Below is the press release (on the web here) from the American Physical Society, responding to the resignation letter of APS fellow Dr. Hal Lewis made public last Friday, October 8th. APS Members Dr. Roger Cohen, Dr. Will Happer, and of course Dr. Hal Lewis have responded in kind, and have asked me to carry their response on WUWT. I’ve gladly obliged, and their inline comments are indented in blue italics in the document below. – Anthony
October 12, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tawanda W. Johnson
Press Secretary
APS Physics
529 14th St. NW, Suite 1050
Washington, DC 20045-2065
Phone: 202-662-8702
Fax: 202-662-8711
tjohnson@aps.org
APS Comments on Harold Lewis’ Resignation of his Society Membership
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a recent letter to American Physical Society (APS) President Curtis A. Callan, chair of the Princeton University Physics Department, Harold Lewis, emeritus physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, announced that he was resigning his APS membership.
In response to numerous accusations in the letter, APS issues the following statement:
There is no truth to Dr. Lewis’ assertion that APS policy statements are driven by financial gain. To the contrary, as a membership organization of more than 48,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous ethical standards in developing its statements.
We know that the existing 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change was developed literally over lunch by a few people, after the duly constituted Committee had signed off on a more moderate Statement.
The Society is open to review of its statements if members petition the APS Council – the Society’s democratically elected governing body – to do so.
We have yet to receive a response to our Petition:
http://www.openletter-globalwarming.info/Site/Signatures__APS_Council_Study.html
…delivered last spring and signed by 260+ members and former members, including nearly 100 Fellows, 17 members of national academies and 2 Nobels. Driven largely by the ClimateGate revelations, the Petition asks that the Society conduct an independent study and assessment.
As for democratic membership participation in matters of science, consider the reaction to a grass roots outpouring of APS member opinion on the 2007 APS Statement http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200912/apscouncilors.cfm . “[APS Councilor] was uncomfortable with the idea of a membership-wide referendum on statements. He said that he was concerned that having a membership wide vote on controversial issues could lead to the adoption of scientifically unsound statements.” Evidently physicists should be excluded from inputting on a question of physics; only “physics monks” are entitled to do so ex cathedra .
Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding.
The chair of the Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) that re-endorsed the 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change sits on the science advisory board of a large international bank http://annualreport.deutsche-bank.com/2009/ar/supplementaryinformation/advisoryboards.html The bank has a $60+ billion Green portfolio, which it wishes to assure investors is safe…not to mention their income from carbon trading. Other members of this board include current IPCC chief Pachauri and Lord Oxburgh, of Climategate exoneration fame. The viability of these banks activities depends on continued concern over CO2 emissions . Then there is the member of the Kleppner Committee (that reviewed the APS 2007 Statement prior to POPA) who served on that committee while under consideration for the position of Chief Scientist at BP. The position had been vacated when Steve Koonin left to take a post in the administration at DOE. Soon after the Kleppner Committee report in late 2009, this committee member took the BP job. BP had previously funded the new Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, which was headed by current Energy Secretary Steve Chu.
Moreover, relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support.
This does not mention the firm expectation by federal government agencies such as the NAS and the Presidential Science Advisor’s office that the APS will continue to support the huge funding machine that diverts billions of taxpayer dollars into research that must support the alarmist credo. APS has been silent on the documented practice by some climate scientists aimed at preventing opposing research from being published.
On the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree with the following observations:
- Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity;
- Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; and
This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.
- The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.
Well, it depends on what you mean by “dwell time.” If it is the conventional half life of an impulse loading of carbon dioxide, the statement is wrong – by a lot.. The IPCC’s Bern carbon cycle model http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/model_description/model_description.html gets a 16 year half life. If it is the time for the last molecule to get picked up by a sink, the statement is meaningless. At the very least, the statement is sloppy and hardly befitting a world class scientific society.
On these matters, APS judges the science to be quite clear. However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain.
This is much better than the 2007 APS Statement itself. However, the phrase “climate disruptions” is noteworthy because it is the new buzzword recently introduced by Science Advisor John Holdren http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100054012/global-warming-is-dead-long-live-er-global-climate-disruption/ , evidently enabling advocates to assign any unusual weather event to human causes. It is curious that that the APS press release happens to echo this new phrase.
