Our Floating Plastics Legacy

At a recent meeting of the American Chemical Society, the worlds largest professional scientific society, a researcher from Japan presented a paper demonstrating that plastics floating in the ocean break down faster than expected. Previously it was thought that plastics broke down very slowly (hundreds of years) and at very high temperatures.

Normally we like chemicals that break down, that is, degrade into smaller chemicals and eventually (hopefully) into carbon dioxide and water. But the study by Dr. Katsuhiko Saido of Nihon University suggests that when the plastics break down they release contaminants - some of them potentially very toxic.

The problem is more urgent because the oceans are now filled with plastic, which the New York Times called in a recent editorial, "...an amorphous, floating mass of waste plastic trapped in a gyre of currents..." Dr. Saido reports that these floating masses of plastic are releasing similar contaminants in seawater samples collected near Malaysia and the Pacific Northwest in addition to the northern Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. The northern Pacific patch is estimated to be on the order of twice the size of the state of Texas and may contain as much as 100 million tons of plastic debris.

Since plastic waste has long been known to trap up to a million seabirds every year and some 100,000 marine mammals, the discovery that degradation of the plastic releases contaminants is an added concern.

A video of the north Pacific gyre and plastic can be seen here.

[Note: Photograph by René Ehrhardt: attribution license]

Dissecting a False Climate Denialist Claim (aka, Why Credibility Matters, aka How Science Works)

The following quote was from a climate denialist on another site:

Alarmists actually believe if you can dig up dirt on someone--that falsifies all his science. An example would be what they did to S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist with credentials out the wazoo! They associated him with oil and tobacco interests, so now all his science is allegedly out the window!

This quote intentionally lies. Why? Because no one says that if you can dig up dirt on someone it falsifies his science. The poster than goes on to lie more by creating a completely fabricated series of stories to "prove" his false - and irrelevant - point.

Let's dissect the statement into its pieces:

"Alarmists actually believe if you can dig up dirt on someone--that falsifies all his science."

False. The poster steers the reader into ridiculous territory, suggesting as one of a series of similar examples that somehow Einstein's science would be ignored because he cheated on his wife. The fact is that none of the discussions of credibility have anything to do with the personal lives of the people being offered as "experts in climate science" by the denialists. Steering the conversation toward a false straw man is one of the denialists most common ploys. It allows them to pose some ridiculous and untrue premise that they then shoot down. The idea is to distract from the lack of credibility and veracity of their positions.

Needless to say, most people would not even have known if Einstein was cheating on his wife when he proposed the theory of relativity. Certainly no scientist would care at all what Einstein's marital arrangements were. And no one today cares whether S. Fred Singer cheated on his wife. Or even if he has a wife.

The important point is that the significance of Einstein's proposal wasn't established until Einstein had done much more research and that research had been confirmed by others. Which took many many years of research, mathematical proofs, and tweaking to his theory. His credibility wasn't determined because one day he said "eureka." It was determined only after the tests of scrutiny and time were met. That is a critical point that I will come back to shortly.

"An example would be what they did to S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist with credentials out the wazoo!

The part about "what they did to S. Fred Singer" is false. The assertions of S. Fred Singer's credentials are mostly false, though one could stretch the case enough to give him some credit for studies in the field. The claim by another denialist that Singer is "one of the most authored expert climate scientist around!" is patently false. Singer, who will be 86 in September, has a degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in physics. He helped design the first instruments to be used in satellites for measuring ozone and other atmospheric parameters. His focus was more on space and the hardware of satellites and instruments, not on climate science itself, though certainly the instruments were used by others to assess climatological and meteorological parameters (which are not the same thing, nor is building instruments the same as studying climate). So while Singer has credentials, mostly they aren't actually in climate science, though he can assume some credit in those areas, primarily later in life and more as a consultant than as a scientist.

It's also interesting to note that Singer lists himself as Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, which may be true (I wasn't able to confirm the Emeritus status, though he certainly was a professor) and if so he has every right to make the claim. But Singer hasn't been an actual professor at the University of Virginia since 1994. Since then (and actually, well before then) he has been a consultant to the tobacco and oil industries and has served as "founder" for several "science sounding" organizations fronting for free market lobbying groups. So why doesn't he introduce himself as President of SEPP or one of the other organizations? Well, because SEPP is well known as being a front group and not a real science organization. Relying on the "Professor Emeritus" label rather than his current affiliations is just one of the common tricks used by denialists to presume greater credibility than they deserve. [One denialist, Dr. David Evans, claims prominently at the top of his resume to be "Rocket Scientist," though he is an electrical engineer that hasn't done any research in rocket science, or for that matter, climate science.]

"They associated him with oil and tobacco interests,..."

False. Singer associated himself with oil and tobacco interests. He wrote opinion pieces on their behalf that claimed smoking didn't cause cancer, all while the tobacco companies own scientists were telling them that smoking did cause cancer. He also worked for the oil industry in a similar controversial capacity, including the infamous API strategy report that documented how they would go about hiding the truth about global warming. Now, I happen to know that many scientists who work for the oil and tobacco industries who are absolutely committed to ensuring the safety of their products (within the inherent risks of the products themselves, obviously smoking causes cancer no matter what you do with it). So why is it important that Singer is associated with these industries? It actually isn't because of the association, but because he has done so in a way that tries to hide and deny the scientific truth instead of inform the science. He has acted as more as their PR (Public Relations) front man on science issues rather than as a scientist. It turns out Singer isn't alone, as all of the most cited climate skeptic scientists are associated with free market lobbying groups whose charters require them to fight anything that might lead to policy options they don't like (and thus require them to deny the science).

..."so now all his science is allegedly out the window!"

