Fasten your seatbelts—you are about to get some real science from one of the foremost experts on global climate change. In fact, Dr. Singer devised the basic instrument for measuring stratospheric ozone. He was somewhat reluctant to discuss the political aspects of the global warming debate—though I tried. Still, as a scientist, he backed me up . . . and confirmed things I’ve been saying for years.

Rush: Dr. Singer.

Singer: Good evening.

Rush: How are you, sir?

Singer: Fine. I’m sitting here in Bonn, Germany, looking out at the Rhine River.

Rush: Are you in Europe, sir, in order to escape the devastating climatological effects of El Niño?

Singer: [Laughs] No, no. I’m here because I was invited to make a presentation to the Austrian Parliament in Vienna. We did that a few days ago and it was quite exciting.

Rush: Did they listen to you?

Singer: They listened. The politicians didn’t agree, but the public did.

Rush: I read your November 10th article, “The Sky Isn’t Falling, and the Ocean Isn’t Rising” in The Wall Street Journal in which you really do destroy the claim that the ocean is rising due to global warming. You explain that sea levels have been rising at the rate of seven inches per century for hundreds of years due to changes in the shape of the ocean basins. Is there any way that this can be blamed on America? And is there a government regulation that can fix it?

Singer: No, and I don’t think we can stop the tides. I don’t think we can stop the earth from going around the sun. There are all sorts of things we can’t stop. Nature has its own way of doing things.

Rush: The proponents of the fear-mongering global warming theory are trying to scare Americans into believing that our advanced technological lifestyles are responsible for this. Only if we change, only if we roll back our lifestyle and live in a more primitive fashion are we going to be able to fix the problem. Yet even the proponents of this admit that their data are not conclusive. They say they need five to 20 more years to figure it all out. What’s going on?

Singer: I think it’s even worse here in Europe, because in Europe the public seems to believe a lot of this. In America—thanks to efforts like yours—the public, I think, is quite skeptical. Mr. Clinton is having a very difficult time convincing people that a calamity is about to happen. And I don’t think he’s succeeding.

Rush: What scientific evidence could you cite to back up your conclusions on the environment? Because one of the things we’re treated to every day is this mantra that “scientists agree.” For example, this document from the United Nations, this climate control paper, had 2,000 pages and 2,500 signatures. The head of our EPA is constantly saying: “2,500 scientists agree.” And yet, we have learned that the seven-page summary of that 2,000 page document doesn’t at all reflect what’s in the 2,000 pages. The 2,000 pages basically say, we don’t know” and “we can’t prove” and so forth. But the seven-page summary fed to the media declares that global warming is certain. Why this mad dash by some to believe something that isn’t happening?

Singer: These are the points I’ve been making here—and they are not my points really, they are points of a large number of us scientists who all agree on this—people like Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia, my colleague down there, and lots of people from Harvard and MIT and many other institutions. First of all, the data, the actual measurements taken with weather satellites, show conclusively that the climate is not warming. It’s been cooling. It’s been getting colder for the last 20 years. The surface data we have before then showed that the climate has been changing both up and down, in no particular pattern. It seems to be controlled mainly by the sun. This is what the majority of us are beginning to believe.

Rush: Isn’t that a bit radical, Dr. Singer—that the sun may actually have something to do with temperature on earth?

Singer: [Laughs] Well, you might think so. People think the sun is constant. But Dr. Sallie Baliunas at Harvard and others have shown conclusively that the sun is variable. And since the sun varies, the climate will vary as well.

Rush: Now I know you base your theories and your conclusions on science, but clearly politics has entered this. Why do you think the President and the Vice President are so insistent on convincing Americans that global warming is happening when it isn’t? And that we are responsible for it when we’re not?

Singer: Well, I like to think that they’re misinformed about the science. I like to think that they’ve been listening to the wrong people. What I would really ask them to do, what we have asked them to do, is to have a scientific debate, to permit a scientific debate in which we can hash out all of our differences. We’ll bring our data. Let them bring their data. Then we’ll see how it comes out.

