Search Results for “fred singer” – Page 2

Climate Scientist Dr. Fred Singer: The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change

May 16, 2018

The Sea Is Rising, but Not Because of Climate Change By Fred Singer, WSJ, May 15, 2018 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sea-is-rising-but-not-because-of-climate-change-1526423254 Of all known and imagined consequences of climate change, many people fear sea-level rise most. But efforts to determine what causes seas to rise are marred by poor data and disagreements about methodology. The noted oceanographer Walter Munk referred to sea-level rise as an “enigma”; it has also been called a riddle and a puzzle. It is generally thought that sea-level rise accelerates mainly by thermal expansion of sea water, the so-called steric component. But by studying a very short time interval, it is possible to sidestep most of the complications, like “isostatic adjustment” of the shoreline (as continents rise after the overlying ice has melted) and “subsidence” of the shoreline (as ground water and minerals are extracted). I chose to assess the sea-level trend from 1915-45, when a genuine, independently confirmed warming of approximately 0.5 degree Celsius occurred. I note particularly that sea-level rise is not affected by the warming; it continues at the same rate, 1.8 millimeters a year, according to a 1990 review by Andrew S. Trupin and John Wahr. I therefore conclude—contrary to the general wisdom—that the temperature of sea water has no direct effect on sea-level rise. That means neither does the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide. This conclusion is worth highlighting: It shows that sea-level rise does not depend on the use of fossil fuels. The evidence should allay fear that the release of additional CO2 will increase sea-level rise. But there is also good data showing sea levels are in fact rising at an accelerating rate. The trend has been measured by a network of tidal gauges, many of which have been collecting data for over a century. The cause of the trend is a puzzle. Physics demands that water expand as its temperature increases. But to keep the rate of rise constant, as observed, expansion of sea water evidently must be offset by something else. What could that be? I conclude that it must be ice accumulation, through evaporation of ocean water, and subsequent precipitation turning into ice. Evidence suggests that accumulation of ice on the Antarctic continent has been offsetting the steric effect for at least several centuries. It is difficult to explain why evaporation of seawater produces approximately 100% cancellation of expansion. My method of analysis considers two related physical phenomena: thermal expansion of water and evaporation of water molecules. But if evaporation offsets thermal expansion, the net effect is of course close to zero. What then is the real cause of sea-level rise of 1 to 2 millimeters a year? Melting of glaciers and ice sheets adds water to the ocean and causes sea levels to rise. (Recall though that the melting of floating sea ice adds no water to the oceans, and hence does not affect the sea level.) After the rapid melting away of northern ice sheets, the slow melting of Antarctic ice at the periphery of the continent may be the main cause of current sea-level rise. All this, because it is much warmer now than 12,000 years ago, at the end of the most recent glaciation. Yet there is little heat available in the Antarctic to support melting. We can see melting happening right now at the Ross Ice Shelf of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Geologists have tracked Ross’s slow disappearance, and glaciologist Robert Bindschadler predicts the ice shelf will melt completely within about 7,000 years, gradually raising the sea level as it goes. Of course, a lot can happen in 7,000 years. The onset of a new glaciation could cause the sea level to stop rising. It could even fall 400 feet, to the level at the last glaciation maximum 18,000 years ago. Currently, sea-level rise does not seem to depend on ocean temperature, and certainly not on CO2. We can expect the sea to continue rising at about the present rate for the foreseeable future. By 2100 the seas will rise another 6 inches or so—a far cry from Al Gore’s alarming numbers. There is nothing we can do about rising sea levels in the meantime. We’d better build dikes and sea walls a little bit higher. Mr. Singer is a professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. He founded the Science and Environmental Policy Project and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.

Physicist Dr. Fred Singer: Does the Greenhouse Gas CO2 cool the climate?