False. Singer's "science" must stand on its own merits just like any other scientist. The controversy about his "science" arises because 1) he hasn't actually done much science, 2) what he did do was long ago and in another field, and 3) what he has done related to climate science largely hasn't stood the tests of scrutiny and time. Singer designed instruments for satellites based on his expertise in electrical engineering and physics. His actual research in climate science has been limited, and he hasn't done real research in quite some time. He has, however, become one of the most visible skeptic scientists because he's been around so long. His credibility really is limited to those in the free market groups and to the public who assume that he must be an expert because the free market groups saturate the airwaves with him. In truth, he's often wrong on the science he supports, including thinking that Phobos (a moon of Mars) was artificial (and hollow!)[it isn't], that passive smoke doesn't cause cancer [it does], that CFCs were irrelevant to ozone depletion [again wrong], and that the impacts of the Kuwaiti oil fires would be local and over in 3 days [they weren't]. It seems Singer's "science" is more related to who he is consulting for at the time then the actual science. In short, he is a professional contrarian, i.e., someone who will always be willing to say the opposite of what the science community says.

I should make the distinction between Singer's "science" and Singer's science. Actual science comes about through the peer-review process. "Sciency sounding" opinions are not science, they are opinions. Much of what people call Singer's "science" is actually blog articles, op-eds, speculation, contrarian testimony, etc. However, Singer does have some actual science that has been published in peer-reviewed journals. There actually isn't that much of it, but just like other scientists if it has undergone real peer-review it can be called science (which like all individual papers, must pass the tests of scrutiny and time, of which peer-review is actually only the first step). As such, Singer's actual science is already part of the data on which the consensus is based, or for any newer stuff, will be based on as we move forward. His actual peer-reviewed work will join the thousands of other relevant peer-reviewed papers that are being published by other scientists, including those who are actually working in climate science.


So, to wrap this up, let's come back to credibility. The poster whose comment I've used above is suggesting that scientists are "digging up dirt" on skeptic scientists in an attempt to "demean the science." That is false. No one cares about "dirt" on anyone else (except perhaps the poster). The truth is that credibility matters.

Would you trust your brain surgery to a brain surgeon (i.e., someone who has been trained in brain surgery and has performed several brain surgeries) or to a podiatrist (i.e., someone who might know where the skull is but not the difference between a cerebellum and an antebellum)?

Certainly no one would trust a non-scientific free market lobbying organization over every major scientific organization in the world when it comes to climate science.

That's point one.

Point two is the shear farce of proposing that any one scientist, or any one paper, can invalidate the entire history of climate science. That just isn't how science works.

Science works incrementally. That means that every single peer-reviewed paper represents some scientific experiment or concept that someone has been able to document enough to pass the initial scrutiny of many other scientists expert in that same field. But that paper may only look at one tiny piece of the puzzle. Think of a 1000 piece puzzle. Each paper may look closely at one piece of the puzzle, or perhaps a small section of pieces (say, the tip of the top of the Empire State Building in a puzzle of the New York City skyline). In fact, there may be many papers that look closely at that same piece to get a complete picture of what that piece looks like (e.g., looking at the tip of the Empire State Building from the North, the South, the East, the West, close up, further away, from the base, from a plane flying overhead, etc.). Only when you put all the papers related to that tip of the Building together will scientists fully understand that the one piece of the puzzle is the tip of the Empire State Building.

Now do that same thing for each of the other 999 pieces in the puzzle.

Only after each piece has been thoroughly examined and pieced together can scientists finally feel confident that the puzzle is of the New York City skyline. Only when there is overwhelming evidence that the puzzle is a NYC skyline will the scientists feel confident to say there is a scientific consensus.

Scientific consensus is not like taking a poll. Personal opinions are irrelevant to science. You have to prove each piece along the way, and so does every other scientist. The science must stand the test of scrutiny. And this takes time. Sometimes a long time. Einstein's theory of relativity, for example, took many years and many experiments and mathematical proofs before it became accepted by the scientific community.


So the denialists say, well, my guy is another Einstein and the world just hasn't caught up to his brilliance yet. False. The point is that the skeptics put themselves forth as more of "The Terminator" than as scientists. They exclaim that their paper (or more often than not, their blog article) completely invalidates all the other work. As noted above, the idea that one paper can invalidate all the other work is not scientifically defensible. For two reasons.

First, because no one study or paper is science. Einstein's first paper on relativity was merely a proposal of his theory. He then followed it up with many other papers and many other experiments and mathematical calculations. Other scientists also added their experiments, calculations, and theories. Only after there was sufficient supporting evidence to confirm the original was it considered valid. In fact, the theory was tweaked quite a bit along the way, as newer experiments helped fine tune and correct for inaccuracies. That is how science works. It is incremental, and it is collaborative. And it takes time.

Secondly, the skeptics papers cannot pass even the initial tests of scrutiny. Many cannot even get past the initial peer-review process and are merely posted on blogs, which other skeptics then cut-and-paste and pass along as the "be all and end all." Most are drivel, fraudulent, or merely unsupportable. That is why science has a peer-review process. Anyone can write a paper and claim whatever they want. And unfortunately some do. So the papers are screened to ensure that the methods are documented, the results are fully presented, and the conclusions reflect the reality of the data.

And peer-review is only the first step. Papers that pass peer-review and get published must then continue to withstand the scrutiny of a broader community of scientists. Any questions raised must be answered. Further study must confirm the initial findings.

Only the sum of the relevant and reliable data from peer-reviewed publications can lead to a conclusion of what the data tell us. Only after all the pieces of the puzzle have been examined can one reach a scientific consensus. You most certainly cannot hold up one piece of a puzzle that looks like a brick in the Empire State Building and claim that the Empire State Building has no windows.