Rush: And have they accepted that?

Singer: Not so far. We find it very difficult to get other scientists, those who support the position of the United Nations and the Administration to debate. They won’t debate. Instead they just call us names.

Rush: At a scientific conference in October, the Vice President compared any doubts over global warming to the tobacco companies denying links between smoking and cancer.

Singer: This is typical of the names we’re being called. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt calls people who disagree with him “un-American.” He thinks we shouldn’t disagree with him.

Rush: This hasn’t deterred you.

Singer: It’s preposterous.

Rush: But this is clearly political pressure. What about your colleagues on the same side as you—are they able to withstand the political pressure? Obviously, they’re not going to get government grants for their research. Are they able to withstand the pressure and still maintain the purity of their beliefs?

Singer: It’s a tough situation. You’ll find that the younger scientists who depend very much on grants and contracts from the government for research are very careful about what they say. They may agree with us in private. In fact, they tell us that they agree with us, but they won’t sign their names to it. More mature scientists, scientists who have tenure or scientists who are retired, have no hesitation about speaking out.

Rush: So junk science and propaganda is threatening good science?

Singer: That, I think, is it in a nutshell.

Rush: A professor of physics at Purdue, now deceased, a gentleman named L.L. Van Zandt, wrote a letter in 1992 in National Review about CO2. He said that human activity releases 6 billion tons of CO2 a year. Nonhuman activity, such as oceans, trees and volcanos, etc., releases 200 billion tons of CO2 a year. How can we possibly as humanity be causing catastrophe when our contribution is so infinitesimal?

Singer: Our contribution is indeed small. But it does make a difference—because CO2 has been rising in the atmosphere. I’m willing to accept the fact that humans are making a contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere. But that’s not quite the point. The point is, does it have any effect on the climate? That we don’t see yet.

Rush: Wouldn’t we by now?

Singer: We should have. But we don’t. If CO2 really has an effect the way their theory says it does, then we should be seeing a very substantial warming. Instead, as I mentioned, the weather satellites, the best global data we have, show a cooling over the last 20 years.

Rush: So this sounds to me as if it’s inarguable. It’s not even debatable. Yet they won’t debate you. So you have some scientists who persist in perpetuating a false premise. It has to be political. What is their ultimate aim?

Singer: I suppose different people have different motives. I like to believe that scientists are basically honest. They may be misinformed. They may be believing in their own theories. They may believe in mathematical models instead of measurements. A lot of people are like that. They will reject measurements because they don’t fit in with the theoretical results that they’re working on.

Rush: Maybe so, but that is strange if the data are as conclusive as you seem to think they are. I’m by no means a scientist, but the satellite data is plenty for me, plus everything else that you and your colleagues have researched and presented. If it’s enough for me as a non-scientist to understand it, what is there possibly for these scientists to gain by looking at this data and ignoring it to pursue this agenda?

Singer: They look at other data that show different results. We explain that these other data really cannot match the satellite data, because the satellite data are the only global data that we have—the only instruments that cover the whole globe twice a day, 30,000 measurements a day; measurements with instruments that are accurate, that are not affected by urban effects or by all kinds of disturbances that occur on the ground. We do have the best data, I’m convinced of that. My scientific career is really based on satellites and remote sensing. I was in charge of the weather satellite service for the U.S. government.

Rush: You sound reluctant to discuss the motives of those who disagree with you. You’re content to suggest that you and they are in the midst of a scientific disagreement. But I tell you, I do question their motives. It seems to me if you’re going to ignore facts in pursuit of an agenda, you have to have a reason for it, or a payoff. You’ve got to have something to gain by doing it. And I’m curious to know what you think that might be.

