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OPINION ONLY
S Fred Singer
(Siegried Frederick Singer) — Best known as a climate denier. However Singer also was available for contract work with many poisoning and polluting companies. He is also the author of the Heidelberg Appeal scam. — An atmospheric scientist from the University of Virginia with strong pro-market neo-liberal ideas who set up a number of think-tanks and decided to make a career in assisting corporations challenge the ideas of global warming. He was responsible for a number of very dubious scams — in particular, the Heidelberg Appeal — and a lot of even-more-dubious propaganda.
Despite the way in which his opinions are dismissed by his contemporaries today, Prof. S. Fred Singer has a long and fairly distinguished career in the area of climate change. He is an Austrian-born Doctor of Physical Science and a genuine atmospheric scientist who was the former Director of the Weather Satellite Program and Dean of the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Miami.
He was also Deputy Assistant Administrator of US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which appears to be a political appointment, awarded by President Nixon at a time when the reluctant president had just been pushed into creating the EPA — and was beginning to regret it.
Singer first broke with other climate scientists over their claims that the polar's protective ozone levels were being depleted, and about this time he appears to have thrown in his lot with the chemical companies which tmanufactured CFC's which were then (and now) believed to be the major cause of the depletion problem. His theory was the ozone depletion was entirely a consequence of volcanic activity.
[Climate activist over-react to this connection with the chemical companies. It is likely that the only serious research money available at this time was from these companies. The question is, how much did the source of these funds influence his later views.]
In the late 1980s he and Candace Crandall (his partner) became associated with the Washington Institution for Values in Public Policy which had been set up, funded and supported by the Moonies Unification Church. At this time he also began writing regularly for the Moonie's newspaper, The Washington Times, which was President Reagan's favourite news source.
Singer appears to have progressively abandoned financial support from his university [he has been 'on leave' for decades] and embarked on a career of running and promoting neo-conservative/ulta-libertarian ideas through think-tanks and policy institutes. Virtually all of those he dealt with have had substantial ExxonMobile funding, and most have had strong associations with the tobacco and chemical industries. Science & Environmental Public PolicyIn 1990 he took leave from his post as professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and set up his most infamous climate-denial/junk-science operation, the Science & Environmental Public Policy (SEPP). This was organised with - Candace C Crandwell ( his wife — since divorced)
- Gerhard Stohrer (a biological research chemist),
later: - Fred Seitz, (an ex-nuclear scientist)
- Michel Salomon, (PR for Winthrop-Sterling Pharacueticsls)
When Seitz joined them he provided SEPP with the tobacco link: he was the Emeritus-President of the Rockefeller University, and also a secret consultant to RJ Reynolds Tobacco. All of the SEPP leaders were active in the Republican conservative circles and zealous Cold War warriors.
A Frontline documentary says that SEPP was initially organised and promoted by APCO & Associates a PR firm which, at that time, was totally directed and controlled by Philip Morris (through its corporate lawfirm Arnold & Porter). [APCO also created The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), and the junkscience.com web site for Philip Morris.]
However, Singer clearly was a reluctant shill for the tobacco industry: he only agreed to work for them in attacking the Environmental Protection Agency's Risk Assessment of passive smoking [ETS — as a Class A carcinogen] and was only persuaded when British-American Tobacco's PR firm, Shadwick, suggested that he could remain at arms-length by putting out (in January 1995) a press-release along the lines of the "The 5 Scientific Myths of 1995".
This narrowed attack was directed at the scientific establishment (rather than being in support of tobacco) and it used 'junk-science' claims and highly dubious material from other tobacco-lobby sources (namely the CRS report) to suggest that passive smoke was not a problem. This approach allowed SEPP to hide behind 'scientific' claim that the EPA had over-reacted on such questions as the health threat from radon and ozone depletion, and had relied on the impossible standards of "zero-risk" (Delaney Clause).
Before long his new organization attracted funding from a large number of industrial groups which were interested in climate-denial and anti-activism attacks in areas of the environment and public-health.
APCO specialised in this sort of 'coalition-building' activity for the tobacco industry, but Singer was not willing to be identified as a tobacco-friendly scientist, so he only worked for the cigarette industry at a distance — always careful to put at least one policy/scientific organisation between himself and the source of his funds.
In 1992 he was the principle author of a report prepared for the Tobacco Institute (via the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution) entitled "The EPA and the Science of Environmental Tobacco Smoke". However when the document finally appeared it was buried in a longer and more varied attack on the EPA, and supposedly authored by Kent Jeffreys, one of the staffers at the Institute. Singer was only credited as "Principle Researcher".