That doesn't mean that all the pieces must fit exactly. If you put together a 1000 piece puzzle of the NYC skyline and find that 10 pieces are missing randomly from it, you can still tell that it is a puzzle of the NYC skyline. Even if a few of the pieces seem to be from the wrong puzzle, you can still tell it is a NYC skyline. Scientific consensus does not have be unanimous. Some scientists need more information to feel confident in the conclusion, others may disagree for some reason even when it is obvious to most other scientists. And as we've seen, some scientists are just contrarians (some legitimately, others because free market organizations pay hefty consulting fees).

But the bottom line is that it is the sum total of all of the peer-reviewed papers on a scientific topic that lead to the conclusions.

Unfortunately, the skeptics seem to be following the wishes of the free market lobbying groups, who simply don't like the possible policy options and therefore have retroactively concluded the science must be wrong. They start with a conclusion and then cherry pick the data (or simply lie about it) to support their predetermined conclusions.

Science starts with a question, which leads to other questions, which leads to some answers and lots more questions. Eventually, there are enough answers to lead to a scientific consensus. In the case of climate change, it was tens of thousands of peer-reviewed studies by thousands of researchers from every scientific organization imaginable over more then three decades that eventually led to confidence enough in what was going on to reach a scientific consensus.

They certainly didn't copy it off some blog one day.

Climate Denialists Grasp for Straws and Come Up Sipping (Warmer) Air

Not long ago I wrote an article demonstrating that the most cited climate skeptic scientists were all associated with free market lobbying groups. I compiled a chart that showed these connections, including color coding so that the mash-pit of lines between the boxes could be discerned. The summary of that article, sans comments, can be read here, and is good for those who don't want to wait the 10-20 seconds it takes for the original article to load, complete with its 647 comments when I shut it down because it was too slow (which, of course, is why the denialists tried to saturate it with repetitive comments).

Apparently the local denialists felt a little threatened by the verifiably accurate chart showing connections between these skeptics and the free market lobbying organizations, because there has been a mad scramble to find new names that don't show up on the list (despite the list being the names they most often cited). One such denialist is now touting a Dr. David Evans (not to be confused with Gather's own David Evans, who is an actual marine scientist).

Unfortunately, the copy-and-paster denialists don't seem to worry too much about credibility, and have said as much.

So, how does Dr. David Evans fit into the chart?

First off, Dr. David Evans is a bit of a fraud. He claims to be a "rocket scientist" in an effort to manufacture credibility, which takes a nose dive when he was exposed for what he really is, a PhD in Electrical Engineering who has never published one peer-reviewed paper in climate science, rocket science, or any science. [Other aspects of his posted resume also lack credibility, but we'll stick just to those that are relevant for climate science.] His climate change "credentials" include some blog articles on climate change, which have been debunked widely. He "produced" (meaning he wrote the line code) for carbon counting software used by the Australian government.

And gee, he even has a company called Science Speak with Joanna Nova, the performance speaker who wrote the Climate Skeptics comic book so widely used by denialists. Oddly enough, Science Speak bills itself as "a scientific modeling and mathematical research company, and we speak about some science issues." [Notice the phrasing, which is designed to suggest more than it actually says. In reality, the fact that David and Joanna "speak" about science doesn't mean they know about climate science at all. And the "scientific modeling and mathematical research" turns out to be more about "Our investment interests led to goldnerds.com.au, which sells subscriptions to spreadsheets that analyze gold and silver companies listed on the North American and Australian stock exchanges. David wrote "Why Invest in Gold Now?" in 2004, foreshadowing the current financial crisis and explaining why gold is a good investment during such times."

Climate change? Not so much.

Ah, but the chart. Where is David Evans?

In the chart I had listed 8 organizations that were either free market lobbying organizations or their front groups, with all the interconnections. Dr. Evans is associated with only 2 of the 8 organizations - SPPI (who published his non-peer reviewed opinion paper) and Icecap (who published a blog on his non-peer reviewed paper). Wow, only 2. That's not bad. Just like Jim D'Aleo and Lord Monckton.

Oh wait, Dr. David Evans says he is Australian, right?

Well, mate, that explains why he is associated with The Lavoisier Group, a global warming skeptic organization based in Australia. The group is closely associated with the Australian mining industry, and was founded in 2000 by Ray Evans, then an executive at Western Mining Corporation (no information on whether Dr. David Evans and Ray Evans are related). Like the Heartland Institute in the US, the Lavoisier Group is a free market group that denies the science because "any policy responses, such as signing the Kyoto Protocol, would be too expensive for Australia's industry." [Yep, don't like the possible policy options, so the science just must be wrong, right, mate]

Dr. Evans also has written for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which is another free market lobbying group that bills itself as "the world center of the Austrian School of economics and libertarian political and social theory." Not much climate science going on there either.

So, why mention Dr. Evans? Well, because in their desperation to cite anyone else besides the usual crew of skeptic scientists who are all associated with free market groups, they have latched on to the Australian version of a free market skeptic. In other words, Dr. Evans has no real expertise (or even experience) studying climate science, but he does have a free market ideology (and a penchant for resume padding).

And despite what denialists claim, credibility matters.

Book Review – Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum

I’ll start by highly recommending this book. Especially to scientists or those interested in science. As suggested by the title – Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future - the book acknowledges the limits of the public’s understanding of science and how science works. But I felt the book was most powerful because it focuses on the role of scientists in disseminating scientific information. More on that later.

The first two chapters give a very nice background on the role science has played, from its high funding and close relationships with policy-makers soon after World War II, to its period of low funding and disconnect from policy-makers, to the more recent “war on science” (the topic of Mooney’s previous book).

