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)
desmong says:
October 8, 2010 at 4:01 pm
“With this he falls so low that is a shame for him. He presents a grand conspiracy involving trillions(!) of dollars and exotic islands.
Who fed him with all this misinformation?”
====================
Where is Eisenhower when you need him, he saw this coming.
Wisdom:
The quality of being wise; knowledge, and the capacity to make due use of it; knowledge of the best ends and the best means; discernment and judgment; discretion; sagacity; skill; dexterity. [1913 Webster]
When was the last time a politician, uttered any of these words?
Excellent letter Mr. Lewis. Taking a stand takes guts and has the power of commitment to action in it.
Inspired by the above I posted the following to the Washington Post comments. It includes a Pro Alarmist Challenge to Michael Mann.
pwvl wrote:
Investigating the Climate of Doom
1) Actual Science Data Correlations:
0.44 CO2 levels v.s. Temperature.
0.85 Pacific PDO + Atlantic AMO Ocean v.s. Temperature.
0.88 Linear+Cyclic Null Hypothesis v.s. Temperature.
0.96 Pacific PDO + Atlantic AMO Ocean + Solar Activity v.s. Temperature.
2) While CO2 has increased in the last 50 years the 130 yr temp linear+cyclic tiny upward tend remains unchanged based upon observational data.
2b) Put another way, for seventy or so years the temperature was rising slightly with a linear and cyclic trend, then as we pumped CO2 into the atmosphere in increasing amounts since after WWII that same slight linear and cyclic trend continued unchanged.
2c) As a result of this, Nature falsifies the alarmists claims, including their IPCC climate model predictions.
2d) Predictions Of Global Mean Temperatures & IPCC Projections, by Girma Orssengo, B. Tech, MASc, PhD, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/25/predictions-of-global-mean-temperatures-ipcc-projections
2e) A primer for disproving IPCC’s theory of man made global warming using observed temperature data, by Girma Orssengo, B. Tech, MASc, PhD, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/01/a-primer-for-disproving-ipcc%E2%80%99s-theory-of-man-made-global-warming-using-observed-temperature-data
3) If CO2 increased temperature as the alarmists claim with their doomsday predictions it would have shown up in the temperature data diverting the tiny linear+cyclic upward trend that started 130 years ago after the little ice age ended. It hasn’t diverted the temperature.
4) This is likely because CO2’s specific heat contribution is logarithmic and already has contributed it’s bulk of heat retention (the first ~20ppm of CO2 is half of it’s specific heat / green house effect capacity).
4b) The Logarithmic Effect of Carbon Dioxide, by David Archibald, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
4c) Of particular interest: “Lo and behold, the first 20 ppm accounts for over half of the heating effect to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, by which time carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas.” http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/heating_effect_of_co2.png
5) Natural causes of PDO+AMO+Solar clearly shown to a very high probability.
6) Based upon observed temperature and CO2 data Nature falsifies alarmist AGW hypothesis.
7) Thus alarmism over 0.44 not rational.
8) CO2 is an essential plant nutrient.
9) From 1980 to 1999 satellites measured a 6% increase in green plant life on the planet during a period of increasing CO2.
10) This is consistent with knowledge from biology and commercial greenhouse operations where CO2 levels of 900ppm to 1,200ppm are commonly used to grow plants faster and bigger.
11) Current atmospheric CO2 is at ~390ppm today. This indicates the potential expanded growth of many plants in the environment with more CO2 present.
12) More plants = more food for humans and for anyone who is pro human that is a good thing for we have an expanding population to feed.
13) CO2 will provide one of the key nutrients for the next green farming revolution.
14) Evidence of CO2 is life: http://youtu.be/P2qVNK6zFgE?hd=1.
N) …
The above is a good summary of some of the factual reasons to conclude that there is no problem with CO2 other than hysteria due to the soothsaying of alarmist doomsday scenarios by irresponsible agenda driven worrywarts such as Michael Mann.
If there is any evidence to actually support the alleged correlation of CO2 to temperature rise as the alarmists allege please provide it. Thanks. I’ve asked many hundreds of supporters of the alarmist AGW hypotheses for their evidence and so far no hard evidence at all and certainly nothing that does any better than their 0.44 correlation of CO2 to temperature.
I challenge Michael Mann to take The Pro AGW Hypothesis Challenge (which he has so far not met the full requirements of): Present a clearly written statement of your alleged alarmist AGW hypotheses along with all the alleged scientific claims made and any hard evidence that supports those claims, provide all data to support your claims (all raw data and all mannipulated data including the reasons for the mannipulations), plus mention all means to verify preferably by experiment the claims, and all means by which they would be refuted. Show your work or the work of others in full detail.
10/8/2010 7:58:49 PM
(Note if I’ve made any mistakes or if you have any links for me that would provide good references please let me know. Thanks, pwl).
Wow .
The truth in plain english.
Thank you Hal Lewis. Extremely kind of you to make it public.
“The Giants no longer walk the earth”, but one is walking out the door.
Checkmate!
Karl: It is like someone driving down a four-lane road, listening to the radio that some driver is driving the wrong way. And this driver says, ‘- Oh, the fool. They are all driving the wrong way!’.
Hal’s resignation is badly written. It shows that he follows a biased view on things related to climate. The worst part is that he hints towards conspiracies. Well, it is more than hinting; he accuses even the president of the APS as part of the conspiracy. And this, because the president did not take him seriously.
This sounds like a sincere and well accomplished old gentleman expressing his concerns (though I disagree with his assessment).
But this statement is absolutely ridiculous: “I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door.”