SEPP's President, Fred Seitz, another climate denier, worked primarily through the gung-ho, Star-Wars, nuclear-energy promoting, George C Marshall Institute which was heavily funded by the main contractors to the Department of Defence. It's main agenda was to attack communism both from the USSR, and from 'liberal activists' in the USA, which it portrayed as "fellow travellers". Seitz was much closer to tobacco than Singer since he had worked for RJ Reynolds Tobacco as a consultant for decades, and had also done some work for Philip Morris. International Center for a Scientific Ecology (CIES) SEPP's attacks on environmental science also raise the interest of Big Pharma and the chemical companies (Winthrop-Sterling was also into pesticides), and eventually this bought to the surface a French ex-military radical conservative Michel Salomon who had a medical degree and operated as a lobbyist and PR expert for Winthrop-Sterling, and later for the European pharmaceutical industry.
This cabal of neo-conservative science lobbyists were then backed by funding from the asbestos and tobacco industries to organise of a conference in Heidelberg on the handling of hazardous materials. It was directed principly at defeating the US government's Delaney Clause which had been written in a way which forced the regulating agencies (EPA, OSHA) to ensure the complete removal of carcinogenic materials (asbestos fibres from schools, tobacco smoke from workplaces) from human environments. The industries wanted this replaced with the concept that, at low levels, carcinogens could be tolerated because the costs of complete elimination was simply too high.
At that time, it was a reasonable argument (especially with asbestos). And participants at the conference were presented with an already-drafted (by Michel Salomon) Heidelberg Appeal document which stressed the need for governments to pay more attention to scientific opinion, and not allow themselves to be pressured into costly and ineffective toxic clean-up actions by non-scientific doomsayers and overzealous activists. The Heidelberg document originally had nothing to do with climate denial; it was little more than a broad 'motherhood statement' by scientists seeking more influence in such decisions.
SEPP and ICSE, however, took the Heidelberg Appeal to the Rio Earth Summit, and released it through the energy-funded Global Climate Coalition (Candace Crandall was PR for them in Rio) in a way that suggested the signatories were climate deniers. So the context of the release, rather than the statement or the signatories, were interpreted as a major scientific counter to the climate-change discussions.
The media sensed the thrill of a scientific controversy when previously only dull consensus existed at Rio, and they then took up the vague demands of Heidelberg Appeal and promoted them worldwide as if a major group of top scientists were contradicting the scientific findings being discussed. In a convoluted way, this then fed (via Seitz and the George C Marshall Institute), into the later Oregon Petition and Leipzig Declaration which had specific and direct climate denial intentions.
So the consequences of the Heidelberg Appeal were substantial, and Singer and SEPP had a major win which established his reputation, and attracted substantial funds. The later pseudo-scientific petitions, and the rash of 'sound-science institutes' and 'junk-science' web-sites and institutes that were floated by the big corporations, were then carefully crafted to appeal to legitimate scientists with a conservative slant. The scientists became convinced that political extremists had taken control of the scientific establishment.
For many years [before climate denial became untennable] SEPP maintained in the media the fiction that "most climate scientists" didn't believe the global-warming alarmists, and that global warming activism was just the amplified sounds of a "very vocal minority". This is the classic Looking-Glass ploy of maintaining that your opposition is an illusion, when in fact it is your own image which is without substance.
Singer may believe what he says, but he is clearly also a professional shill for the big energy corporations. SEPP, the George C Marshall Institute, and various other climate denial organisations have since been exposed and dissected in numerous articles and a few major television documentaries. However there is still enough ignorance about some of sub-categories of climate change, and still far too many exaggerated claims by the activists.
He is therefore able to continue in his chosen profession as a loudspeaker for the lunatic right of the Republican party, and because of people like Singer, American think-tanks have increasingly gained a reputation as inhabiting a world not entirely divorced from Lewis Carrol.
Singer's latest book "Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate" was published in late 1997 ... but only by the Independent Institute [A right-wing publishes-on-payment think tank]. Clearly he now has no credibility with conventional publishers when he has to resort to this sort of vanity publishing venture.
Postscript
Singer still operates through SEPP even though it has been well exposed as little more than a front for ExxonMobile and other poisoning and polluting industries.
Crandall divorced him and resigned from SEPP in 2001, and she is now an Associate Producer with PBS producing a far-right-wing talk show. And Singer's old partner Gerhard Stohrer runs the faux- Risk Policy Institute out of his home in New York. Seitz recently died.
Some key documents Singer was born September 27, 1924, in Vienna, Austria. He was in America during the years of World War II, and received a Batchelor in Electrical Engineering. from Ohio State University in 1943. Later he earned a PhD from Princeton University in 1948.