In light of the significant settled aspects of the science, APS totally rejects Dr. Lewis’ claim that global warming is a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud.”
What we have here is a bait and switch. No one is saying that the greenhouse effect itself is a scam. This passage seeks to transfer the ‘scam’ charge from its real target to the trivial. The fraud/scam is to be found in the continual drumbeat that the science is settled; that the effects will be catastrophic; that it requires draconian economic sacrifices to avoid; and that mandates and subsidies for rent-seeking corporations are justified.
Additionally, APS notes that it has taken extraordinary steps to solicit opinions from its membership on climate change. After receiving significant commentary from APS members, the Society’s Panel on Public Affairs finalized an addendum to the APS climate change statement reaffirming the significance of the issue. The APS Council overwhelmingly endorsed the reaffirmation.
Never mind that the Panel on Public Affairs is chaired by an individual whose research funding stream (from BP) depends on continued global warming alarm. And you have to keep your eye on the pea. The dispute was not over the “significance” of the issue; it was over the alarmist nature of the statement. The addendum used more than five times the number of words to try to explain what the original statement meant. Not a good sign that they got it right the first time.
Lastly, in response to widespread interest expressed by its members, the APS is in the process of organizing a Topical Group to feature forefront research and to encourage exchange of information on the physics of climate.
Never mind that the Topical Group was proposed in a petition organized by a group of five members that included Dr. Lewis. Also, the Council has not yet approved a TG; therefore it is not in the process of being “organized.” It is being considered. No formal charter or bylaws have been set down. What we have here is the first attempt to co-opt the TG for PR purposes. This before it has even been approved by the APS Council.
Read the APS Climate Change Statement and Commentary: http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm.
APS should be very reluctant to draw public attention to this Statement, with its infamous phrase, “The evidence is incontrovertible,” despite the fact that nothing in science is ever incontrovertible.
About APS: The American Physical Society (www.aps.org) is the leading physics organization, representing 48,000 members, including physicists in academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and internationally. APS has offices in College Park, MD (Headquarters), Ridge, NY, and Washington, DC.
Tawanda W. Johnson
Press Secretary
APS Physics
529 14th St. NW, Suite 1050
Washington, DC 20045-2065
Phone: 202-662-8702
Fax: 202-662-8711
tjohnson@aps.org
=================================================
This page is available as a PDF here: APS Press Release Deconstruction
=================================================
Dr. Roger Cohen writes in with an addedum:
I would like to clarify one technical point for your visitors. It relates to: “This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.”
The statement is fact, but it does not by itself imply that additional amounts of atmospheric CO2 will not cause significant warming. Straightforward radiation transfer calculations have established that the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 would be to increase global average temperature by only about 1 deg. C. — if there were no other climate effects involved. However, these other effects, generally called “feedbacks,” can amplify or attenuate the primary radiation altering effect of additional CO2. The most prominent feedback is the “cloud-water vapor feedback,” which is very difficult to calculate or determine empirically. The IPCC says these feedback effects are in aggregate large and positive, giving rise to their most recent estimate of 2 to 4.5 deg. C for doubling, with a most likely value of 3 deg. C. However, a substantial body of other research points to a much lower value, much closer to the zero feedback value of 1 deg. C, or even lower. The actual aggregated effect of feedbacks is a critical aspect of the debate.
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“This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.”
I’ve got the same question as Bret. Is this true? If so, it’s game over. ANY scientist worth his salt would recognize this and there would be no debate. So I’m guessing, until shown otherwise, that either it isn’t true or is under dispute.
Interestingly, I read sections of the article as “generally our statements about climate alarmism at the APS are correct, but we certainly don’t know everything. Please send more money towards climate science so we can figure these other things out.”
Argh.
The Australian newspaper chimes in with this stinging editorial on media coverage, that mentions Hal Lewis resignation:
Vigorous climate debate a plus
ON a subject as important as our climate, reasoned, informed public debate is the key to finding the consensus that must underpin an effective policy response.
