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)
Dave Springer says:
October 9, 2010 at 4:01 pm
“Daniel Kozub says:
October 9, 2010 at 9:37 am
An untestable hypothesis (idea) is called a “concept”.
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.”
I would tend to agree with your definition. A concept is a necessary component of creating and refining a scientific hypothesis. Forensic science is a good example. But so is theoretical physics, lol.
“Cat knows where the ham is”. Never heard that before. Nice.
http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2000/october/loct00.html
Phil Clarke wrote: “So that’s 47,946 members of the APS who have not resigned, then. Really, if Lewis has hard evidence of fraud he should present it, otherwise he should shut up. I for one, am getting a little fed up with this serious charge being thrown about with a conspicuous lack of supporting evidence.
Professor Emeritus Lewis is annoyed that the APS did not amend their position statement on climate change after ‘Climategate’, which he described as ‘fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity.’
However in his resignation letter, the professor provides no evidence to support his charge of fraud, which is of course an extremely grave one. If he has such evidence one has to wonder why he did not make a submission either to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee or the Muir Russell panel, both of which actively solicited such evidence from any interested parties.
The background is that Lewis and a handful of other senior physicists have been attempting to get the APS to endorse their viewpoint of corrupted science for some time, but their views have not gained any significant traction within the APS membership. He signed an open letter to Congress in mid-2009 stating that ‘the Earth has been cooling for ten years, without help.’ http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3666
In late 2009 they circulated a letter to a selection of members stating that ‘By now everyone has heard of what has come to be known as ClimateGate, which was and is an international scientific fraud, the worst any of us have seen in our cumulative 223 years of APS membership.’ The signatories were …
Bob Austin, Professor of Physics, Princeton
Hal Lewis, emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Will Happer, Professor of Physics, Princeton
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics, Hartford
Roger Cohen, former Manager, Strategic Planning, ExxonMobil
About the same time Lewis and others organised a petition of APS members to pursuade the Society to amend its position on climate change. He gained signatures from 160 members, or about one third of one percent of the membership. Maybe he has decided that his (tiny) minority position has become untenable?”
Ah, the safety in numbers argument. While it works for schools of fish, it does not work for science.
Only a small percentage of the physicists in the APS are involved in so-called climate science and are informed about it only to the extent of what they may read in Physics Today and in the general press. Most are involved in other fields:
http://www.aps.org/membership/units/index.cfm
and with collegiality simply assume that their colleagues actually involved in climate research subject themselves to the same exacting standards of the scientific method as they do in their own unrelated work.
However, the people who brought forward this petition, such as
Will Happer, Professor of Physics, Princeton, have spent their distinguished careers studying the interactions between light and molecules, including CO2,
http://happerlab.princeton.edu/
and as such are qualified to call shenanigans on the claims of man-made global warming.
Daniel Kozub says:
October 10, 2010 at 11:17 am
First rule of holes, Daniel:
When you’ve dug yourself into one, stop digging.
The story has been picked up by one of Norway’s major newspapers, Dagbladet
– Global oppvarming – tidenes største svindel
http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/10/10/nyheter/global_oppvarming/forskning/utenriks/13777180/
The article is essentially a complete translation of Harold Lewis’ resignation letter to APS.
This is quite significant considering the complete domination of alarmist viewpoints in norwegian press in recent years.
You might see some traffic from a link at <a href="http://urgentagenda.com/PERMALINKS%20V/OCTOBER%202010/10.WARMING.HTML" title="Urgent Agenda".
NPR
Top US Physicist Blows The Whistle 2 HOURS AGO
http://topics.npr.org/article/0bWDe8GfjcdmV?q=Princeton+University
Top Scientist slams corrupt AGW 2 HOURS AGO
http://topics.npr.org/article/05mS0J91xH0Nf?q=Princeton+University
SFGate
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/djsaunders/detail?entry_id=74246
Physicists with pitchforks
examiner.com San Diego
http://www.examiner.com/conservative-in-san-diego/hal-lewis-former-uc-santa-barbara-prof-resigns-from-aps-on-global-warming
Hal Lewis, former UC Santa Barbara prof, resigns from APS on global warming
French News Online Blog:
http://www.french-news-online.com/blog/?p=557
A Post Scriptum to an Eco-fascist blog
Well done.
Telegraph.co.uk
(link referenced on NPR)
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058265/us-physics-professor-global-warming-is-the-greatest-and-most-successful-pseudoscientific-fraud-i-have-seen-in-my-long-life/
US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’
The somewhat leftist main Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet published an article today about the American professor emeritus’ letter to the American Physical Society.
See http://www.dagbladet.no/a/13777180/
This is fantastic of two reasons: First, no Norwegian media writes anything about anything that could give reasons against AGW belief. Secondly, an accompanying poll with already over 10 000 votes showed that 57% don’t believe in AGW and 7% don’t care. This is not only 15-20% higher than previous polls, but the readers of Dagbladet in general are fed only AGW propaganda.