Singer: I think the agenda many people have—and I won’t single out scientists now, but many people, politicians and the public—is they want to reduce the use of energy. They want to eliminate energy from our daily lives. Well, that’s a hopeless task. But they’ve tried to do that now for a long time. You may remember something called the Club of Rome.

Rush: Oh, yes.

Singer: They said, “We’re going to run out of oil in ten years, so we’ve got to stop using energy.” They said that in 1970. Of course, we haven’t run out of oil. We’ve got more oil now than we had in 1970, because we found so much. A few years later, there was the oil crisis. Again they said, “We’ve got to stop using oil”—this time because “the Arabs control the oil and they’re going to be rich and we’re going to be poor.” Well, Japan doesn’t have any oil and they became very rich; and we’re not doing too badly either, compared to other countries, and we import more oil than anybody else.

Rush: Right. If it weren’t for NAFTA, who knows how well we might be doing.

Singer: Now their latest excuse is global warming. To many people, global warming is just an excuse to restrict the use of energy. And they want to do that because they would like to stop economic growth.

Rush: Ah! And for what reason would they like to stop economic growth?

Singer: A number of reasons. There are some people who want to do this so they can collect taxes on energy. Energy taxes. BTU taxes. Other people want to stop economic development because they think it’s bad for nature. They think man is an enemy of nature. There are people who are extreme in this matter and believe that human beings really don’t belong on this world.

Rush: Human beings are not natural.

Singer: Right. And there’s another group of people who see it as an opportunity for a kind of world government. They think if we can control energy use throughout the world, then we’ve got to have an authority, a world authority, that assigns energy quotas, that keeps track of how much energy’s being used everywhere. We have inspectors who will come and tell us whether we’re up to our quota or exceeding our quota. They will sanction us or fine us or do other things to us. They think that’s a great idea.

Rush: Would you put the Vice President in any of these categories?

Singer: I hate to do that. I don’t know where he stands on these issues personally. All I know is that he is misinformed. And I would love to be able to tell him what the real facts are.

Rush: Well, you probably could any day of the week. The real question is whether he would listen to you. That’s the problem.

Singer: That’s right. He’s referred to us as the kind of people who believe global warming is the empirical equivalent of the Easter Bunny. Those are his words.

Rush: But when he compares you to tobacco companies denying a link between smoking and cancer, he’s now saying you’re killing people. He’s saying people like you and me and others who share your interpretation of your data are really no different than people who want to go out and willingly kill people.

Singer: Yeah, well, we’re used to that. But the funny thing is, if the climate did warm—and it does warm from time to time and it cools from time to time—whenever climate warms, it’s good for people. Agriculture benefits. We have longer growing seasons. We have fewer frosts. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes plants grow faster.

Rush: Yes. Replenishes the rain forest.

Singer: We get more precipitation. Farmers get more rain. And what we’ve just discovered is that the sea level will not rise as fast—it may even go down if it warms.

Rush: As your piece in The Wall Street Journal explains.

Singer: Right. And this is based on the analysis of data. Real data.

Rush: The proponents of this fear-mongering recite this statistic: “The United States has five percent of the world’s population but we consume 20 percent of the world’s resources.” This is supposedly bad—even though the use of these resources ends up basically feeding the world. We share our technological advancement with the world; the world’s a better place because of our freedom and our use of these resources. What do they mean when they say that’s too much usage, that we’ve got to make it more equitable and fair? Aren’t they really saying that we’ve got to make the U.S. civilization and lifestyle more primitive or less advanced?

Singer: Yes. We use a lot of energy because we produce goods. And we produce goods for the rest of the world. We export food. We export all sorts of things to the rest of the world, which provide jobs and advance our welfare. I think what we should do is to bring the rest of the world up to our level rather than go down to their level.

Rush: Right. So one might say that the problem with the world is an unequal distribution of capitalism, not too much usurpation of resources.

Singer: Capital is quite willing to go to other countries where the economic climate is favorable—where the authorities are oriented toward capitalism, not socialism.

