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)
From the footnote to his letter at the top of this thread:
He’s also a Fellow of the APS, a rare distinction.
They’re scientwists.
I’ll repeat what was posted well above your post, and which should have forestalled it:
With apologies to WC, “Some nonentity! Some neck!”
😀
Eadler and other detractors: It’s obvious Lewis is in the level ABOVE those scientists whose only chance at recognition is through prodigious publications. By the way, has that approach enhanced Mann’s status among honest scientists? Hardly!
eadler says:
October 15, 2010 at 8:54 pm
u.k.(us) says:
October 15, 2010 at 7:51 pm
You conclude:
“The fact that a scientific theory has adherents doesn’t prove that it is false and people only are in it for the money. This is one of the more stupid arguments put up by skeptics, when their scientific objections to AGW are shown to be false.”
==========================
You seem to be a master straw man builder, your entire conclusion has been pulled out of thin air. Neither of your statements was even brought up, except by you.
I’d like to know how Lewis derives his “trillions” figure. Anyone know?
I’ve seen the details recently, but don’t have them to hand. In a nutshell, the economic “hits” caused by pushing down carbon use with taxes and caps, plus the huge mandated and subsidized expenditures on inefficient green power like wind and rooftop solar, quickly add up to many hundreds of billions a year. 2 or 3 years of that and you’re into the trillions.
Roger Knights: “Not really — it deals essentially with the APS’s refusal to follow its procedures and desire thereby to suppress intramural debate and discussion in a Topical Group. The story is not about the global warming controversy, but about the meta-controversy of how it is being suppressed.”
We’re talking here about generating controversy and publicity. In that sense, the arcane nature of the dispute is self-defeating.
Lewis is claiming oppression. Perhaps that is the case, but it’s not clear from the accounts I’ve read where the rights and wrongs lie, hence the failure of this issue to gain traction among the general public.
RockyRoad says:
October 17, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Eadler and other detractors: It’s obvious Lewis is in the level ABOVE those scientists whose only chance at recognition is through prodigious publications. By the way, has that approach enhanced Mann’s status among honest scientists? Hardly!
When I studied physics years ago, I never heard of Harold Lewis. It seems he was just a bureaucrat and hanger on. His oral history interview is simply a bunch of name dropping. There is no trace of any publication or any research. This is not my idea of a scientist.
http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4742.html
Mann is a respected scientist, among scientists.
The only work that is traceable on the internet is dates from the time he was chairman of a committee to study Nuclear Winter, a phenomenon that is said to result from a nuclear war which would create dust and smoke which would block the sun. As a result of that work, he developed respect for the climate models which were used to develop the conclusions about this phenomenon, and he recommended these models highly, and pointed out that they predicted global warming would ensue from CO2 emissions resulting from human activity. Was he dishonest then, only looking out for big bucks from the research that this prediction would drive? Did he believe that the late Stephen Schneider, who did much of the work that was the basis of his report was dishonest also?
The only thing Lewis did,that he was remembered for, was based on the same climate research he now derides. It seems that he is impeaching his judgement at the peak of his career. Is his judgment really improved at age 87?
eadler says:
October 18, 2010 at 11:05 am
Mann is a respected scientist, among scientists.
Yes, that’s the mass delusional problem.
Though as Hal points out those ‘scientists’ who don’t experience revulsion at Mann’s emails in the east anglia collection aren’t worthy of the title anyway.
I posted:
Raving wrote:
Huh? That’s got nothing to do with the test I proposed.
A bureaucrat is an administrator, like a dean or a high governmental official or the head of a complex development project, like Oppenheimer. Lewis was a none of those. He was researcher at Bell Labs, a teacher at top schools, and a member and sometimes chairman of various working groups that advised government and helped develop policies and standards. Nonentities don’t get invited to join such committees, let alone chair them.
Some of the Bell Labs work would have been proprietary, and most of his nuclear work would have been classified, as Dave Springer pointed out.
The APS disagrees, having elevated him to a Fellowship. He was obviously head and shoulders above the run-of-the-mill physicist.
Anyway, it wouldn’t matter if Lewis were just a high school physics teacher, if his charge of APS misbehavior were correct.
And Lewis’s position on global warming is backed by 200+ co-signers, including 17 other APS Fellows. They may be wrong, but they can’t be brushed off as nonentities, as you’re attempting to do. Attention must be paid. A Topical Group should have been formed.
