On its face, a proposal to create a “presidential committee on climate security” might sound like progress, given President Donald Trump’s well-known penchant for dismantling Obama-era environmental and climate initiatives, withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and tweeting dismissively about global warming any time there’s a cold snap.

But after the proposal was leaked to the Washington Post earlier this week, climate scientists, environmental campaigners, and national security experts were not optimistic. Their concerns center on the description of the proposed committee’s task and the background of the adviser behind the plan.

That adviser is William Happer, an accomplished 79-year-old Princeton University physicist who recently became Trump’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies