Singer and Avery were con men

A recent letter from a reader, arguing that climate change is a hoax, cited for its back-up two “respected climate scientists” Fred Singer and Dennis Avery.

Fred Singer? The same Fred Singer, now 93, who worked for many years with the Tobacco Institute to falsely claim that tobacco smoke was harmless? The same Fred Singer who has voiced positions on acid rain and ozone depletion that run contrary to the entire scientific community? The same Fred Singer who says that nuclear war wouldn’t be so bad, that we should be more concerned with comets?

And Dennis Avery? The man who for years has taken money from Monsanto and DuPont and does a dog-and-pony show claiming that pesticides are as safe as mother’s milk? The same man who said that the ban on DDT lead to the death of “five times as many as Hitler killed in his concentration camps.” Is this the Dennis Avery who, according to the website of the Heartland Institute, where he is a “senior fellow” (there appear to be no “junior fellows” on staff), has a degree not in climate science, in fact not in any physical science, but in “agricultural economics”?

I imagine that the Chestnut Hill Local is trying, as a respectable publication, to air “both sides of the controversy.” But there is no controversy about climate change. Not among scientists. The evidence that the climate is changing, that it represents a serious danger to all living things, and that it is directly linked to atmospheric CO2 concentrations, is enormous and incontrovertible.

For any readers interested in learning more about Fred Singer, Dennis Avery and their ilk, I suggest reading “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,” by Naomi Oreskes of Harvard, and Erik Conway

Russell Wild

Mt. Airy

Thanks

Green IN Chestnut Hill  (GRINCH) and Weavers Way Environmental Committee would like to thank Norwood Fontbonne Academy, PAR Recycle Works, the hundreds of citizens who brought their electronic waste  and all of the volunteers who made our E-Waste event a huge success. We collected 8,129 pounds of electronics that will be responsibly recycled by PAR Recycle Works.

Amy Edelman, President Green in Chestnut Hill

Sandra Folzer, Weavers Way Environmental Committee