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)
When a scientific society issues a statement related to science it is implicit that some science was done to support the statement. It appears that the APS statement was supported by a vote of the membership. But how many of the members who voted actually performed scientific inquiry into the subject of the statement? I would guess that many of those who voted are devoting their scientific efforts toward String Theory or other esoteric subjects that have little connection with climate.
I would hope that the members of scientific societies would refrain from voting on policy statements unless they have done appropriate research or due diligence on the research of others they are depending on. Otherwise such votes are no more than an expression of the opinions of a group of highly educated novices. Perhaps that’s better than opinions of uneducated novices, but hardly a scientific product.
“BTW 10,000 people out on the streets of Paris supporting 10:10 right now!”
No doubt they’ve all seen the 10:10 commercial and are afraid of being “eliminated”…LOL!
By the way, Phil…here’s your “protest”…
Paris gets ready to party on 10:10:10
10:10 France organises a free concert for the Day Of Doing
—
Ah yes, doing what Climate Scientists do best – PARTY!!! (Except climate scientitsts do it in Cancun and Bali at taxpayer’s expense…)
There’s a solid chance this isn’t being covered in the media, because, with respect to Dr. Lewis, his resignation is not newsworthy.
He is a single man in his eighties, a retired professor and researcher who hasn’t published any meaningful research in his field, much less that of climate science, in what appears to be near 50 years, resigning from an organization that represents nearly 50,000 people. That his letter was public, inflammatory, and blogged heavily does not make it notable, much less Galilean.
That it is simply the latest volley in a lengthy campaign to portray a manufactured controversy makes it even less so.
And herein lies a real issue, the inability of current society to actually parse events to determine those actually worthy of widespread attention. This is not one of them.
Daniel Kozub says:
October 10, 2010 at 2:16 pm
re; first rule of holes
Here is where you kept digging:
“Yes, in a closed system, with a black body, at thermal equillibrium.”
In the earth’s energy budget practically all incoming energy comes from the sun. Less than 1% from tidal friction, heat of formation, and radioactive decay. For the purpose of the energy budget the earth/sun system comprises a closed system.
“Your first error is inferring that all radiation emitted by the sun is absorbed by the earth.”
The commenter made no such inference that I could determine.
“Your second error is inferring that I was only including thermal radiation.”
I did not see that either. The commenter gave you a link to Kirchoff’s law which applies to all heated objects. The sun and earth are both heated objects with characteristic black body emission spectra of approximately 5000K and 300K respectively.
“Neither the sun nor the earth are black-bodies. But that isn’t an error in logic.”
Astronomy 101 – the sun and earth both approximate black bodies in their emission spectra.
“And the earth is far from being a closed system. Please research terrestrial energy sources, gravitation, gas laws, radioactive decay, relativity, and heat of formation.”
In the earth’s energy budget less than 1% of the energy comes from the sources you cite. In that context the sun/earth is a closed system.
“It’s sad that reading wikipedia can make you more ignorant.”
Not as sad as the same effect via a PhD program. At least in the case of wikipedia there are no tuition payments adding insult to injury.
Marco,
The prof is writing a letter of resignation, not a scientific paper. He is resigning because of what he considers to be unconstitutional shenanigans, which he details in points 4, 5 and 6, not because someone disagrees with him. Had the APS followed its constitution, the prof makes it clear he would have been happy to deal with the science from within the APS.
R.S.Brown says:
“… The emails are undoubtedly controversial. One side insists that they are the nail in the coffin for AGW (without explaining how an allegedly flawed paleo reconstruction contradicts radiative physics or the anthropogenic contribution of co2 or the fact that co2 is a green house gas or the fact that co2 is increasing or the fact of decreasing arctic ice etcetera etcetera)… ”
Actually, the reverse is true. In spite of the billions spent, the global warming lot have failed to prove how carbon dioxide forces atmospheric temperatures upwards or downwards rather than those temperatures affecting the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as part of nothing more than natural climate cycles.
It is up on my site with the request to contact the Washington Post. This does deserve comparable (greater really) coverage than Mann gets.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2010/10/emeritus-professor-resigns-from-the-american-physical-society/
John Kehr
Perhaps, to lighten things up, you folks would enjoy a listen of The Hockey Stick Blues…
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978577798
@Daniel Kozub
You ask which things are not falsifiable.
Pretty much all those which refer to anthropogenic driven climate change, either local or global.
How do you propose isolating the anthropogenic factor(s) in question? Absent a time machine we can’t go back in time and remove the anthropogenic contribution to see what happens. This is a problem with all forensic sciences. Climate change is not an experiment that can be repeated with one variable isolated for study. One might speculate on what would have happened if Adolf Hitler was never born. Such speculation is no more than narrative. Similarly we might speculate on what would have happened to atmospheric CO2 if the industrial revolution had never happened. That speculation would also be no more than narrative. The industrial revolution is not a repeatable experiment.
