Image copyright AP Image caption Rick Perry at Trump Tower 
 
 Donald Trump has picked ex-Texas Governor Rick Perry as his energy secretary, a department whose name he famously forgot in a TV debate. 
 
 The nomination puts Mr Perry in charge of an agency he proposed abolishing in a failed 2012 White House bid. 
 
 Environmental groups called the oil-drilling advocate's selection "an insult to our functioning democracy". 
 
 In the role, the recent Dancing with the Stars contestant would oversee America's nuclear arsenal. 
 
 Trump appoints another military veteran 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption 'Oops': Rick Perry's debate disaster 
 
 Mr Trump said in a statement: "As the governor of Texas, Rick Perry created a business climate that produced millions of new jobs and lower energy prices in his state, and he will bring that same approach to our entire country as secretary of energy." 
 
 If confirmed by the Senate, green activists fear Mr Perry will shift the department away from renewable energy and towards fossil fuels. 
 
 During 14 years as governor, he called for lighter regulation of the oil industry, and referred to the science around climate change as "unsettled". 
 
 Mr Perry is on the board of directors at Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. 
 
 Accepting the nomination, Mr Perry said: "I look forward to engaging in a conversation about the development, stewardship and regulation of our energy resources, safeguarding our nuclear arsenal, and promoting an American energy policy that creates jobs and puts America first." 
 
 Image copyright ABC Image caption Mr Perry was the second contestant eliminated on this season's Dancing with the Stars 
 
 He was briefly frontrunner in a previous Republican White House race until a disastrous brain freeze on live television. 
 
 During the November 2011 forum, Mr Perry vowed to ditch three cabinet-level departments if elected. 
 
 After mentioning the departments of Commerce and Education, he said: "I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops." 
 
 It was, he later recalled, the Department of Energy. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption 'Just friends' - Trump hosts Kanye West 
 
 Mr Perry, 66, left office in January 2015 and briefly ran again - again unsuccessfully - for this year's presidential election. 
 
 He was a fierce critic of Mr Trump, calling him "a barking carnival act" and "a cancer on conservatism". 
 
 Mr Trump had belittled Mr Perry, saying: "He put on glasses so people will think he's smart." 
 
 Mr Perry was the second contestant eliminated on this season's Dancing with the Stars. ||||| Donald Trump Taps Rick Perry To Head Agency He Once Forgot 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Updated 7:51 a.m. ET Dec. 14 with official announcement of Perry's nomination. 
 
 It's a good thing former Texas Gov. Rick Perry once forgot he wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy, because President-elect Donald Trump is nominating him to lead the agency. 
 
 Perry, who served 14 years as governor of energy-rich Texas, blanked on the Department of Energy's name during a televised gaffe in a 2011 debate that was probably the most high-profile moment of his troubled 2012 presidential run. It's become known as the "Oops" moment: 
 
 YouTube 
 
 Perry ran again in 2016. But in an early sign of the electorate's anti-establishment mood, he and several other multiple-term governors dropped out of the race in its early stages, while Trump, a man with no prior political experience, rushed to the head of the Republican primary pack. 
 
 Perry was critical of Trump, warning that he was a "cancer on conservatism," but he eventually endorsed him. 
 
 In a statement, Trump said Perry would carry out his goal to "take advantage of our huge natural resource deposits to make America energy independent and create vast new wealth for our nation." 
 
 In one of the many only-in-2016 twists, the former Texas governor appeared on Dancing With The Stars this fall as the onetime-Apprentice star contended for, and ultimately won, the White House: 
 
 If confirmed, Perry would oversee a broad-reaching department with ties in everything from funding energy research and providing loans for alternative energy efforts, to tracking and analyzing American energy production and consumption, to securing the safety of America's nuclear weapons. 
 
 (Despite the popularity of Netflix's summer hit Stranger Things, the Department of Energy does not explore parallel universes. It actually put out a statement about this during the show's cultural peak.) 
 
 The current energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist, played a major role in negotiating and crafting the Obama administration's controversial nuclear deal with Iran. Under Obama, the department has been a big booster of alternative energy like wind and solar power. 
 
