UPDATE5: (Saturday 10/16/10) It has been a week, and I think this piece has been well distributed, so I’m putting it in regular queue now and it will gradually scroll off the page.
UPDATE4: (Friday 10/15/10) APS member Roger Cohen comments here on Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth op/ed.
UPDATE3: (Friday 10/15/10) Andrew Revkin, after a week (I sent him this story last Friday) of digging around to get just the right rebuttal, responds here at Dot Earth.
UPDATE2: (Wednesday 10/13/10) This just in…click for the story.
APS responds! – Deconstructing the APS response to Dr. Hal Lewis resignation
UPDATE: (Saturday 10/9/10) Since this came in late Friday, many of our weekday WUWT readers might not see this important story, so I’m sticking it to the top for a couple of days. New stories will appear just below this one, please scroll down to see them. – Anthony
(Originally posted on 10/8/10 ) We’ve previously covered the APS here, when I wrote:
While Copenhagen and its excesses rage, a quiet revolution is starting.
Indeed, not so quiet now. It looks like it is getting ugly inside with the public airing of the resignation of a very prominent member who writes:
I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
…
In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.- Hal Lewis
Below is his resignation letter made public today, via the GWPF.
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.
What I would really like to see though, is this public resignation letter given the same editorial space as Michael Mann in today’s Washington Post.
Readers, we can do this. Here’s the place at WaPo to ask for it. For anyone writing to the WaPo, the national@washpost.com, is the national news editorial desk. The Post’s Ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, is the readers’ representative within the newspaper. E-mail him at ombudsman@washpost.com or call 202-334-7582.
Spread the word on other blogs. Let’s see if they have enough integrity to provide a counterpoint. – Anthony
======================================
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal
==========================================================
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)
Sorry couldn’t face the Mann Op-Ed.
The interview I saw in the BBC propaganda piece, Climate wars was enough of that Mann for me.
He came across like a wheedling whining little schoolboy crying to mummy.
He was effectively saying, “I’m a scientist, why does everyone want to check what I’m saying? I mean, all my pals had a look and they agree with me.”
Sorry Michael, everything I’ve done I’ve tried to get someone who doesn’t agree with me to check, someone who’s had nothing to do with the work. If there’s something wrong and they find it, I thank them, take it away & try again.
I have this little conscience thing that tells me I don’t want to kill people with my mistakes. If I never get it right then the World’s a better place without it.
DaveE.
Colonel Sun says:
October 9, 2010 at 9:17 am
“You’re being a bit unfair to computer nerds.
At least they typically know how to write proper documented design-patterns-based tested code.”
The code used to make these climate claims was hacked together by absolute amateurs.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone brought up NASA GISS Model E! LOL!!
Former_Forecaster October 9, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Thats says it all, really. Hal Lewis’s API resignation letter must reflect hundreds of other unpublicised and unsung resignations from numerous scientific societies for the same reason.
to dbleader61:
The only statement that is prefaced by “incontrovertible” is that global warming is occurring. Everything else is not addressed by that word, even though the opening paragraph has a strong tone of certainty.
If you run an advanced google search for the past 24 hours you’ll find pages of links including the Canada Free Press and some in France. I haven’t seen any from major broadcast news but keep in mind its the weekend crew.
Has anyone sent the story to CNN yet?
I’m a lay person; Professor Lewis’ letter seems to me to be written by a brave and principled man and we could do with a lot more of those attributes in all professions and our daily lives; I’ve circulated the letter as widely as I can in Australia and hopefully he will get a lot of support from down under; I notice that Jo Nova’s blog and the Climate Conversation Group have featured this
John Coleman is quoted as stating:
” “Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics” is the line that jumped out at me. The key word is Emerotus, i.e. Retired. It is us old guys with retirement income and no allusions of future granduer that are in a safe position to break from the bad science of man-made climate armaddegon.”
The quotes below are relevant to the statement above. The first is attributed to “RW Harvey”.
“…I would recommend a (re)reading of Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Kuhn coined the phrase “paradigm shift” and this work gives an excellent exposure of just how difficult it is to embrace new theories; the standard approach is to toss anomalies and go full-speed ahead. According to Kuhn, it either takes the old scientists dying off, or the pile up of enough anomalies for new theories to even get a look. There is plenty of psychology in his exposure — egos, fear, material well-being, etc. — so the point is this is not only about scientists in the laboratory, but it is about anyone/group that is applying a theory to some part of reality… in the same phenomenon in the case of revolutionaries.”
