For Singer:
The public debates in which Singer has received most criticism have been about
second-hand smoke and global warming. He has questioned the link between second-hand smoke and
lung cancer, and has been an outspoken opponent of the mainstream scientific view on
climate change; he argues there is no evidence that increases in
carbon dioxide produced by human beings is causing
global warming and that the temperature of the earth has always varied.
[10] A CBC
Fifth Estate documentary in 2006 linked these two debates, naming Singer as a scientist who has acted as a consultant to industry in both areas, either directly or through a public relations firm.
[8]Naomi Oreskes and
Erik Conway named Singer in their book,
Merchants of Doubt, as one of three contrarian physicists—along with
Fred Seitz and
Bill Nierenberg—who regularly injected themselves into the public debate about contentious scientific issues, positioning themselves as skeptics, their views gaining traction because the media gives them equal time out of a sense of fairness.
[51]
In a 2003 letter to the
Financial Times, Singer wrote that "there is no convincing evidence that the global climate is actually warming."
[55] In 2006, the CBC's
Fifth Estate named Singer as one of
a small group of scientists who have created what the documentary called a stand-off that is undermining the political response to global warming.
[8] The following year he appeared on the British Channel 4 documentary
The Great Global Warming Swindle.
[56] Singer argues there is no evidence that the increases in carbon dioxide produced by humans cause global warming, and that if temperatures do rise it will be good for humankind. He told CBC: "It was warmer a thousand years ago than it is today. Vikings settled Greenland. Is that good or bad? I think it's good. They grew wine in England, in northern England. I think that's good. At least some people think so."
[57] "We are certainly putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," he told
The Daily Telegraph in 2009.
"However there is no evidence that this high CO2 is making a detectable difference. It should in principle, however the atmosphere is very complicated and one cannot simply argue that just because CO2 is a greenhouse gas it causes warming."[10] He believes that radical environmentalists are exaggerating the dangers. "The underlying effort here seems to be to use global warming as an excuse to cut down the use of energy," he said. "It's very simple: if you cut back the use of energy, then you cut back economic growth. And believe it or not, there are people in the world who believe we have gone too far in economic growth."
[3]
Singers's opinions conflict with the
scientific opinion on climate change,
[58][59] where there is overwhelming consensus for
anthropogenic global warming, and a decisive link between Carbon dioxide concentration and global average temperatures, as well as consensus that such a change to the climate will have dangerous consequences.
[60][61] In 2005
Mother Jones magazine described Singer as a "godfather of global warming denial."
[62] However, Singer characterizes himself as a "skeptic" rather than a "denier" of global climate change
. In an article in American Thinker, he complains about bad arguments used by the "deniers," saying that "Climate deniers are giving us skeptics a bad name."[63]