In its ongoing attempt to discredit decades of climate science, the Trump administration is reportedly reaching out to some of the most seasoned deniers on the circuit to join a new panel to present an alternative take on climate change .

As The Washington Post first reported Sunday, the administration is recruiting scientists and researchers to challenge the scientific consensus that climate change is an immediate crisis driven by the worlds addiction to fossil fuels. At the top of the committees target list will be the National Climate Assessment , a congressionally mandated report that scientists from 13 federal agencies released in November.

That report, which President Donald Trump said he doesnt believe , concluded that planetary warming could increase by 9F (5C) or more by the end of this century without dramatic emission reductions.

The goal of this Presidential Committee on Climate Security will be to conduct adversarial scientific peer review of climate science, E&E News reported Monday, citing a leaked White House memo. For anyone who has followed the Republican -led effort to cast doubt on the climate crisis, the names that have emerged as possible panelists will be familiar.

Many have appeared at the congressional hearings Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the former chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology , organized to peddle climate misinformation and his own anti-science views.

Trumps reported pick to lead the panel is William Happer , a retired Princeton physics professor with no expertise in climatology. E&E noted that those under consideration also include Judith Curry , a former professor at Georgia Techs School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences; John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville; and Richard Lindzen, a retired MIT professor.

Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center, told HuffPost that the early list of candidates would indicate that the White House has opted to turn to folks in academia rather than representatives of climate denial think tanks. Though that might make it seem like they have more credibility, all bring different flavors of denial, Davies said.

These guys arguments are only held in high regard amongst a very small club of climate deniers, he said. They are not included in mainstream thinking about climate science. And they variously attack the temperature record or the modeling.

William Happer

Happer, who serves as Trumps deputy assistant for emerging technologies on the National Security Council, has a long history of colorful comments on climate change. He has called climate science a cult and repeatedly argued that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.