53 Facts About Fred Singer

Fred Singer is the author or editor of several books, including Global Effects of Environmental Pollution, The Ocean in Human Affairs, Global Climate Change, The Greenhouse Debate Continued, and Hot Talk, Cold Science.

Fred Singer co-authored Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years with Dennis Avery, and Climate Change Reconsidered with Craig Idso.

Fred Singer designed mines for the US Navy during World War II, before obtaining his Ph.

Fred Singer became a leading figure in early space research, was involved in the development of earth observation satellites, and in 1962 established the National Weather Bureau's Satellite Service Center.

Fred Singer was the founding dean of the University of Miami School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences in 1964, and held several government positions, including deputy assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, and chief scientist for the Department of Transportation.

Fred Singer held a professorship with the University of Virginia from 1971 until 1994, and with George Mason University until 2000.

Fred Singer argued, contrary to the scientific consensus on climate change, that there is no evidence that global warming is attributable to human-caused increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that humanity would benefit if temperatures do rise.

Fred Singer was an opponent of the Kyoto Protocol, and has claimed that climate models are neither based on reality nor evidence.

Fred Singer was accused of rejecting peer-reviewed and independently confirmed scientific evidence in his claims concerning public health and environmental issues.

Fred Singer was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family.

Fred Singer's father was a jeweler and his mother a homemaker.

Fred Singer ended up in England, where he lived in Northumberland, working for a time as a teenage optician.

Fred Singer taught physics at Princeton while he worked on his masters and his doctorate, obtaining his Ph.

Fred Singer was discharged in 1946 and joined the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Program at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland, working there until 1950.

Fred Singer focused on ozone, cosmic rays, and the ionosphere, all measured using balloons and rockets launched from White Sands, New Mexico, or from ships out at sea.

Fred Singer was one of the first scientists to urge the launching of earth satellites for scientific observation during the 1950s.

Fred Singer proposed that satellite measurement of ultraviolet backscatter could be used as a method to measure atmospheric ozone profiles.

Fred Singer moved back to the United States in 1953, where he took up an associate professorship in physics at the University of Maryland, and at the same time served as the director of the Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

Fred Singer developed a new method of launching rockets into space: firing them from a high-flying plane, both with and without a pilot.

The Navy adopted the idea and Fred Singer supervised the project.

Fred Singer received a White House Special Commendation from President Eisenhower in 1954 for his work.

Fred Singer became a full professor at Maryland in 1959, and was chosen that year by the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce as one of the country's ten outstanding young men.

Fred Singer became known for his early predictions about the properties of the electrical particles trapped around the earth, which were partly verified by later discoveries in satellite experiments.

Time magazine wrote in 1969 that Fred Singer had had a lifelong fascination with Phobos and Mars's second moon, Deimos.

Fred Singer told Time it might be possible to pull Deimos into the Earth's orbit so it could be examined.

In 1962, on leave from the university, Fred Singer was named as the first director of meteorological satellite services for the National Weather Satellite Center, now part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and directed a program for using satellites to forecast the weather.

Fred Singer told Time magazine in 1969 that he enjoyed moving around.

In December 1965, The New York Times reported on a conference Fred Singer hosted in Miami Beach during which five groups of scientists, working independently, presented research identifying what they believed was the remains of a primordial flash that occurred when the universe was born.

Fred Singer accepted a professorship in Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia in 1971, a position he held until 1994, where he taught classes on environmental issues such as ozone depletion, acid rain, climate change, population growth, and public policy issues related to oil and energy.

Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway say that Fred Singer was involved in the Reagan administration's efforts to prevent regulatory action to reduce acid rain.

Fred Singer believed in what Rachel White Scheuering calls "free-market environmentalism": that market principles and incentives should be sufficient to lead to the protection of the environment and conservation of resources.

In October 1967, Fred Singer wrote an article for The Washington Post from the perspective of 2007.

Fred Singer's predictions included that planets had been explored but not colonized, and although rockets had become more powerful they had not replaced aircraft and ramjet vehicles.

Fred Singer debated the astronomer Carl Sagan on ABC's Nightline, regarding the possible environmental effects of the Kuwaiti oil fires.

Fred Singer argued that it would rise to 3,000 feet then be rained out after a few days.

The public debates in which Fred Singer received most criticism have been about second-hand smoke and global warming.

Fred Singer questioned the link between second-hand smoke and lung cancer, and was an outspoken opponent of the mainstream scientific view on climate change; he argued there is no evidence that increases in carbon dioxide produced by human beings is causing global warming and that the temperature of the earth has always varied.

Fred Singer was involved in 1994 as writer and reviewer of a report on the issue by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, where he was a senior fellow.

Fred Singer told CBC's The Fifth Estate in 2006 that he stood by the position that the EPA had "cooked the data" to show that second-hand smoke causes lung cancer.

Fred Singer told CBC it made no difference where the money came from.

Fred Singer argues there is no evidence that the increases in carbon dioxide produced by humans cause global warming, and that if temperatures do rise it will be good for humankind.

Fred Singer predicted disastrous economic damage from any restrictions on fossil fuel use, and argued that the natural world and its weather patterns are complex and ill-understood, and that little is known about the dynamics of heat exchange from the oceans to the atmosphere, or the role of clouds.

Fred Singer has repeatedly criticized the climate models that predict global warming.

Scheuering writes that Fred Singer had cut ties with the institute, and was funded by foundations and oil companies.

Fred Singer writes that he was a paid consultant for many years for ARCO, ExxonMobil, Shell, Sun Oil Company, and Unocal, and that SEPP had received grants from ExxonMobil.

Fred Singer said his financial relationships did not influence his research.

ABC News reported in March 2008 that Fred Singer said he is not on the payroll of the energy industry, but he acknowledged that SEPP had received one unsolicited charitable donation of $10,000 from ExxonMobil, and that it was one percent of all donations received.

Fred Singer said that his connection to Exxon was more like being on their mailing list than holding a paid position.

Fred Singer responded with a letter to Science saying the IPCC report had presented material selectively.

Fred Singer wrote the "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change in the US" in 1995, updating it in 1997 to rebut the Kyoto Protocol.

Scheuering writes that Fred Singer circulated this in the United States and Europe and gathered 100 signatories, though she says some of the signatories' credentials were questioned.

Fred Singer set up the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change in 2004 after the 2003 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Milan.

Fred Singer prepared an NIPCC report called "Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate," published in March 2008 by the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank.