jbe, res-<<<A good science reporter is not just going to paraphrase a news release; he/she will check it out with other sources. And the other sources are other scientists. Then the question would be: why don't his peers take him seriously? >>>
This is interesting.... So your assumption is that science writers for the N.Y. Times make objective judgements on the validity of scientific claims based on how that particular scientific body views them? And based on this assumption you have determined that Doctor Singer is not taken seriously by his peers.
hmmmm. Let's see where this may lead us. :-)
First let's take a look at Doctor Singer's Resume.
S. FRED SINGER, Ph.D.
Professional Background
POSITIONS HELD:
1989- Director and President, The Science and Environmental Policy Project. Foundation-funded, independent research group, incorporated in 1992, to advance environment and health policies through sound science. SEPP is a non-profit, education organization.
1994- Distinguished Research Professor, Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
1989-1994 Distinguished Research Professor, Institute for Space Science and Technology, Gainesville, FL. Principal investigator, Cosmic Dust/Orbital Debris Project.
1987-1989 Chief Scientist, U.S. Department of Transportation. Also: Deputy Administrator, Research and Special Programs Administration; Chairman, Navigation Council (GPS applications). Technical advisor on Air Traffic Control System procurement.
1971-1994 Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. Planetary science; global environmental issues (acid rain, greenhouse warming, ozone depletion); cost-benefit analysis; oil and energy(economics and public policy); economic and environmental impacts of population growth.
1970-1971 Deputy Assistant Administrator (Policy), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Also, chaired Interagency Work Group on Environmental Impacts of the Supersonic Transport.
1967-1970 Deputy Assistant Secretary (Water Quality and Research), U.S. Department of the Interior. Also, integrated atmospheric/oceanographic activities within the Department.
1964-1967 (First) Dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL. Expanded the oceanographic institute and added departments of atmospheric sciences and geophysics.
1962-1964 (First) Director, National Weather Satellite Center (now part of NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce. Established operational systems for remote sensing and for management of atmosphere, ocean, and land surface data.
1953-1962 Director, Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and Professor of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Experiments, theory, and publications on rocket and satellite technology, remote sensing, cosmic rays, radiation belts, magnetosphere, the Moon, meteorites, general relativity.
1950-1953 Scientific Liaison Officer, U.S. Office of Naval Research, London. Reported on research in nuclear physics, astrophysics, and geophysics in European universities and laboratories.
1946-1950 Research Physicist, Upper Atmosphere Rocket Program, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Silver Spring, MD. Cosmic ray, ozone, and ionosphere research with instrumented V-2 and Aerobee rockets, launched from White Sands, NM and shipboard.
VISITING POSITIONS:
1997 Research Fellow, Independent Institute, Oakland, CA. Global climate change research.
1992-1993 Distinguished Visiting Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA. Environmental policy and economic impacts.
1991 Guest Scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. U.S. space policy.
1991 Guest Scholar, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Early history of rocket and space science.
1984-1987 Visiting Eminent Scholar, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. Public policy analysis on natural resources, environment, climate effects, strategic defense, space travel.
1982-1983 Senior Fellow, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C. Natural resources policy; oil price forecasts.
1978 (First) Sid Richardson Professor, Lyndon Baines Johnson School for Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin, TX. Studies of manned exploration of Mars and Martian moons.
1972 U.S. National Academy of Sciences Exchange Scholar, Soviet Academy of Sciences Institute for Physics of the Earth, Moscow, USSR.
1971 Federal Executive Fellow, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. Cost-benefit analysis of environmental regulation.
1961-1962 Visiting Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cal Tech, Pasadena, CA. Research and publications on planetary atmospheres.
hmmm. Looks pretty impressive to me! Now let's take take a look at some of his achievements. :-)
HONORS: (Partial List)
Selected as one of "Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation," by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce, 1959.
White House Commendation (President Eisenhower) for early design of space satellites; for drafting in 1954 the resolutions on satellites for IUGG, URSI, and the International Geophysical Year.
Elected to the International Academy of Astronautics (Paris).
Member, European Academy for Environmental Affairs
U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for the development and management of weather satellites.
Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer has published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers over the course of his career. Only a handful of scientists--in any field of research--have anything approaching that number. His most recent peer-reviewed publication on global warming appeared in EOS: Transactions of the AGU (American Geophysical Union), December 16, 1997.
In the last decade, Dr. Singer's key research publications have included a paper on the greenhouse effects of cirrus clouds, published in the Journal of Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics in 1988; publications on ozone depletion, including a paper in EOS in 1988; and a peer-reviewed technical critique on UV-B trends, co-authored with Prof. Patrick Michaels and Paul Knappenberger, published in Science in 1994. He also contributed several book chapters, including an invited chapter on the magnetosphere for a 1997 book published by the American Geophysical Union and an invited chapter on ozone depletion for a NASA book published in 1990.