 A questionnaire the Trump transition team sent to Department of Energy employees is raising a lot of questions about how the incoming administration would change the department's priorities. As NPR reported: 
 
 "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. ... The Trump team questionnaire also asks about the Energy Department's role in the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump has called 'stupid.' And it asks for the 20 highest paid employees at the department's national laboratories." 
 
 The questionnaire alarmed Democrats, like Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who sent a letter to Trump raising concerns that "this request suggests that your administration may intend to retaliate against career employees who faithfully executed their responsibilities." 
 
 Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism about wind power's cost and effectiveness. But under Perry, Texas heavily promoted wind. Massive wind farms dot the Texas landscape, and wind energy now produces more than 10 percent of the energy the state consumes. ||||| The Senate confirmed Former Texas governor Rick Perry to head the Energy Department. Here's what you need to know about him. (Bastien Inzaurralde,Julio Negron,Osman Malik/The Washington Post) 
 
 President-elect Donald Trump picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department on Wednesday, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it. 
 
 Perry, who ran for president in the past two election cycles, is likely to shift the department away from renewable energy and toward fossil fuels, whose production he championed while serving as governor for 14 years. 
 
 His nomination — announced officially by Trump’s transition team a day after sources leaked the decision — stirred further alarm from environmental groups and others worried that the Trump administration will roll back efforts to expand renewable energy and give a powerful platform for officials questioning the scientific consensus on climate change. 
 
 The Energy Department was central to the 2011 gaffe that helped end his first presidential bid. Declaring that he wanted to eliminate three federal agencies during a primary debate in Michigan, Perry then froze after mentioning the Commerce and Education departments. “The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops.” 
 
 [Trump taps Montana congressman Ryan Zinke, who frequently votes against environmentalists, as Interior secretary] 
 
 Later during the debate, Perry offered: “By the way, that was the Department of Energy I was reaching for a while ago.” 
 
 Speaking to reporters once the event was over, he said, “The bottom line is I may have forgotten energy, but I haven’t forgotten my conservative principles, and that’s what this campaign is really going to be about.” 
 
 Despite its name, most of the Energy Department’s budget is devoted to maintaining the nation’s stockpile of nuclear warheads and to cleaning up nuclear waste at sites left by military weapons programs. The department runs the nation’s national laboratories, sets appliance standards and hands out grants and loan guarantees for basic research, solar cells, capturing carbon dioxide from coal combustion and more. 
 
 Four years after his first Oval Office bid, the former governor sought it once again in the big Republican field that included Trump. Perry touted the high rate of job growth and the low tax rate his state enjoyed under his leadership. At one point, he dismissed Trump’s campaign as a “barking carnival act.” 
 
 [What Rick Perry’s wink says about his own art of the deal] 
 
 The child of a cotton farmer and county commissioner from west Texas, Perry immersed himself in politics from a young age. He was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature but switched to the GOP when he ran for Texas agriculture commissioner. 
 
 As governor, he recruited out-of-state firms to Texas. In 2013, he starred in an ad that aired in California in which he declared that companies should visit his home state “and see why our low taxes, sensible regulations and fair legal system are just the thing to get your business moving. To Texas.” 
 
 Salo Zelermyer, who served as a senior counsel at the Energy Department’s general counsel’s office under President George W. Bush and is now a partner at the Bracewell law firm, said Perry has proven “it is indeed possible to successfully balance appropriate environmental regulations with domestic energy production and use.” 
 
 “During his time in office, Perry embodied the type of ‘all of the above’ approach to U.S. energy production that many have advocated on both sides of the aisle,” Zelermyer said. “Rick Perry’s Texas was not only a world leader in oil and gas production; it was also a global leader in wind power and renewable energy investment. This approach is a big reason Texas experienced such enormous job growth during Perry’s tenure.” 
 
 [Trump says ‘nobody really knows’ if climate change is real] 
 
 But environmentalists take a dim view of Perry. The former governor has repeatedly questioned scientific findings that human activity is helping drive climate change. In 2011 during a presidential debate, he compared the minority of scientists who challenged this assumption to 17th-century astronomer Galileo, who was persecuted by the Catholic Church after suggesting that the Earth revolved around the Sun, rather than the reverse. 
 
 “The science is not settled on this. The idea that we would put Americans’ economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that’s not settled yet to me is just nonsense,” Perry said at the time. “Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said here is the fact. Galileo got outvoted for a spell.” 
 
