The new EPA Chief is a climate denier: why are you surprised?

On Thursday, newly appointed EPA chief Scott Pruitt said he doesn't think human-driven carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming. The internet exploded with outrage.

Why so surprised? We already knew that Scott Pruitt was a climate change denialist.

Donald Trump is also a climate change denialist. Why is anyone surprised that Trump is appointing other denialists to top posts in his administration?

During his campaign, Trump claimed that climate change was a "hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese. Mr. Trump just made that up: it's complete nonsense, and he would be laughed out of the room in a serious discussion of climate science. Unfortunately, he now has too much power for us to ignore him.

The Secretary of Energy, former Texas governor Rick Perry, has also been a climate change denier, although he "softened" his position during his confirmation hearings. At those hearings, Perry said

"I believe the climate is changing. I believe some of it is naturally occurring, but some of it is also caused by man-made activity." [Secr. of Energy Rick Perry]

How refreshing! What really matters, though, is whether Perry's newfound awareness will be reflected in actual policy or it will turn out to be just a pose he adopted for the hearings.

Scott Pruitt, though, is unreprentant. Pruitt has spent much of his recent career suing the EPA on behalf of oil companies (despite the fact that he worked for the state of Oklahoma, not for those companies). Oil companies, coal companies, and others who make their money from fossil fuels–notably the Koch brothers and their fake-science-pushing Heartland Institute–have devoted millions of dollars and years of effort to climate change denialism. We already knew Scott Pruitt was one of them.

On CNN, Hawaii's Senator Brian Schatz commented:

"If there was ever any doubt that Scott Pruitt is a climate denier, this settles it."

Sen. Schatz is correct, of course–but there wasn't any doubt in the first place.

The New York Times couldn't have been surprised. Just two days before Pruitt's on-air denial, they ran a story headlined "E.P.A. Head Stacks Agency With Climate Change Skeptics." The Times pointed out that Pruitt's chief of staff and top deputies are former staffers of Senator James Inhofe, one of the Senate's leading climate change deniers.

I do have a major disagreement with The Times, though: stop calling these people "skeptics." They are not skeptics. A skeptic is someone who insists on solid evidence before accepting claims about science, medicine, or other fact-based issues. Once evidence is produced, a good skeptic acknowledges the evidence and changes his/her views, if necessary.

Denialists, in contrast, stick to the same rigid narrative regardless of the facts. When evidence contradicts their views, they have no choice but to deny, deny, deny. When pushed, they obfuscate and delay, often arguing that the evidence is not yet clear and more studies are needed. This is precisely what EPA head Scott Pruitt and his boss, Donald Trump, have been doing with climate change. Pruitt argued on Thursday that "we need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis." No, we don't. The evidence is overwhelming that the planet is warming, that rising CO2 emissions are a major contributor to that warming, and that human activities are causing much of it.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), summarizing the work of thousands of scientists from around the globe, has concluded with very high confidence that human activities are the primary driver of climate change. They've also explained (hello, Scott Pruitt?) that carbon dioxide is the most important human-driven cause of global warming, and that it has increased 80% since 1970.

Because Scott Pruitt is a denialist–not a skeptic–he will simply deny these facts.

The New York Times and other media need to stop calling Pruitt a skeptic. Skepticism can be healthy; all good scientists are skeptics. Denialism, on the other hand, can lead to great harm. Cigarette companies were not being skeptical when they denied, for decades, that cigarette smoking causes cancer. They too called for more research. They were protecting their profits, and millions of people died while the companies denied and delayed.

Oil and coal companies are now playing exactly the same game, sowing doubt in order to preserve their profits. Scott Pruitt demonstrated this when he claimed, on CNN, that "there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact [of human CO2 emissions]." No, there isn't. Quite the opposite is true: there's remarkable agreement among climate scientists that humans are causing global warming. The only source of disagreement is the profit-driven fossil fuel industry, which cares far more about its short-term profits than about the world that future generations will inherit.

So let's not be surprised when Trump and his minions deny climate change, or deny that human activities are causing it. Perhaps it would be better to consider what the harms will be, and whether we can prevent them. Just don't expect any help from the government.