April 3, 2018

By S. Fred Singer Most would consider this an odd question and probably ignore it or just delete it. Not so fast, please, my friends! The answer to the question is important in understanding the puzzling ineffectiveness of the greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2) in warming the climate — as seen in the 20th century record and as deduced from the existence of the widening gap between the model results based on rising CO2 and observations of atmospheric temperatures by both satellites and radiosondes [Fig. 1] Fig. 1 –Model results vs. observations[i] Note the growing “gap.” “Greenhouse gas” only means that CO2 absorbs some infrared (IR) radiation; it does not guarantee climate warming. In fact, the outcome depends mostly on atmospheric structure, measured by balloon-borne radiosondes. It is expressed by the so-called atmospheric lapse rate (ALR), defined as change in atmospheric temperature with altitude.[ii] [Note that “lapse rate” has nothing to do with back-sliding alcoholics and smokers.] Physicists who have examined our counter-intuitive hypothesis, all agree with the science — albeit somewhat reluctantly. Such is the power of group-think that even experts, with some exception, find the idea that CO2 might cool the climate difficult to accept. The ALR is generally negative in the troposphere[iii] as much as [minus] -6.5 degree C per km of altitude. [The troposphere is the lowest atmospheric layer, from zero up to about 50,000 foot altitude.] ALR goes through zero in the tropopause region, the layer that separates the troposphere from the overlying stratosphere. The ALR turns positive in the stratosphere, just above [see schematic nearby.[iv] [The warming of the stratosphere is produced by absorption of energy by stratospheric ozone.] STRATOSPHERE ALR is positive Temperature increases with altitude TROPOPAUSE ALR is zero Temperature is constant TROPOSPHERE ALR is negative Temperature decreases with altitude Fig. 2 Schematic of lower atmosphere The key result Adding a tiny increment of CO2 raises slightly the “effective” altitude for emitting Outgoing Long-wave (OLR), the Radiation (IR), going out to space from a CO2 molecule. Because of the reversal in the atmospheric temperature structure, OLR is: 1. of lower energy than normal if the effective altitude remains in the troposphere; and 2. a bit higher than normal if this effective altitude is in the stratosphere. In case 2., the stratospheric CO2 emission “borrows” some energy from the surface emission — hence “cooling” the surface. Assumptions It is incumbent upon the proponent of a controversial hypothesis to find potential weak points — and list crucial assumptions. To be sure, critics will soon enough find many more. It seems safe to assume that CO2 molecules, excited and de-excited by collisions with more abundant nitrogen and oxygen molecules, emit at the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere.[v] We may also assume that CO2 is well mixed with altitude, as inter-hemispheric mixing is nearly perfect. But — can we assume that energy balance is nearly perfect, even on very short time-scales? — i.e. will OLR always exactly equal absorbed solar short-wave radiation? I think the answer is yes. The times involved are too short to permit energy to go into or come out of ice or ocean. Most important, are CO2 transitions strong enough to penetrate past the tropopause into the stratosphere? We can see evidence for this in the year-by-year increase of the amplitudes [near the center of the 15-micron CO2 absorption band. This increase comes about because the stratospheric ALR is positive. To verify and extend this observation, we may use data from the AIRS satellite instrument. (AIRS is a satellite-borne IR spectrometer with ultra-high resolution in wave length.) Once confirmed, the hypothesis can furnish additional explanation for the observed absence of CO2 warming in the 20th century,[vi] and perhaps also for the cause of the puzzling observed warming pause (‘hiatus’)[vii] of at least the past two decades [Fig 1]. A typical reaction “That’s a very nice theory. And, I think I can follow your argument. But, where is the predicted cooling?” One can think of three possible answers: First, the warming and cooling effects are very small; remember that the CO2 effect becomes logarithmicx, once CO2 concentration exceeds roughly 60 ppm (parts per million). [The concentration is now 400 ppm, 0.04%, and growing]. Any cooling would be offset, at least partly, by molecular transitions that remain in the troposphere and cause climate warming in a conventional way. Finally, there is climate noise that would hide any small warming or cooling. Climate noise is produced both naturally and by human sources. For example, changes in the weather may change global cloudiness and therefore incoming absorbed solar energy. Conclusion A greenhouse gas produces cooling of the climate when its molecular transitions are in a region of positive lapse rate. One example is CO2 and the stratosphere, where temperature increases with altitude. Another example is temperature over the winter poles [Happer – private communication; Flanner et al. GRL 2018]. While the climate cooling is not obvious, it counters [conventional] GH warming. This at- least-partial cancelation might explain the puzzling absence of CO2-based GH warming in the 20th century.[viii] It could also help explain the cause of the [hotly] contested climate ‘pause.’[ix] Much further work awaits! Acknowledgements I am grateful to colleagues for helpful discussions of the assumptions. This work was supported by SEPP, which solicits only private charitable donations.

Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Fred Singer on the ‘failure of UN IPCC to find credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming’

May 11, 2017

By S. Fred Singer Exploring some of the intricacies of GW [Global Warming] science can lead to surprising results that have major consequences. In a recent invited talk at the Heartland Institute’s ICCC-12 [Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change], I investigated three important topics: 1. Inconsistencies in the surface temperature record. 2. Their explanation as artifacts arising from the misuse of data. 3. Thereby explaining the failure of IPCC to find credible evidence for anthropogenic global warming (AGW). A misleading graph In the iconic picture of the global surface temperature of the 20th century [fig 1, top] one can discern two warming intervals — in the initial decades (1910-42) and in the final decades, 1977 to 2000. Fig 1 20th century temps; top—global; bottom– US Although these two trends look similar, they are really quite different: the initial warming is genuine, but the later warming is not. What a surprise! I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘fake,’ but it just does not exist; I try to demonstrate this difference as an artifact of the data-gathering process, by comparing with several independent data sets covering similar time intervals. The later warming is contradicted by every available dataset, as follows: **the surface record for the ‘lower 48’ [US] shows a much lower trend; [see fig 1, bottom]; presumably there is better control over the placement of weather-stations and their thermometers; **the trend of global sea surface temp [SST] is much less; with 1995 temp values nearly equal to those of 1942 [according to Gouretski and Kennedy, as published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2012]; ** likewise, the trend of night-time marine air-temperatures [NMAT], measured with thermometers on ship decks, according to data from J Kennedy, Hadley Centre, UK ** atmospheric temperature trends are uniformly much lower and close to zero (during 1979-1997), whether measured with balloon-borne radiosondes or with microwave sounding units [MSU] aboard weather satellites [see fig 8 in ref 2] ** compatible data on solar activity that show nothing unusual happening. Interestingly, the solar data had been assembled for a quite different purpose – namely, to disprove the connection between cosmic rays and climate change [see here fig 14 of ref 2], assuming that the late-century warming was real. In the absence of such warming, as I argue here, this attempted critique of the cosmic-ray–climate connection collapses. ** proxy data also show near-zero trends, whether from tree rings or ice cores, as noted about 20 years ago [see fig 16 in ref 1 and figs 2 and 3 of ref 2; plus those that may have been withheld by Michael Mann]. [If you look carefully at Mann’s original 1998 paper in Nature or subsequent copies, you will note that his proxy temps cease suddenly in 1979 and are replaced by temps from thermometers from CRU-EAU, the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University. This substitution not only supplies the ‘blade’ of Mann’s hockey-stick but enables the claim of IPCC-AR3 [2001] that the 20th century was the warmest in the past 1000 years, surpassing even the high temps of the Medieval Warm Period. In Climategate e-mails this substitution was referred to as “Mike’s Nature trick. I can’t help wondering if Mann’ s original post-1979 proxy data showed warming at all; perhaps that has some bearing on why Mann has withheld these data; it could have killed the blade and spoiled the IPCC claim.] On the other hand, the early warming [1910-40] is supported by many proxy data – including temps derived from tree rings, ice cores, etc; unfortunately, we could not find any temperature data of the upper troposphere. However, I bet they would have shown an amplified warming trend – a hot spot. A Digression on Hotspot [HSp] and Hockeystick [HSt] ‘Hotspot’ refers to an enhanced temp trend in the tropical upper troposphere [UT]; it is produced by convection of latent energy through water vapor [WV] and is the dominant agent for heating the UT. In IPCC-AR2 [1996], BD Santer mistakenly identified the HSp as the fingerprint for GH [greenhouse] warming, which has led to much confusion in the technical literature, fostering the mistaken claim that the HSp owes its existence to tropospheric CO2. But according to textbooks, it is merely an amplification of any temp trend at the surface through the ‘moist’ atmospheric lapse rate. It surely existed during 1910-42 but we lack data to prove it. Virtual absence of the HSp during 1979-97 [fig 8 of ref 2 ] implies a near-zero surface trend in that interval. This observation also disproves the AGW hypothesis of IPCC-AR2 [1996] that led to the Kyoto Protocol. Mann’s construction of his hockeystick graph [often referred to as ‘Mike’s Nature trick’ was explained earlier [see above]. This recital of data should suffice to convince alarmists and climate skeptics alike that the late 20th-century global warming does not exist. We should note, however, that both IPCC-AR4 [2007] and AR5 [2013] rely on such (non-existing) warming in trying to prove that its cause is anthropogenic. Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/05/a_global_warming_surprise.html#ixzz4gmeCjOQQ Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Climatologist Dr. Fred Singer mocks the 2 Degree limit: ‘The Goldilocks Approach to Global Warming’

