Will Happer attacking climate change on CNBC in 2013

In his ongoing war with U.S. intelligence agencies, President Donald Trump is now challenging the military’s longstanding conclusion that climate change poses a serious national security threat to America, appointing a fringe climate science denier to lead the effort.

Trump has decided to assemble a Presidential Committee on Climate Security, spearheaded by William Happer, one of the president’s National Security Council (NSC) appointees, the Washington Post reported after obtaining an NSC discussion paper on the subject.

“It’s designed to try to scare our intelligence, defense and science professionals into doing and saying nothing about this pressing threat,” retired Rear Admiral David Titley said in a statement.

Titley, a former oceanographer of the navy who led its Task Force on Climate Change, called Trump’s new panel “an embarrassment” and said Happer holds “an extreme, fringe view even for the tiny number of scientists” who deny climate science.

How extreme is Happer? He has claimed that more carbon pollution “would be a benefit” to humanity, as he wrote in a widely mocked