For the better part of the last decade, leaders of the oil and gas industry have questioned both the science of climate change and the need for policies that posed an existential threat to their businesses.

In November, they appeared to get a reprieve with the election of President Donald Trump, an unabashed skeptic of climate change. At an international energy conference held in Houston last week, Trump administration officials underscored that skepticism as adviser Peter Thiel dismissed the push to lower carbon emissions as “groupthink” and Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, questioned whether human activities were the principal cause of global warming.

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“The administration will stir up the pot to some extent,” said Dan Reicher, a law professor at Stanford University who served as an energy adviser to former President Barack Obama. “But I think the basic direction is increasingly being set by forces outside the administration.”

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