February 8, 2016

Have you ever wondered where the 2⁰C number comes from? Does it sound like the Y2K scare all over again? Well, let me tell you, because I have something to do with provoking its original publication. In 1995, I published an article in Eos, the journal that goes to every member of the American Geophysical Union, a professional society of which I am a life-member and an elected Fellow. I claimed there that we couldn’t see any evidence for a significant human contribution to global warming. Naturally, this provoked some immediate responses — which I commented on in turn. One response came from two Swedish scientists, Henning Rodhe and Christian Azar of Stockholm University. This was the first time I saw this magic 2⁰C value. Of course, they gave a reference for this number, which turned out to be a publication in the Swedish journal Tellus — by the same authors. In other words, it was a self-reference — or a circular argument if you prefer. It may even have been self-refereed; I don’t know. Anyway, there is nothing to indicate that anything drastic will happen at the 2⁰C limit. None of the climate models suggest any particular disaster; there will be no runaway warming; and climate warming will not become irreversible. Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/the_goldilocks_approach_to_global_warming.html#ixzz3zawsrgUt Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Climatologist Dr. Fred Singer: ‘Any warming observed during the past century appears to be trivially small and most likely economically beneficial’

February 1, 2016

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/climate_change_the_burden_of_proof.html The real threat to humanity comes not from any (trivial) greenhouse warming but from cooling periods creating food shortages and famines. … The burden of proof falls upon alarmists to demonstrate that this null hypothesis is not adequate to account for empirical climate data. In other words, alarmists must provide convincing observational evidence for anthropogenic climate change (ACC). They must do this by detailed comparison of the data with climate models. This is of course extremely difficult and virtually impossible since one cannot specify these natural influences precisely. … Policies to limit CO2 emissions are wasting resources that could better be used for genuine societal problems like public health. They are also counter-productive since CO2 promotes plant growth and crop yields, as shown by dozens of agricultural publications.

Physicist Dr. Fred Singer: Saving Humanity from Catastrophic Global Cooling

May 19, 2015

‘Good Science Prevails’: Renowned Scientist Dr. Fred Singer Talks Climate Change

April 14, 2015

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2015/04/14/good-science-prevails-renowned-scientist-fred-singer-talks-climate-chan

Merchants of ‘smear’ movie slanders eminent Physicist Dr. Fred Singer – Singer Fires Back!

