Why Climate Deniers Are Attacking Epidemiologists (Because They Always Have)

I keep seeing this thing on social media where climate scientists will say something like “dear epidemiologists, we totally understand — signed climate scientists.” I get it, but also … epidemiologists have been dealing with climate denier attacks forever too, guys.

In fact the one scientist who’s named over and over again in king climate denier Steve Milloy’s book and various presentations on why the EPA needs to be gutted is not a climate scientist, but an epidemiologist: C. Arden Pope. Exhibit A, from a presentation Milloy started giving as soon as Trump was re-elected about how the EPA should be reformed (many of those proposals are on their way to being new EPA rules or legislation, in case you’re wondering):

Pope was part of the landmark Harvard Six Cities Study, and lead author on the follow-up American Cancer Society study that alerted the world to the dangers of fine particulate matter, aka PM 2.5, or soot. It’s the stuff in tailpipe and power plant emissions and, importantly, cigarette smoke.

Milloy, like so many spinmasters before and since (see S3 of Drilled, please), worked for tobacco and coal at the same time—in fact in the same year that he was running a fake science group funded by Philip Morris, he was strategizing on climate denial with the American Petroleum Institute—so PM 2.5 regulation is something he’s been fighting against for a loooong time. In a 2017 presentation at the Heartland Institute’s annual anti-climate conference, Milloy even says PM 2.5 regulation is more dangerous to fossil fuel companies than CO2 regulation.

A big part of his tactic against said regulation has been to attack the epidemiologists whose science the regulation is based on, none more than Pope who Milloy calls a “scammer”. So it wasn’t surprising to see him start to attack the epidemiologists trying to predict and explain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, especially when a new study came out linking PM 2.5 exposure to COVID mortality.

As with the various organizations that funded climate denial and are now backing the “reopen the economy” movement, the crossover here is simple: any science that threatens business is bad, and if you can’t disprove the specific study or model that’s causing your problem, you need to erode the public’s acceptance of science and the credibility of scientists in general.