In the early 1990s, Singer's wife, Candace Carolyn Crandall, was Executive Vice President of SEPP and is currently a Research Associate of SEPP.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute lists Singer as "expert" on their website.
1989: He is the founder, director, and president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), "a foundation-funded, independent research group, incorporated in 1992, to advance environment and health policies through sound science. SEPP is a non-profit, education organization." (according to their press releases).
1993: Member of the board of the International Center for a Scientific Ecology.(Which SEPP set up and controlled.)
1994– Distinguished Research Professor, Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
2002: Advisory Board Member, American Council on Science and Health
Editorial Advisory Board, The Cato Institute
Adjunct Scholar, National Center for Policy Analysis
Adjunct Fellow, Frontiers of Freedom
2006– Member of the Science Advisory Committee for the Natural Resources Stewardship Project.
It should be noted that, according to Environmental Defense, October 26, 2005: ]
The Cato Institute received $55,000 from ExxonMobil in [2002-2003.]
The National Center for Policy Analysis received $105,000 from ExxonMobil in [2002-2003.]
The Frontiers of Freedom organizations received $282,000 from ExxonMobil in [2002-2003.]
The American Council on Science and Health received $35,000 from ExxonMobil in [2002-2003.]
1992 Feb 21: Bonner Cohen's EPA Watch newsletter (funded by Philip Morris) notes that Singer is critical of the NASA actions on ozone depletion. Cohen lists him as the director of the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy. This is a year after the founding of SEPP  
1991: Mar/E Possible ghost-bylines
) Dr. Fred Singer — University of Virginia. Charged that the EPA-supported theories of global warming and global ozone depletion are not backed up by the scientific evidence. Has charged that several major government studies that found information contrary to "politically correct" issues (acid rain), was ignored . At a Consumer's Research seminar in D.C. that dealt with official regulations frequently have little basis in scientific fact, being instead driven instead by political/social factors. "The tendency not only to misuse science but to ignore it is very strong" in policy decisions concerning global warming, ozone depletions, and acid rain. Has spoken on issue of cost of other environmental problems. Singer was director of the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, on leave from Uva's department of environmental science.
1991 Mar 15: Gerhard Stohrer wrote as director of the Washington Institute's Chemical Risk Program ("which aims to affirm practical and scientifically sound environmental standards") to the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR) requesting funding for arsenic research. He was also the Director of Chemical Risks at SEPP, and later a key member of the ICSE (Heidelberg Appeal organisation).
1991: Guest scholar at Smithsonian +Woodrow Wilson Intl Center for Scholars
1992: with Alexis d toq and Jeffreys in 1992
1992 Feb 21: - EPA WATCH [2501050015/0018] still head of Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy (on leave from Uni of Virg) fighting the idea that the ozone hole problem was worse than anticipated.
In the first Vol 1 No 1 EPA Watch
1992 April: THE OZONE SCARE: POLICY BY PRESS RELEASE
[2074144038] "It took careful reading to discover that nothing at all was happening to the ozone" Took up cudgels on behalf of the CFC manufacturers.
1992 May: WASHINGTON, D.C. EXPERTS QUESTION SCIENCE BEHIND HEALTH AND SAFETY REGULATIONS 2074144188/4189A
"the tendency not only to misuse science but to ignore it is very strong" in policy decisions concerning global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain.
1993 March 8: Tom Hockaday of APCO Associates (at this time the PR company owned and controlled by Philip Morris) is ghostwriting and/or doctoring up articles for Dwight Lee and S Fred Singer. Hockaday writes to his contact Ellen Merlo at PM (and her associates):
As you know we have been working with Dr Fred Singer and Dr Dwight Lee, who have authored articles on junk science and indoor air quality, (IAQ), respectively.
Attached you will find copies of the junk science and IAQ articles whiich have been approved by Drs Singer and Lee. You will also find attached copies of biographies for Drs Singer and Lee.
We discussed with Dr Singer, Ellen [Merlo]'s suggestion for the junk science article to have a more personal, introduction, however he is adamant that this would not be his style.
We are planning to send to you by close ot business today, draft copies of three
additional articles that are being prcpared on the following, topics:
- the economic impact of excessive rcgulation and junk science — based on my conversation with Tina [Walls] regarding the hearings in California.