March 6, 2015

Climate Depot Exclusive Also Sent by Registered Mail to Robert Kenner Films, 134 So. Norton St, Suite A, Los Angeles, CA 90004 Dear Mr. Kenner, March 6, 2015 I am writing this letter on the advice of my attorneys, who suggested that a friendly letter from me to you might avoid having to take legal action. I’ve been informed that your new documentary “Merchants of Doubt” refers to me as “Liar for Hire”. If correct, that is a very serious accusation which of course cannot be backed up in any way. The word “Liar” implies not only telling something that is not true, but telling an untruth knowingly. So even people who disagree with me on climate-change science (and such people do exist) would have to prove that I don’t really believe what I say – that I am saying it in order to mislead. The word “hire” implies that I am being paid directly, i.e., that I am on salary by some entity such as an oil company — or that I am taking money from a source that is supported predominately by such money and that I am aware of it. We would judge that hire is also very difficult to demonstrate. I have some experience with libel suits; thanks to Kirkland & Ellis, we prevailed against an environmental lawyer, a groupie of then-Senator Al Gore. It took a lot of my time and was costly. I would prefer to avoid having to go to court; but if we do, we are confident that we will prevail. My good friend, the late J. Gordon Edwards, professor of entomology at San Jose State University, sued the New York Times for libel and prevailed in a jury trial. The NYT had referred to him as someone who is being paid to lie. We think there will be no problem to demonstrate “malice.” (That is, “knowledge that [the libelous statement] was false or [made] with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”) Mind you, I am not now accusing you personally of malice, but it is rather too bad that you got mixed up with Naomi Oreskes. She claims to be a historian of science; unfortunately, she has only demonstrated that she’s a great polemicist with a rather well-defined bias. Her book “Merchants of Doubt” contains a number of serious scientific errors; also, it is not in accordance with the kind of scholarship expected from an academic historian. Instead of primary sources, she relies on secondary and even tertiary sources who have obvious, demonstrated agenda. In her book, she attacks four physicists, three of whom were quite distinguished and are now deceased. I have felt it my obligation to defend their reputations posthumously. I hope that you will respond positively to this letter and suggest ways in which the situation raised by your documentary can be rectified. Your reputation based on your past work is excellent and we should do everything possible to maintain it that way. Sincerely yours, Fred Singer ************************** End Letter # Dr. Fred Singer’s Original Critique of Naomi Oreskes book: Merchants of Smear: Oreskes and Conway SFS/ 6/16/2011 http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/science_and_smear_merchants.html Professor Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California in San Diego, claims to be a science historian. One can readily demonstrate that she is neither a credible scientist nor a credible historian; the best evidence is right there in her recent book, “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,” coauthored with Eric Conway. Her science is faulty; her historical procedures are thoroughly unprofessional. She is, however, an accomplished polemicist, who has found time for world lecture tours, promoting her book and her ideological views, while being paid by the citizens of California. Her book tries to smear four senior physicists – of whom I am the only surviving one. I view it as my obligation to defend the reputations of my late colleagues and good friends against her libelous charges. Oreskes is well known from her 2004 article in Science that claimed a complete scientific consensus about manmade global warming; it launched her career as a polemicist. Her claim was based on examining the abstracts of some 900 published papers. Unfortunately, she missed more than 11,000 papers through an incorrect Internet search. She published a discreet “Correction”; yet she has never retracted her ideologically based claim about ‘consensus.’ Al Gore still quotes her result, which has been contradicted by several, more competent studies [by Peiser, Schulte, Bray and von Storch; Lemonick in SciAm, etc]. Turning first to her science, her book discusses acidification, as measured by the pH coefficient. She states that a pH of 6.0 denotes neutrality [page 67, MoD]. Let’s be charitable and chalk this off to sloppy proofreading. Elsewhere in the book [page 29], she claims that beryllium is a “heavy metal” and tries to back this up with references. I wonder if she knows that the atomic weight of beryllium is only 9, compared to, say, uranium, which is mostly 238. A comparison of these two numbers should tell anyone which one is the heavy metal. Her understanding of the Greenhouse Effect is plain comical; she posits that CO2 is “trapped” in the troposphere — and that’s why the stratosphere is cooling. Equally wrong is her understanding of what climate models are capable of; she actually believes that they can predict forest fires in Russia, floods in Pakistan and China – nothing but calamities everywhere — and tells climate