Yesterday, everyone’s favorite fossil-fuel-flunky-turned-EPA-administrator did one of the few things he does well: talked to his conservative media friends. Pruitt’s day of denial kicked off in the morning with a visit to the assorted idiots of Fox and Friends, followed by a chat with Fox’s Dana Perino at the Concordia 2017 Summit.
Pruitt’s talking points on both visits were obvious: he relayed during both appearances an anecdote about how it would be a mess to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act. This is part of his argument that despite Mass vs EPA and the Endangerment finding, the EPA lacks the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. But that’s pretty much exactly what they mean- Mass v EPA told the agency that if it found GHGs to be a public health threat, it needed to address that pollution. The Endangerment finding then confirmed GHGs to be a threat.
Pruitt also confirmed that agencies are working out a framework for the long-rumored red team/blue team exercise. After a protester called out his harmful denial, Pruitt said the US needs “a thoughtful discussion” on some of the nuances of human influence on climate change--a discussion he claims “hasn’t [yet] occurred.”
Except, of course, this debate has happened--and not only in the realm of peer-reviewed science, which, by its nature, tests every paper with the sort of skepticism the red team would provide. In multiple appearances, Pruitt has cited an WSJ op-ed by Obama admin official Steve Koonin suggesting the idea of a red/blue team debate. It’s worth noting that in the piece, Koonin mentions in a parenthetical aside that he’s conducted a similar red/blue team exercise on climate before, for the American Physical Society in 2014. Koonin even links to the testimony on the exercise heard as part of the APS’s reassessment of its 2007 statement on climate change.
But what Koonin doesn’t say is that after the testimony from three red and three blue teamers, and resulting debate, the APS experts were left unimpressed by the red team’s argument. Turns out, credible scientists weren’t convinced by the denier arguments presented by John Christy, Judith Curry and Richard Lindzen, who represented the red team. So after hearing from the red team and discussing their arguments, the subsequently updated APS statement reads: “While natural sources of climate variability are significant, multiple lines of evidence indicate that human influences have had an increasingly dominant effect on global climate warming observed since the mid-twentieth century.”
Koonin also doesn’t mention that as the APS process was nearing completion, he resigned from the effort. Maybe we’re just jaded and cynical, but this sort of makes it seem like Koonin pushed APS to review its 2007 statement, and when the experts made it clear the red team was unpersuasive and it wasn’t going the way he wanted, he quit. And since Koonin’s cited reason for resignation was due to a desire to promote his own opinion, one can’t help but wonder why he had to quit, instead of just embracing the conclusion of the red teamed APS statement. Almost like he wasn’t engaging in a good faith effort at all, and was just looking to reinforce his own skepticism and water down the APS statement.
With this extra context, we can add yet another reason to doubt the legitimacy of this effort to doubt the legitimacy of climate science. The red team idea has been called a kangaroo court that is antithetical to the scientific process. It’s been strongly condemned by a former GOP EPA admin, and described as a government bailout to failed denier scientists. And now we know that it’s not a new idea at all. It’s something that’s already been done, a rerun.
And for the Reality TV president, that might be the worst insult of all.
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