Interest groups that attempt to keep the public in the dark by suppressing alternative views have succeeded only in eroding the credibility of their own arguments.
snip
The unnecessary heat in the debate has prompted the resignation of eminent US physicist Harold Lewis, 87, from the American Physical Society, the US’s leading academic body of physicists. After 67 years’ membership, the emeritus professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is dismayed that the APS, unlike the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences, has refused to engage in proper scientific debate about climate change and has ignored sceptics.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/vigorous-climate-debate-a-plus/story-e6frg71x-1225938366537
I haven’t been following this one in any great detail – the APS is not big news in UK for obvious reasons.
But at a glance their response to Prof. Lewis is remarkably weak. Doesn’t really answer his points and waffles on with bits of motherhood. Nowhere did I see them say directly that anything Lewis had said was wrong.
A poor essay, unworthy of a national society for a hard science.
Gamma (?+)?
Bret says:
October 13, 2010 at 10:54 am
“This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.”
Is it? At all relevant altitudes?
Yes.
To this;
“However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain.”
Which was notably absent before. (should have been at the end of my post above).
I’m not sure how clearer Hal Lewis could have made his resignation. His overriding concern was the response of the APS to the climategate escape, or rather the lack of it, in addition to the manner in which the APS drew up their statement on climate change.
Economist John Maynard Keynes said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” The facts around man made global climate warming disruption change changed with that escape from the University of East Anglia. The naked self-interests, the fudgey computer code, the private admission of uncertainties and most egregiously the attempts at undermining the scientific method and peer-review process were plain to see. Yet the APS were unmoved such was the council’s faith in incontrovertible man made global climate warming disruption change.
jorgekafkazar said: “If so few APS members are involved in climate change research, why the hell is the APS issuing statements on it? It would seem the topic is almost as far from the APS’s purview as it could get.”
Well spotted! Peer pressure would be my bet due to other illustrious societies taking a similar view. For whatever reason it was beyond the council to say ‘This is not our field of expertise’.
The ‘consensus’ is a sham. How many of the scientists involved in writing the IPCC literature are climate scientists? Not many out of a couple of thousand. But there are chapters and chapters and chapters about all the other projected effects written by specialists in those fields. They have to start from a point of certainty – that man made additional CO2 is warming the world – and apply that projection to their own field of expertise.
Those authors are not expressing an expert view on the validity of man made global climate warming disruption change but just setting out what they see as the likely consequences of the projections they have been handed.
Beyond the basic 1 degree C if CO2 doubles (I think that’s the figure isn’t it?) the idea rests on the quality of the data and how correct the computer models and the assumptions contained within them are.
But Lucy,
Temperature hasn’t changed enough since the little ice age to cause the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere that we have seen.
And the 800 year lag puts the time back to the Medieval Warm period, which we all know was warmer than today.
And I guess the APS told Dr. Hal Lewis not to let the door hit him on the way out.
Mac the Knife says:
October 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm
The American Physical Society announces the New Laws Of Mo’Shun,…..
heheheh……very nice!
Nice post.
@Geoff Cranston: Can you supply reference(s)? It would be much appreciated.
John Whitman says: October 13, 2010 at 11:05 am
Great statement John. But IMO there are still several steps to take, to pull back from the precipice:
* Closing the loopholes by which alarmists could take over scientific institutions
* Reforming the funding system which has skewed research to scream about imaginary alarms
* Ways by which many originally good and still capable folk in top positions can participate in reform driven by concerns from below, without losing face unnecessarily
* The means by which Wikipedia can be righted to regain true neutrality in controversial areas where their current neutrality rules seem to be inadequate or inappropriate (eg NOR, No Original Research, fine for encyclopedias generally, but disallows stuff that may be brilliant but not peer-reviewed, or may allow a degraded newspaper report about it)
* probably several more steps
There’s so much stuff here I didn’t previously know. For example:
There aren’t even subtle links between those promoting AGW and financial interests. I mean there are blantant conflicts of interest evident in this little piece alone.
I’d immediately resigned of any scientific society I am a member of should they include a climate change declaration such as APS.
