President Donald Trump is preparing an assembly to evaluate whether climate change poses a threat to the nation. One of the members of that panel will be Dr. William Happer, a renowned physicist who is highly skeptical of catastrophic manmade climate change. With this move, Trump shows that he is serious about bringing science and reason back into the national conversation on global warming.

William “Will” Happer

A Science Pioneer

The 79-year old William “Will” Happer has specialized in atomic physics, optics, and spectroscopy. He is a long-time member of the JASON advisory board, which consists of elite scientists who advise the government on technology and science. He received his doctorate from Princeton University in 1964 and serves as the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus.

Among his contributions is his work as a pioneer in adaptive optics, which has significantly improved telescope technology. He is not a specialist in climate science specifically, but as a top scientist with deep knowledge in fields that are crucial to climatology, such as radiative physics, as well as a broad general scientific knowledge, he is among the most supremely qualified people to be on a climate assessment advisory board.

His own position is that CO₂ is a weak greenhouse gas, and not strong enough to be a problem. Instead he has focused on the enormous benefits of increased concentrations of CO₂ on plant life. Unlike the highly uncertain computer climate models, it is a scientific fact that our carbon emissions have dramatically greened the earth. He has stated that they should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant.

“Denier”

How have the mainstream media reacted to this news? Many outlets, including The New York Times, have labeled him a “climate denier” or “denialist,” thereby using a terminology that creates associations to Holocaust deniers. 

Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama in Huntsville principal research scientist and the NASA U.S. Science Team leader who oversees global satellite temperature measurements, told the Washington Times that “journalists using the ‘denialist’ label demean their profession. None of the prominent skeptical scientists I know deny some level of recent warming, or humans as a contributing cause.”

Commenting on the accusation, he said that “Dr. Happer doesn’t deny that increasing CO₂ might have some small influence on climate. The question is the magnitude of the influence, whether the benefits of more CO₂ are being ignored, and whether reducing CO₂ substantially might well impoverish humanity.”

Removing Politics

Although the media are widely reporting this as a highly political move to set aside well-established science, the opposite is the case. With this appointment, Trump will significantly contribute to the removal of politics from science and re-establish a sound and healthy scientific debate.

Climatology has not been a proper science since the hockey stick graph fraud ended all public discourse nearly two decades ago. With Happer as an advisor to the president, that charade may finally come to an end.