Fred Singer

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Fred Singer : biography

September 27, 1924 –

Singer set up the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) after a 2004 United Nations climate conference in Milan. NIPCC organized an international climate workshop in Vienna in April 2007, to provide what they called an independent examination of the evidence for climate change.Johnson, Harriette and Bast, Joseph L. , Environment News, The Heartland Institute, May 7, 2008. Singer prepared an NIPCC report called "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate," published in March 2008 by The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank.Singer, S. Fred (ed.). , Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, March 2, 2008, accessed May 17, 2010. ABC News said the same month that unnamed climate scientists from NASA, Stanford, and Princeton who spoke to ABC about the report dismissed it as "fabricated nonsense." In a letter of complaint to ABC News, Singer said their piece used "prejudicial language, distorted facts, libelous insinuations, and anonymous smears."

However, Singer characterizes himself as a "skeptic" rather than a "denier" of global climate change. In an article in American Thinker, he complaines about bad arguments used by the "deniers," saying that "Climate deniers are giving us skeptics a bad name."S. Fred Singer, , American Thinker, February 29, 2012 (accessed March 21 2013); see also discussion at 17 March 2012 (accessed March 21 2013).

Climategate

In December 2009, after the release of thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit—a controversy that came to be known as "Climategate"—Singer wrote an opinion piece for Reuters in which he said the scientists had misused peer review, pressured editors to prevent publication of alternative views, and smeared opponents. He said the leaked e-mails showed that the "surface temperature data that IPCC relies on is based on distorted raw data and algorithms that they will not share with the science community." He argued that the incident exposed a flawed process, and that the temperature trends were heading downwards even as greenhouse gases like CO2 were increasing in the atmosphere. He wrote: "This negative correlation contradicts the results of the models that IPCC relies on and indicates that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is quite small," concluding "and now it turns out that global warming might have been ‘man made’ after all."Singer, Fred S. , Reuters, December 14, 2009. A British House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee later issued a report that largely exonerated the scientists.Gillis, Justin. , The New York Times, July 7, 2010.

Notes

Selected publications

  • Global Effects of Environmental Pollution (Reidel, 1970)
  • Manned Laboratories in Space (Reidel, 1970)
  • Is There an Optimum Level of Population? (McGraw-Hill, 1971)
  • The Changing Global Environment (Reidel, 1975)
  • Arid Zone Development (Ballinger, 1977)
  • Economic Effects of Demographic Changes (Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, 1977)
  • Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Decisionmaking (Mitre Corp, 1979)
  • Energy (W.H. Freeman, 1979)
  • The Price of World Oil (Annual Reviews of Energy, Vol. 8, 1983)
  • Free Market Energy (Universe Books, 1984)
  • Oil Policy in a Changing Market (Annual Reviews of Energy, Vol. 12, 1987)
  • The Ocean in Human Affairs (Paragon House, 1989)
  • The Universe and Its Origin: From Ancient Myths to Present Reality and Future Fantasy (Paragon House, 1990)
  • Global Climate Change: Human and Natural Influences (Paragon House, 1989)
  • The Greenhouse Debate Continued (ICS Press, 1992)
  • The Scientific Case Against the Global Climate Treaty (SEPP, 1997)
  • Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute, 1997)
  • with Dennis Avery. Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
  • with Craig Idso. (2009).