Once a skeptic about climate change, Jim
Bridenstine came around to the prevailing
view of scientists before he took over as NASA
administrator. That evolution did not sit well
with a Trump environmental adviser, nor a
think-tank analyst he was consulting, according
to newly disclosed emails that illustrate how
skepticism of global warming has found a
beachhead in the Trump White House.
“Puzzling,” says the May 2018 exchange between
William Happer, now a member of President
Donald Trump’s National Security Council, and
Thomas Wysmuller of the Heartland Institute,
which disavows manmade climate change.
Their exchange calls scientifically established
rises in sea levels and temperatures under
climate change “part of the nonsense” and urges
the NASA head — who was copied in — to
“systematically sidestep it.”