As I documented in my last post, Big Tobacco was able to recruit brilliant, prestigious scientists to deny the consensus among virtually all other scientists that smoking tobacco caused lung cancer. Frederick Seitz, who distributed $45 million of Big Tobacco money to sponsor research casting doubt on this scientific consensus, was extremely influential. Martin Cline, member of the Scientific Advisory Board of R. J. Reynolds, was another of these scientists. Fred Singer, an Austrian-born, Ph.D. graduate in physics at Princeton, is yet another one of these influential scientists. One thing many of the scientists who both supported Big Tobacco and later denied man-made global warning had in common was a political bias. They tended to be Cold War Warriors whose anti-Communism morphed into a view that all governmental regulation was a "socialistic" interference with the free market. Thus, government should not interfere with the freely chosen relationship of Tobacco companies with tobacco smokers; it should not attempt to regulate or protect the public against the dangers of second-hand smoke; it should not attempt to regulate the [to them, non-existent] phenomenon of acid rain, government should not regulate CFCs that [to them, were not] destroying the ozone layer, and the government should not regulate carbon emissions. All this proposed government regulation smacked of "socialism." It would amount to the monstrous creation of a Nanny State, emasculate our virile, free enterprise institutions, and perhaps lead to an oppressive world government.
[The quoted material in this blog is from Merchants of Doubt, cited in my last blog, except where otherwise specifically stated].
[The quoted material in this blog is from Merchants of Doubt, cited in my last blog, except where otherwise specifically stated].
Fred Singer, is a poster child [or rather poster senior] for all these tendencies. For example, in 1989 Singer charged that scientists tended to be left-wing and that "some of these 'coercive utopians' are socialists; . . . most have a great desire to regulate--on as large a scale as possible." In 1991 he charged that scientists who believed in man-made global warming had a "hidden political agenda" which is anti- "business, the free market, and the capitalistic system." These types of non-scientific, ad hominem attacks have become standard orthodoxy for those media figures at the forefront of the assertion that there is no scientific consensus that global warming exists. For example, George Will, a leading right-wing intellectual, claimed in 1992 that environmentalism was a "green tree with red roots." Charles Krauthammer asserted in a Washington Post article that environmentalism was socialism in new clothes. It was a "gigantic heist" wherein wealth would be transferred from the rich to the poor. Colorfully, he charged that "the Left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green." This would result in the EPA being like a Russian commissar. The "EPA will [soon] be regulating practically everything . . . Not since the creation of the IRS has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life . . . Big Brother isn't lurking in CIA cloak. He's knocking on you door, smiling under an EPA cap."
Thus, although men like Seitz, Singer, Will and Krauthammer purport to be arguing science, their real concern is the still ongoing, world-wide struggle between "socialism" and "free markets." The money from Big Tobacco is probably secondary. However, if Frederick Seitz was Big Tobacco's point man in the fight to maintain freedom to smoke, Fred Singer was Big Tobacco's point man in the fight to deny the health hazards of second hand smoke.
For example, Wikipedia documents the following:
The connections between SEPP, the Cato Institute, and the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, their links with S. Fred Singer, and the further links with ARCO, ExxonMobil, Shell,Sun Oil, and Unocal demonstrate the true hidden agenda--one where large fossil fuel interests and fundamentalist so-called free marketers are uniting and using a few rogue scientists like S. Fred Singer to put a scientific facade on an economic agenda.
The Desmoblog documents how crudely the pro-industry lies are manufactured and how S. Fred Singer incarnates in one person how one scientist for hire can act simultaneously as a sycophant for Big Tobacco and a cheerleader for UNREGULATED, unlimited burning of fossil fuels.
First the Desmoblog documents and has a link where one can see for themselves a memo sent by an official at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution soliciting $20,000 from the Tobacco Institute for the preparation of a "research" paper challenging the health effects of second-hand smoke, and suggesting that Dr. Singer be retained to write the report. One can also see a 1989 Philip Morris memo describing Fred Seitz as "quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice." Nevertheless Fred Singer installed him as Chair of his notorious climate change denial project with SEPP. Seitz, joined by Robert Jastrow and Bill Nierenberg, had written a "white paper" promoted by the George C. Marshall Institute which denied the link between CO2 and global warming. This became the main "scientific" foundation which the Bush I White House used to discount, all the other scientific findings. Robert Jastrow claimed as much in a 1991 letter to the American Petroleum Institute.
Second, the Desmoblog recounts how Singer made a totally false claim that global warming could not be true because the world's glaciers were enlarging and not shrinking. Initially, he denied he was the source, then admitted he was the source and said the material would be updated, still made no correction 18 months later, and concealed the entire time that the SEPP staffer responsible for the phony claim was his wife!