 In his 2010 book, “Fed Up!” Perry described the science showing that climate change was underway and caused by humans as a “contrived phony mess,” writing that those who embraced this idea “know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend, that the complexities of the global atmosphere have often eluded the most sophisticated scientists, and that draconian policies with dire economic effects based on so-called science may not stand the test of time.” 
 
 [Yes, Trump met with Al Gore. But his transition tells a very different climate story] 
 
 “Al Gore is a prophet all right, a false prophet of a secular carbon cult, and now even moderate Democrats aren’t buying it,” he added, referring to the former vice president and environmentalist. Gore met with Trump recently to discuss climate change. 
 
 Later, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Perry said, “There are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.” 
 
 In fact, the top 10 hottest years on record have all been since 1998, and 2016 is expected to be the hottest year since formal record-keeping began in 1880. The 2014 summary report for policymakers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was endorsed by officials from nearly 200 countries, stated, “Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic [human caused] emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history.” 
 
 [Trump has picked the most conservative EPA leader since 1981. This one will face much less resistance.] 
 
 “There is no doubt that Rick Perry is completely unfit to run an agency he sought to eliminate — and couldn’t even name. Perry is a climate change denier, opposes renewable energy even as it has boomed in Texas, and doesn’t even believe CO2 is a pollutant,” League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said in a statement. “Not only that, he is deep in the pocket of Big Polluters, who have contributed over $2.5 million to his presidential campaigns, a disturbing sign that they expected him to protect their profits in office, not do what’s best for the American people.” 
 
 Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary under President Clinton, said that Perry was a deal maker, political presence and good manager, and therefore a “sensible choice.” But he said that “my big concern is that he’s too tied to the fossil fuel industry and because of Donald Trump’s positions he will try to dismantle the very valuable renewable energy and climate change programs and policies that are a huge part of the DOE.” 
 
 Wind power did expand under Perry during his tenure in Texas — from 200 megawatts in 2000 to 14,098 megawatts in 2014, according to the American Wind Energy Association — and he supported the construction of transmission lines nearly a decade ago that helped bring wind-generated electricity to market. 
 
 “He created an environment conducive to economic investment through robust infrastructure and competitive power markets that allowed new technologies to enter,” said Tom Kiernan, the chief executive of the American Wind Energy Association, in a statement. “The Texas model under Gov. Perry’s leadership enabled the growth of low-cost wind energy that made the grid more diverse and reliable while saving consumers money.” 
 
 [Energy Dept. rejects Trump’s request to name climate change workers, who remain worried] 
 
 “The fact that Gov. Perry refuses to accept the broad scientific consensus on climate change calls into question his fitness to head up a science-based agency like DOE,” said Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But, he added, as governor Perry “increased the ambition of the state’s Renewable Energy Standard, directed state funds to innovative wind energy R&D initiatives, and created a ‘Competitive Renewable Energy Zone’ that helped expand transmission of renewables, bringing clean wind energy from rural communities to new state markets.” 
 
 However during a 2015 Iowa Agriculture Summit in Des Moines, the former governor said he opposed extending the federal tax credit for wind power. “I do if a state wants to do it,” he said. “I don’t at the federal level. I think all of these need to be looked at, whether it’s oil and gas, whether it’s the wind side, whether it’s the [Renewable Fuel Standard program] — I think all of them need to be put on the table, prove whether or not these are in fact in the best interest of this country.” 
 
 Referring to renewable sources, Jennifer Layke, the World Resources Institute energy program director, said: “The Department of Energy leads essential programs that drive innovation and fill important gaps to get new technologies off the ground. These are vital to keep the U.S. at the frontier of energy technology. In recent years, the Department of Energy has given U.S. businesses a significant boost to accelerate the development of battery storage, solar panels and electric vehicles. These programs must continue.” 
 
 Perry sits on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, the firm that is trying to complete work on the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Great Plains. Under President Obama, the Army Corps of Engineers recently decided to withhold a key permit from the company that is needed to finish the oil pipeline. The pipeline has drawn protests from activists who say that segment of the pipeline would disturb American Indian burial grounds and pollute the drinking water of the nearby Indian reservation. The Energy Department has not played a role in that decision-making process, however, and Trump has indicated he would allow the project to move forward once he takes office. 
 
