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)
Jacob Mack says:
October 11, 2010 at 5:55 pm
“Stastical thermodynamics proves why thermodynamics cannot be violated at the micro-level. The correspondence principle is what this is called. Thus global warming cannot be depicted by the hockey stick accurately or have a run away effect ever.”
Jacob, your posts are fantastic!
My conversion to a skeptic happened similarly. At first, the global warming hypothesis seemed plausible. I flipped when I learned about the positive feedbacks/runaway global warming that they associated with water vapor. If such a feedback system existed (CO2–>heat–>increased H2O–>heat–>increased H2O–>heat–>etc…), then the earth would have exhibited that feedback loop in the past. And it would likely have lead to the atmosphere venting into space.
Years of FT-IR analysis and the necessity for me to hold my breath while openning the sample chamber made me VERY familiar with the infrared spectra of carbon dioxide and water vapor. Connecting the dots was easy after that. Okay, not easy. But that gave me fuel to search out the answers and discover the scientific flaws.
I’d like to pick your brain:
Can you explain caloric theory and how it applies in this debate?
As used by the CCAGW orthodoxy, is the earth a closed or open system? I consider their use as of it as an open system, but they seem to call it closed. Am I correct identifying the earth and sun as an open system in regard to radiation transfer and an open system in regard to total energy but approximating a closed system?
Regarding the ideal gas law, how accurate is pV=nRT with the entire troposhere as an ideal gas? What about near the earth’s surface?
My guess is that it doesn’t fit very well or not at all. The average height of the tropopause is variable, and currently very low. Surface temperature and pressure are recorded at most weather stations. R is a constant, and n is nearly constant. So does the change in volume match the changes in pressure and temperature? Is there a change in entropy? Does math and physics have an answer to this?
I’m having difficulty finding data for the average height of the tropopause and average barometric pressure. Any ideas where to find it?
Thank you.
[Here we go again! Who’s the foolest fool?]
Dave Springer says:
October 11, 2010 at 9:03 pm
@Daniel Kozub
“Thermodynamically, the earth and sun are an OPEN system. A flashlight is a closed system. A bomb calorimiter is another one.”
Daniel, Daniel, Daniel…
Everyone with a passing knowledge of physics knows that closed systems are an ideal state that doesn’t exist in nature as it requires total isolation from the rest of the universe. Tell me how you’d isolate any point in our galaxy from the gravitational effects of the Andromeda galaxy. We don’t even know if the entire universe is a closed system because we don’t know what lies outside the observable portion of it.
I’m fixin’ to give up on you unless you start showing at least a high school level understanding of basic physics. No system in the real world is closed. Some are just closer approximations than others. Write that down.
The sun/earth system closely approximates a closed system for most practical purposes and certainly so for the earth’s energy budget.
[End Quotation]
You are describing an ISOLATED system. Your wiki-fu is weak.
Ten Trillion Dollar per year market in “Carbon” emission was proposed by Chicago Climate Exchange founder Richard Sandor, link at http://banksterreport.blogspot.com/2009/11/10-trillion-emissions-market.html
and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWm8sbxfok
So the founders of the CCX certainly expect to make an obscene amount of money off the energy use of everyone. So everyone’s costs go up, and these people make out like mega bandits and zero difference is made to “saving the planet”.
“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.”
So the magnetic flux tubes connecting the earth with its plasma environment, in which 100,000’s amperes have been measured by THEMIS satellites contributes nothing to the earth’s energy budget, then. Whoops I also forgot the Birkeland currents at the poles.
So one could think about what proportion solar radiation is in terms of the other electromagnetic energy sources now being discovered by space exploration. I suspect it might be about 10% once we finally figure it out.
Jacob Mack says:
October 11, 2010 at 5:46 pm
“At firt thermodynamics was all about the study of heat and its ability to generate motion. Then later it merged with a larger subject which was of energy and its interconversion into one form and another and then later it evolved still further to study transformation of any matter in general and motion generated by q being a consequence.”
Quite right. It has further transformed to include information which also appears to obey fundamental laws of conservation and entropy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory
A long famous argument took place between Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskind about whether information could be destroyed in even the most extreme case imaginable – an enclopedia crossing over the event horizen into a black hole. Hawking bet that information could be destroyed, or at least lost to the rest of the universe in this manner. He conceded the bet a few years ago. As far as anyone can tell information, like energy, can be neither created nor destroyed, it can only change form. Likewise it follows the law of increasing entropy. Fascinating stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
Outside The Box says:
October 11, 2010 at 7:38 pm
“I suppose any man who thinks he can control the climate is suffering from some sort of deeply disturbed complex.”
