Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumHow Much Of A Lying Asshole Was The Now-Dead Denier Fred Singer? This Much Of A Lying Asshole
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By this time, climate scientists were also in Singers sights. In early 1991, just a few years before inventing the whaling controversy, Singer had shown up at the office of oceanographer Roger Revelle, a pioneering and widely respected climate researcher with the University of California, San Diego. Singer wanted to discuss a draft paper that hed written, and which Revelle had received months earlier and ignored. Singer argued in the paper that climate change wasnt real, even though by 1991 this position was already contrary to the growing body of scientific evidence that it was, which included Revelles own climate research and findings.
At the time, Revelle was a frail 82-year-old recovering from recent triple-bypass heart surgery, and just months from the grave. But that didnt deter Singer, who over the course of many hours talked Revelle into making some minor modifications to Singers draft. Singer then published the paper with Revelle listed as a co-author, not in a peer-reviewed and reputable science journal, but in an obscure magazine called Cosmos, put out by an equally obscure Washington-based social organization called the Cosmos Club. But because the article had Revelles name on it, it helped to keep the public doubting climate science, instead of debating what the nation needed to do to stop climate change.
Further, as Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway recount in their book Merchants of Doubt, the article served as a weapon the following year against one of Revelle's most famous protégés, then-Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore. In a 1992 article in The New Republic, climate contrarian Gregg Easterbrook cited the Cosmos article, observing that Gore hadn't mentioned in his recent climate change book, Earth in the Balance, that before his death last year, Revelle published a paper that concludes: The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.'" Singer then managed to quash an effort by another scientist to clear Revelles name. A Harvard post-doc named Justin Lancaster challenged Singers unethical behavior and the dishonest article. Singer responded in typical Singer fashion: He forced Lancaster to shut up by filing a libel lawsuit against him, and coerced Lancaster into signing a retraction.
The full details of this especially enraging chapter in Singers career only came to light in 2006, when Lancaster broke his silence and published documents online that fully backed up his denunciations of Singer. Calling the retraction hed been forced to sign the worst decision I ever made in my life, Lancaster stated that hed been confident that he would have won the lawsuit, but backed down because of its effect on his wife. She was terrorized by this lawsuit, he wrote, scared we could lose our house and all our assets. More than any other, this series of actions in the early 1990s exemplified the Singer method: bullying and falsely discrediting the work of a dying scientist, and then protecting himself from the consequences by terrorizing the family of another scientist who called out his wicked behavior.
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https://www.drillednews.com/post/fred-singer-obituary-climate-denier
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,295 posts)This is why big corporations need front-men - if they directly threaten to take a truth-teller to court, it's bad publicity; but if it's an individual doing it, with lawyers' fees paid by a vague "educational charity" or something, and the coal and oil companies are hidden by several layers, it just isn't a story that would get into national news.