And this is from “Bryan Feir” in a different discussion:
“Do you have any idea how many years it took for ideas like Continental Drift to be accepted by mainstream science? How many decades ‘standard’ ideas like Clovis First (the idea that all the American Indians crossed the Bering Strait 11 000 years ago) lasted despite evidence that they were wrong simply because too many people were emotionally attached to the idea to give it up? (Parts of South America were inhabited more than a thousand years before Clovis First says they could have been.) How much damage was done to effective research in Quantum Mechanics because Einstein himself couldn’t abide by the random factors in the theory he helped lay the foundations for?
It’s often said that any real progress in science takes at least a generation; long enough for all the old scientists who are attached to the old ideas to get replaced. Trust me, we’ve seen lots of evidence for that in this century alone. ”
“Emeritus” doesn’t necessarily imply an absence of fear.
a link to this article and the Professor’s letter has now been placed on Quadrant Online’s Doomed Planet http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/10/scientist-says-no
Daniel Kozub says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:50 am
Actually the width of the spectrums are the same. They’re both continuous gray body spectrums with the sun’s peak at about 5000K and the earth at 288K.
It also absorbs a portion of incoming solar energy. The key difference is that most of the sun’s energy is in the visible spectrum whereas that of the earth is in the infrared spectrum. GHGs are largely transparent to visible light but are opaque in the infrared. Water (liquid) absorbs visible light very well and given the surface is 70% covered with it and a good fraction of the sky is obscured at any one time by clouds (composed of liquid water droplets) it is important to know that.
Water vapor.
Yes, but so do butterflies. See Butterfly Effect. The central question is whether the effect is quantifiable, predictable, and significant.
Locally, almost without a doubt. Globally is a different proposition with far less confidence.
In principle, perhaps. In practice, not.
That is a problem. I’m an engineer. Scientists are experts at figuring out what we don’t know. Engineers are experts at figuring out what we do know. You got a lot of stuff that we do know wrong.
Daniel Kozub says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:50 am
The earth emits radiation in a more-narrow spectrum, and that energy escapes the planet unless it is absorbed by other matter.
I forgot to correct one glaring mistake. All the energy escapes the planet. If it didn’t the planet would vaporize from the accumulated energy and violate all kinds of thermodynamic laws in the process. Outgoing energy equals incoming energy. Write that down.
Anthony, rather that trying to get the editors of the Washington Post to print the Lewis letter, why don’t we just take up a collection to buy a full-page ad in the Post and print the letter that way? I, for one, would be willing to contribute. Find out how much it would cost, let us know, and then take pledges until we have enough to cover it.
Toby; great idea but rather than take pledges why not donations specifically for that?
Daniel Kozub says:
October 9, 2010 at 9:37 am
More apt is to call them narratives or a “just-so stories”. These abound in forensic sciences. When just-so stories become widely accepted they take on the patina of fact. When that happens in the halls of science, where narrative becomes widely accepted as fact, then science has left the building and dogma has taken its place. Dogma dies hard. There’s some truth in the saying that science progresses one funeral at a time. But just because something is dogma that doesn’t make it false. So in the case of dogma that happens to be true we can also say that science sometimes regresses one funeral at a time. The latter seems to be the case here.
@desmong
‘when 97% of climate scientists support the research on climate change. Are 97% of climate scientists on an elaborate conspiracy?’
Are you so naive that you can’t read the statistics for what they were?
Only 1/3 of the populace asked answered one or two of the two questions asked. That in and of itself spells terrible statistics.
Only 82% answered that they believed that man was somewhat responsible for the global warming problem, which means no more an 82% of the total 1/3 of slightly above 10 000 can be accounted for. Of those 82% there was an amount of active climatologists that amounted to one hundred percent and of those 97% agreed, if not in details so at least in the abstract the only two questions asked for the toll. Now, how many active climatologist were there amongst those 82% of one third of the slightly more an 10 000 asked, I ask? Do you how many of the “simpleton” earth scientists that also qualified as full blown active climatologists? Understand that if it only was 100, then only 97 people agreed, right? How many active climate scientist existed in the world at the time of the poll? Did you even know the poll only was for US and Canada? Does US and Canada represent the whole world? If so since when I would ask?
Now what does 97% mean for your crap ass authority figure. <–Get it?
'Of course, I will never find out because'
You're too indoctrinated to fully grasp reality better?
Send in tips on the resignation to The Drudge Report.
http://drudgereport.com/
The form to submit news tips is in the bottom right corner. Everyone in the mainstream media (MSM) reads the Drudge Report along with many millions of individuals. Some cynics even say the MSM has become so lazy they’ve taken to getting their news from the Drudge Report and abandoned any semblance of real investigative reporting.
Dave Springer says:
October 9, 2010 at 3:11 pm
” Outgoing energy equals incoming energy. ”
That’s only approximately so, and even then only over a considerable period of time. On average outgoing energy is appreciably greater than incoming energy (the Earth is gradually cooling, and there is additional heat from radioactive decay, nuclear fission, tidal friction, etc.).