So let’s have an official investigation! (The investigators can either expose the wrong or cover it up, digging their side into a deeper hole.)
PS: Or how about a congressional investigation? A mere “fact-finder” would do the job.
Roger Knights:: “So let’s have an official investigation! (The investigators can either expose the wrong or cover it up, digging their side into a deeper hole.)”
Since you’ve already decided your view of the outcome of this hypothetical investigation, may as well cut out the middleman and save the time and money.
Is Climate Science closer to historical research than to physics? The problem is that we use the term ‘science’ to cover a multitude of sins whereas Professor’s Mann, Jones, Briffa et al are engaged in a process of discovering historical evidence to validate their theories of climate change and populate various models which purport to predict the future. The methods of the natural sciences whilst useful cannot bring closure to the debate about climate change because like all historical research the data that has been collected can equally support more than one theory at a time. The unaided astronomical observations of the Persians supported both Ptolemy and Copernicus and, to a large extent Galileo and Newton. Macro economic data supported both Freidman and Keynes. The problem where there is no definitive and immediate empirical validation of a theory is that it becomes a battle for consensus which theory dominates and this is a matter of opinion and of politics.
Dr Lewis is a highly respected figure in the American academy – like gaining fellowship of the Royal Society in the UK – it is only granted to the finest scientists of the day. On reflection I strongly support his highly principled stand against the APS for not permitting an airing of the ‘skeptical’ case. However, I do think he has erred in setting the bar too high for climate science. This version of science is not the science which he is familiar with. I suspect the term ‘fraud’ in the context of climate science did not help his case and probably closed ears and minds to his otherwise cogent argument.
As for the ad-hominem attacks on him, and indeed on Mann, Jones and others – they are not helpful. Mann, through his PhD and subsequent publication was I believe (others will correct me if wrong) the first to perform a systematic investigation of a wide range of climate proxies using PCA. His method had flaws, it is a difficult technique to execute effectively and interpret properly (I have had many PhD students who will attest to that), but he deserves credit for the attempt. It is legitimate to criticise the work of other ex-post, but character assassination is quite unacceptable. Others who have followed have been more successful but far from conclusive in my view that recent warming has been principally driven by CO2 emissions. But, that is my opinion based upon what I have had time to read and study. But, if this debate is to get anywhere, both sides need to open up to one another in a spirit of generosity. Even though ‘climate science’ may not be the real thing the questions it asks and attempts to answer are deadly serious. This debate needs the best of our intellectual skills – not the worst.
Mods: Several posts seem to have disappeared from this site. (Not just a post I submitted, because Brandon’s already-posted comment has disappeared as well. It’s not that I’m mistaken about the thread it was in, because a site-search on google fails to turn up Brandon’s remarks as well. I’m reposting my response to him below.
[REPLY: The posts are there and intact. Note;
Roger Knights
2010/10/18 at 11:05 pm
…bl57~mod]
(Oops, sorry: “Brendan.”)
================
That’s like saying, “Let’s not have a trial, because you have an opinion of the outcome,” or “Let’s not have a world series, because you think you know who’ll win.”
For me it is simple.
The MWP and LIA did exist, and significantly changed world history.
Mann’s work attempts to reduce the significance.
Why? Let us discuss the facts, and appraise the significance.
Hal Lewis attempted to bring about discussion.
The American Physical Society actively resisted open discussion.
Has Lewis resigned to bring this resistance to scientific openness to the forefront.
Let us stop the mud-slinging, and get back to open discussion.
I am fairly certain open discussion will get us back to the simple fact that the MWP and LIA did exist, and did have a significant effect on world history. If this weaken the political arguments of a certain group, well, so be it.
Roger Knights: “That’s like saying, “Let’s not have a trial, because you have an opinion of the outcome,” or “Let’s not have a world series, because you think you know who’ll win.””
I was highlighting the presumption of guilt. And I doubt that climate sceptics would be happy with the outcome of an investigation, so we might as well save ourselves all the wailing over “whitewash” etc.
‘The Christian Science Monitor jumps the shark with pre-debunked, anti-science op-ed by Anthony Watts on Harold Lewis’s resignation from APS ‘
http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/19/christian-science-monitor-anti-science-anthony-watts-harold-lewiss-resignation-from-aps/
Romm chimes in.