Much of the main part of the book looks at the intersection of science and other institutions. Individual chapters look at science as it relates to politics, to religion, to its portrayal in Hollywood, and to journalism, all within the subcontext of C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” theme. In short, different ways of thinking, and different needs, affect the interaction of the two institutions in the dyad. For example, whereas the needs of the media are episodic, science is more incremental. So every incremental finding coming from scientific studies can be picked up by the media and presented as if it is a revelation. Except it might suggest the opposite of yesterday’s revelation. No matter that the two studies merely looked at different parts of the picture and support the full knowledge base, the media assume each piece stands on its own. This can be, and usually is, highly confusing to the public. Similar conflicts in the messaging occur between science and religion, scientist depiction in film (usually as a stereotypical caricature), and politics.

One chapter discusses the role of blogs. As newspapers and broadcast media have been eliminating science coverage, at least 1000 science blogs have sprung up. While blogs can help disseminate information broadly, the authors say “[t]he problem with the internet is obvious to anyone who has ever used it; There’s tons of information available, but much of it is crap.” Misinformation thrives, and those who want to manipulate the debate can publish whatever they want, and unfortunately, usually do. Much of it is biased, inaccurate, or outright fabrication. Which is why blogs may be useful for rapidly getting the word out, they cannot be relied upon for an accurate assessment of the science itself.

The authors refer repeatedly in the book to Carl Sagan, an astronomer who was also a stellar communicator, but whose popularity was often seen by other scientists as an indignity (i.e., to traditional scientists who preferred to do their science and leave the communication to others). But in the end the authors of Unscientific America, one a journalist and the other a scientist (who together write a blog called The Intersection), assert that disseminating the science to the lay public, to the media, and to policy-makers is an “integral part of the job description of scientists themselves.” Essentially, they say that it should be part of every scientist’s responsibility to communicate the science accurately, and to make sure that the science is not misrepresented by those who would misuse it.

The book is eminently readable (I read it in it’s entirety on a cross-Atlantic flight) and surprisingly insightful. I highly recommend the book; it is definitely worth the read.

Other book reviews

Independent Climate Skeptics - Well, Maybe not so Independent After All (With Graphics)

Climate skeptics like to claim that there are many independent scientists who refute the consensus of climate change. They love to cite folks like S. Fred Singer, Robert Carter, Roy Spencer (ahem, Dr. Roy Spencer), Pat Michaels, and Willie Soon. Each of these people is asserted to be some independent minded scientist bucking the trend.

Except it isn't true.

There really are only a handful of climate skeptic scientists. Some, Lord Monckton for example, have no real science background at all (the closest Monckton gets to science training is he is a certified Day Skipper for his yacht). Others have a scientific background, though only a few have any actual expertise in climate science. Others, S. Fred Singer for example, are merely figureheads who act as spokesmen for the industry. In any case, qualified climate scientist dissenters must put their data into peer review for incorporation into the analysis, just like every other scientist. Their data must be persuasive. To date it has not. Which may be why they post more on blogs than in the peer-reviewed literature.

Ah, but the climate skeptics (denialists or realists depending on if you are a real scientist or not) point to the vast array of organizations that prove that climate change is not real and/or a natural phenomenon that has nothing to do with anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The skeptics aver that these are scientific organizations, usually in a desperate effort to counter Steve B, who has demonstrated unequivocally that no scientific organization has refuted the IPCC consensus statement on climate change.

Except that the skeptics organizations are not scientific organizations at all.

On the right side of the chart below are the organizations most often touted by the climate skeptics (click the chart to enlarge). Some are essentially just blogs, some are actual organizations, but none are scientific organizations. All are advocacy groups. The numbers in the boxes indicate the number of the 11 scientists who are associated with them (e.g., Icecap has 8 of the 11 scientists associated with it).



The boxes on the left side of the graphic represent some of the most often cited skeptic scientists. The numbers indicate how many of the 8 organizations to which each scientist is associated (e.g., Sally Baliunas is associated with 5 of the organizations).

The color-coded lines tie together each of these "independent" scientists to the organizations to which they are most often associated.

As can be clearly seen, there is quite a traffic jam of lines in the middle, which is why I used color-coding (otherwise it becomes impossible to tell one scientist and organization from another).

Which, of course, is the point. These organizations all hire the same handful of scientists that either agree with them or are willing to shill for them. The fact that the scientists are associated with so many organizations suggests that independence is really not particularly important.

But let's take a closer look at the organizations.

Several of the organizations - George C. Marshall Institute, Heartland Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Greening Earth Society - are free market lobbying organizations that have no expertise or mission regarding climate science. Except of course that these organizations promote free market and free enterprise business principles (which roughly translates to externalizing much of the societal costs to the taxpayers). Thus, since their own mission statements promote free markets, they obviously are only interested in trying to keep Congress and others from taking action that they feel will hurt their organizational goals. That in itself is part of their mission, but they try to sell it as if it were science. It isn't.

The other organizations sound more scientific, but then that is part of the playbook first used successfully by the tobacco industry to obfuscate the health effects of smoking. Folks like S. Fred Singer are no stranger to the playbook as they also were "experts" on tobacco before becoming experts on climate change. The bottom line is that these organizations are front groups for the other free market organizations and the industries most likely to be effected by any policy remedies designed to deal with climate change.

One last point. You'll see in the chart that 8 of the 11 skeptic scientists are associated with the Heartland Institute (whose mission is promoting free market strategies). A significant number of the skeptic scientists are also associated with other free market groups. This begs the obvious question:

Why would supposedly reputable, independent scientists be associated with free market lobbying organizations? What benefit would the Heartland Institute be to a scientist who is studying climate change? I mean, scientists belong to scientific organizations. Organizations where they can present their research, listen to others presenting their research, and engage in scientific debate about that research. After all, that is how science is done. Scientists publish their research in peer-reviewed literature and discuss their research in scientific conferences and other venues designed for the exchange of data and ideas. Heartland Institute meetings are all about economics and free market principles (and lobbying Congressmen).

