is there’s no basis that that relates to any work he’s done in the field of climate science.
He’s emeritus at Princeton. He’s a laser physicist with a distinguished career in that field, he’s done some brilliant work in the past, he’s a national academy member, winner of the Broida prize, etc etc.
But no expertise in climate science. He’s dangerous because he THINKS he knows better than actual experts, and like lots of people who are good at one thing, they think that gives them the authority to talk about other things they know little or nothing about. (The faculty of every university is full of people like this.) A little humility would go a long way for these people. I guess he’s found a soul mate in Trump.
“…he does not have the appropriate experience, or the demonstrated capabilities, to be engaged in this sort of position.”
Not a bug but a feature. You can say the same thing for just about any political appointee of the Trump Maladministration.
Psst! Don’t look now, but we are killing off all the insects. Unless we can reverse this, we are probably living in man’s last century.
This would have happened with any Republican President.Isn’t climate denial part of their platform?
The only Derem I remember who actually tried to institute some changes that would curb, or slow down some of our most damaging behaviors was President Carter. We can remember or read about how far he got with those. Perhaps I’m not giving Obama his due but this old guy tends to focus on the past these days. Rachel Carson is staring down on us frowning and saying “I told you so”.
Clean Power Plan? China Treaty? Paris Accords? CAFE standards? Billions devoted to clean power development and deployment in the stimulus?
Can’t say Obama had a perfect record but he absolutely did a fuckton to put us on a better path.
Your points are well taken here. As I said in my reply, I tend to look into the wayback machine these days. Obama did a lot, most of it tossed in our ever growing trash dumps by Orange Julius. But the Paris accords or whatever won’t amount to anything when the food chain collapses. I guess what I’m saying is perhaps instead of trying to convince the climate deniers that it’s getting too hot, we might try talking about losing our ability to feed ourselves. We don’t have another 50 years to spare.