Hubris on steroids.
[Let me know if you’re feeling stupid yet. I sure am!]
Dave Springer says:
October 11, 2010 at 9:10 pm
@Daniel Kozub
“Please tell me what color of visible light water emits at room temperature.”
The electromagnetic frequency range that human eyeballs can discriminate is irrelevant – EMR is EMR. This may be the most asinine thing you’ve written so far but I could be wrong because there are so many asinine things you’ve written vying for the title.
[End Quotation]
Who said anything about eyeballs? I’m looking for a UV-vis spectrogram.
Produce it.
Hint: It will look like this: 0.00000000 ____________________________
400 700
I see you punted on the unpowered light bulb. Maybe you’re starting to think. Why would something heated to 3,500K emit white light, but none at 300K?
If you forgot your original point, you were telling me that the earth and the sun emit radiation in the exact same spectral range.
My faith in Physics and the Physics community is restored. The truth will not be hidden forever.
Bravo Dr. Lewis
[From Paul Birch. Refreshing, thank you.]
Paul Birch says:
October 11, 2010 at 8:16 am
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.
[End Quotation]
Paul,
The following is an example of a once untested but falsifiable hypothesis. It became a once tested and falsified concept. It also, conveniently, is an example of anthropogenic climate change.
In 1991, during the US-led/UN Coalition invasion of Kuwait (the first Gulf War), Sadaam Hussein ordered his army to light the Kuwaiti oil fields on fire. They burned uncontrolled for most of the year. Carl Sagan predicted (prior to the event!) that the soot would darken the skies, lower the temperature, and decrease Asian crop yeilds for years. He described it as a (large) regional version of nuclear winter.
The skies did darken, the temperatures did drop, the rain was black. But the soot never escaped the troposphere, and rain scrubbed the soot from the atmosphere quickly. Even thought he spent a lot of his career on the fringe, Carl Sagan was a true scientist. He admitted that this event busted his nuclear winter hypothesis.
Sadly, the story didn’t end there. Climate modellers have taken up the banner of nuclear winter again. Guess what? IT’S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT!!!!
The climate model used?
Wait for it…
NASA/GISS Model E!!!!!!!!!
LMAO! I can’t make this up.
Dr. Lewis deserves kudos beyond this site; he is at the end of his career and does not need to worry about his future in physics. Unfortunately, the perpetrators of the politically motivated, money driven “global warming” FRAUD apparently are still in their earning mode, as well as many well meaning actual scientists who are properly appalled at the misuse of the emperical scientific process for personal and political gain. I have always had the utmost respect for the scientific methods and results, as it was, along with mathematics, the last bastion of honesty in a world driven “mad” by grossly inflated personal egos in this so called information society. If we as U.S. and world citizens cannot believe scientific papers, what can be trusted? It was obvious from the start with this issue of the alleged climate changes that something was amiss. Those persons who would criticize Hal Lewis are no better than the frauds who lead us to this point.
Science is dead. The only way to bring back science is…
total separation of science and state… including state funding.
“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. ”
Wow.
This just in: Old guy leaves a science society, reforms Christianity.
Dave Springer says:
October 11, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Actually in that post she mentions both and puts a finer point on it to boot:
Some good publicity for the sceptic side in today’s Daily Express…
GLOBAL WARMING IS ‘THE GREATEST FRAUD IN 60 YEARS’
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/204880
“A TOP American professor has quit a prestigious academic body after claiming that global warming has become a “scam” driven by “trillions of dollars” which has “corrupted” scientists.”
Anthony;
Many thanks for the link to Romm’s discussion:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/11/hal-lewis-resigns-from-the-american-physical-society/
I’m truely astounded Mr. Romm can, in one large-printbreath
say Dr. Lewis’s resignation represents, ” An unimportant
moment in science history…”. then expound paragraph
upon paragragh as to how this event ties in with so many
others he appears to detest and have shouted about many
times.
Since it’s so “ unimportant” why send so many
flaming epithets at the Doctor ?
We had a magazine come into our house back in the
late 1960’s titled “American Opinion Magazine”.
In it a great many folks were declared to be commies, pinkos,
fellow-travelers, closet socialists and one-worlders. The
levels of documentation for these accusations and the quality
of rhetoric were very similar to Mr. Romm’s column on the
Lewis resignation.