So what reason is there that "independent scientists" would be associated with free market organizations whose entire objective is to defeat any possible regulatory remedy that they feel will negatively impact free enterprise?

NGO Reaction to the Decision to Suspend ChAMP Chemical Program

As previously noted, the Obama EPA suddenly suspended its ChAMP program last week. ChAMP was the Agency's mechanism for evaluating the data received during the voluntary HPV Challenge, in which industry agreed to provide available health and safety data on about 2200 high production volume chemicals (i.e., those produced or imported in excess of 1 million pounds per year in the US).

Yesterday I gave some of the reaction from industry. Most felt that ChAMP was a good program and didn't understand its sudden suspension. Some feel it was so the Obama administration could institute more "command-and-control" regulation over chemicals, rather than the more voluntary (and EPA-onused) ChAMP.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) reaction, on the other hand, has been generally in favor of the move. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), whose 1997 report "Toxic Ignorance" was the catalyst that led to the HPV Challenge in the first place, has been very critical of the ChAMP program. According to EDF's Richard Dennison,"[i]t probably goes without saying that EDF welcomes EPA's decision to suspend the development and posting of risk-based prioritizations under its Chemical Assessment and Management Program (ChAMP)." Dennison has been writing a series of blog posts in recent months in which he notes some of the failings of ChAMP, arguing "that ChAMP's "rush to risk" has taken EPA badly off-track." He claims, however, that "we have also identified many useful things that EPA's existing chemicals program can and should be doing with the data it obtained through the HPV Challenge (whether called ChAMP or not)," and that EDF looked "forward to working with EPA to craft a new approach, grounded in a return to developing scientifically defensible hazard, not risk, characterizations and transparently identifying and addressing data gaps and data quality problems."

Another environmental advocacy group that has been following ChAMP, and in particular has been very supportive of the proposed Kid Safe Chemical Act, is the Environmental Working Group (EWG). EWG recently launched an interactive online site "featuring news and commentary, as well as a forum for a thought-provoking exchange of ideas on reforming the nation’s federal toxic chemicals policies." According to EWG, the site "will feature analysis and opinion by scientists, lawmakers, industry officials, community activists, policy specialists, journalists and others interested in environmental health issues." A major focus of the site "will be the emerging debate over reform of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)."

Another group interested in the ChAMP and TSCA reform is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Commenting on the EDF blog, Gina Solomon of NRDC notes that "[t]his is a very important step toward meaningful chemical reform. It was clear that EPA needed to sweep the house clean before bringing in the new furniture, and the elimination of ChAMP does exactly that. Now we can get on with the job of really reforming U.S. chemical policy." She also congratulated EDF for its series of blog stories, saying "I really think this blog brought down ChAMP!"

Many in the NGO community feel that the administration's decision to suspend ChAMP is a clear signal that "ChAMP is grossly, indefensibly ineffective." EDF's Dennison says the decision is "implicit acknowledgement" that the ChAMP prioritization process needed an overhaul. According to the ChAMP web site, as of March 2009, EPA had "developed and posted risk-based prioritizations for 220 HPV chemicals and has posted hazard-based prioritizations for 83 chemicals." The goal of the program was to develop "screening-level hazard, exposure, and risk characterizations for an estimated 6,750 chemicals produced or imported in quantities of 25,000 pounds or greater a year" by 2012.

Clearly the administration felt that the program could not accomplish those goals and that a better way was needed. According to EPA, they expect to offer a new direction some time this summer.

Industry Reaction to Obama Decision to Suspend ChAMP Chemical Program

As noted a few days ago, the Obama EPA has decided to suspend its voluntary Chemical Assessment & Management Program (ChAMP). The news came as a bit of a shock to most policy watchers, both on the industry and NGO side (and apparently also within the Agency).

Industry reaction has been mixed, some attacking the decision as "less about science and more about the new administration's desire for a command-and-control approach to chemicals management policy." For example, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA) attacked the move in a statement issued June 18th by accusing the EPA of remaining “silent about its full intentions, contradicting President Obama's commitment to transparency and support for scientific integrity.” NPRA's President, Charles Drevna further noted that “[i]t is extremely disheartening that the administration would abandon its priority-setting chemicals management process before it is even given the opportunity to work.” Drevna further "urge[d] the administration to reconsider its abandonment of both the scientifically sound ChAMP initiative and the United States’ commitments to Canada and Mexico under the Security & Prosperity Partnership of North America."

Similarly, the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) issued a statement in which indicated that the suspension of ChAMP “is creating confusion over how or whether to continue activities already begun by industry in this effort.” In the SOCMA statement, Bill Allmond, vice president of government relations, urged "EPA to not delay the forward progress it has been making under ChAMP. We applaud the agency for wishing to strengthen its chemicals management program, but we’re concerned that, in order to do so, they’re stopping it altogether. We hope that EPA’s evaluation of ChAMP will be brief and maintain the program’s original intent.”

Meanwhile, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) also issued a statement, though perhaps with a less strident tone. ACC says “[W]e are confident that any changes to ChAMP do not signal a reversal of the U.S. government’s commitment, but rather to further strengthen the program.” ACC seems to believe that the initial reports are overreactive and that EPA will find a way to get chemical reviews moving again. ACC was the original industry lead in developing the voluntary High Production Volume (HPV) Challenge program, from which ChAMP evolved as a means to evaluate the collected data.

Consistent with ACC's view is the fact that EPA has requested an additional $3 million for the program in its fiscal year 2010 budget proposal. The budget request includes monies to hire additional employee resources in order to accelerate the development of the ChAMP prioritization documents. Now, according to an EPA spokesman, the EPA is looking at options “to determine how best to ramp up efforts to assess, prioritize and take risk management action on chemicals of concern. EPA plans to announce the specifics of this effort this summer and will seek public input into the discussion.”