It is gratuitous hyperbole. Please stop the hype.
vigilantfish says:
October 8, 2010 at 3:36 pm
I wish this would be a wake-up call to the rest of the APS, but suspect the APS leadership will encourage this letter to sink without creating noticeable ripples.
Exactly.
How long before the warmist smear campaign begins… counting down… 3…2…1…
Most of the people who post here are in love with real, evidence based, data driven science. We are excitied by it. The corruption that has gained prominence disgusts us.
So what must happen. We must continue to push, those who have succumbed to corruption are unlikely to voluntarily step aside and relinquish their ill gotten gains. (Some will redeem themselves – but they will be few). The corrupt must be demonstrated for what they are and removed from their positions. Keep shining the light.
This is not new. I resigned from the APS over 10 years ago, after ~30 years of membership starting in my student days, mainly because I saw their influence turn a large project into incompetent hands for political reasons. Their newsletter Physics Today has taken a strong political slant and is no longer interesting. A similar political slant has crept into the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I shall shortly stop paying my dues to that organization and read from the numerous smaller journals that have come into being, likely for similar reasons that bother me.
Other once-grand communicators including Scientific American have been dumbed down into popular science and political correctness. American science is still a grand thing to work at but its voices have come under the influence of political hacks whose influence is detrimental to the world and their profession. The quest for money is behind this as many of your correspondents have noted.
Stupid and ill considered splatter movies go viral in an instant but I fear this letter, so studied and thoughtful, will just sink into oblivion.
I think that says something about the times we live in.
Why isn’t this all over the media? Why haven’t professional societies picked up his lead? Dr. Lewis deserves a great deal more time for this fabulous letter as opposed the regular celebrity circus.
desmog,
Apologies if my sarcometer missed your subtle sense of irony. I’ll remind you that
Tahiti and Bali are indeed tropical islands.
This pretty much confirms my intuition on the internal politics. Power and prestige seeking fools tend to rise to the top of organizations (i.e. the shit rises to the top) and they will do everything for the short-term gain.
Reading these two letters side-by-side shows, through contrast, how incredibly pathetic Mann is.
Posted on the NTTimes and about 10 California sites related to the Prop 23 issue.
Breaking News:
Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara Resigns from The American Physical Society on October 6th.
source: http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html
The reason:
“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.”
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)
Outstanding, excellent, and in all ways commendable. Bravo.
Rarely has the difference between intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals been made so clear.
Unlike desmog, Hal Lewis clearly does not like the taste of Kool-Aid.
Sir, you have my respect, as a physics graduate. The instruments today certainly cost a bit, but politics is not supposed to be what drives the field. Let alone suppressing discussion. That practice could hardly be more wrong.
A tribute to Professor Hal Lewis. Thank you for your courage. Many of us see similar corruption in our own fields and I think we all should follow the money. Much of it is not coming from the debt of tax payers, but from outside the country — like in the last fraudulent U.S. election. As a non-scientist who has followed many of the sciences with awe, enthusiasm, and gratitude for truth-seeking much of my life, I hope all the decliners and resigners will form new organizations and develop new peer-reviewed, non-pay-wall, publications. I think there is a large audience out there. I am ready to join and subscribe. As I have mentioned before, I “suscribe” (make a quarterly “donation”) to WUWT and other blogs that I believe are magnificently filling the huge gap. The problem for these soldiers (warriors, it seems) for the cause of science is that the “pay-offs” or the funding will not be large,…but it will be honorable. Will it be enough?
(One of my great sadnesses is how many geologists whose work I admire tow the AGW line. They, of all scientists, should be ashamed. They all know better if they are scientists of the Earth and its natural cycles.)
Desmong, it will take more than your small effort to discredit Hal, he has done more in his years than most would ever dream of.
I do not think he is quite the bumbling fool you would have us believe. Many a good tune played on an old fiddle etc.
I would like to see this resignation letter making headlines in the news, I’m going to do my bit by posting the link to this post and the letter wherever I can.
The interesting question to ask is who else/how many among the APS members/fellows will follow Dr. Lewis’ lead?
If the APS has not followed the normal procedures regarding petitions then that needs to be rectified. As for the rest; I’m not sure I understand why all the high-fiving is merited. So this Harold Lewis, an APS member, thinks much of climate science is psuedo-science. Many other APS members do not.
Any particular reason I should weight this guys opinion more then the society’s council that adopted the aforementioned statement?
Here is an article that should interest many of the readers, especially the Canadian ones and those of you in the northern US. New study says Global Warming will be a benefit to us … http://www.globalissues.org/news/2010/10/08/7204
Course there is the infamous Mr Weaver and Mark Serreze commenting on the soon to disappear Arctic ice.
Good for Mr Lewis, standing up for open debate. Here in Alberta, Canada, our professional engineering and geophysical association allows fully open debate. Why other societies would want to shut out debate defies my understanding.
Earle Williams says:
October 8, 2010 at 5:16 pm
“Tahiti and Bali are indeed tropical islands.”
Cancun may not be an island, but it is a vacation paradise . And nothing else.
Where next ? St. Maarten ?
“Any particular reason I should weight this guys opinion more then the society’s council that adopted the aforementioned statement?
”
Because he comes from the generation that practiced ( as mentioned in his letter) some pretty potentially deadly science and did not just fall back on computer models to verify their feelings about dangerous matters, but actually did the work,.
And the work they did had to be accurate , and the stuff had to work. Or else.
Starwatcher,
Institutional leaders, like babies nappies, should be periodically changed – and for the same reason.