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)
Larry Fields says:
October 13, 2010 at 10:20 pm
” Most physical scientists believe that the Earth’s supply of cheaply-extracted CONG (coal, oil, natural gas) is finite. ”
If they do (which I doubt) then they should learn some economics as well as physics. With increasing demand, increasing capital formation and increasing knowledge, the cost of energy falls; it has done so consistently in the past and will continue to do so in the future. There is no shortage of energy; in the Solar System alone trillions of times more power than we currently use is continuously going to waste, thrown away into space, yet is readily captureable; even little Earth receives around ten thousand times our present usage. So unless the ecofascists and other socialist thugs destroy the world economy, energy will be even cheaper in the future than it is today (and that is very cheap by historical standards, relative to disposable income). With cheap energy the supply of hydrocarbon fuels becomes unlimited; we can easily produce as much as we like, whether we extract it them from beneath the surface or just make them from CO2 and water. Oil is not finite in any economically relevant way. It will become gradually more affordable, not less.
Anthony: “Dr. Lewis APS resignation letter is comparable to the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. ”
You’re drawing a very long bow here, Anthony. Martin Luther was steeped in the theological and doctrinal issues in dispute, having given them long thought and study. He was an inveterate pampleteer and debater, pouring a huge amount of intellectual energy into his battles.
And he was young — still in his mid-thirties, so he was still physically vigorous and his thinking was new and fresh and grew with his own maturity.
By contrast, Prof. Lewis is an outsider to climate science, an oberver rather than a participant. His letter deals with arcane technicalities, and consists of worn bromides and tired rhetoric. I doubt that Lewis is going to be leading a movement any time soon.
REPLY: I get a chuckle out of the fact that the only people complaining most strongly about this analogy are the defenders of the AGW faith. – Anthony
Time to move on. Get this off the lead area.
————
Marco,
Thank you for your reply.
I understand your ‘scroll bar’ comment to mean that you haven’t any comments that you think were important for us to comment on, much less important enough to restate them for us. OK, that ends that.
Certainly, this is an open place, thanks to Anthony. But I will also say thanks to you for pointing that out to me. : )
Back to the thrust of my original comment to you; I think you implied commenters here were cowards because we did not respond to what you imply are your important comments. I think each individual here gets to decide if your comments are important to our knowledge base and our time. If nobody responded then it indicates perhaps that your comments were actually not that important wrt our knowledge base and time. It is the free market of ideas . . . . I love it.
John
Brian,
Having actually done a little research into it, I can tell you that you’re wrong. Mirroring the amount of substantiation in your post and Lewis’ letter, no citing or referencing is necessary in order for my opinion to be sound. The APS likewise rebuts this contention (see the update).
Oops, I cited something to back up what I said. I’ll leave it to you to judge whether that disqualifies the opinion.
Anthony’s analogy of Luther’s actions wrt to Dr. Lewis’ action has expanded in the comments.
So, this unreligious heathen (me) embedded by birth into a religious family, religious community, dominantly religious country and dominantly religious globe quickly went and got out my trusty “A History of Christianity” by Paul Johnson.
I reread the section on “The Third Force (1500-1648)” which describes the rise of the Protestant sects of Christianity in opposition to the Western European monopoly on Christianity held by the Roman Catholic Church.
In a religious sense, Anthony’s analogy to Lewis’ science situation is way off the target.
In a historical sense, with some literary license, Anthony’s analogy does give an impressive mental image of protester (Lewis) taking on the dominating juggernaut (APS); just as Luther (Protestant) taking on the total society role of the Roman Catholic Church (of Western Europe). Anthony’s analogy does have a sense to it that is similar to the underdog versus the powerful, or of David versus Goliath.
So, Anthony, you got everyone’s attention . . . . : )
John
Kudos to the good doctor. Resigning from such an historic organization for his reasons is no trivial move. I see the pain of his separation.
Having bothered to read dozens of technical papers (yes, I have no life) on the subject of ‘climate change’ I can see why he left. There is so much garbage being put out as ‘science’ that as a Scientist, many of the papers don’t even pass the giggle test, let alone serious review. He is right that this is the biggest fraud perpetrated, ever. and serious public policy is being shaped on it. I am frightened for my children. I can only hope that he, and others like him can shine the light of real science on this fraud and expose it for all to see.
“REPLY: I get a chuckle out of the fact that the only people complaining most strongly about this analogy are the defenders of the AGW faith. – Anthony”
You’ll remember from your religious history that Luther preached justificatiion by faith alone. No works necessary. So in that sense, I guess the analogy works.
“”” Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
October 13, 2010 at 3:55 pm
George E. Smith says:
October 13, 2010 at 3:13 pm
I was only saying that you can’t use the seasonal drop and increase of CO2 to deduce any thing about the real time constant of removing an excess amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Most of the drop in CO2 in spring is by the sudden growth of leaves in the moderate forests. That is measured midst these forests by tall towers. And confirmed by a huge change in d13C levels (up in summer, down in winter). The air of the mid-latitudes is moved up and comes down again near the Arctic via the Ferrel cells.