So it seems that EPA already has some idea in mind about how it prefers to proceed. Expect more updates and potential options for moving forward as information continues to become available.

Obama Administration Shuts Down ChAMP Chemical Program?

EPA sources report that the Obama administration and EPA leadership are shutting down EPA's Chemical Assessment and Management Program (ChAMP). ChAMP was initiated as a mechanism to implement the Montebello Agreement, also called the Security & Prosperity Partnership between the three countries (Canada, Mexico and the US), signed in August 2007 by former President Bush.

Apparently EPA staff were told of this decision in an internal meeting within the last two weeks. It remains unclear what might replace it. However, it should be known that highly placed EPA executives believe the report misrepresents what is actually happening, which is merely to "renovate" the program rather than shut it down completely.

If the decision is to shut ChAMP down completely, it would come as a bit of a surprise to EPA watchers. Just a few months ago EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson had indicated that she wanted to accelerate the full assessments of high priority chemicals. For the time being it actually looks like the risk-based prioritization activities have ceased pending further review. Jackson also suggested that she had been leaning toward a ChAMP like program rather than the original Kid Safe Chemical Act concept previously introduced to Congress by Senator Lautenberg and Congressman Waxman. TSCA reform has been a hot topic of discussion in Congress and Lautenberg repeated only a few days ago that he plans to reintroduce the bill later this year, though the bill is expected to be substantially altered from the original to incorporate new ideas...and some thought, ChAMP-like provisions.

According to the Montebello Agreement, the United States agreed to complete risk characterizations by 2012 on more than 9,000 chemicals produced above 25,000 pounds per year. The regional agreement also provided for the sharing of scientific information and technical understanding, best practices and research on new approaches to chemical testing and assessment. The agreement established additional goals to be met by 2020, which include creating and updating chemical inventories in all three countries, as well as coordinating the management of chemicals in North America as outlined in other international agreements. ChAMP was on its way toward meeting those goals, and in fact was anticipated to be expanded to take on additional enhancements that would look at inorganic chemicals and reset the TSCA Inventory.

Obstensibly a voluntary program which put much of the onus for evaluation on EPA, ChAMP is the second large voluntary program that has been shut down by the current administration - the first being the Performance Track program. There is no question that the ChAMP program takes substantial EPA resources, and this announcement may simply be a sign that the administration is intending to revamp the program in a way that allows its stated goals to be pursued within a revised Kid Safe Act when it is reintroduced later this year.

I will continue to update as I get more information.

New Report Says Climate Changes Are Already Occurring

A new report says that climate change is already happening, and and its effects are on track to get much worse in the coming century. The report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," was released today (June 16th) by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which "coordinates and integrates federal research on changes in the global environment and their implications for society." Begun as a presidential initiative in 1989 by George H.W. Bush, and then mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-606), the USGCRP called for "a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change." Thirteen Departments and Agencies participate in the USGCRP.

Key findings from today's report include:

1. Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.
Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. (p. 13)

2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow.
Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows. These changes are projected to grow. (p. 27)

3. Widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and are expected to increase.
Climate changes are already affecting water, energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems, and health. These impacts are different from region to region and will grow under projected climate change. (p. 41-106, 107-152)

4. Climate change will stress water resources.
Water is an issue in every region, but the nature of the potential impacts varies. Drought, related to reduced precipitation, increased evaporation, and increased water loss from plants, is an important issue in many regions, especially in the West. Floods and water quality problems are likely to be amplified by climate change in most regions. Declines in mountain snowpack are important in the West and Alaska where snowpack provides vital natural water storage. (p. 41, 129, 135, 139)

5. Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged.
Agriculture is considered one of the sectors most adaptable to changes in climate. However, increased heat, pests, water stress, diseases, and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production. (p. 71)

6. Coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge.
Sea-level rise and storm surge place many U.S. coastal areas at increasing risk of erosion and flooding, especially along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Pacific Islands, and parts of Alaska. Energy and transportation infrastructure and other property in coastal areas are very likely to be adversely affected. (p. 111, 139, 145, 149)

7. Threats to human health will increase.
Health impacts of climate change are related to heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Robust public health infrastructure can reduce the potential for negative impacts. (p. 89)

8. Climate change will interact with many social and environmental stresses.
Climate change will combine with pollution, population growth, overuse of resources, urbanization, and other social, economic, and environmental stresses to create larger impacts than from any of these factors alone. (p. 99)

9. Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in climate and ecosystems.
There are a variety of thresholds in the climate system and ecosystems. These thresholds determine, for example, the presence of sea ice and permafrost, and the survival of species, from fish to insect pests, with implications for society. With further climate change, the crossing of additional thresholds is expected. (p. 76, 82, 115, 137, 142)

10. Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices made today.
The amount and rate of future climate change depend primarily on current and future human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases and airborne particles. Responses involve reducing emissions to limit future warming, and adapting to the changes that are unavoidable. (p. 25, 29)

Book Review – Galileo’s Revenge: Junk Science in the Courtroom by Peter W. Huber (1991)

Galileo’s Revenge is actually an older book published in 1991, and the author has written several since that time. But it is definitely must reading for both scientists and lawyers. Peter Huber is believer in free markets and works at the conservative Manhattan Institute. He is considered an expert on liability lawsuits and clearly feels that courts have mismanaged tort law by allowing spurious claims to move forward, often resulting in huge monetary awards to plaintiffs on questionable science. I suggest the reader quickly move beyond this motivation and seriously consider the information that is put forth in the book.

