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.

Brevia: Critical thinking prize for this blog

Last week at CSICON 2013 in Seattle, this blog was the recipient of the

2012 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking

which was awarded jointly to Joe Nickell and myself, by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.  The announcement reads, in part:

In his column for Forbes, "Fighting Pseudoscience," Steven Salzberg regularly shines the light of reason on the false or dubious claims made by those hawking homeopathy, demonizing vaccines, deifying celebrity gurus, or generally denying science and reality, often at the expense of public health. He has done so with a clear and accessible voice, and with a healthy dose of humor.

Recipients in past years include Richard Wiseman, Steven Novella, Michael Specter, Leonard Mlodinow, and Ben Goldacre. I feel privileged to join this select group of writers and skeptics.

[Note: this blog and my Forbes column contain identical content, with a few exceptions.]

Have another cup o' joe, it's good for you

My favorite science studies are the ones that tell us that what we're already doing is good for us. This story fits the bill. In the American Journal of Epidemiology this month, Janet Hildebrand and colleagues reported on a large study looking at the effects of coffee on throat cancers.

Let's get right to the good news: drinking coffee seems to reduce your risk of death from oral or pharyngeal cancer by about 50%. Drinking more coffee is better than drinking less, and drinking caffeinated (normal) coffee is better than decaf.

I knew there was something wrong with decaf.

Now for some details. This study is part of an enormous project, the Cancer Prevention Study II, with over 1 million participants who've been followed for 30 years. The participants regularly fill out questionnaires answering a variety of questions, including how much coffee and tea they drink. After excluding people with missing information about coffee drinking and those who already had cancer in 1982, the researchers still had over 950,000 people. Coffee drinking was categorized based on daily consumption: less than a cup (or none), 1-2 cups, 3-4 cups, and more than 4 cups. They asked about decaf coffee and tea drinking as well.

A study like this is hard to do well, because there are so many confounding variables, especially smoking. Smokers have a dramatically higher risk of throat cancer, and smokers also drink a lot of coffee. Hildebrand and colleagues did a good job at separating out this effect, looking at the risk of cancer in nonsmokers separately and adjusting the statistics accordingly.

Perhaps the most encouraging finding is this: in people who have been nonsmokers for at least 20 years, 1-2 cups of coffee per day corresponds to a 32% decrease in the risk of death from throat cancer.  More than 2 cups per day corresponds to a 64% decrease. And among all participants (including former smokers), more than 4 cups a day seemed to provide the greatest benefit.

Decaf coffee also seems to reduce the risk of fatal throat cancer, though not quite as much. Tea drinkers, in contrast, don't seem to get any benefit, not for this type of cancer.

All this comes with some very big caveats.  First, despite the very large size of the study, the number of deaths oral or pharyngeal cancer was very small, only a few hundred. (Oral/pharyngeal cancer is very common worldwide, but less common in the U.S., where this study was conducted, with about 7850 deaths per year. This includes cancers of the tongue, mouth, and pharynx.)  So the absolute risk is very small.  Another big caveat is that this study only looked at cancer deaths - it did not measure the risk of getting cancer in the first place.

But skepticism aside, drinking coffee seems to reduce the risk of oral cancer.  This confirms my long-held view that the three major food groups - coffee, chocolate, and red wine - are all good for you.  So the next time you feel like a second cup, or a third: drink up!

The Skeptical Optimist

Some readers of this blog may be surprised to learn that I'm very optimistic about the future of science and medicine.  Over the past few years, I've criticized many different frauds, fakes, bad scientists, bogus claims, quack medical practices, and scam artists.  I will continue to do so.

But deep down, I'm an optimist.  Science has transformed our lives over the past century, thanks to a list of discoveries far too long to write down, including cures and vaccines for many childhood diseases, better ways to heat and light our homes, and faster ways to travel and communicate. I'm confident science will continue to make progress on all sorts of problems affecting our species. One reason I focus my criticism on pseudoscience is that every minute spent on bad science is a minute that could have been spent on real science, moving us closer to genuine treatments or real scientific discoveries.

I also write on occasion about true breakthroughs, such as the recent success using stem cells to treat damaged hearts, or last year's development of a vaccine against the Ebola virus.  It's good to remind ourselves that good stuff is happening despite all the nonsense being pushed by quacks out there.

But I'm a skeptical optimist.  All real scientists must be skeptics: we know that initially exciting results often turn out to be statistical flukes, experimental errors, or just plain randomness.  We have to check and double-check our results before publishing, and even then we sometimes make mistakes.  Our training makes us skeptical whenever we hear about some amazing new breakthrough, even when we are hopeful that the results are true.

But we can't let pseudoscience take precious resources away from real work.  So it's back to the front lines in the ongoing battle against the anti-science forces: watch this space tomorrow for my choice for the worst quackery of 2011.

Alcohol and cancer: journal editors say they got it wrong

In a recent editorial in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, three scientists point out that I was correct in my February blog post, where I pointed out the errors - and the mistaken scare-mongering - in press reports of a new study on alcohol and cancer.

The JNCI editorial, titled "Promoting Healthy Skepticism in the News: Helping Journalists Get it Right" focuses on two studies, one of which is the article I wrote about. Journalists at the time, including Sanjay Gupta at CNN, reported "there is no level of alcohol consumption that can be considered safe when it comes to cancer." As the editorial points out, the journalists got it wrong. The authors point out that other explanations (other causes besides alcohol) might explain the increased risk. And it's nice to see that even though their own journal was partly to blame for the hype back in February, at least they're making an effort to correct it now.

They could have done more, though. They didn't dig into the article and report, as I did, that the minimum risk levels in the study were for light drinkers, who had 1-2 glasses of wine per week and who had a lower risk than non-drinkers. But at least they pointed out that the absolute increase in risk, even for heavy drinkers, was very small. In fact, they go on to say that under-reporting of absolute risk is a major failing of many biomedical journals.

So my advice for the holiday season is: drink up! The evidence for heart-healthy benefits of wine, especially red wines with high levels of procyanidins (as described in this article from Nature 2006), probably outweighs any risks. Happy holidays!