Rush: Precisely. Well, we’ve got the big climate control conference coming up in December in Kyoto, Japan.

Singer: Yes, and I’ll be there.

Rush: What do you expect to happen there, Dr. Singer?

Singer: Not much.

Rush: That would be good, wouldn’t it?

Singer: [Laughs] Yes. Look, I don’t see countries getting together on a single goal. The Europeans have really gone overboard. When we spoke to the Parliament in Austria last week, we told them they’re committing economic suicide. We can’t stop them if they want to do that, but we certainly don’t want to join them. And I think they’re looking to us to join them. In fact they would like for us to lead the parade. They want us to commit economic suicide first.

Rush: Probably so that they won’t have to, is the bottom line. Well, I know you’re shying away from any political interpretation here, but I’m going to try to ask you this question anyway. The Vice President has his entire political future wrapped up in this issue. As I look at winners and losers in the global warming debate, I see the biggest loser as Vice President Gore. If somehow this theory is debunked, and if the Kyoto conference doesn’t go the way he wants it to, his entire foundation for the future of his political career has been undermined. And that’s why I worry that something other than nothing will occur in Kyoto.

Singer: If something does happen in Kyoto, if we do go the way of restricting energy use in the United States by rationing or by taxes, then working people will really suffer. The labor unions are very strongly against Kyoto, and as you know, Al Gore’s support depends to a large extent on labor unions. So he’s in a very tough position. It will be interesting to see what he does.

Rush: I’m glad you have the optimism about Kyoto that you do. Since there’s so much false data that is being treated as true and being acted upon as though it’s true, people are a little bit pessimistic. Let me ask you—if cooling may be going on, how would it manifest itself? How would cooling affect our climate, globe and economy?

Singer: If it should cool—and you know the climate does change all the time—that would be not very good for us. Particularly it would be bad for developing countries, because they don’t have the resources we have to defend ourselves against a worsening climate. Generally, a cooler climate is considered bad. It requires more heat. It requires more energy. It is also bad for agriculture. If we look back into history, we see that all the tough periods in human history occurred when the climate was cold.

Rush: Now if indeed the scientists who disagree with you were right, that we are experiencing a tremendous warming caused by human activity and output of CO2, is there anything that we could do to stop it?

Singer: I don’t think we can and I don’t think we should. I think the best thing to do is to adjust to any climate change, as we have adjusted to climate changes in the past. After all, we adjust to climate change throughout the year, from winter to summer. We adjust to climate change when we move to the south. In past history, people have moved from the frozen north in Scandinavia all the way into Italy and Spain. They’ve done pretty well. Adjustment is the key; and adjustment is easy if we have a good economy. So we need to protect our economy, we need to make sure that people have enough resources, help poor people get resources so they can adjust, if climate should change either way, either cold or hot.

Rush: When gigantic ozone holes have supposedly been discovered at the South Pole, human activity and primarily human activity in the United States has been blamed. My question to you is this: If it became the policy of the United States government, for whatever reason, to destroy 100 percent of the ozone layer in the stratosphere, could we do it?

Singer: No. No, the ozone layer in the stratosphere is constantly being replenished by the sun. You can make it thinner for a short time with a lot of effort, but you cannot destroy it.

Rush: Does it stand to reason then that if we tried to destroy it and couldn’t—could we then destroy it when we’re not trying to?

Singer: The ozone varies up and down all the time, from day to day. Tremendous variations. It’s hard to say whether, in fact, there is a general tendency in global ozone. Certainly there is a thinning, which we call the hole, in the Antarctic. But that’s a temporary phenomenon. It occurs every October and then the ozone comes back again. So ozone always recovers because the sun, solar radiation, always makes more. [See The Way Things Ought to Be excerpt above.]

Rush: Thank you, Dr. Singer, for your time. I’ve enjoyed talking to you very much.

Singer: I enjoyed talking to you.