Fred Singer's Silence on Request for Data

After Fred Singer's Nov. 4th op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled "Why I Remain a Global-Warming Skeptic," I emailed him with two questions:

1) You wrote that "data from weather satellites show no atmospheric temperature increase over this period," which you defined as "the period between 1978 and 1997." What data (exactly) are you using, and what calculation (exactly) have you done?

2) You also wrote that "the Super El Niño of 1998 that had nothing to do with greenhouse gases or other human influences." What is your basis for this claim?

I never received a reply. I asked again on Nov 16th and didn't get a reply to that either.

Maybe openness and transparency only go in certain directions.

(By the way, the linear trend for UAH data over the period Jan-79 to Dec-96 is +0.034 ± 0.021 °C/decade, r²=0.012.)

In that vein, The Guardian reports that Benny Peiser isn't too keen on providing information either:

"The Guardian has also seen documents showing that GWPF director, Benny Peiser, declined to provide emails requested by at least four freedom of information requests, despite the GWPF's previous calls for openness from climate scientists.

"Until July 2010, Peiser was on staff at Liverpool John Moores University, which received several FoI requests for emails relating to the GWPF, which was founded in November 2009. The GWPF contracted high-profile law firm Farrers & Co to reply to the university and Peiser told a university official in March 2010: "We are concerned to avoid the disclosure of private foundation affairs."

"All the FoI requests to date have been rejected and there is no suggestion Peiser failed to comply with FoI rules. The university found that a number of emails had been deleted by Peiser, and that none remaining contain the phrase "global warming", according to the Information Commissioner's Office.

"Peiser told the Guardian: 'The Freedom of Information Act is clear. Both I and the GWPF have complied fully with the law, and I expect others to do the same.'"