Daniel Kozub says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:50 am
“[…]The earth emits radiation in a more-narrow spectrum, and that energy escapes the planet unless it is absorbed by other matter.[…]”
Please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirchhoff%27s_law_of_thermal_radiation
which states that emission and absorption in heated objects are equal in local thermal equilibrium. So the matter that absorbs the radiation must also re-emit it.
This well-credentialed scientist is obviously sincere and genuinely outraged by what he perceives as a scientific ‘scam’. His resignation is from the APS is honourable in this light. However, none of these virtues, by themselves or together, automatically mean that his probity is keen on the matter of the science. Indeed, he focuses on the politics. I agree with him on the former APS statement, but not much else.
@Paul Birch
“” Outgoing energy equals incoming energy. ”
That’s only approximately so”
Yes but over longer periods of time it is an approximation accurate to at least four decimal points. Outoing heat from the earth’s formation and radioactive decay are a few milliwatts per square meter whereas total outgoing energy is in the hundreds of watts – several orders of magnitude difference there. For climate analysis purposes heat of formation and radioactive decay are rightly ignored in primary effect. In the secondary effect (volcanic activity) however they can have some dramatic short term climate effects that are essentially ignored because predicting volcanic eruptions is (in the kindest possible terms) not an exact science.
The APS has as of 2010 almost 50,000 members.
Hal Lewis has together with some others constantly tried to influence the APS stance on global warming. He managed 160 signatures that demanded a watering down of the APS stance on Global Warming. So I would think that is about 3.2 per-mill of the APS membership. Storm in a tea cup I would say and the APS will do well without Hal. The PR of this is well overblown.
For those who would like to know what the APS is about I recommend their website, not what bloggers like micro-watts have to say about them. http://www.aps.org
I have been member of many clubs. You always find cranks and the noise that one crank in the middle of thousand others can make is always disproportionate.
Enough said.
Samoth says:
October 9, 2010 at 8:16 pm
The APS has as of 2010 almost 50,000 members.
……
I have been member of many clubs. You always find cranks and the noise that one crank in the middle of thousand others can make is always disproportionate.
Enough said.
Well, the responses were running two to one, according to the APS link some posts above yours, and 1/3 of 50.000 is a lot of cranks for one society.
In societies you find some cranks, and a lot of honest people, and a good number pushing their self interest, in this case jobs in the global warming band wagon. I wonder to what sub sample you belong. Can you swear, cross your heart and hope to die, you are not feeding from the AGW trough?
dbleader61;
Good post. But I twitched every time I had to read “incontravertible”. Since the actual word is “incontrovertible”.
Indeed. They are jackasses of all trades, masters of none. They rigidly exclude input from those who know better. Self-promotion has carried them to the heights, but is now about to fail in confrontation with actual scientists, programmers, statisticians, modelers, forecasters, and physicists.
The above implies that the mainstream membership has well-considered opinions on the subject. Only that would justify dismissal of Lewis as a crank.
But what if they have ill-considered opinions, and their consent has been manufactured?
How about a test? Pick a convenient location and have a dozen random nearby members attend a dozen weekend presentations and debates between members of Lewis’s dissenting contingent and the CAWG-consensus authors of the APS position statement. Then poll those jurors on their opinions on that position statement.
And how about a bet on what those poll numbers would look like? (I bet that strong support for the APS statement would drop in half, and strong support for the Lewis position would double, compared to pre-debate sentiment.)
“Samoth says” he “tried to influence the APS stance on global warming” and he’s a “crank”, yeah, like that crank Galileo tried to influence the concensus positon on whether the sun went around the earth or the other way around, we wouldn’t want to upset the consensus, now would we? Apperently you don’t understand science at all, if we stuck with the consensus we would still be living in caves.
Second, “crank” and “micro-watts” are just name calling, is that scientific? It can also be described as “poisoning the well”, an illogic argument that attempts to say “you shouldn’t listen to them, they’re eeeevil”. Illogic is really just a fancy word for lying.
Finally, going to the APS website and seeing what they stand for is irrelivent, since they have, in violation of their own constitution, denied a petition, with the requisite number of signatures, to form “a Topical Group on Climate Science”. As such, it is no longer even remotly relevent what they SAY they stand for, since the main document about that, their constitution, is simply being denied. Who cares what they say anymore after that? How to tell if the leadership of the APS is lying, their lips move.
Given, that, the only thing that should happen to the APS now is:
1. It should be destroyed.
2. It should be replaced by an organization that actually DOES do what they SAY they stand for.
And if 1/3 of their membership now disagrees with their position, and the leadership no longer follows it’s own constitution, then that 1/3 should leave en mass, and form a new organization to DO what the old one no longer DOES.