In Memory of Dr. S. Fred Singer

 

S. FRED SINGER 1924-2020 Memorial comments given by Ken Haapala, President, SEPP, at the Celebration of the Life of S. Fred Singer, September 27, 2020 on the 96th anniversary of his birth Albert Einstein commented: "Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death." That truly applied to Fred Singer. He once commented that he had difficulty understanding Maxwell’s equations. He was 16 at the time. Published in 1861 & 62, Maxwell’s equations helped unify the concepts of magnetism, electricity, light, and radiation – issues which give difficulty to many scientists today. There is no one, simple answer. Even as his body was failing, Fred continued to be mentally alert and put forth the effort to understand the physical world – to learn Though I had met him before, I first got to know Fred when I invited him to speak to the Philosophical Society of Washington, which has been meeting here at the Cosmos Club since the Club acquired the building. I picked Fred up at his home near George Mason University and we chatted at length. After dinner, Fred gave a talk on global warming in which he pointed out that from about 1940 to the mid-1970s, the best global surface temperature measurements available showed a cooling. Then a warming began. Someone in the audience asked why. Fred stated – We don’t know. That impressed me because I had left a field in which many practitioners supplied ready answers – even if they did not have the evidence supporting it. It was remarkable for a speaker to present evidence and admit that there was no satisfactory answer. Years later, at a 2014 meeting with a popular advocate of global warming, someone asked: Why had there been no warming since 1998? This lack of warming was known as the pause. The answer was: It’s hiding in the Southern Oceans. When I ask how does something that occurs in the atmosphere get into the oceans without leaving a trace? The response was: It’s all explained on my web site. Of course, it was not. Later, when Fred and I were discussing the pause, I commented it appears to be disappearing. Fred asked how did I know? I said, Roy Spencer had shown the latest atmospheric temperature trends showing a warming that is approaching the 1998 warming. Fred’s response was that John Christy and Roy Spencer are excellent researchers, so that must be the case. To Fred, evidence trumps personal thoughts and beliefs. On another occasion, Fred described his views on the errors made in the early calculations of the orbits of the satellites used to calculate atmospheric temperature trends. The errors gave the false impression that the atmospheric temperature trend was a cooling. Fred stated that the errors were personally embarrassing, but once the errors were confirmed, they were acknowledged and promptly corrected. The history of science is laden with errors. Scientific knowledge of the physical world advances by acknowledging error and correcting it. It is part of the scientific method. During his life, Fred never stopped learning about the physical world. He was able to separate knowledge, which requires constant testing against physical evidence, from personal beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. Fred Singer was remarkable. Given by Ken Haapala The Cosmos Club, September 27, 2020