The book provides several chapters of example cases illustrating the abuse of the courtroom by “experts” pushing specious, and often illogical, scientific explanations for serious injuries or harm. He includes the famous sudden acceleration cases in which the Audi 5000 was targeted as inexplicably bursting forward even though the driver “had their foot jammed on the brakes” (though nothing was shown to be wrong with car). Also liabilities associated with accusations that obstetrician mishandling of birth caused cerebral palsy (since proven false), chemically-caused disease (most of which was shown to be untrue), cancer caused by trauma (not true), the mosaic theory against Benedectin (shown to be specious), and ignoring lifelong smoking to “prove” asbestos caused cancer, etc. There are even cases won by plaintiffs because they had real fear of living close to tuberculosis patients even though there was no medical basis for such a fear. One could add other examples that have occurred since publication of the book.

But the real thrust of the book is how the courts have gotten away from a landmark 1923 ruling (Frye), which “allowed experts into the courtroom only if their testimony was founded on theories, methods, and procedures ‘generally accepted’ as valid among other scientists in the field.” This held sway until the 1970s when expert testimony came to be allowed “if scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact.” According to Huber, at this point mainstream scientific consensus was no longer a requirement, and any fringe theory could be advocated in the courtroom even if it was in conflict with established scientific belief. Together with liability insurance and the tendency to sue those with deep pockets, Huber believes this accounted for many of the huge awards being given to cases based on questionable, or even false, scientific and medical testimony. He spends some time in each chapter describing the unscrupulous “experts” that were hired to provide the needed testimony in such cases.

This book predates the 1993 Daubert ruling, which provided for standards of evidence to be used in court. Daubert superceded the Frye standard of generally accepted by the scientific community, and set a number of additional guidelines for the court to use to determine scientific reliability: testable technique or theory; known error rates of technique or theory; and methodology that has been peer reviewed. These are similar to some of the suggestions offered by Huber in his final chapters. He notes that “a scientific fact is the collective judgment of a specialized scientific community. Good science is defined not by credentials but by consensus.” He argues that there must be careful development of rules for the admissibility of legitimate evidence. There should be a scientific consensus on what the data tell us, not some theory acceptable only to the expert on the witness stand.

I highly recommend this book as a thought starter for all scientists and lawyers. From here readers should move on to more recent books on the topic. And consider Huber’s final words as he suggests that “the best test of certainty we have is good science – the science of publication, replication, and verification, the science of consensus and peer review; the science of Newton, Galileo, and Gauss, Einstein, Feynman, Pasteur, and Sabin; the science that has eradicated smallpox, polio, and tuberculosis; the science that has created antibiotics and vaccines. Or it is, at least, the best test of certainty so far devised by the mind of man.”

Senate Votes to Give FDA Power to Regulate Tobacco - Good Idea or Bad Idea?

Today the US Senate voted 79-17 to "give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the content, marketing and advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products" according to a story in the Washington Post. The bill would give regulators "new power to limit nicotine in cigarettes, drastically curtail ads and ban candied tobacco products aimed at young people." The vote now sends the bill back to the House, which had previously passed a similar bill. Speaker Pelosi apparently believes the House can simply pass the Senate version and send it on to President Obama, who has supported the idea despite the fact that he is a smoker who has struggled to quit (or perhaps because he is a smoker who has struggled to quit).

Many may not realize it, but tobacco products have been exempt from the normal regulation administered by the Food & Drug Administration. This bill would change all that.

Supporters of the bill say it is long overdue, and that it will save hundreds of thousands of lives annually and reduce the "$100 billion in annual health care costs linked to tobacco," which is considered one of the "leading preventable causes of death in the United States" according to those quoted in the Washington Post story.

While no opponents of the bill - which got bipartisan support - were quoted in the Post article, there are many who believe that regulating tobacco is an unwelcome intrusion into personal choices. They point to the inability of Prohibition to reduce alcohol consumption, and its eventual repeal.

So, is it a good idea for tobacco use to come under the regulatory arm of the FDA? Will it save lives? Reduce health care costs? Place a burden on the tobacco industry? Fail to result in changes in smoking habits?

Coming Back to The Dake Page!

I have been unavailable much of the past month and thus have not been posting regularly to The Dake Page. But the page is still active and expect to see many more articles coming through shortly.

In the meantime, check out past articles by clicking on the keywords in the column to the right.

Scientific Debate of Climate Change on Social Networking Sites

Climate change, or global warming, is a popular topic of scientific debate on various social networking sites. Proponents on either side studiously present their factual evidence supporting their views and....

...sorry, I can't write that with a straight face. The truth is there is no real scientific debate on the issue of climate change on social networking sites. On the other hand, there is a lot of noise about the issue.

The fact is that after over three decades of research on the issue, thousands of peer-reviewed studies, and many compilations of the state of our knowledge on the topic, a clear scientific consensus has been reached that climate change is occurring and that human activities are playing a significant role in that occurrence. The debate now is on what policies best allow us to deal with the realities of the science.

But that doesn't stop the denialists from continuing to post their obfuscatory message, largely determined by ideology and then rabidly seeking any information they deem to support the conclusion needed to ratify that ideology. While there are probably many typologies of denialists, there are three distinct forms that seem the most vocal.

The cut-and-paster: This particular form of denialist largely relies on opinions copied verbatim out of blogs. They tend to suggest these blogs are "science" despite the fact that blogs are not peer-reviewed. To date, no one has even attempted to offer a convincing argument for why we should simply accept anything written on a blog as science. For why peer-review is irrelevant. For why having to withstand the scrutiny of the entire scientific community isn't important. For why a blogline known for supporting and being supported by purely ideological funders is science, but decades of scientific study and thousands of peer-reviewed publications is "ideological." These cut-and-pasters are relatively innocuous because they clearly don't understand science, but do tend to get annoying when they use every opportunity to insert their pastings into even totally unrelated threads.