- effects of government regulation on business, and
- civil/personal liberties
1993 March 4: WS article ENVIRONMENTAL FEAR-MONGERS EXPOSED
[2025528264] NOTE SENT BY APCO ON SAME DAY AS ABOVE
1993 MAR 8: APCO also send Junk Science at the EPA JUNK SCIENCE AT THE EPA [2021178206/8208] At this time he is Visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute'
1993 March 16: ICSE guidelines for linear risk seminar in Paris list Professor Gerhard Stohrer as speaking on the risks of arsenic. (see above)
1994: Singer was the Principal Reviewer of a report authored by Kent Jeffreys titled Science, economics, and environmental policy: a critical examination which was published by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI), a conservative think tank of which he was a Senior Fellow.[17] The report attacked the United States Environmental Protection Agency for their 1993 study about the cancer risks of passive smoking and called it "junk science". Singer also appeared on a tobacco industry list of people who could write op-ed pieces defending the industry's views, according to a peer-reviewed commentary by Derek Yach and Stella Aguinaga Bialous
1994 Aug: — Oct Alexis de Tocqueville release a summary of (mainly) Fred Singers activities on behalf of the climate deniers. This is an amazing flurry of anti-climate output in a few months. This has been sent to Philip Morris [who probably paid for the activity (as a diversion??)
1994: Briefing Congress on sound science with Fred Singer and Ken Jeffreys of the Alexis de Toqu Insitute 1994 [503098402]
1994: exposed by Nightline accepting money from Exxon, etc.
- Prof. S. Fred Singer, Doctor of Physical Science ; President of the Science & Environmental Policy Project : former Director Weather Satellite Program : Dean of the School of Environmental Sciences. University of Miami : Deputy Assistant Administrator of US Environmental Protection Ageny (EPA)
1996 Jan 12: Joe Helewicz of B&W Corporate Communications advises his Executive Committee: "Mick asked that I brief you on our most recent effort to publicize the Congressional Research Service (CRS) report which was critical of the EPA's findings on environmental tobacco smoke."
He list: SEPP's publication of its "Top Five Environmental Policy Myths" which endorsed the CRS report saying:
"SEPP reviewed the CRS report on the recommendation of our public relations agency, Shandwich, which served as intermediary for B&W. SEPP initially was reluctant to publicly take the lead on a tobacco issue, so Shandwick recommended the concept of creating a "myth list." Although the CRS report would be the focal point of publicity activities, SEPP packaged four other issues — global warming, radon, "zero risk" and stratospheric ozone."
The publicity plan was launched January 10 with a national press release. Dr S Fred Singer, SEPP president, agreed to an aggressive media interview schedule arranged by Shandwick. [] Dr Singer has agreed to additional news media interviews and will incorporate the CRS messages into future speeches. Dr Singer also plans to write articles for editorial papers. The Shandwick public Relations agency will continue to coordinate."
2001 Feb: Divorced from Candice Crandall
Possible use of his name as a by-line (See Crandall)
The original letter from APCO to Philip Morris in March 1993 proposing a list of scientists and academics who were possible candidates to allow their names to be used in op-ed articles, etc. Note that it uses some of the same material that was developed in the final list:
The full list of scientists who would be approached to allow their names to be used as bylines on op-ed articles, etc.
ICSE coordinator. [2028385656]
Doctor of Physical Science
Pres of SEPP
former Director US Weather Satellite Program
Dean of School of Environmental Sciences, Uni of Miami
Dept Ass Admin of US EPA
—S. Fred Singer (1924- ), a physicist at the University of Maryland, proposed a Minimum Orbital Unmanned Satellite of the Earth (MOUSE) at the fourth Congress of the International Astronautics Federation in Zurich, Switzerland, in the summer of 1953. It had been based upon two years of previous study conducted under the auspices of the British Interplanetary Society, which had built on the post-war research of the V-2 rocket. The Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel at White Sands discussed Singer's plan in April 1954. In May, Singer presented his MOUSE proposal at the Hayden
Planetarium's fourth Space Travel Symposium. MOUSE was the first satellite proposal widely discussed in non-governmental engineering and scientific circles, although it never was adopted. See
"Singer, S. Fred," biographical file, NASA Historical Reference Collection.
Involved in the development of early satellite weather systems.
Member of TASCC anti environmentalist who runs SEPP. He was a former University of Virginia professor, and has extensive ties to the fossil fuels industry. On a Nightline program (feb 1994) it was revealed that he acted as a consultant to Exxon, Shell, Arco, Unocal and Sun Oil. His organisation also receives funding from Philip Morris, Texaco and Monsanto.
His wife is publicist Candice Crandall, and close associates are Patrick Michales, Michel Salomon, and Frederick Seitz
At a Congressional ozone depletion hearing in 1995 he was caught out in a lie — claimed to have published several peer-reviewed papers on ozone holes — but none were found.
