Science and Environmental Policy Project

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Global warming.jpg This article is part of the Climate project of Spinwatch.

Science and Environmental Policy Project was founded by Fred Singer in 1989 and incorporated as a Foundation-funded, independent research group in 1992, “to advance environment and health policies through sound science. SEPP is a non-profit, education organization”[1]. It was started an as affiliate to the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, which is part of the Rev Sun Myung Moon’s Unification church, although it is no longer affiliated to it.[2]

Singer, a former government scientist, has become one of the world’s leading and most quoted climate sceptics. Singer has also attacked other issues such as ozone depletion, acid rain, automobile emissions and whaling.

Rachels Environment and Health Weekly argues that: “Singer is himself one of the fringe scientists who appeared as a witness (as did Michaels) at the 1995 Congressional ozone hearing …. During the hearing, Singer tried to establish his ozone credentials by claiming to have published several peer-reviewed papers in which he presented his current theories about why the continent-sized ozone hole over the South Pole isn't a problem. However, when Congressional staff checked his references, they found that Singer's only published work on ozone depletion during the past 20 years had been one letter to the editor of SCIENCE magazine, and two articles in magazines that are not peer reviewed[3]”

He has also worked with the Independent Institute, The Hoover Institution, The Heritage Foundation, and The Brookings Institution, amongst others[4]. He has also appeared on behalf of the fossil-fuel Global Climate Coalition, along with Robert Balling and Patrick Michaels[5]

Indeed in 1995 Singer appeared at a one day conference organised by Atlas in Hong Kong along with other sceptic Michael Formento, then of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of Science under Siege. Singer’s talk was called “Science and Myth in Global Warming and Ozone Depletion[6]”

Singer has also debunked global warming along with Patrick Michaels at press conference organised by the Wise Use group, Consumer Alert. Singer and Robert Balling have also spoken at Wise Use conferences[7].

Singer was also on the Advisory board of TASCC, along with other known “Sceptics”, Bruce Ames (on SEPP’s board), Dr. Patrick Michaels, Michael Sanera, and Hugh Ellsaesser[8]. He is also on the Advisory board of the corporate front groups ACSH.[9] He appeared along with a whole host of anti-greens on the programme Against Nature, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1997[10]. The programme was linked to the Revolutionary Communist Party / Living Marxism activists, which drew the wrath of the Independent Television Commission for having "misled" participants and "distorted" their views via selective editing[11]. Many of these activists have now resurrected themselves in new guises in the anti-green backlash.

Funding

In March 2001, Ross Gelspan, the author of the Heat is On wrote that “The most widely quoted sceptic, S. Fred Singer, denied receiving oil industry money in a February letter to The Washington Post. But in 1998 ExxonMobil gave $10,000 to Singer's institute, the Science and Environmental Policy Project, and $65,000 to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which shared building space with SEPP. Says Atlas' website, "For those who believe public policy should be based on sound science, Dr. Singer offers a wealth of information, credibility and encouragement[12]."

Singer now admits he has worked as a consultant for Exxon, Shell, Unocal, Sun Oil, and ARCO, GE, Ford, and GM.[13] SEPP has received some $20,000 from Exxon since 1998.[14]

Board of Directors

  • Frederick Seitz - (Chairman), president of The Rockefeller University (1968-78), on the board of the Wise Use Group the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the George C Marshall Institute as well as used to be on the Science Advisory board of TASSC.
  • Charles Gelman - is the founder, and former chairman and chief executive officer, of Gelman Sciences, Inc. Supporter of the web-site that supports controversial conservative journalist John Stossel - supportjohnstossel.org web-site. Along with the National Center for Public Policy Research; Political Economy Research Center; Tom DeGregori; Dr. C.S. Prakash; Steve Milloy, Junkscience.com; Free-Market.net; MissLiberty.com; Consumer Alert; counterprotest.net; Competitive Enterprise Institute; Michael Fumento; overlawyered.com and People for the USA[15]
  • David L. Hill - president and chief executive officer of the Patent Enforcement Fund, Inc. in Southport, Connecticut, a privately held company that pursues licensing for infringed technological patents.

S. Fred Singer

SEPP Board of Science Advisors

Ames is also a contributor to the book called “Fearing Food - Risk, Health and Environment”, edited by Julian Morris and Roger Bate, at the time from the right-wing think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs in London (see below). Other contributors included Dennis Avery from the Hudson Institute, and Lynn Scarlett from the Reason Foundation, amongst others[17].

Issues

Singer on climate: “Computer models forecast rapidly rising global temperatures, but data from weather satellites and balloon instruments show no warming whatsoever[24]”

Singer on Ozone: Although environmental pressure groups have made exaggerated claims that the stratospheric ozone layer is being eaten away by chlorofluorocarbons (most notably Freon) wafting into space, scientists have yet to see any increase of solar ultraviolet radiation at the Earth's surface[25]

The “New on the SEPP website” includes articles from known right-wing / sceptics such as Steven Milloy, Steven Hayward; Paul Driessen; Paul Reiter; Bjorn Lomborg; Iain Murray; Sallie Baliunas; Ross McKitrick; William O'Keefe; Ronald Bailey; James Glassman; Christopher C. Horner; Myron Ebell; Sherwood and Keith, Idso and Richard Lindzen to name a few[26].

The website also lists four “Declarations” on climate: the Heidelberg Appeal from 1992, the Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming signed the same year; Singer’s own Leipzig declaration from 1997 and the Oregon Petition, circulated by Frederick Seitz, the Chair of the Board of SEPP in 1998.

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber from PR Watch have analysed the petitions. They are that the Heidelberg Appeal “has been enthusiastically embraced by proponents of ‘sound science’ such as Steven Milloy and Elizabeth Whelan and is frequently cited as proof that scientists reject not only the theory of global warming but also a host of other environmental health risks … the only problems is that the Heidelberg Appeal makes no mention whatsoever of global warming … it is simply a brief statement supporting rationality and science.”

The Leipzig Declaration emerged from a conference, "The Greenhouse Controversy," cosponsored by The Science & Environmental Policy Project and the European Academy for Environmental Affairs in Leipzig, Germany, in November 1995. The statement was revised in 1997 and currently has more than 140 endorsements from climate scientists, with more coming in.[27]

Of Singer’s own Leipzig Declaration they say that “it has been cited by Singer himself in editorial columns appearing in hundreds of conservative websites and major publications”. However when journalist David Olinger of the St.Petersberg Times investigated the Declaration “he discovered that most of its signers have not dealt with climate issues at all and one of them is an acknowledged leading expert.”[28]

Contact

  • Address: The Science & Environmental Policy Project, 1600 South Eads Street, Suite #712-S, Arlington, VA 22202-2907
  • Web Address: http://www.sepp.org/

References

Notes

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