The good old John Birch Society advertised their books,
pamphlets and school educational films in American
Opinion Magazine
Romm’s jabbering could have been reduced to the elegant
headline, “Dr. Who ??. Then followed it with one
line obit-type entry, “On Friday, 08 October 2010, Hal Lewis
resigned as an emeritus member of the American Physical
Society.”
Everything else he’s saying is sour grapes.
TonyB says: “Brendan H
Good grief, you’re right (for once) :)”
Bound to happen occasionally 🙂
interesting question: “would all the so called highly respected climate scientists remain “eminent” if empirical evidence showed human induced global warming to be not significant?”
That’s an interesting question, interesting question. I don’t think I said that climate scientists were “eminent”, but I bow to your judgement on that one. Whether they would remain eminent if found to be mistaken, I don’t see why not, unless you are equating “eminent” with “infallible”.
“THEY SHOULD BURN IN ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.
what do you think?”
I think that eternity is a very long time, and human beings are finite. In which case, eternal punishment would be impossible. Even if it were possible, and the scientists were shown to have done very bad things, an eternal punishment for finite acts seems disproportionate.
The A.P.S. NEEDS TO REMEMBER TO USE IT’S OWN ADVICE”into Not Fooling Themselves”
“Fooling Students into Not Fooling Themselves”
http://www.aps.org/units/fed/newsletters/spring2002/hall/hall.html
“Science as a Safeguard”<<Oh!! the irony,Please read it.
"safeguards known as the scientific method were developed;”6 safeguards such as control samples, blind (and double blind) studies, and peer review."
AND
"how wrong things can go if one does not adequately guard against such pitfalls."
To DocBud
Fair point. However I have to add that this is not just a resignation letter, it has been made available for wide spread publication and as such seeks to contribute to the ‘debate’. Thus I don’t think a little more by way of meat and potatos is unreasonable otherwise the letter simply becomes an example of appeal from authority.
To Kate
I think you will find that the behaviour of CO2 as a green house gas is pretty well understood.
Brendan H,
No need for the extreme answers I provide, although the answer to the interesting questions is not simple. Giving them the window seat is probably to harsh.
My solution is to ignore them, that’s all.
Dave Springer says:
October 11, 2010 at 12:31 pm
“@Paul Birch “however, the hypothesis that man is unable to influence climate is falsifiable”
How’s that, Paul? We have one earth that we do something to and a control earth that we do nothing to?”
I said: “… 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.”
What didn’t you understand there? Controls are not necessary in science, though they’re jolly useful when you can manage them.
I see from the Global Warming Policy Foundation website that Dr Lewis has agreed to join their Academic Advisory Council.
http://www.thegwpf.org/news/1687-professor-hal-lewis-joins-the-gwpf.html
Hal Lewis joins GWPF’s Advisory Council.
http://www.thegwpf.org/news/1687-professor-hal-lewis-joins-the-gwpf.html
see revised list of his new colleagues here:-
http://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/academic-advisory-council.html
includes – Prof Lindzen, Prof McKitrick, Prof Freeman Dyson
Professor Lewis is to be congratulated for his stand, however I fear that his taking of a principled position will not be enough to save science.
Save science? Does science need saving?
Not yet, but it will do. Science is currently respected because it is trusted. It is trusted because of the principles of people like Professor Lewis and his Victorian forbears who worked so hard to make science a doctrine based purely on evidence and fact and not on political expediency, fame or financial reward.
Regardless of what Professor Lewis, Michael Mann or the IPCC do or say, the final word on “climate change” will be had by the climate itself. Whether that is in twenty, fifty or one hundred years time is irrelevant – what is relevant is that if science has made the claim that CO2 drives temperature and the reality in twenty, fifty or one hundred years time contradicts that then science will have ruined its reputation and will have lost the trust of the public.
That trust will not be regained easily. Those people in the APS – or, indeed, the RS in Britain – are placing a heavy burden on their successors. They have no right to do that any more than they have the right to discard the principles and morals upon which their institutions were founded.
“The President of the APS, Professor Curt Callan, said: “The use of the word ‘scam’ is ridiculous. To dismiss the work of large numbers of honest, hard-working scientists as a scam is just silly.””
To an extent, I agree, though the description of the use of the word “scam” I’d use would be inaccurate. Words like scam, hoax, or fraud are far too small, and tend to trivialize the CAGW/CC/CD monstrosity. It is an industry based on a lie. All else stems from that fact. The “scientists” who support that industry may indeed be hard-working, but their honesty is in question. In essence, all they are doing is punching the CAGW/CC/CD time clock. They are putting their time in, but they are no longer scientists. Surely some part of them must realize that fact.