The oceans react the other way out: increasing emissions of the warming mid-latitude oceans. In the NH with far more land, vegetation is by far dominant, in the SH there is hardly an amplitude visible.
That all says nothing about how fast an extra amount of CO2 is removed, as most the CO2 which was removed in spring/summer returns in fall/winter at about the same rate. The real removal rate is the difference between removal and release at the end of the year, thus after a full seasonal cycle. And that is about 4 GtC, which implies an excess removal half life time of about 40 years. “””
Ferdinand; if I turn on the faucet to my bath, and start to fill it with water, (full bore), the water level will rise at some rate, depending on the water flow rate, and the area of the bath . If I then Turn off the Faucet and pull the drain plug, the water level will fall, at a rate depending on the diameter of the drain, and the areqa of the bath, and in this case on the water depth, and it would tend to fall in a normal exponential decay fashion assuming the outlet flow rate was proportional to the head.
So now if I have the bath full, and I leave the faucet on, and also pull the drain plug, the water level will now change (either up or down) but at a much slower rate than before, until it reaches some equlibrium level where the head determined outflow rate, matches the faucet input rate.
But even though the water level change rate has dropped significantly, the time constant of the removal mechanism has NOT changed.
Yes I know that the growth cycle ebbs and flows with the seasons. Antarctica doesn’t see much CO2 cycle, because basically nothing much happens at the south pole that involves CO2, and the Antarctic coast where the southern ocean ends, is quite remote, and its Temperature doesn’t change a whole lot, to alter the CO2 take up rate.
In the arctic; you have in addition to the tundra and arboreal forest growth and decay, the CO2 cycle with the ocean water due to the melt and refreeze of thewater; that we watch like a religious ritual every year.
If I follow your approach, I conclude that the closer we come to exactly balancing the CO2 ebb anbd flow; lets say we return it to 350 ppm as the zealots want; and keep it there, then by your analuysis, the decay time constant or “residence time” for CO2 would become infinite.
I’m saying that is a wrong conclusion because if we turned off the faucet (shut down ALL economic enterprise), the CO2 would plummet with something akin to the 2 1/2 year Time constant, that the principle removal mechanisms (the dr5ain plug) seem to exhibit; it won’t stick around for any 200 years.
UPS just delivered Montford’s “The Hockey Stick Illusion” so I will be offline more that on for next couple of days. : )
John
Every year we see a different piece of new information showing this planet is warming .
This year you can now circumnavigate the artic without needing an ice breaker
See http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-crew-circles-north-pole-summer.html
“Less than 10 years ago the first steel-hulled sailboat managed to get through just one of the passages, and 100 years ago, a circumnavigation would have taken six years,” the “Northern Passage” crew said in a statement. ”
In addition to the warming , the CO2 is also changing the acidity ( or alkilinity of the oceans).
The idea that Hal Lewis is some sort of Matin Luther is just twaddle .
George E. Smith says:
October 14, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Different mechanisms at work: there is not one drain and not one faucet, but several of different diameter and pressure. The seasonal drain is a very big one, pumping all water out of your bath up to a reservoir on the next floor. Open the big valve from the reservoir and your bath is filled within minutes. That all is only recycled water. Nothing happens with the water level in the bath (or the reservoir) after a full cycle.
The real extra fill comes from a small faucet (human emissions) and the real removal is a small drain at the side, which acts only if the bath is filled above a certain level (the equilibrium level). Both mechamisms: cycle and extra fill/drain work independent of each other.
If I follow your approach, I conclude that the closer we come to exactly balancing the CO2 ebb anbd flow; lets say we return it to 350 ppm as the zealots want; and keep it there, then by your analuysis, the decay time constant or “residence time” for CO2 would become infinite.
Not at all, as the emissions increased slightly exponential over the years, the increase in the atmosphere increased in ratio with the emissions at about 55% of the emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
but also the sink rate increased in ratio, simply because the increase in the atmosphere caused more pressure difference between atmosphere pCO2 and ocean pCO2 (and plant alveoles). The only possibility to maintain a constant CO2 level in the atmosphere is by constant emissions. The height of the emissions doesn’t influence the decay rate, only the height of the CO2 level at which the new equilibrium will be reached. If you double the emissions, the difference between CO2 level and equilibrium CO2 level will double too. In all cases the decay rate is about 40 years half life time.
I’m saying that is a wrong conclusion because if we turned off the faucet (shut down ALL economic enterprise), the CO2 would plummet with something akin to the 2 1/2 year Time constant, that the principle removal mechanisms (the drain plug) seem to exhibit; it won’t stick around for any 200 years.