scientists in a recent lecture: I If the predictions of climate models have come true, then why don’t people believe them? [see http://tinyurl.com/3wrvon2] Perhaps because people are not gullible. But the most amazing science blunder in her book is her hypothesis about how cigarette smoking causes cancer [page 28]. She blames it on oxygen-15, a radioactive isotope of the common oxygen-16. I wonder if she knows that the half-life of O-15 is only 122 seconds. Of course, she does not spell out how O-15 gets into cigarette smoke, whether it is in the paper or in the tobacco itself. If the latter, does she believe that the O-15 is created by the burning of tobacco? If so, this would be a fantastic discovery, worthy of an alchemist. Perhaps someone should make her aware of the difference between radio-active and ‘reactive’ oxygen; the two words do sound similar. I am sure one would find more examples of scientific ignorance in a careful reading of the rest of the book. But why bother? Having demonstrated her scientific ‘expertise,’ let’s turn to her historical expertise. Any careful historian would use primary sources and would at least try to interview the scientists she proceeds to smear. There is no trace of that in Oreskes’ book. She has never taken the trouble to interview Dr. Robert Jastrow, founder of the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and later Director of the Mt. Wilson Astronomical Observatory and founding president of the renowned George C Marshall Institute in Washington, DC. I can find no evidence that she ever interviewed Dr. William Nierenberg, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who actually lived in San Diego and was readily accessible. And I doubt if she ever even met Dr. Frederick Seitz, the main target of her venom. Seitz was the most distinguished of the group of physicists that are attacked in the book. He had served as President of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the American Physical Society, and later as President of Rockefeller University. He had been awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities here and abroad, as well as the prestigious National Medal of Science from the White House. Instead of seeking first-hand information — in the tradition of historical research — Oreskes relies on secondary or tertiary sources, quoting people who agree with her ideology. A good example of this is her discussion of Acid Rain and of the White House panel (under Reagan, in 1982) chaired by Bill Nierenberg, on which I also served. Here she relies on what she was told by Dr. Gene Likens, whose research funding depends on portraying acid rain as a very serious environmental problem. It most definitely is not – and indeed, it disappeared from view as soon as Congress passed legislation designed to reduce the effect. An amazing discovery: I found that Oreskes gives me credit (or blames me) for inventing ‘cap-and-trade,’ the trading of emission rights under a fixed cap of total emissions [see pp. 91-93]. I had never claimed such a priority because I honestly don’t know if this idea had been published anywhere. It seemed like the natural thing to suggest — in order to reduce total cost, once an emission cap had been set. My example involved smelters that emit SO2 copiously versus electric utilities that burn coal containing some sulfur. I even constructed what amounts to a ‘supply curve’ in which the bulk of the emission control is borne initially by the lowest-cost units. Of course, Likens and some others on the panel, antagonistic to coal-burning electric utilities, objected to having my discussion included in the panel report. Nierenberg solved the problem neatly by putting my contribution into a signed Appendix, thereby satisfying some panel members who did not want be responsible for a proposal that might let some electric utilities off the hook. We have established so far that Oreskes is neither a scientist of any sort nor a careful professional historian. She is, however, a “pop-psychologist.” It seems she has figured out what motivates the four senior physicists she libels in her book; it is “anti-communism.” Really! This is not only stated explicitly but she also identifies them throughout as “Cold Warriors.” Well, now we know at least where Oreskes stands in the political spectrum. ***************************************************************** Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer pioneered upper-atmosphere ozone measurements with rockets and later devised the satellite instrument used to monitor ozone. He is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service (now NESDIS-NOAA). He is a Fellow of the Heartland Institute and the Independent Institute. His book “Unstoppable Global Warming – Every 1500 Years” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) presents the evidence for natural climate cycles of warming and cooling and became a NY Times best-seller. He is the organizer of NIPCC (Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change, editor of its 2008 report “Nature – Not Human Activity – Rules the Climate” <http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf>, and coauthor of “Climate Change Reconsidered,” published in 2009, with conclusions contrary to those of the IPCC <http://www.nipccreport.org/>. As a reviewer of IPCC reports, he presumably shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and 2000 others.

