Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2930

Article about Heath’s long-time friend, physicist Fred Singer from the time he was a student at the University of Maryland, published by the Independent Institute in Volume 13, Issue 14 of The Lighthouse. No original with this Item.

April 5, 2011

Original is missing.

S. Fred Singer:

Frugal Scientist in

          The Belly of the Beast

What’s it like for a frugal research scientist to work in the federal bureaucracy? In his latest piece for American Thinker, atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, author of the Independent Institute book Hot Talk, Cold Science, reminisces about working in five different positions under both Republican and Democratic administrations — including his attempts to cut agency budgets.

 Appointed the first Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service in 1962, Singer left this position after two years for academia, pleased to have cut his agency’s bloated budget by half. “I didn’t realize at the time that this would come back to bite me,” he writes. “The bureaucracy never forgets or forgives.” After a few years of university teaching, Singer returned to government, directing research on water quality with the Department of Interior, pushing for cost-benefit studies at the new Environmental Protection Agency, and trying to privatize programs while working at the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere — assignments that were interspersed with academic appointments.

 Some of Singer’s views — including his opposition to the International Space Station and to a manned moon base — likely prevented him from getting jobs at NASA. And his skepticism about man-made global warming may have kept Singer out of the running for an appointment supervising climate research for the Commerce Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But Singer seems philosophical about the inevitable frustrations that come from working for the federal government: “We need lots of mid-level managers who are not afraid to put their jobs on the line,” he writes. “The bureaucracy is steeped in a culture of automatic annual increases — and new programs…. Remember that ‘pulling pigs out of the trough causes a lot of squealing.'”

“Adventures in Federal Budget Cutting,” by S. Fred Singer (American Thinker, 4/1/11)

Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate, by S. Fred Singer

More by S. Fred Singer