Anthony,
Maybe it’s just me, but I see an unfortunate ambiguity in the way you phrased the title of this story that can easily lead readers to think Hal Lewis himself has described his resignation as “an important moment in science history.” The word “My” makes it sound as if all the words after his name were his words. At least that’s the way I interpreted it on first reading.
There should be various ways to prevent this, for example
Hal Lewis’ Letter of Resignation…. etc.
The American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/10/brave_scientist_calls_out_the.html
October 11, 2010
Brave scientist calls out the global warming fraudsters
An interesting discussion with Desmong here showing the power of groupthink excess, if not a few decision makers but if millions are involved in it.
Could also be the battle between the guardians against the rationalists.
“Guardians often experience stress when rules, expectations, and structure are unclear, or when those around them do not act according to established procedures. The extraverted (expressive) types—Providers and Supervisors—may respond by becoming critical of others.”
But it’s great that ad hommers like Desmong get tit for tat. Refreshing.
Hopefully this letter will have a significant impact in the physics community given Hal Lewis stature. That he is a co-founder of the JASON government advisory group should add more impact. Unfortunately the JASONs were early adopters of the AGW pseudoscience as far back as 1982.
[quoted from Spaceballs]
Barf: I know we need the money, but . . .
Lone Starr: Listen! We’re not just doing this for money!
Barf: [Barf looks at him, raises his ears]
Lone Starr: We’re doing it for a SHIT LOAD of money!
What a pity.
300+ comments, and many with the usual ad hominem attacks, majority justifications, and blatant refusals to accept the obvious.
The AGW supporters will have to name for me the individual whose single-handed challenge to accepted orthodoxy was universally greeted with acclaim. The “incontrovertible” assertion makes clear the acceptance of AGW as orthodox.
Shall we look to Semmelweis? Or Copernicus? Shall we consider Heisenberg? Or Democritus?
Oh, sure. Any person setting things right is always welcomed with open arms. Not. Welcomed with derision, scorn, dismissal from employment, an occasional burning at the stake, a really warm welcome! Science is made by rebels, and only the test of time sorts out the true rebels from the charlatans.
Facts are unpleasant things, especially when facts contradict what you think is true. And the fact is that AGW theory does not present us with testable predictions. Documented history demonstrates that AGW predictions have not come to pass.
One can argue without limit about the absorption by carbon dioxide of infrared radiation which leaves the earth. Again the facts intervene. What, exactly, IS the carbon dioxide budget? How much is absorbed by plants, how much stored, how much released by plant death, and so on? How much is in the oceans, how much in fossil deposits, how much in living plants? How does this budget vary over geological time?
What is the cost/benefit ratio for reducing emissions? See the work of Bjorn Lomborg on this question.
Again, the facts. Anthony has been the point of the spear in questioning our method of data collection via Stephenson screens. The low ratio of screens which are sited in accordance with our own standards should give any scientist pause to reflect. An old rule is “garbage in, garbage out.” Or, “the probability of valid predictions based on inaccurate data is zero.”
The lack of a published explanation for the radical decrease of the number of stations used for computing the world temperature also gives those who care about accuracy a chill.
What I have not found in this thread is an explanation of the close connection between the AGW orthodoxy and the zeal of the Universal Utopian Socialists. Remember: the treaties which have been sought would bind the world into a universal socialist state. It is the same group which sought the same end under the flag of the Nuclear Winter not so many years ago.
It was pseudo-science then (Nuclear Winter); it is pseudo-science now (AGW).
But phony models which cannot predict cloud cover are no substitute for the hard work of accurate and methodical data collection!
Especially when the records are “amended” after-the-fact in order to buttress the pre-determined conclusion.
Dave Springer says:
October 11, 2010 at 6:38 am
“@Daniel Kozub
You ask which things are not falsifiable.
Pretty much all those which refer to anthropogenic driven climate change, either local or global.
How do you propose isolating the anthropogenic factor(s) in question? Absent a time machine we can’t go back in time and remove the anthropogenic contribution to see what happens. This is a problem with all forensic sciences. Climate change is not an experiment that can be repeated with one variable isolated for study.”
Partly this is a matter of wording. The hypothesis that man is able to influence climate is probably not falsifiable; however, the hypothesis that man is unable to influence climate is falsifiable. It could be falsified by eg, scattering a large quantity of reflective chaff in orbit (or by any other drastic intervention sufficient to dominate the natural variations, or by an intervention we can switch on and off at will to isolate its signal – such as a soletta mirror). A scientific experiment capable of verifying or falsifying a hypothesis does not necessarily have to be repeatable, so long as the prediction of what will be observed is sufficiently robust and discriminatory. For example, if I predict that pushing you off a high cliff will kill you, I would be able to carry out the experiment exactly once – assuming that my theory is correct! – ’cause you’d be dead after the first run through. It would still constitute pretty good evidence, though.