Naomi Oreskes in Merchants of Doubt also demonstrates how the media moguls like Rush Limbaugh play their role in supporting Big Tobacco and denying the reality of global warming. In footnote #53 to chapter five, it is noted that "a search on Rush Limbaugh in Legacy Tobacco Documents Library brings up over five hundred documents." These include a document on ETS strategy from Craig Fuller to Jim Boland and other entitled Getting Rush Limbaugh on the Issue, 23 January 1993, BN: 2047908408, Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, and a letter from the New York State Association of Wholesale marketers and Distributors to Limbaugh dated 13 September 1996, thanking him for his program on the 'unreasoned attack by anti-smoking zealots."
Anyone who ever listened to Rush Limbaugh is acquainted with his repeated attacks on the concept of global warming. Such media amplification of Big Tobacco's and Big Petroleum's war on any scientific consensus which is not in their economic interest is absolutely essential in the conversion of millions of ditto-heads. In our blog on the Dreyfus Affair we will see how an irrational nationalism led millions of French Catholics to embrace as their national heroes men who said they'd just as soon slaughter hordes of their countrymen as to spit on them. And how they cried for the crucifixion of Dreyfus, the true patriot, repeatedly. Just so, we will see in the U.S. controversy over global warming that our Dreyfus equivalents in the scientific community have been vilified by modern day scoundrels who'd wrap themselves in the American flag, religion, and free markets.
For example, Wikipedia documents the following:
"According to David Biello and John Pavlus in Scientific American, Singer is best known for his denial of the health risks of passive smoking. He 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. The report criticized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for their 1993 study about the cancer risks of passive smoking, calling it "junk science". 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 secondhand smoke causes lung cancer. CBC said that tobacco money had paid for Singer's research and for his promotion of it, and that it was organized by APCO. Singer told CBC it made no difference where the money came from.
Rachel White Scheuering writes that, when SEPP [Science and Environmental Policy Project , founded by S. Fred Singer ] began, it was affiliated with the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a think tank run by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. A 1990 article for the Cato Institute identifies Singer as the director of the science and environmental policy project at the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, on leave from the University of Virginia. Scheuering writes that Singer cut ties with Moon, and is funded by foundations and oil companies. She writes that he has been a paid consultant for many years for ARCO, ExxonMobil, Shell, Sun Oil Company, and Unocal, and that SEPP has received grants from ExxonMobil."
The Desmoblog documents how crudely the pro-industry lies are manufactured and how S. Fred Singer incarnates in one person how one scientist for hire can act simultaneously as a sycophant for Big Tobacco and a cheerleader for UNREGULATED, unlimited burning of fossil fuels.
First the Desmoblog documents and has a link where one can see for themselves a memo sent by an official at the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution soliciting $20,000 from the Tobacco Institute for the preparation of a "research" paper challenging the health effects of second-hand smoke, and suggesting that Dr. Singer be retained to write the report. One can also see a 1989 Philip Morris memo describing Fred Seitz as "quite elderly and not sufficiently rational to offer advice." Nevertheless Fred Singer installed him as Chair of his notorious climate change denial project with SEPP. Seitz, joined by Robert Jastrow and Bill Nierenberg, had written a "white paper" promoted by the George C. Marshall Institute which denied the link between CO2 and global warming. This became the main "scientific" foundation which the Bush I White House used to discount, all the other scientific findings. Robert Jastrow claimed as much in a 1991 letter to the American Petroleum Institute.
Second, the Desmoblog recounts how Singer made a totally false claim that global warming could not be true because the world's glaciers were enlarging and not shrinking. Initially, he denied he was the source, then admitted he was the source and said the material would be updated, still made no correction 18 months later, and concealed the entire time that the SEPP staffer responsible for the phony claim was his wife!
“In his May 10, 2005 Guardian column, George Monbiot uncovered a story implicating Fred Singer in the spread of misinformation on the state of the world's glaciers. An expanded version of this story made its way into Monbiot's best selling book, Heat.
Monbiot was researching climate change a couple of years ago and when he became nervous about what he thought was the manipulative nature of the "scientific debate." He found a letter by the UK climate change denier David Bellamy in New Scientist magazine where Bellamy reported that "555 of all the 625 glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring Service in Zurich have been growing since 1980."
When Monbiot phoned the World Glacier Monitoring Service, they reported in indelicate words that this claim was "complete bullshit." They confirmed that glaciers are retreating around the world.
Monbiot looked for a source for the claim, which appeared dozens of times in different locations. All trails seemed to lead back to the website of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, S. Fred Singer’s group.
