alt.energy.renewable

March 27, 2008



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342276,00.html



By any standard, atmospheric physicist Dr. S. Fred Singer is a
remarkably accomplished scientist. But his outspoken questioning of
global warming alarmism has just earned him one of the most outrageous
mainstream media smear pieces I've ever seen.



ABC News reporter Dan Harris interviewed Singer for more than an hour at
the recent International Climate Conference. From that interview, Harris
produced a three-minute TV broadcast and Web site article that was about
as fair and objective toward Singer as I might expect Greenpeace to be.



In fact, considering the activist group's dominant role in Harris'
"report," it seems that ABC News was merely the production company for a
Greenpeace propaganda hit.



Harris' piece starts out, "His fellow scientists call him a fraud, a
charlatan and a showman, but Fred Singer calls himself 'a realist.'" And
just who are these "fellow scientists"? Harris didn't identify them.



But I doubt anyone who knows anything about Singer could slander him
like that in good conscience. Armed with a doctorate from Princeton
University, Singer played a key role in the U.S. Navy's development of
countermeasures for mine warfare during World War II.



From there, Singer achieved fame in space science. Some of his major
accomplishments include using rockets to make the first measurements of
cosmic radiation in space along with James A. Van Allen (1947-50);
designing the first instrument for measuring stratospheric ozone (1956);
developing the capture theory for the origin of the Moon and Martian
satellites (1966); calculating the increase in methane emissions due to
population growth that is not key to global warming and ozone depletion
theories (1971); and discovering orbital debris clouds with satellite
instruments (1990).



Singer is exceedingly modest about his career. Although I have known him
for more than a decade, I only inadvertently learned of his earlier
achievements last year while reading "Sputnik: The Shock of the Century"
(Walker & Company, 2007), which chronicles the development of the U.S.
Space Program.



The book described Singer, along with Van Allen, as a "pioneer of space
science." The author also wrote, "America's journey into space can
arguably be traced to a gathering at James Van Allen's house in Silver
Spring, Maryland on April 5, 1950. The guest of honor was the eminent
British geophysicist Sydney Chapman. The other guests were S. Fred
Singer."



Among his many prominent positions, Singer was the first director of the
National Weather Satellite Center and the first dean of the University
of Miami's School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences. He's also
held many senior administrative positions at federal agencies, including
the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Transportation and
Department of Interior.



Despite this illustrious bio, ABC News' Harris apparently was too busy
swallowing the Greenpeace caricature of Singer to do any research on the
actual man.



In a letter to ABC News, Singer complained that "Dan Harris also
referred to unnamed scientists from NASA, Princeton and Stanford, who
pronounced what I do as 'fraudulent nonsense'. They are easily
identified as the well-known global warming zealots Jim Hansen, Michael
Oppenheimer and Steve Schneider. They should be asked by ABC to put
their money where their mouth is and have a scientific debate with me. I
suspect they'll chicken out. They surely know that the facts support my
position - so they resort to anonymous slurs."



Perhaps the most comical part of Harris' hit piece is the Greenpeace
contribution. In the eco-activist tradition of willful ignorance and ad
hominem attack, Greenpeace's Kert Davies said of Singer, "He's kind of a
career skeptic. He believes that environmental problems are all
overblown and he's made a career on being that voice."



Right, Kert. Singer is just now making his career. And just who is Kert
Davies, described by Harris as a "global warming specialist," and what
exactly qualifies him to pass any sort of judgment on Singer? I e-mailed
Kert a request for his resume in order to learn precisely what a "global
warming specialist" is. I received no response as of the writing of this
column.



Singer's eminent qualifications and lifetime of accomplishment are
readily available on the Internet for all to see. What about Davies'
qualifications and accomplishments? I couldn't find them on the
Greenpeace Web site; I couldn't find them through a Nexis search.



Is it possible that their Internet absence is indicative of their
general nature? All that I could find out about Davies is that the media
often has used quotes from him in the role of a spokesman for various
eco-activist groups since the mid-1990s.



Worse than Davies is ABC News' Harris. Although he didn't need any
particular qualifications or expertise to fairly report the interview
with Singer other than perhaps some basic journalistic objectivity, he
couldn't even manage that as he allowed the distinguished Singer to be
smeared by a rather undistinguished blowhard.



This column recently reported on another recent mainstream media effort
to marginalize those who question global warming alarmism. It's a
fascinating phenomenon given that available scientific evidence on the
all-important relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global
climate indisputably supports Singer's point of view rather than the
alarmists.



Apparently the activists have decided that since they can't destroy the
facts, they'll instead try to destroy anyone who dares mention them.



Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com. He is a
junk science expert, advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar
at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.


--



Warmest Regards

Bonzo

Get The TRUE Facts At
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html

Excellent Links At
http://www.warwickhughes.com/


"...and I think future generations are not going to blame us for
anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a degree
panic us"
Dr. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology MIT and Member of the
National Academy of Sciences


"What most commentators-and many scientists-seem to miss is that the
only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes"
Dr. Richard Lindzen


[most of the current alarm over climate change is based on] "inherently
untrustworthy climate models, similar to those that cannot accurately
forecast the weather a week from now." Dr. Richard Lindzen