Mac the Knife says: October 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm
hahahahaha
This is a particularly difficult message to reconcile following the bass ackwards logic Brasseur asserts. So, asking the body scientists to weigh in on a scientific matter will result in a wrong consensus? Actually, I think it works the other way around. If you don’t ask the body of scientists to weigh in, you’ll wind up with a wrong but preconceived and politically correct consensus. Now I understand how global warming became a scientific consensus.
bob says: October 13, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Look at Akasofu’s work. I disagree that temperature hasn’t changed enough, I believe that if we take Henry’s Laws seriously it only requires a tiny increase. And please note, I carefully said UP TO 800 years, because with the total effects of ocean currents we are really dealing with quite a complex “hydra”, and certainly the major ocean effects, following the sun, kick in far more quickly than 800 years delay AFAICT.
There are significant similarities between this issue and the issue the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) is having with it’s DC representation. The views of the rank and file of an organization may be significantly at odds with their DC representations’ job of securing or protecting funding, maintaining cognizance of government affairs, and keeping communications open.
The APS and ACS were issuing endorsements and statements as organizations – not scientific publications or peer-reviewed journals. The public affairs value of those statements is significant because of the reputation and membership of the organization; and those statements were either solicited or offered as a means of advancing other APS and ACS agendas. The statements themselves have no scientific value, they have political and public relations value – as does Dr. Lewis’ resignation letter.
Having a professional lobby is unfortunately the price one pays for spending lots of public monies. If they are getting out of control, then the membership needs to re-assert some authority; such as a bylaw stating that organization can only refer to peer-reviewed work, not make independent assessments or scientific statements.
————-
Lucy Skywalker,
I agree with all your additional steps. Thanks.
We also must pay very close attention to the IPCC . . . it is the last refuge of the accepted/consensus science of AGW by CO2 . . . . that is where the current leadership will surely retreat to.
John
Gareth says:
October 13, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I’m not sure how clearer Hal Lewis could have made his resignation. His overriding concern was the response of the APS to the climategate escape, or rather the lack of it, in addition to the manner in which the APS drew up their statement on climate change.
Economist John Maynard Keynes said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” The facts around man made global climate warming disruption change changed with that escape from the University of East Anglia.
I disagree – the facts did not change. More people became aware of the facts, to be sure, but they didn’t change. The facts do not, and have not, supported the CAGW concept.
Hal Lewis says:
—Well, it depends on what you mean by “dwell time.” If it is the conventional half life of an impulse loading of carbon dioxide, the statement is wrong – by a lot.. The IPCC’s Bern carbon cycle model http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/model_description/model_description.html gets a 16 year half life. If it is the time for the last molecule to get picked up by a sink, the statement is meaningless. At the very least, the statement is sloppy and hardly befitting a world class scientific society.—
I’m pretty sure the she means the life of a carbon molecule that “dwells” in the carbon cycle. Which would make her statement absolutely correct and pertinent to the issue of long term climate change. This is established scientific fact that is undisputed. Why Lewis would assume she would only be discussing the “half-life” of molecules that aren’t taken into sink is anyone’s guess. My guess would be that he wants to argue with a strawman.
—-This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.—
Maybe in his chemistry set at home at sea level but certainly not in the upper atmosphere where pressure and temperature are much different. Has this guy opened an atmospheric physics book since the forties?
‘dwell time’???
My best farts have a ‘hang time’ of several minutes. Is this ‘dwell time’ a similar concept?
“Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; and…”
It is sad to see the representative of what is supposed to be a prestigious physics organization spew such nonsense. They threaten to send us back to the dark ages for sure.
—————–
Mac the Knife,
Really funny. Thanks. You made my Wednesday a nice day. : )
John
“But Lucy,
Temperature hasn’t changed enough since the little ice age to cause the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere that we have seen.
And the 800 year lag puts the time back to the Medieval Warm period, which we all know was warmer than today”
Exactly. 800 years since the warmth of the medieval warm period and now we are seeing CO2 increasing…
How does that not equal a 800 year lag between warming and CO2 increasing?