 [DOE leaders refuse to identify specific climate change employees for Trump transition team] 
 
 The Energy Department Perry would take over has changed substantially since its creation in 1977 under President Carter on the heels of the oil crisis that struck after the Arab countries of OPEC imposed an embargo on the United States. In the 1970s, the agency focused on weapons maintenance and regulations. In the 1980s, nuclear weapons research took center stage. In the 1990s, arms control and anti-proliferation took priority. 
 
 But the last two secretaries, physicists Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz, have moved laboratories and other energy programs toward finding ways to slow climate change. The much derided loan and loan guarantee program — which stumbled with a half billion loss linked to solar panel maker Solyndra — has as of September had issued $31.98 billion in loans and loan guarantees for 30 projects, which have leveraged $50 billion in total project investment and created or saved 56,000 jobs. More than $1.65 billion in interest payments have already been paid. 
 
 Moniz also used his knowledge of physics and nuclear weapons, and the department’s national laboratories to play a key role in talks aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Perry brings lacks that knowledge. 
 
 If confirmed, Perry would walk into an agency where many career civil servants are likely to be wary of him, not only because of his past pledge to abolish the department. Employees there are already on edge, given the fact that Trump’s transition team gave a questionnaire to DOE officials asking that they identify which employees have worked on either international climate negotiations or domestic initiatives to cut carbon. 
 
 Current DOE leaders have declined to provide any individual names of employees to Trump transition team members. 
 
 Speaking to reporters Tuesday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the administration needed to resist “what certainly could have been an attempt to target civil servants, career federal government employees … who are critical to success of the federal government’s ability to make policy, and their work transcends the term of any one president. That’s by design.” 
 
 “Our principle — this is principle that presidents of both parties have long abided by — is that we should observe the protections that are in place, that ensure that career civil servants are evaluated based on merit, and not on politics,” Earnest added, before tweaking Trump for his latest Cabinet pick. “And I’m sure the president-elect used the same kind of criteria when choosing his new Department of Energy Secretary as well. Don’t you think?” 
 
 1 of 35 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Here’s a look at Trump’s administration so far View Photos The men and women the president-elect has selected for his Cabinet and White House team. Caption The men and women the president-elect has selected for his Cabinet and White House team. Scott Gottlieb, nominee for commissioner of FDA President Trump is set to nominate Scott Gottlieb, a conservative physician and businessman with deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry, to be commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, a White House official said. Courtesy of American Enterprise Institute/via Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 Dan Balz contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more at Energy & Environment: 
 
 Trump names Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general suing EPA on climate change, to head the EPA 
 
 Atmospheric levels of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, are spiking, scientists report 
 
 Trump transition team for Energy Department seeks names of employees involved in climate meetings 
 
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– News that Donald Trump has settled on Rick Perry to run the Energy Department prompted a slew of stories Tuesday with one common refrain, and the former Texas governor must be thrilled with it. Here's a sampling: NBC News: "President-elect Donald Trump has selected former Texas Gov. Rick Perry—who famously once forgot that he wanted to abolish the Energy Department—to be secretary of energy ..." New York Times: "Trump plans to name former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas to lead the Energy Department, elevating a man who once could not remember the name of the agency he wanted to eliminate to the cabinet post, secretary of energy, that will run it." Washington Post: "Trump has picked Rick Perry to head the Energy Department, said two people familiar with the decision, seeking to put the former Texas governor in control of an agency whose name he forgot during a presidential debate even as he vowed to abolish it." Politico: "On a presidential debate stage five years ago, Rick Perry blanked on the Energy Department's name when trying to include it in a list of agencies he promised to abolish—memorably concluding with 'oops.' Now Trump has chosen the former Texas governor ..." ABC News: "Trump is expected to choose a man to lead the Department of Energy who infamously forgot its name." BBC: "Trump is expected to pick ex-Texas Governor Rick Perry as his energy secretary, a department whose name he famously forgot in a TV debate." NPR: "It's a good thing former Texas Gov. Rick Perry once forgot he wanted to eliminate the Department of Energy, because President-elect Donald Trump is nominating him to lead the agency. That's according to reports by multiple news outlets." And so on, even here.