Monday, November 09, 2009

Fred Singer - Is that the best they've got?

I listened to a radio program which had one of the handful of climate deniers who are proper scientists; Fred Singer. Not very credible given he also denies the link of cigarette smoke and cancer and the dangers of DDT. Here's a few quotes from Mr Singer: "There's nothing we can really do to effect the climate. We might be able, if we work really, really hard to change slightly the level of CO2 in the atmosphere." He then goes on to talk about the burning of oil and gas; "Human activity is changing the composition of the atmosphere slightly."

On all the evidence on melting ice caps and increased sea temperatures; "I don't pay much attention to that and I'll tell you why. If glaciers are melting all it tells you is that it is getting a little warmer - we don't need falsifiers to tell us that, we have thermometers."

Finally; "I don't' make predictions about the future."

Shocking - so he doubts that change is happening, doubts that humans are causing it, dismisses the evidence and ignores the stuff that does not fit his narrow world view.

In summary a confused, ill-informed mess of the usual denial memes stating the warming is not a problem, its all natural anyway, it's really cooling, humans are not to blame blah blah.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No he's not the best we've got but with guys like Singer and others we're winning the climate battle in the minds of the public. And that's where it counts. Have a nice day.

Ben said...

Anonynous
I don't know what you mean by 'we'. Climate denial is not some kind of popular uprising against the system, but a top down disinformation program executed by billionaires for their own purposes.

Fred Singer is employed by several free-farket think-tanks to advance the interests of their Corporate donors. If you're not on the pay-roll of any of these, you have no agency in the matter, and are not part the 'we' that is promoting it. Your sole requirement is to believe and obey.

anarchist said...

"And that's where it counts."

Only a follower of psuedo-science could think that winning a battle of science in the court of public opinion is any kind of victory for science. Sad.