Fred Singer, scientist and climate-change skeptic, dies at 95
S. Fred Singer, a scientist who made key advances in rocketry and atmospheric research in the 1950s and 1960s but became better known in later years for his persistent criticism of the scientific consensus surrounding climate change and global warming, died April 6 at a nursing home in Rockville, Maryland. He was 95.
A cousin, Rochelle "Rocky" Lieberman, confirmed the death and said she did not know the precise cause.
Dr. Singer was a Princeton-trained physicist who held a number of prestigious academic posts throughout his career, including as a longtime professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
He conducted some of the first experiments with high-altitude rockets and satellites, measuring cosmic rays and other components in the upper atmosphere. He was a consultant during the start-up of the U.S. space program in the 1950s and later, while working for what is now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, participated in early efforts to use satellites in weather forecasting.
Singer was a professor at the University of Maryland in the 1950s, then in 1964 became the first dean of a school of environmental and planetary studies at the University of Miami. He held high-ranking positions at the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency before joining the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1971.
During those years, Singer wrote dozens if not hundreds of research papers and contributed articles to the popular press, including a 1967 essay in The Washington Post, written as a retrospective view from the year 2007.
Among his activities, he foresaw an "increased reliance on the electronic computer and data processor" and "increased understanding of our environment" that included climate-modifying "planetary engineering." The melting of ice caps and the redirecting of rivers could help irrigate the arid Southwest and produce "a general improvement to the climate of the North American Arctic," he wrote.
Warning of the dangers of overpopulation in 1971, Singer noted, "Environmental quality is not a luxury; it is an absolute necessity of life."
At that time, he advocated the "conservation of resources" and "above all ... choosing lifestyles which permit 'growth' of a type that makes a minimum impact on the ecology of the earth's biosphere."
As some of his predictions came into focus and others faded from view over the next half-century, Singer came to occupy a different place in the scientific world. Somewhere along the line, Singer's views of science became entwined with a libertarian, anti-communist political viewpoint that made him increasingly outspoken and contrarian.
He found a new purpose as a scourge who sought to denigrate other scientists who warned the public about secondhand smoke, greenhouse gas emissions, acid rain and the dangers of a steadily warming climate.
"It's all bunk," he often said.
"Stop worrying, don't worry," he told a gathering at Colorado State University in 2011. "Nothing you do will have any effect on the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere. Even if it did have an effect, it won't affect the planet."
In 1990, Singer founded the Virginia-based Science and Environmental Policy Project "to challenge government environmental policies based on poor science." The group's mission statement notes that "omitting critical data violates the scientific method" - precisely what Singer's critics accused him of doing.
In 2007, he helped launch the Non-governmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) - a climate-skeptical counterpart to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
From climate to tobacco to air pollution, Singer held firm to one consistent principle: Government regulation was wrong. Over time, he focused his attention mostly on climate change, becoming perhaps the best-known scientist speaking out in opposition to a growing body of evidence that rising global temperatures could have a catastrophic effect on the planet.
"There is no debate among any statured scientists of what is happening," Harvard University earth scientist James McCarthy said in 1997. "The only debate is the rate at which it's happening."
Genial and glib, Singer spoke in a British accent and was eager to spread his views in speeches, articles and interviews.
"There is nothing remotely like scientific consensus that global warming is occurring, or if it is, that it will have disastrous consequences," he wrote in 1991 in his regular column in the Washington Times. "A respectable body of opinion in the international scientific community holds that any climate warming is as likely to be beneficial as harmful, acting as a hedge against global cooling."
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