Paris Climate Conference Could Spell 'Economic Suicide' For US: Climate Skeptic Fred Singer

Later this year, leaders from across the globe would arrive in Paris to attend one of the most crucial climate conferences held in recent years. Activists and environmentalists hope that the United Nations Climate Change Conference, scheduled to begin in the French capital on Nov. 30, would finally end with a binding and universal agreement on climate change and greenhouse gas emission cuts.

However, according to Austrian-born American physicist Fred Singer -- a prominent climate “skeptic” -- the Paris climate conference could be the harbinger of “economic suicide” for the United States, the Guardian reported Friday.

In the document, which is reportedly a fundraising letter written on behalf of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow -- a conservative Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that has frequently questioned the veracity of data pointing toward a warming planet -- Singer appeals for stopping the “radical, economy-wrecking and sovereignty-destroying U.N. climate pact set to be signed in Paris later this year.”

The leaked fundraising letter was accessed by the Guardian.

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, with a stated aim to “promote a positive voice on environment and development issues,” has consistently questioned the science behind climate change, claiming that global temperatures have not increased since the 1990s.

In a recent statement, Craig Rucker, co-founder of the organization, termed Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change “Rome’s greatest scientific blunder since Galileo was tried.”

Although Singer, who trained as an atmospheric scientist, has no formal association with the organization, he has frequently accused climate change “alarmists” of promoting a theory that is not backed by science. In the letter, he also accused U.S. President Barack Obama of pursuing “reckless environmental policies.”

“President Obama is pandering to zealots on the far left fringe posing as environmentalists. An extreme fringe that is against almost all forms of electrical power except those that are prohibitively expensive,” Singer alleges, according to the Guardian.

Data analyzed by several agencies, including NASA, indicate that since records began in 1880, global temperatures have risen by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit. And, over the last 100 years, the global average sea level has gone up by seven inches; its effect is already being felt by island nations in the Pacific Ocean and people living in coastal regions. Greenhouse gases, emitted by a variety of sources such as fossil fuels and livestock, are believed to be largely responsible for this phenomenon.

The Paris climate conference is extremely crucial as it aims to draw consent from countries across the world over legally binding emission cuts that would limit the rise in average global temperatures to less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.