Trump Administration Lining Up Climate Change ‘Red Team’

Washington Examiner discusses the “red team-blue team” environmental policy commission with Myron Ebell.

The Trump administration is in the beginning stages of forming an adversarial “red team” to play devil’s advocate in a plan to debate the facts behind global warming and take on what skeptics call climate alarmism.

The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency are recruiting scientists by enlisting the help of the Heartland Institute, considered to be the lead think tank for challenging the majority of scientists on climate change.

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“It’s my understanding that Scott Pruitt is trying to hire Koonin to be in charge of the whole thing,” said Myron Ebell, Trump’s former EPA transition chief, who is environment director at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Neither the EPA nor Koonin returned calls to confirm his being tapped for the post of red team leader.

But Ebell points out the logic in having him participate. “He’s an honest broker, right?” Ebell said. “He served in the Obama administration but he thinks we haven’t had a sufficient debate. He would have a lot of credibility, I think, running the whole process.

“I don’t know what they have in mind in how to do it, and I certainly don’t know what Koonin has in mind,” Ebell said. “In general, we need to go beyond what they establishment says whenever they’re confronted, which is, ‘You can trust us.’ I don’t think we can trust them.”

Ebell says he would rather “trust, then verify,” using former President Ronald Reagan’s old adage when dealing with the Soviet Union. “I’m not saying the scientists are Soviets. I just think that’s a good approach to take, particularly when the policies being advocated are going to cost trillions of dollars over the next several decades.”

Read the full article at Washington Examiner.