Fred Singer Receives First Flat Earth Award

Twenty Middlebury College students have teamed up with the nonprofit Green House Network to create the

Flat Earth Award, designed to publicly expose well-known climate-change naysayers “for their denial of the facts on global warming.” This year’s nominees were Michael Crichton, whose 2004 novel,

State of Fear, portrays climate change as a “vast scientific conspiracy”; Rush Limbaugh, who plays down climate change as the “hysterics of a few pseudo-scientists” and whose nationally syndicated talk show reaches 20 million people each day; and Fred Singer, Ph.D., president and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, who insists that climate change has been and will continue to be insignificant. Singer was awarded the Flat Earth Award on April 22, 2004—Earth Day. “Competent economists conclude that a modest global warming is good for you,” Singer wrote in an “acceptance speech” run in the

Christian Science Monitor, “and agriculturists know that more carbon dioxide is good for crops and forest growth.” Details are online at www.flatearthaward.org.