Climate change is about to enter the reality-bending fog machine that is Donald Trump’s White House.

Trump has instructed his National Security Council to create an “ad hoc group” of carefully selected scientists to reassess what every serious scientific report in the last 20 years has concluded is an existential threat to humanity posed by global warming.

Three senior Trump administration officials told The Washington Post last weekend that the White House plans to use its scientists “to counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet.”

Trump’s point man for this charade is an NSC official, William Happer, a physicist who joined Trump’s security council team last fall. Happer previously led the CO2 Coalition, an advocacy group that promotes the “important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.” It should come as no surprise that the CO2 Coalition was funded in part by Charles Koch Institute, a political action organization that advances fossil-fuel industry interests.

If Trump were looking seriously for reliable scientific research on climate change, he could study three alarming reports released recently that scream global crisis:

• In October, a United Nations report from its climate change panel warned that if global warming increases as predicted in the next 22 years the result will be ruination for economies, societies and environments. Coastal flooding, droughts, wildfires and heat waves will cause mass extinctions of animals and marine life, create food shortages, and force mass migrations of people. The report pleas for an urgent international effort to replace burning fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.

• In November, the federal government Trump oversees released a National Climate Assessment that warned national security is threatened if the United States does not cease burning fossil fuels.

• In January, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats testified to Congress that worsening wildfires, droughts and acid in oceans are “threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.”

To the government that Trump leads, and to 194 nations that ratified the United Nations report, climate change is a settled scientific reality.

But facts matter little to the unshakeable belief system of Trump. He wants a study that validates his conviction that global warming is “a hoax.”

One senior administration official told The Washington Post that Trump was looking for “a mixture of opinions.”

And there it is. When faced with hard facts that debunk his predetermined world view, Trump seeks a “mixture of opinions.” Don’t trouble the president with facts. What he wants are opinions that mesh with his.

Trump’s ploy establishing a presidential commission to validate his faulty thinking was tried once before to a bad result.

Remember Trump’s declaration that he won both the 2016 Electoral College presidential contest and the popular vote? Contradicting Trump were actual ballot counts that recorded Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by 3 million votes.

Displeased with those fact-based results, Trump made a baseless claim that up to 5 million fraudulent votes were cast for Clinton. Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May 2017 to find evidence of his claim. To chair his conspiracy committee, Trump tapped then Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican who crusaded to limit voting among poorer or minority citizens via tougher voter identification laws.

After nine months, the panel found no evidence of voter fraud in the 2016 election. The group disbanded in January 2018 without producing a report or any findings.

Our 45th president is a creative inventor of fictions. Sometimes his falsehoods are amusing and reveal nothing more than obsessive self-absorption, as in his imagined popular-vote victory.

But climate change is no laughing matter. It is a bona fide emergency. The nation and the world are faced with an existential threat that demands a coordinated, sustained response.

Trump should be doing what a president is supposed to do in a crisis. He should be uniting the country with a call to action addressing the climate change threat.

Drop the idea of a climate change panel, Mr. President. Trust the findings of your own government scientists, military chiefs and national security intelligence team. To quote actor and director Spike Lee, “Do the right thing!”

Point your national emergency powers at a real problem. Galvanize the nation to urgently address climate change.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.