Michael Searcy says:
October 11, 2010 at 6:14 am
There’s a solid chance this isn’t being covered in the media, because, with respect to Dr. Lewis, his resignation is not newsworthy.
Anything is possible, of course, but the most likely reason is that it doesn’t fit the MSM’s Alarmist stance (which sells papers) the way that, say, “The Hottest Summer Ever” does.
That it is simply the latest volley in a lengthy campaign to portray a manufactured controversy makes it even less so.
Heh. Nice try, but there is nothing “manufactured” except things like the Hockey Stick, and what you call a “campaign” is actually just an effort to bring science and truth back into climate science, which is obsessed with C02, or what they like to call “Carbon”, and adamant about their claim that it is man’s C02 which is either (take your pick) causing global warming, climate change, or climate disruption.
And herein lies a real issue, the inability of current society to actually parse events to determine those actually worthy of widespread attention. This is not one of them.
Yes, only a select few should be in control of the flow of information. That way, it’s much easier to
brainwashhelp the public to understand things.Unfortunately for the Alarmists (and fortunately for mankind), that isn’t quite the case.
Lewis is an “Emeritus”. . . in other words, there’s not a whole lot that can be done to him at this point, absent the inclusion of ninjas. So I don’t know if this is exactly brave, but it certainly was clearly very honest and more than a little painful for him.
But “brave” requires real risk, and Lewis has none. Alas, such bravery does not appear to be forthcoming from those who do still have careers to risk.
Phil Clarke says:
October 10, 2010 at 2:17 pm
“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!”
Yes, Phil. And Pol Pot got his crazy ideas while he studied at Sorbonne in Paris.
So the lesson is;
In any big city you will have a certain percentage that supports Pol Pot, Stalin, Lenin or Mao, or whatever lunatic. Sad to see you are one of them.
“In astronomy, there is huge dollars funding the pursuit of “dark matter” and “dark energy”
It is a bit ironical that even Quantum Physics has its skeptic group which believes that physics has been a prisoner of the Copenhagen Interpretation clan. Like the skeptics here, their arguments sure seem more logical than the mainstream.
http://web.archive.org/web/20011221071928/www.gilder.com/AmericanSpectatorArticles/carver.htm
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/scattering.by.free.pdf
Who’s Hal Lewis?
Hah – not just the APS, but every scientific academy in the world? In every major developed country? As well as most of the major research institutes? Apparently another conspiracy theorist. This puts killing Kennedy and keeping it a secret to shame. Same for Bush and Cheney demolishing the towers. It’s up there with Roslin, NM and Area whatever it is. The scientific conspiracy to end all conspiracies – 200 years in the making. He’s mystified at the motivations, but his guess is that it’s all in the money. Even though the Heartland Inst has an open checkbook for any scientist, or person with even vague scientific credentials, ready to support their cause.
The mainstream media have failed to pick up on this issue for the simple reason that it’s not newsworthy. If Prof. Lewis were a central figure in climate science and had made an about-turn on previous support for AGW, that would be news.
But a retired physicist with no clear track record in climate science doesn’t count as news. The reason for this gatekeeping is obvious once you realise that every man and his dog has an opinion about global warming. They can’t all feature as spokespeople for media purposes, however, eminent they may be in other fields.
Lewis hasn’t helped his case by alluding to internal squabbles with APS, nor by his accusations of fraud, scam and corruption, much less the hints at conspircy.
A couple of years ago there was a flurry of excitement about a chap who claimed to have been James Hansen’s superior. I predict this issue will go the same way.
Because it`s so damned difficult to get the french communists out on the streets isn`t it?
Kate:
At your “Kate says: October 11, 2010 at 6:31 am”,
you seem to have confused me with someone else.
I was the one who at October 11, 2010 at 5:24 am,
used the lyrics quote , “The revolution will not be
televised.”
I forgot to give proper credit for the quote.
According to Wikipedia (shudder) Gil Scott-Heron
wrote the song in 1970 and showed it up as a track on
his 1970 album “Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. ” Gil
Scott-Heron recited the piece, accompanied only by
congas and bongo drums. This is the version with
which I am familiar.
It was later rerecorded with fuller instrumentation.
Oddly enough, at the time the tune first came out,
it only really got air play on underground FM stations…
which the song’s target audience tended to avoid.
It was never welcomed by mainsteam media.
I guess you had to be there