If the leaves are on the stem and the summer growth is nearing its end, CO2 levels will increase again in the NH, whatever the human output, only dropping with a half life time of about 40 years in the main sinks, whatever the current level. If the human emissions equal the sink rate, then the CO2 level will stay even, with larger emissions we will see an increase, with lower emissions that will be a drop.
PeteM;
CO2 is irrelevant to long-term warming trends.
Lewis’ brainpower, knowledge base, and attention to the issues are so far in advance of yours that your comment doesn’t even rise to the level of risible.
John M says:
October 13, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Steve Mennie says:
October 13, 2010 at 4:35 pm
So now we are paying attention not only to a resignation that means little but it is a resignation from a society that means little as neither the one resigning nor the organization from which he is resigning have any publishing record in climate research. Who’s on 1st?
Well, whoever wrote this entry thinks what scientific socieities say is important even though most of these organizations have a very small percentage of members who have published in climate science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Of course, you are free to edit the entry.
Keep us posted on how that goes.
I would agree that what scientific societies say vis a vis climate change is important..but you made me think for a moment when you mentioned how few of the members of APS are engaged in climate research and further how few of the members of any of these societies are thus engaged. If this is indeed the case, then how much weight can we give to any of the endorsements of the soundness of climate research from scientific societies around the globe? Just wondering…
Brian H says:
October 13, 2010 at 6:22 pm
John/CA;
Huffington? Gore? Standing up? I doubt they can.
=====
Brian,
They are so asleep it would take a cattle prod to wake them up but tragically they seem to prefer fantasy to fact. Our “huddled masses yearning to breath free” have been drinking the Party Cool Aid and turned green.
The educational system isn’t the greatest here so I guess you get what you pay for.
Brian H
“CO2 is irrelevant to long-term warming trends.
Lewis’ brainpower, knowledge base, and attention to the issues are so far in advance of yours that your comment doesn’t even rise to the level of risible.”
Wrong , and well , debatebly wrong.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucf3BWLrw3Y&fs=1&hl=en_US]
For the record, same subject described by Dr Timothy Ball
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/28741
PeteM, you might want to disconnect the north west passage from AGW, the nice russians, and bear in mind atomic ice breakers were thin on the ground in 1939, helped the Nazi raider (small armed merchant ship disguised so as to dupe other ships) into the pacific then (1939) I have seen nothing to connect climate with CO2, I have seen the most alarming pollution (video and pictures) from the countries who are benifitting from the civilised countries killing off their manufacturing with carbon credits and sending the factories to the unregulated `China and India. S there is scant evidence that CO2 is anything other than benificial but the scam perpetrated in the whored name of science is causing horrific harm to the world and the economies of the duped countries.
Everyone here is shouting “RA RA” but what about the environment?
Even if pollution doesn’t cause global warming does that make it okay?
Where’s the integrity in trying to stop measures to mitigate the trashing of our planet?
Xamana
What measures would you have us take, at what cost, and why?
Xamana says on October 14, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Which measures are those?
CO2, for example, is not a pollutant. It is an essential ingredient in plant growth.
Richard Sharpe says:
October 14, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Xamana says on October 14, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Everyone here is shouting “RA RA” but what about the environment?
Even if pollution doesn’t cause global warming does that make it okay?
Where’s the integrity in trying to stop measures to mitigate the trashing of our planet?
Which measures are those?
CO2, for example, is not a pollutant. It is an essential ingredient in plant growth.
Richard…H2O is an essential engredient in plant growth as well…this doesn’t mean that all plants flourish under water.
Xamana. where is the benefit for the environment in bankrupting the west and sending all production to very dirty factories in India and China?? The whole carbon scam is disgusting and the only supporters are demented or corrupt. Here in Ontario the power is called “hydro” carried over “hydro lines” in Orillia all our power comes from water so why am I paying surcharges, called “environmental” to subsidise solar and wind generation? Fraud is the only answer and I would like to see the fraudsters hung at least.
Paul Birch says:
October 14, 2010 at 3:21 am
Larry Fields says:
October 13, 2010 at 10:20 pm
I wrote:
”Most physical scientists believe that the Earth’s supply of cheaply-extracted CONG (coal, oil, natural gas) is finite. ”
Paul wrote:
“If they do (which I doubt) then they should learn some economics as well as physics.”
Paul, it’s logic-check time.
•The Earth is finite.
•Therefore any subset of the Earth is finite.
•The Earth’s supply of cheaply-extracted CONG (coal, oil, natural gas) is a subset of the Earth.
•Therefore the Earth’s supply of cheaply-extracted CONG is finite.
If you like, we could compare estimates of extraction rates with reasonable estimates of replenishment rates, but that’s not what your posting was about.
Anyway, thank you. That was fun! It’s not every day that I get to use a syllogism in an argument. One thing that physicists understand, but which a few of economists apparently cannot fathom, is that physics is the basis of economics. To butcher a famous old saying: Man lives not by Smithian slogans alone.