See http://stem.start.no/result.php?id=14492
To me it’s pretty simple, just as a judge who must be objective cannot be an advocate a scientist who must be skeptical cannot be an advocate. Advocacy on a scientific subject simply has no place in science. It is definitionally not science. APS is guilty of the advocacy of a particular point of view on climate science and so deserves the thrashing Professor Lewis has administered. Note, this doesn’t depend on what is being advocated, it’s the advocacy itself that is wrong.
Where do you draw the line between advocacy and argument? When words like ‘incontrovertible’ and phrases like ‘beyond question’ appear or there is an appeal to authority it is no longer argument and definitely not science.
Geir in Norway says on October 10, 2010 at 12:19 pm
While it is interesting that in a poll of 10,000 people in Norway 57% don’t believe in AGW, it has little bearing on the science.
My personal view is that human activities, including land use changes and the production of CO2 is likely to have had some impact, although it is likely small. However, I also think that liberating more CO2 from the earth’s clutches will likely have a beneficial effect on plant life … and is to be applauded.
However, the energy flows through the environment dwarf anything we are currently responsible for and that the thing to be feared is cooling.
Of course, the science is far from settled, and we need to get the funds into the hands of people who will do real research.
This whole episode reminds me of a chemist who would have been a contemporary of Dr. Lewis’ and while they might not have been direct acquaintances, they likely shared some of the same friends. His initials were F.T. and he passed away in 1976. He graduated from UCLA in 1932, served some time in WWII, and eventually went to work in industry while working on his grad studies.
He became so disgusted with what he saw as financial and political corruption that he completely quit the field of science, moved back to California and bought a garbage business that he eventually traded for an apple ranch which he worked until he died. One of the things that disgusted him was the “loyalty oath” that UC pressured many (and which Dr. Lewis refused) to sign but there were other considerations, many financial, that he discovered while working in veterinary pharmaceuticals.
This isn’t new, but it is different. It is yet another example of political and economic pressure being brought on scientists to arrive at the “correct” conclusion else they risk their jobs at the cost of their integrity.
It is the retirees who are most likely to blow the whistle because they are not in the funding game. Freeman Dyson is another such. Unfortunately they are easily ignored, but if the media takes note, then not so easily ignored.
I need to say, it is not only climate science which has gone askew. In astronomy, there is huge dollars funding the pursuit of “dark matter” and “dark energy” in support of a Big Bang & Inflation model which cannot stand except when supported by 90% unknowable matter & energy constructs. Common sense will one day prevail, if only the money spigots would dry up.
Dave Springer says:
October 9, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Daniel Kozub says:
October 9, 2010 at 10:50 am
[I snipped the bulk of my 10-9-2010 10:50 a.m. post and your response from 10-9-2010 3:06 p.m.]
I was referring to the earth and sun’s total electromagnetic radiation emission, not to their grey body thremal spectra.
Liquid and solid water in the atmosphere (rain, clouds, hail, snow) also absorb radiation from from the surface of the earth. I should have put “greenhouse gas” in quotes instead of “greenhouse” gas.
We could discuss the butterfly effect at length, and it’s likely that we hold the same opinions on it. So I will clarify my initial statement:
Humans have the capability to alter the earth’s climate and weather in quantifiable, predictable, and significant ways.
Please note that I consider the above statement, as well as all of the others in that post (with one exception, see below), testable and falsifiable concepts within the definition of science.
It is my OPINION that the earth’s hydrological cycle has been severely altered on the local and regional level. I would not refute someone that defined that as anthropogenic climate change. Urban rainfall flows into sewers, not creeks. Swamps are drained, resivoirs are created for dams. Dikes and levees are built. Crops are irrigated. Power plants spew water vapor. Land-use changes are too numerous to mention.
More OPINION:
You stated that you believe humans have altered climate and weather at the local level. Neither that opinion nor my opinion listed above claim that those changes lead to catastropic global warming. But the average of all local effects is the global effect. So the question is: Is that value not equal to zero?
My opinion is that the earth’s temperature is controlled by a severely-redundant negatively-coupled buffered system. And I think that there are two major stable states of that system, glaciated and non-glaciated. Global warming “theory” essentially states that either those systems are not stable or that there is a third stable state that I’ll call “fireball earth”.
I wish that I could plainly and accurately state that global warming is a farce. But instead I choose to say that I don’t believe in “catastophic carbon dioxide-based anthropogenic global warming”. It rolls right off the tongue. 🙁
[Quotation from our previous two posts]:
DK: I’m just a scientist.
DS: 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.
[End Quotation]
And that was the only statement in my previous post that was not scientific. In fact, it is wholly inaccurate. I’m not just a scientist, you’re not just an engineer. I wrote that as a declaration that what I was writing was as free of opinion and bias as much as possible for me.
