He Waged Intimidation Campaigns Against Climate Scientists; Now Hes Helping Trump Remake the EPA

[think]

He Waged Intimidation Campaigns Against Climate Scientists; Now He’s Helping Trump Remake the EPA

Lee Fang
December 9 2016, 12:59 p.m.

MANY OF THE LEADING scientists working on climate change research around the country have found themselves targeted by David Schnare, an attorney working for a coal-industry-backed nonprofit. In recent years, Schnare has hounded academics with lawsuits and voluminous record requests as part of a campaign the Union of Concerned Scientists has called “harassment” designed to “chill their speech, and discourage them from tackling contentious topics.”

Now, Schnare is working for Donald Trump.

On Monday, the Trump transition team named Schnare to the team revamping the Environmental Protection Agency, the agency that oversees climate change and pollution-related research and science. Schnare is one of many operatives with fossil-fuel ties to join Trump’s EPA team, but his name stands out as someone who has gone beyond mere advocacy by actively working to intimidate individual scientists.

Schnare, the general counsel for the Environment & Energy Legal Institute, a group formerly known as the American Tradition Institute, has gone after climate scientists for the last five years.

Dr. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist whose 1988 congressional testimony brought national attention to the dangers of climate change — and who in 2006 revealed that the Bush administration was censoring climate change research — was among the first targets. In 2011, Schnare filed a lawsuit demanding years of Hansen’s records, and in the accompanying press release, claimed that Hansen was engaged in “‘global warming’ activism” as a ploy to enrich himself.

Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/david-schnare-trump/