According to the Environmental Research Foundation: "For years, Singer was a professor at the University of Virginia where he was funded by energy companies to pump out glossy pamphlets pooh-poohing climate change. Singer hasn't published original research on climate change in 20 years and is now an `independent' consultant, who spends his time writing letters to the editor, and testifying before Congress, claiming that ozone-depletion and global warming aren't real problems.
1992 Feb 19: Article on Rio in WSJ [2074144017] 19 Feb 1992
1993 May: Claims about Alar, Times Beach, Delaney Clause [2025492663]
1994: Principle Reviewer at Alex de Toqu institute involved in SCIENCE, ECONOMICS, AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION
Bates Number: [91826391/6460]
1994 Aug 11: Still listing Professor Emeritus of Environ Sciences, Uni of Virg
+ President of SEPP
AdeToq report ETS, Radon, Superfund [TI16791055]
Physicist, former Director US Weather Satellite Program
[2028443741]
* Singer, S Fred
Editorial in WSJ on Earth Summit [2074144017] 19 Feb 1992
* Singer, S Fred
Listed as Uni of VA
running the Science A Basis for Environmental Policy section [2025813954/3959] 1990 (Fred Singer's workshop at AAAS meeting)
1993: Editorial Advisory Board 1993 Cato Instutute, Regulation magazine, Editors [2065193947/4038]
1992 Apr 27: Writing on ozone in Detroit News' Denying any problem existed
A more likely explanation is that tf NASA waited until the end of the experiment and did not find an ozone hole, any announcement would immediately lose its publicity value.
By holding out the possibility, however slim, that a hole might develop, the NASA project could improve its budget outlook and perhaps even have a policy impact. NASA's game plan has proved successful
See page 70
[He suggests SO2 might be the cause of high readings. Credentials: "He designed the currently used instrument for measuring ozone from satellites" ]
1992 Nov 21: Scripps Howard News Service (St Louis Post Distpach)b Mark Schlinkann. Scientists ripped as alarmists in ecology warning. 'It's the usual hype we've come to expect" from the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Candace Crandall, executive director of the Science and Environmemal Policy Center a research group. These kinds of tactics do little to clarify the reality and extent of our environmental problems and even help to bring about effective costings of some solutions.
S. Fred Singer. director of the Science and Environmental Policy Project. said the US environment is improving and population growth is stabilizing. He added that various parts of the world have problems, but that most are local in nature — such as a Iack of space for garbage in the United States.
Mr. Singer a former professor of environmental sciences at the University
of Virginia. said the concerned scientists union's statement was part of a "numbers game[. He said the group might have been trying to offset the Heidelberg Appeal . a statement signed by 1,800 scientists last year which said "adequately managed science and technology are "indespensible tools" in overcoming problems such as overpopulation, starvation and worldwide diseases.
Singer said that the appeal amounted to "a revolt by scientists tired of seeing science constantly politicized, used and mistreated."
See page 66
1996 Feb 2: SEPP and Singer being used to promote the CRS report. Claims that meta-analysis is a suspect technique.
1998 Apr: Newsweek reported "In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine — including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon — met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty." The plan was reportedly aimed at "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom'" on climate change. According to Newsweek, the plan was leaked to the press and therefore was never implemented.[15
ABC News has reported that Singer insists he is not on the payroll of the energy industry, but admits he once received an unsolicited $10,000 from Exxon.[16]
1999: Blue Smoke, Mirrors, and Designer Science: How the Public Relations Industry Compromises Democracy by Brian Siano (Skeptic magazine)
The Washington Times runs a regular column by Fred Singer, director of the Science and Environmental Policy Project [SEPP]. He's been a paid consultant to ARCO, Exxon, Shell, Sun Oil, and Unocal, and many of his column inches are expended in denouncing claims of global warming. In one 1994 column, Singer claimed that climate models had overestimated increases in temperature; Paul Ehrlich notes that Singer hadn't included 1980's data in his graph ("the warmest years in recorded history,") and that the models Singer attacked hadn't incorporated the cooling effect of aerosols. The models that did do this were closer to the recorded trends. (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1996)
http://www.briansiano.com/Science%20and%20PR%20article.htm
2007,: the nonprofit advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists called Singer a "climate contrarian.
A 2007 Newsweek cover story on climate change denial reported that: "In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine — including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon — met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty." The plan was reportedly aimed at "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom'" on climate change. According to Newsweek, the plan was leaked to the press and therefore was never implemented.[15] ABC News has reported that Singer insists he is not on the payroll of the energy industry, but admits he once received an unsolicited $10,000 from Exxon.[16]
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