Year 2, Month 8, Day 5: Send In The Clowns

The July 19 Colorodoan (CO) runs an article very properly pointing out that arch-denialist Fred Singer is a buffoon:

Don’t worry, be happy about the changing climate.

And don’t believe newspaper articles like this one – the mainstream media are not to be trusted because reporters have been “brainwashed” to believe the prevailing wisdom of climate science, which suggests climate change is real and caused by people.

Those were the messages Monday evening from Colorado State University emeritus atmospheric science professor William Gray and the “dean” of climate change skeptics, Fred Singer, an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia. Singer and Gray spoke to a sometimes unruly and tense audience in a packed CSU auditorium in attempts to convince them that most climate science is “hokum” and “bunk.”

Fear about climate change, Singer said, is a “psychosis” because global warming is natural and harmless.

Presenting almost no data while being peppered with questions from some of CSU’s other atmospheric scientists and faculty, the pair emphatically denied the climate has warmed significantly in recent decades and said rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have only positive implications for humans.

It’s always good to indulge in a little bit of justified character assassination. Sent July 19:

Fred Singer is a living example of Upton Sinclair’s apothegm, “It is difficult to make a man understand something when his paycheck depends upon his not understanding it.” His denials of oil company funding are Nixonian shadings of the truth; many of the organizations he’s affiliated with rely heavily on the fossil fuel industry for their support. If he examined the evidence for human causes of climate change with the kind of genuine skepticism any good professional scientist employs, he’d be forced to abandon a gratifying and remunerative position. Accorded disproportionate prominence in the media due to his rejection of the worldwide climatological consensus on global warming, Singer’s credibility is summarized neatly in your article’s fifth paragraph. “Presenting almost no data,” is not a phrase appropriate to a credible scientist. Singer’s not a skeptic, but a corporate shill exploiting public confusion and fear for personal gain.

Warren Senders