Fred Singer is a 'climate scientist'? And here I was thinking he was an Exxon Mobile superannuant!

Club Troppo has pulled a really entertaining rabbit out of the hat since 19 December, with its online debate headed by David Evans a well-known greenhouse sceptic.

This is a serious debate worth visiting and, if you have a mind to obey the rules, participating in.

It made my day to read Evan's describing Fred Singer as a climate scientist.

Now S. Fred Singer may be a lot of things (including a man with a couple of decent university degrees, an extended work history in atmospheric physics and a published author), but a reputable voice on climate science he has not been for some time.

As far as I can tell he is fatally compromised by his perceived longstanding relationship with Exxon and other big oil/energy companies as well as his association with the discredited Frederick Seitz petition and, his constant repetition of a fear that developing climate change policy will in turn distort energy policy, a principle argument that there is no global warming trend and there might even be a cooling trend and, an assertion that an emissions trading scheme would just be a tax ruse.

Indeed Singer has been a denialist since at least 1998 when this correspondence occurred.
However, almost every argument he has floated over the years seems to be easily refutable by academics and working scientists.

This has led Singer to assume the position of front man for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) which appears to represent the published opinion of around 23 authors who reputedly are not all scientists and, his Science & Environmental Policy Project founded in 1990 is beginning to sound distinctly nutty.

Now I am aware that there has been legitimate scientific opinion which has swum against the tide in the past and later been proved right, but Fred Singer appears to have done no independent or collaborative science in years and apparently relies on a anti-global warming stance he developed years ago before much of the current data had been either gathered or collated.

The fact that the NIPCC document published this year online has purportedly 'peer reviewed' the same primary sources as the UN international panel does not give cause for comfort because of the small number of participants involved.

As Singer has reportedly also published his doubts about the links between second hand smoke and lung cancer and between UV rays and skin cancer one has to wonder at anyone citing him as an expert.

NIPCC's 2008 Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate can be found here.