When people challenged Singer on his claim, he first lashed out, saying Monbiot "has been smoking something or other." Singer eventually conceded that the information had originated on his site – posted there by "former SEPP associate Candace Crandall." Singer acknowledged that the information "appears to be incorrect and has been updated."
"Updated," however, is different than "corrected." You could still find the claim on his website 18 months later.
Singer also failed to mention that this former associate, Candace Crandall, is his wife."
This is the honest scientist that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said he was relying on in 1995 for his scientific data! [according to page 133, Merchants of Doubt, cited in last blog]
To listen to DeLay talk, [see The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress] one would conclude he was Singer's intellectual parrot. He called "the EPA, the Gestapo of government." DeLay claimed: "There is no crisis of acid rain in the Northeast." When the non-consensus scientists in the mold of Singer claimed volcanoes not made made pollutants were affecting the atmosphere. DeLay aped their language: "'It's the arrogance of man to think that man can change the climate of the world,' he assured the House Science committee. 'Only nature can change the climate--a volcano, for instance.'" "When a group of scientists won a Nobel Prize for research on ozone depletion in 1995, DeLay sneered, 'The Nobel appeasement prize.'" A direct mimicry of Singer's position. Like Singer, DeLay collected monies from both Big Tobacco and big energy companies who believed government regulation was the secular equivalent of the anti-Christ. He got his political allies lie Karl Gallant and his personal assistant/preacher/chief of staff, Ed Buckham, a $750,000 consulting contract with Enron. DeLay was furiously attempting to engineer a bail out of hundreds of millions of dollars just before CEO Ken Lay, and George W. Bush's biggest campaign contributor for many years, declared the ENRON bankruptcy.
To listen to DeLay talk, [see The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress] one would conclude he was Singer's intellectual parrot. He called "the EPA, the Gestapo of government." DeLay claimed: "There is no crisis of acid rain in the Northeast." When the non-consensus scientists in the mold of Singer claimed volcanoes not made made pollutants were affecting the atmosphere. DeLay aped their language: "'It's the arrogance of man to think that man can change the climate of the world,' he assured the House Science committee. 'Only nature can change the climate--a volcano, for instance.'" "When a group of scientists won a Nobel Prize for research on ozone depletion in 1995, DeLay sneered, 'The Nobel appeasement prize.'" A direct mimicry of Singer's position. Like Singer, DeLay collected monies from both Big Tobacco and big energy companies who believed government regulation was the secular equivalent of the anti-Christ. He got his political allies lie Karl Gallant and his personal assistant/preacher/chief of staff, Ed Buckham, a $750,000 consulting contract with Enron. DeLay was furiously attempting to engineer a bail out of hundreds of millions of dollars just before CEO Ken Lay, and George W. Bush's biggest campaign contributor for many years, declared the ENRON bankruptcy.
Thus, there has been an alliance between Big Tobacco Scientists, doing double-duty for fossil fuel industrialists, and top politicians of the Republican Party. The ideology that unites them is an anti-regulation mentality that brooks no scientific dissent. Thus, when a scientific consensus does develop which is threatening to an industry--be it 1st hand cigarette smoke, 2nd hand cigarette smoke, CFCs that destroy ozone, acid rain or carbon emissions-- the reflexive action of the industry, free-market fundamentalists, and their scientific gunslingers is to move heaven and earth to deny that a scientific consensus exists.
For another example of this alliance, I note that Singer was the star witness for Republican congressman Dana Fohrabacher--on "scientific integrity." Here Singer castigated all the other scientists who disagreed with him and said the committee was being "misled, bamboozled, and otherwise manipulated." Further, that "there was 'no scientific consensus on ozone depletion or its consequences." When the science and scientist he was attacking was given the 1995 Nobel Prize, he discounted the scientific honor saying that "the country is in the throes of a collective environmental hysteria." (Like DeLay above).
Anyone who ever listened to Rush Limbaugh is acquainted with his repeated attacks on the concept of global warming. Such media amplification of Big Tobacco's and Big Petroleum's war on any scientific consensus which is not in their economic interest is absolutely essential in the conversion of millions of ditto-heads. In our blog on the Dreyfus Affair we will see how an irrational nationalism led millions of French Catholics to embrace as their national heroes men who said they'd just as soon slaughter hordes of their countrymen as to spit on them. And how they cried for the crucifixion of Dreyfus, the true patriot, repeatedly. Just so, we will see in the U.S. controversy over global warming that our Dreyfus equivalents in the scientific community have been vilified by modern day scoundrels who'd wrap themselves in the American flag, religion, and free markets.
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