"Climate science is in a disgraceful state,
and Fred Singer tried as best he could
to keep the climate cabal honest."
Chuck Wiese, Meteorologist
Atmospheric physicist
S. Fred Singer, PhD,
passed on at the age of 95.
Singer’s impacts on
the world of science
will live on long after
this generation
also passes on.
Dr. Singer’s was born to a Jewish family in Austria in 1924. He escaped to England when Adolf Hitler invaded the country in 1938. During the war, he immigrated to the U.S., where he joined the U.S. Navy. He later obtained a Ph.D. from Princeton.
He served the U.S. Embassy in London as a scientific liaison officer (1950-53), served as one of 12 members of the American Astronautical Society of the nation’s top 300 scientists (1954-56), was director of the Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Maryland (1953–62); was the first director of the National Weather Satellite Service (1962– 64); founding dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami (1964–67); deputy assistant secretary for water quality and research, U.S. Department of the Interior (1967– 70); deputy assistant administrator for policy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1970–71); vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA) (1981–86); and chief scientist, U.S. Department of Transportation (1987– 89).
In 1990, Fred established the Science and Environmental Energy Project (SEPP), which I discovered in 1997 ( I started using the internet in 1996). I had read that burning fossil fuels was bad for the environment, and looked for information online. One source I found was a bibliography of URL inks at www.SEPP.org that I still read today. "The Week That Was" has since expanded into a several page newsletter, written by the current SEPP president, Ken Haapala, plus the usual list of links to articles and studies. That list is a primary source for climate science reading that me to find summarize for this blog.
The Week That Was, this week, was a tribute to Mr. Singer, including:
"Singer recognized that the most important greenhouse gas is not carbon dioxide, but water vapor, the changes in which are too often ignored. Without greenhouse gases, life on this planet would be far different, with most major land masses deeply freezing at night, making complex life on them nearly impossible.
Singer strongly believed that the principles of the scientific method should apply to environmental regulations, especially in eliminating error. In 1990, he formed the Science and Environmental Policy Project to use the scientific method to evaluate environmental and energy policies. A number of distinguished scientists joined him in this effort.
Concerned that the UN was presenting a narrow, one-sided view of the extremely complex processes changing the earth’s weather and climate, while ignoring the comprehensive temperature trends compiled from satellite data, in 2007 Singer formed the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) to counter the UN view that human emissions of carbon dioxide control climate.
Hundreds of scientists world-wide
have participated in NIPCC reports
especially in the last series:
Climate Change Reconsidered II;
The Physical Science;
Biological Impacts;
Why Scientist Disagree
about Global Warming.
These reports present extensive data that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide have an important role in increasing biodiversity and the observed greening of the earth, while have only a minor role altering the planet’s temperatures. Nature, natural variation, dominates.
All the reports were published by The Heartland Institute."
In the summer of 2019,
with his 95th birthday approaching,
over 150 professional scientists
signed a document reading:
“We, the undersigned,
write to express
our deep gratitude
for your outstanding
leadership in the field
of climate science
over many decades.
We are greatly
indebted to you.
You have been
the ‘mentor’
to many of us.
From you
we have learned
not only science,
but patience and
endurance in
dealing with others.
With praise, affection
and love, we say:
Thank you,
Dr. Fred Singer.”