Dr. Singer was the Principal Investigator (working with a team of scientists from the Institute for Space Science and Technology, Gainesville, Florida) on an experiment launched aboard the LDEF satellite in 1985 and retrieved by the space shuttle in 1990. That experiment resulted in peer-reviewed research papers on the effects of particles moving in the outer atmosphere of the Earth. The first of these research papers was presented at a 1991 international congress of the ICSU Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), published that same year in Advances in Space Research, and has since been expanded and published in numerous reports and journals. For this work, NASA in 1997 presented Dr. Singer with a commendation and cash award "for important contributions to space research."
Dr. Singer has authored or edited 17 books and monographs, six of them on global climate change. They are:
Global Effects of Environmental Pollution (Reidel, 1970)
The Ocean in Human Affairs (Paragon House, 1989), which dealt with ocean circulation and climate
Global Climate Change: Human and Natural Influences (Paragon House, 1989)
The Greenhouse Debate Continued (ICS Press, 1992), a critique of the IPCC science report.
The Scientific Case Against the Global Climate Treaty (SEPP, 1997)
Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute, 1997)
These books are all technical publications and are well-referenced. Global Effects of Environmental Pollution, published in 1970, was one of the first to deal with the possibility of global warming. The book grew--in part--out of Dr. Singer's association with the late Dr. Roger Revelle, a scientist often referred to as the "father of greenhouse warming."
Dr. Singer currently has 5 scientific research papers either in progress or submitted for publication, all of them on global warming. He has presented four of these research papers at scientific conferences hosted by the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and NASA.
Drawing on his books and research, Dr. Singer has given nearly 40 lectures and seminars on global warming in the past year. The list of those organizations that have invited him to speak include the science faculties at Stanford University, University of California-Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, State University of New York-Stony Brook, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, University of Connecticut, University of Colorado, Imperial College-London, Copenhagen University, University of Rome, and Tel Aviv University.
Singer has also given invited seminars at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Max Planck Institute for Extra-Terrestrial Physics in Munich, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. In November 1997, he gave a solo presentation on global warming before an audience of more than 250 people at the Austrian Parliament in Vienna, with follow-up questions and commentary by the five leading Austrian political parties.
President, SEPP
Expertise: Global climate change and the greenhouse effect, depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, acid rain, air pollution, importance and future of the U.S. space program, energy resources and U.S. energy policy.
S. Fred Singer is internationally known for his work on energy and environmental issues. A pioneer in the development of rocket and satellite technology, he devised the basic instrument for measuring stratospheric ozone and was principal investigator on a satellite experiment retrieved by the space shuttle in 1990. He was the first scientist to predict that population growth would increase atmospheric methane--an important greenhouse gas.
Now President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project, a non-profit policy research group he founded in 1990, Singer is also Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University and professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia. His previous government and academic positions include Chief Scientist, U.S. Department of Transportation (1987- 89); Deputy Assistant Administrator for Policy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1970-71); Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water Quality and Research, U.S. Department of the Interior (1967- 70); founding Dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences, University of Miami (1964-67); first Director of the National Weather Satellite Service (1962-64); and Director of the Center for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Maryland (1953-62).
Now jbe, I challenge you and the supposedly objective N.Y.Times to show me a person with equal or better credentials to analyze the effects of Global Warming? I doubt very seriously whether such a person exists. Dr. Singer has been studying the worlds ecosystem for nearly 50 years! If you had to select one person as an expert in the feild of climate research. This would be your person!
And since you asked who these other scientist are. The entire list of names is shown on this site.
oism.org
Next, let's take a look at what I have found regarding the 2500 scientist that the N.Y. Times and nearly every other newspaper reports as the authoritative consensus.
heartland.org
An analysis carried out by Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) shows that fully 90 percent of the "scientists" who have signed a letter frequently cited by administration officials as evidence of scientific consensus on global warming are not qualified to be called experts on the issue. The letter, circulated by the environmental group Ozone Action, offers the names of some 2,600 alleged experts on climate change--only one of whom is, in fact, a climatologist.
"At the same time, we have found people whose expertise is in fields not even remotely related to climatology," noted Patrick Burns, a global warming policy analyst at CSE. "Among these so-called experts on global warming are a plastic surgeon, two landscape architects, one hotel administrator, a gynecologist, seven linguists, and even one person whose academic background is in traditional Chinese medicine."
Burns says CSE's analysis of the list of signatories indicates that fewer than 10 percent of the people who have signed the letter have training or knowledge that would qualify them as experts on global warming. "Supporters of the global warming theory and the President's agenda want us to believe that scientists are just about unanimous in agreeing that humans are causing global warming. What our research shows is that real scientists, those who know what they're talking about, are far from agreement on this issue," Burns added.
And in another example of media bias comes this little tid-bit report.
On January 27, 1992, then-Senator Albert Gore was scheduled to appear on "Larry King Live" to discuss the global warming issue. When he learned that Dr. Fred Singer had been booked to appear on the same program, Gore backed out, saying that he "could not appear under those circumstances." The segment was canceled. A week later, Larry King agreed to let Gore back on the show, alone and unchallenged.
Now do you believe media bias exists jbe? :-)
Michael |