Please tell me what I got wrong within the constraints of everything I said being “testable and falsibiable” scientific concepts. I wrote all of that post from the top of my head. I no doubt omitted concepts of which I am unaware, didn’t consider, or couldn’t remember.
As this debate further politicizes, arguements are becoming more political. Cognitive dissonance leads to rationalization and confirmation bias. Too many political arguments are supported by one side and rejected by the other. A year ago, supporting global warming did not mean that you are a Democrat, and rejecting it did not mean that you are a Republican (in the United States). Being an enviromentalist and scientist that does not believe CCAGW is an incontrovertible fact is probably about as difficult as being a conservative Democrat or a liberal Republican.
And that brings this discussion back to the original posting about Hal Lewis’ letter.
Phil, did you sign on to support 10:10?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/08/friday-funny-2-2/#comment-503336
Thanks for pointing me to the signup page. FYI while the names appear immediately, the full sign up process involves responding to a confirmation email which presumably weeds out the more obviously bogus signers. Interesting that in one small country over just a few months they have gained more support than the absurd Oregon Petition managed in a decade. And I see that Mexico City has committed to its 10%…
http://www.1010global.org/uk/2010/10/largest-city-americas-goes-1010
REPLY: You ducked the question and added irrelevant fluff. So I’ll ask again: did you signup for 10:10 as a supporter? Your name appears on it. – Anthony
Dave Springer says:
October 10, 2010 at 11:48 am
“First rule of holes, Daniel:
When you’ve dug yourself into one, stop digging.”
What are you talking about? You commentent on my post that I wrote to another commenter who asked me directly what parts of global warming orthodoxy were REMOTELY VALID. (wsbriggs October 9, 2010 at 9:57 am)
From our discussion:
DK: All of the above are testable and falsifiable.
DS: In principle, perhaps. In practice, not.
Which concepts that I listed are not testable and falsifiable?
Please stop insulting me with your false dichotomy. Continue to insult yourself with it if you please.
Anthony – click the first link – I answered the question on your very blog. Yes it was me.
BTW 10,000 people out on the streets of Paris supporting 10:10 right now!
REPLY: Thanks, it is truly sad to see that you support such idiots that make child snuff films – Anthony
1. Create the perception of crisis.
2. Proffer your own convenient, pre-determined solution.
3. Lobby your solution into law.
4. Profit by force at the expense of the masses.
5. Repeat.
It doesn’t take a scientist or a professional skeptic to understand the truth about the climate change context. As Hal Lewis aptly pointed out, it’s a HUGE FRAUD; as anybody, nevermind a scientist, should have figured this out years ago.
There is no defense for continuing to pursue the fraud of climate change. It is time to force those promoting the climate change fraud to disclose their vested political and financial interests. They have committed a terrible crime against humanity — among the greatest crimes in this age.
Line them up!
Congratulations Hal! Hope you are not the last to do such a courageous act!! We have been emotionally badgered for so long about this global warming/cooling scam that many do not want to hear the truth. I just found out that DDT is totally SAFE for humans and environment by going to http://www.3billionandcounting.com I then went to see the documentary and was shocked back to sanity! The folks that supported the lies around global warming are the same who banned DDT. I am encouraged that much of the deceit fed us over the last 40 years, is finally having light shed on them. Stand tall Hal .. there are many who are in your court!
Phil Clarke:
“BTW 10,000 people out on the streets of Paris supporting 10:10 right now!”
So that’s 2193817 parisians who are not on the streets then, Phil.
Not to mention exoplanets. I mean, we should all pretty much take it as a given that there are planets of all different sizes in all different kinds of orbits around stars. That we should find one or two million of them over time shouldn’t surprise anyone; it should be *assumed* they are there. I have no idea why so much money and publicity is being poured into the finding of them.
We should probably invest the money into something more worthwhile in astronomy like, I don’t know, searching for things in orbits perpendicular to the ecliptic, maybe? Imagine our chagrin in cataloging all the NEOs in the ecliptic only to get walloped by something flying in from due South. Say, how disruptive would it be to our solar system if something the size of Jupiter that was ejected from some star system comes sailing through on a parabolic path?
I would say it would be better to simply assume that we are going to find exoplanets pretty much everywhere we look and not to waste time looking for them until we have some use for the information. To me it is like looking for sand at the beach. Oh look! SAND! And more sand! And yet more sand! Basically a planet is just a very large grain of sand of which there are probably countless billions.
“Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare.”
This says it all…
Interview with Harold Lewis (HT:Runi Sørensen)
by Finn Aaserud in Santa Barbara, CA
6 July 1986
http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4742.html
@Paul Deacon (way back):
“Scientific truth is not decided by majority vote”
Thanks for saying that, so I wouldn’t have to.
I’d add to that: “Reality is not decided by a majority vote”. Sadly, many people seem to lack that basic knowledge.