The focused irrelevant: The second form of denialist is the kind that latches on to the "Al Gore invented global warming" canard or the "I saw some photographs and now I'm a climate expert" fantasy. Notwithstanding the fact that someone who normally posts non-science (e.g., humor) is an unlikely source for discovering something "that scientists who study climate change somehow missed," the naiveté of the presentation should speak for itself. First, the suggestion that scientists who use the data don't understand the quality of the data is simply silly, as the scientific process verily forces the discussion of every aspect of the related science. All uncertainties are then incorporated into the analysis. And second, focusing on one part of the data input and suggesting that it invalidates the remainder of the data used in the analysis demonstrates a significant lack of understanding of how science works in general and how climate science works specifically. It's like showing photos of a close up of a 2-inch square of plastic that makes up the bumper of a car (without showing the car itself), and saying that a smudge on that 2-inch square allows you to say that the car does not exist. The folks in this type of denialist simply show their lack of understanding by their incessant carping on the one red ball and ignoring all the blue balls as if they aren't there.

The poser: By far the least prevalent, but the most insidious, is the poser. Posers know full well that most people don't understand the science, and so go out of their way to "sound scientific." We are expected to simply ignore the fact that they suddenly have become "climate experts" after only writing fiction in the past (okay, technically they still are writing fiction). We should be taken in by the use of "official looking" but irrelevant (and laughably simplistic) calculations because, well, because they look official. They look scientific. We should assume that because there are some mathematical formulas in the post that anything and everything said must therefore somehow be accurate. The goal is to look technical, and thus by appearing to "talk over the heads" of most non-scientists, presume an air of authority. [What these posers are actually looking for is the smugness they can assume when someone effectively says "Ooh, he used math formulas I don't understand, so he must be smart, so he must be right."] The poser knows that he is posing, but does it anyway, caring little that he misrepresents the science, or that the "technical stuff" presented is largely wrong or irrelevant anyway. For the poser, the same 2-inch square of plastic is used to state definitively what kind of car it is, what year it was produced, how many miles it has traveled, how tall the driver is, and whether the driver had eggs or waffles for breakfast that morning. The problem is, because the calculations are wrong, the 2-inch square of plastic is not even from the bumper of a car, but from some random pile of plastic that is only barely related to the manufacture of a car. So the whole exercise is meaningless anyway.

Luckily, these folks mostly just talk to themselves. There is a tendency for them to gather together to mutually stroke each others egos and pat each other on the back for the supposed wittiness of their deceptions.

The point of this article, of course, is to say that science is not actually "debated" on social networking sites. Scientific debate must, and does, go on constantly in the peer-reviewed literature and at scientific conferences, among real scientists. While there are a good number of actual scientists on social networking sites, mostly they understand that scientific debate goes on elsewhere. In the past, many of these scientists have confronted the few lonely climate change denialist holdovers, pointing out the inconsistencies in their arguments, the lack of veracity of their sources, and the shear silliness of some of the calculations (I mean really, if you can post a calculation in a social networking site article then it clearly is not sufficient to describe the complexities of atmospheric, oceanic, continental, chemical, solar, and man-made influences to climate change). Unfortunately, denialists tend not to learn, and in fact conveniently forget, all of the information presented by real scientists, and thus simply repeat over and over the same points as if no discussion has taken place. Often, when faced with refutation of their posits, they turn abusive (or merely whine). And while scientists are used to arguing over details - after all, that's what we do - we do not suffer gladly those who show a lack of intellectual integrity. After a while scientists simply stop trying to explain to those who actively choose not to learn.

So for the most part scientists ignore the cut-and-pasters, focused irrelevants, and posers (with occasional forays just to get humor from their silliness) and rely on real peer-review with fellow real scientists doing real science in real scientific venues. Of course, we will still post articles related to science for informational purposes, but the actual scientific debate is done elsewhere.

SURPRISE!! - US Government Asks for Public Input on Scientific Integrity

In a surprise move, the US government published in the Thursday, April 23rd Federal Register a "request for public comment" on a scientific integrity memo. This relates to the memorandum issued by President Obama on March 9, 2009, in which he required "the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)to craft recommendations for Presidential action to ensure scientific integrity in the executive branch." I discussed the memo in a previous post.

The Federal Register notice "solicits public input to inform the drafting of those recommendations." The notice asks "a series of questions to help guide the public in responding to this request."

As defined in the current Federal Register notice, the six principles of the President's March 3rd memorandum, and on which public comments are solicited are:

(a) The selection and retention of candidates for science and
technology positions in the executive branch should be based on the
candidate's knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity;

(b) Each agency should have appropriate rules and procedures to
ensure the integrity of the scientific process within the agency;

(c) When scientific or technological information is considered in policy decisions, the information should be subject to well-established scientific processes, including peer review where appropriate, and each agency should appropriately and accurately reflect that information in complying with and applying relevant statutory standards.

(d) Except for information that is properly restricted from disclosure under procedures established in accordance with statute, regulation, Executive Order, or Presidential Memorandum, each agency should make available to the public the scientific or technological findings or conclusions considered or relied on in policy decisions;

(e) Each agency should have in place procedures to identify and
address instances in which the scientific process or the integrity of
scientific and technological information may be compromised; and

(f) Each agency should adopt such additional procedures, including any appropriate whistleblower protections, as are necessary to ensure the integrity of scientific and technological information and processes on which the agency relies in its decision-making or otherwise uses or prepares.

There is a 21 day period for public comment from April 23, 2009 to May 13, 2009.

The fact that this request for public comment relates to a presidential memorandum - which generally are edicts from the President without any public input - is a sign of a greater openness not just in providing the final results but also the underlying research and the process that went into developing the final outcome. It instills a greater degree of public confidence in the scientific process. It also gives all viewpoints - dissenting opinions as well as proponents - a chance to be heard. Which is likely to increase the chances of strong science-based policy decisions being made with less ideological manipulation.