Here's some seasonal advice to federal employees involved in efforts to fight climate change: You better watch out. Bloomberg is reporting that the Trump transition team has asked the Energy Department to provide a list of such employees.

The transition team has asked the agency to list employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules. The advisers are also seeking information on agency loan programs, research activities, and the basis for its statistics, according to a five-page internal document circulated by the Energy Department on Wednesday. The document lays out 65 questions from the Trump transition team, sources within the agency said.

Bloomberg says that Energy Department staff were "unsettled" by the request. As well they might be: Despite telling the New York Times that he had an open mind about climate change, and after well-publicized meetings on the subject with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, Donald Trump tapped climate denier Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency and shows every sign of following through on his campaign pledge to roll back President Barack Obama's climate efforts.

"Nothing prevents the transition from collecting information on who's doing what," says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a nonprofit organization that helps government employees uphold their environmental values. In this case, he says, it appears that "what's being signaled is that the federal government is going to be turned into a center for climate denial." Already, a Trump campaign advisor has told the Guardian that there was no need for NASA to do "politically correct environmental monitoring,” which was seen as a threat to defund the agency's Earth Science division, which conducts a broad range of climate research.

"Rather than keep people on the payroll under instructions not to fulfill their position descriptions," says Ruch, "it's likely that such positions would be declared surplus." The bureaucratic term is a RIF—a reduction in force, which may be what is being planned at the Energy Department. There's not much PEER or anyone else can do to stop it. "Civil service is not a suit of armor that can't be penetrated," he says. "If [the Trump administration] wants to cease climate-related activities, they can."