Atmospheric physicist Dr. Fred Singer: ‘Cause of Pause in Global Warming’

December 30, 2014

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/cause_of_pause_in_global_warming.html

Slimed by Naomi Oreskes – In Defense of Dr. Fred Singer

October 20, 2014

The excerpt is found in Chapter 5, “Radicals” in the middle of page 183 forward for about 3 pages. -Ron Arnold On February 24, 1994, ABC News Nightline with Ted Koppel ran a report titled, “Environmental Science For Sale,” produced by Jay Weiss. It was an investigation of the wise use movement, probing my activities and those of scientist Fred Singer of the Washington, D.C.-based Science and Environmental Policy Project, among others.[1] Koppel opened this edition of Nightline with a stunning revelation: Vice President Al Gore had given him the story. Koppel explained that he and Gore had met by chance waiting for an airplane, and, over coffee, Gore urged him to investigate connections between the wise use movement and such elements as big industry, Lyndon LaRouche and the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Koppel had first covered the wise use movement almost exactly two years earlier, on February 4, 1992.[2] On that date, after a five-minute introductory segment interviewing me and a number of other wise use advocates, the program switched back to the studio and a face-off between conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh and then-Senator Al Gore. Koppel was the first broadcaster to note that environmentalism was no longer a motherhood and apple pie issue, but now had serious challengers for the moral high ground. Gore was deeply upset by the rise of wise use. By 1994 he was Vice President of the United States, and the time had come to strike back. So, on the night of February 24, Koppel told Gore’s story—but notified his viewers exactly where it had come from, a highly unusual move in a medium that normally goes to extremes protecting sources. And he sounded annoyed. While Koppel explained that Gore’s office had sent him a stack of documents, an image of fanned-out papers filled the TV screen. If you’ve seen such graphics, you know that the top document is always totally illegible so that a certain amount of anonymity is preserved for the source. However, peeking out from behind the first sheet was a letterhead just beyond legibility—unless you knew what it said to begin with. I did. It said, MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider. So—Vice President Al Gore was keeping a dossier on us, courtesy the Green Cartel: MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider, a political strategy firm, hired by The Wilderness Society, using a grant from the W. Alton Jones Foundation (the CitGo oil money) authorized by Director John Peterson “Pete” Meyers, who has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars to smear the wise use movement. Knowing that Al Gore has been secretly keeping tabs on me, do I need to call Psychic Hotline to know why the Winthrop Foundation gave money so that Sheila O’Donnell of Ace Investigations could gather intelligence on me? Could it be because Wren Winthrop Wirth is the wife of Clinton administration official Tim Wirth who was given his State Department slot with the help of Vice President Al Gore? Vice President Gore, Koppel told his viewers, was particularly concerned about Dr. Fred Singer of the Washington, D.C.-based Science and Environmental Policy Project, well known for debunking the ozone depletion and global warming scares. Laws have been passed against important industrial chemicals because computer models predict them to deplete ozone or cause global warming. Dr. Singer points out flaws in computer models, noting that realistic risk assessments rather than computerized guesswork or emotional scare tactics are needed for sound public policy. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund told Koppel he was so worried about the wise use movement because, “If they can get the public to believe that ozone wasn’t worth acting on, that they were led in the wrong direction by scientists, then there’s no reason for the public to believe anything about any environmental issue.” What about those Moonie ties and big industry money? When asked by Nightline, Dr. Singer acknowledged having accepting free office space and science conference travel expenses in the past from the Unification Church, as well as funding from large industries. The Moon support lasted only a short time, but the industry funding continued. “Every environmental organization I know of gets funding from Exxon, Shell, Arco, Dow Chemical, and so on,” said Singer. “If it doesn’t taint their science, it doesn’t taint my science.” Koppel evidently felt used by Gore, saying, “In fairness, though, you should know that Fred Singer taught environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, that he was the deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Nixon Administration, and from 1987 to 1989 was chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Transportation. You can see where this is going. If you agree with Fred Singer’s views on the environment, you point to his more impressive credentials. If you don’t, it’s Fred Singer and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.” Koppel noted that Dr. Singer’s predictions about the low atmospheric impact of the Kuwait oil fires was accurate and the environmentalists’ forecast of doom, as voiced by the late astronomer Carl Sagan, was wrong. Koppel handled the segment about me much the same way, saying that I had once served on a local board of the American Freedom Coalition, “a political organization, which, in the past, has received substantial funding from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.” There were no allegations that my Center had received Moonie money, or that I was a follower of Moon or his church, or that some nefarious Moon-influenced plot was afoot, unlike the Green Cartel’s version