Trump team disavows requesting the names of Energy Department employees

"While the new Administration is entitled to select political appointees who share the President-Elect's views on climate change, any effort to retaliate against, undermine, demote, or marginalize civil servants on the basis of their scientific analysis would be an abuse of authority,"

"And now what we're seeing is an inquiry by the Trump Transition Team that goes right to the heart of the integrity of the science,"

It wants to know who at the Department of Energy attended domestic and international climate talks. It wants emails about those conferences. It also asks about money spent on loan-guarantee programs for renewable energy.

Now, it’s not at all certain what the Trump administration plans to do with any of this information. Possibly nothing. But given the attacks on mainstream climate science by both Trump and many of the members of his transition team, and given that congressional Republicans have called for changing civil service protections to make it easier to fire federal employees, this is understandably getting a lot of attention.