(Bloomberg) — Activists who challenge the severity of human-caused climate change are quietly preparing to seize their chance if Donald Trump wins a second term.

Pushed to the political margins during Joe Biden’s presidency, they are now laying the groundwork to bring back coal-fired power plants, gut science from the Environmental Protection Agency, and neutralize modeling used in the National Climate Assessment of the federal government and in other reports.

“Everything Biden has done will be scrutinized. The question is: will there be enough time in the day over the next four years? said Steve Milloy, who previously advised Trump’s EPA transition team and serves on the board of the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank that has espoused the benefits of global warming. “How much can you get rid of?”

Environmental groups say the measures would reverse U.S. climate progress at a critical time, as the Earth approaches 1.5C warming and climate-related disasters increase.

“With Trump, we will move backwards to a time when we can least afford it,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action. “These guys have an agenda that would kill jobs and raise electricity rates for Americans, not to mention cost thousands of lives. »

A representative for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Democrat Kamala Harris, meanwhile, is largely expected to maintain the Biden-era course on energy issues, including policies that promote clean energy and combat greenhouse gas emissions.

In the past, Trump has called global warming a hoax. During his first term, members of his administration touted fossil fuels, rejected the scientific consensus on climate change and touted the benefits of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. (Emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have already raised global temperatures by about 1.2°C, or 2.1°F, scientists say.) Even though Trump withdrew the U.S. United with the 2015 Paris climate agreement and successfully repealing or slowing a large number of environmental regulations, many of the radical changes sought by climate skeptics have not been achieved.

A former director of coal mining company Murray Energy Corp., Milloy said he and allied groups are working on a policy roadmap for a possible Trump administration, similar to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Heartland has signed on to. (Trump and his campaign have disavowed the 2025 plan, which many of his former advisers helped draft.)

The road map will challenge the science the EPA uses to support a range of environmental rules, Milloy said. During Trump’s presidency, the agency proposed limiting the use of scientific research unless the methodological, technical and other information was publicly available. Critics said the move would exclude research such as public health studies that contain anonymous patient data.

This would overturn the EPA’s 2009 “danger finding,” which provides part of the legal basis for regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, cars and other sources of pollution that contribute to global warming. the planet.

Among Heartland’s targets are Biden-era restrictions on coal plants, the Biden administration’s pause on approving liquefied natural gas export permits, and gas reporting requirements greenhouse effect, said James Taylor, president of the Illinois-based organization. who criticized climate science.

“We have people within Heartland who might have connections, influence or contacts with an incoming Trump administration, and those are the things we will promote,” Taylor said.

Much of the wish list is in line with Trump’s promise to “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels and with the oil, gas and coal industries’ desire for regulatory changes.

Other skeptics attack the scientific modeling used by federal researchers to create the National Climate Assessment and other major reports on climate change. The most recent edition of the National Climate Assessment, released last year, found that climate change was fueling a growing number of heat waves and wildfires.

“Modeling is in the crosshairs,” said Myron Ebell, a longtime skeptic who led Trump’s EPA transition team and who said he thinks “overall, the impacts of modest warming have been largely beneficial.” Ebell added that some groups are pushing to require that scientific modeling be verified.

The CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit organization whose self-described goal is to educate policymakers and others about the benefits of carbon dioxide, wants to see the creation of a presidential committee to review climate science, said Greg Wrightstone, executive director of the group. “We have climate alarmists at every level of government,” Wrightstone said. “We need climate realists to have an open and fair debate. » An overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that Earth’s climate is warming and that human activity is the main cause.

Such a review was proposed during the first Trump administration by William Happer, an adviser to Trump’s National Security Council. That effort failed following pushback from moderate Republicans, who feared it would cost Trump votes among women, Happer said in an interview. But if he is reelected, Trump won’t have the political considerations that come with running for another term, he added.

The skeptics’ level of planning shows they are better prepared for a possible second Trump term than they were when he won in 2016, said Kert Davies, director of the Washington-based Center for Climate Integrity, DC. He said he feared the consequences given the severity of climate change: “Removing regulations – or even slowing them down – is terrible. »

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