of the story. Somebody at ABC News had actually done some fact checking. Then I remembered. Three months earlier, on Tuesday, November 9, 1993, ABC News producer Bob Aglow had called me on behalf of correspondent Bettina Gregory, asking for an interview for the “American Agenda” segment of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. I had previously appeared in that segment and was treated fairly. I agreed. That Friday, November 12, Aglow and Gregory taped the interview in my office. Among other things, I gave them a stack of my Center’s financial statements showing where our budget really came from: small donations from members, book sales and conferences, with less than 5% coming from foundations and corporate grants. However, the segment never aired. But the film that Koppel used in his Nightline broadcast was the footage taken by Bob Aglow with correspondent Bettina Gregory. Someone on the Nightline staff had obtained it from the World News Tonight staff—evidently along with my financial data. At the end of the Nightline feature, Koppel pointedly rebuked Gore’s recruitment to a hatchet job, concluding, “The measure of good science is neither the politics of the scientist nor the people with whom the scientist associates. It is the immersion of hypotheses into the acid of truth. That’s the hard way to do it, but it’s the only way that works.” There was something odd about this edition of Nightline. Why did Koppel reveal the source of his story? And why did he take such pains at fairness that it repudiated Gore’s premise? I contacted the network to see what they knew about their source. Neither Koppel nor ABC News Nightline producer Jay Weiss knew that the Search and Destroy Strategy Guide existed because Gore did not provide it, only a stack of anti-wise use articles and news releases provided by MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider. So I sent them a copy. A little poking around also led to an interesting discovery: Al Gore himself took $1,000 from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church to address their American Leadership Conference just before accepting the vice presidential nomination. Two high ranking environmentalists had also taken $1,000 from Moon’s Unification Church for speeches at a media conference: Marion Clawson of Resources for the Future and Donella Meadows, lead author of The Limits to Growth. What, if anything, did that mean?[3] A little more poking around revealed that Jay Weiss was not the producer originally assigned to investigate Gore’s allegations. The original producer of the “Environmental Science for Sale” segment had been 12-year ABC News veteran Tara Sonenshine. Sonenshine had started her career as a booker, the person who finds newsmakers and makes appointments for interviews. She had a Rolodex® to kill for by the time she became an assistant producer. She knew just about every newsmaker in the world when she received the promotion to full producer, including Al Gore and Tim Wirth and his rich wife Wren. Sonenshine took Gore’s story and ran with it as if she were Gore’s advocate. She scripted it as a truly vicious hit piece. Her original version had painted Lyndon LaRouche operative Rogelio Maduro as a crackpot with ties to the wise use movement, the culprit who allegedly sank the Biodiversity Treaty.[4] It also crucified University of Virginia Professor Patrick Michaels—who, like Fred Singer, challenged global warming computer models—for accepting research funding from industry.[5] It took every cheap shot in the book: sinister lighting to make Professor Michaels look unsavory, industry-sponsored film footage with no context, a one-sided slam against everyone it didn’t like. It was the perfect Green Cartel reprisal. Sonenshine’s show was scheduled to air early in February, but a Nightline assistant producer told me Koppel didn’t like its tone and demanded changes. Sonenshine was chagrined. My source said that during an acrimonious staff meeting, she departed. Whether she was fired or resigned depends on who you ask. The February 8 edition of The Washington Post carried “Rumour du jour: Tara Sonenshine, editorial producer at ABC News’s ‘Nightline,’ is headed for a policy job with national security adviser Anthony Lake. She has been with ‘Nightline’ for 12 years.”[6] The Washington Post reported on February 14 that Tara Sonenshine had been appointed special assistant to the president and deputy director for communications at the National Security Council, “working on longer-term projects, which some uncharitably call an effort to make NSC chief Anthony Lake more TV-genic.”[7] Did Al Gore give her that job as a weenie for doing a hatchet job on the wise use movement? Or as a getaway route when the hatchet broke? Ten days later, “Environmental Science For Sale” was broadcast, much changed, a combination of clips from Sonenshine’s hit piece and the Weiss remake. Sonenshine lasted less than a year at NSC before going to work covering national security for Newsweek.[8] [1] “Environmental Science For Sale,” ABC News Nightline, Ted Koppel, Transcript No. 3329, February 24, 1994. [2] “The Environmental Movement’s Latest Enemy,” ABC News Nightline, Ted Koppel, Transcript No. 2792, February 4, 1992.. [3] Telephone interview with Tom Ward of the Unification Church, New York, March 10, 1994. [4] Telephone interview with Rogelio “Roger” Maduro, Leesburg, Virginia, February 25, 1994. The actual individuals behind the anti-treaty call-in campaign were Tom McDonnell, consultant Michael Coffman, Ph.D. and Kathleen Marquardt of Putting People First. [5] Telephone interview with Prof. Patrick Michaels, Charlottesville, Virginia, February 25, 1994. [6] “The TV Column,” The Washington Post, February 8, 1994, by John Carmody, p. C4. [7] “The Federal Page – In The Loop,” The Washington Post, February 14, 1994, by Al Kamen, p. A13. [8] “Media Notes,” The Washington Post, June 21, 1995, by Howard Kurtz, p. D1.

Search Results for: fred singer – Page 2