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)
A number of people here have said that Dr Hal Lewis, Emeritus Professor at U Cal, Santa Barbara, should do this, or that, or take things through the Courts etc. etc.
Might I respectfully suggest that Professor Lewis had been a member of the APS for 67 years! Assuming he joined as a student at 18 (rather unlikely) he must be 85 years old. If he joined after completing his undergraduate course this will raise him to, say, 88/89 years. Again, if he joined after getting his PhD he would be 90+ years.
I am not going to ask him or anyone else to give his exact age but I would ask whether it is reasonable to expect a man of his age to take the kind of actions some have suggested. He has done his part (at cost to himself) in resigning from a Society he has obviously loved and has been a significant part of his life.
I cannot know whether or not it will have any effect. But he has played a large role and deserves our respect. Maybe it should be the role of younger members to think where things should go from here.
Professor Lewis, you have my admiration and my respect for your principled stance and your carefully reasoned and superbly written letter of resignation.
Desmong (and others of similar ilk); I don’t have the words to express the disgust your peurile attempt to smear Professor Lewis induces in me.
I read the WaPo/Mann letter. Yuk!!
Oakden Wolf says:
October 8, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Seems like there’s an omission here. What exactly is the APS statement on climate change that Lewis objects too so strongly?
========
No, I don’t believe there was any omission. In fact, that to which Prof. Lewis was objecting was contained in the very text you quoted:
From Prof. Lewis’ letter:
From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incontrovertible
Some of the synonyms listed on the same page are: certain, inarguable, irrefutable, unchallengable, etc.
I will readily admit that I’m not a scientist; however, in the past eleven months I have learned that in the field of “climate science” the word “trick” apparently carries no connotation whatsover similar to “deceit”, which is inherent in the common understanding of the word “trick”.
In light of the above, and since you had determined that there was an “omission”, perhaps you would be kind enough to explain what exactly one should infer from the phrase “incontrovertible evidence” as it pertains to “climate science”.
I noticed that the text you quoted included the following:
That sounds very, very alarming – and, to be honest, very authoritative (in more ways than one!) But it certainly doesn’t sound like science to my ear.
P.S. Anthony, I’ve just posted the following comment in response to the Mann piece:
hro001 says:
October 9, 2010 at 4:35 am
“whose stature and respect was earned the hard way,”
aaack! “were earned”
Memo to self: compose important comments outside the little box, then proof ‘n paste!
@desmong says:
October 9, 2010 at 3:00 am
“Who are you to claim that the climate researchers know no science? You spew your conspiracy theories on climate science, when 97% of climate scientists support the research on climate change. Are 97% of climate scientists on an elaborate conspiracy?”
————————————————————————————–
You are missing the point, making a living out of science is not an conspiracy and not all scientists are in it for the money, actually I think this is what Harold Lewis resignation is all about, did you read it ???
from Edmund Burke
“For evil to triumph
all that is necessary is
that good men
do nothing.”
A few good men and women cannot save the World.
I fear that all is lost.
When the book, “The Rise and Fall of the Western World” is writen,
let it be noted that we decayed from within and were then enslaved
by our betters.
I don’t know if an organized resignation campaign would do much good. It might just look like “pressure politics” and sour grapes. The way to minimize that impression would be to deliberately NOT solicit resignations, but OTOH to have a website where members who choose to spontaneously resign can post their names and their endorsement of a statement charging the APS with shoddy behavior for failing to form a Topic Group, for commissioning a kangaroo court, etc. (Individuals could also post their own additional comments if they desired.)
If a few prominent physicists resigned on this matter and made a stink about the APS’s outrageous behavior, it would give the APS a black eye and might well force the formation of a TG and an impartial review of AGW.
This in turn would encourage other scientific Societies to do likewise — especially if a few of their prominent members also resigned and started petition/protest websites calling for impartial reviews of the evidence.
Good luck with this:
*************
“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.
Let’s see if they have enough integrity to provide a counterpoint. – Anthony”
*************
WaPo just sold NewsWeek. For $1 (Not a typo! One only dollar.)
And WaPo agreed to pay off some $10 million in NewsWeek debt.
There is a reason why NewsWeek is worthless. (Actually worth less than worthless!) But I doubt that the WaPo gets “why”. And they aren’t going to change.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
PS: Lewis isn’t just a member of APS, but a “Fellow.” (I.e., a Grand Poobah.) If several additional “Fellows” resign, that’ll have an impact.
desmong says:
October 9, 2010 at 3:00 am
“Who are you to claim that the climate researchers know no science? You spew your conspiracy theories on climate science, when 97% of climate scientists support the research on climate change. Are 97% of climate scientists on an elaborate conspiracy?”
Of course they know their science, they know how flaky the models are, they know a gradual reduction in grid dimensions doesn’t make them more accurate, what they need to achieve any increase in precision is such a big increase in computing power that it’s not in sight for the next 2 decades; they know it gets harder and harder to finance the giant investments for computing power, it gets harder and harder to justify… they’re running scared. They’re running from debate.
I just don’t see how climategate establishes that AGW is a scam as this guy claims. Past climate reconstructions are a small part of AGW. Believing that climategate alone proves AGW is a scam is not scientific That reflects a rather poor understanding if the science. I’m not surprised his organization has therefore found him unpersuasive
Seriously, there is too much blaming the other side here when climate change skeptics should be blaming themselves for not being persuasive. In the democracy of ideas, the best ideas win. If an idea is winning, eg AGW, that’s because mire scientists find it persuasive. The skeptical scientists may be right, but they should stop whining and do more science to prove they are right. I don’t see this guy doing anything to prove AGW is wrong. He’s just whining
“The true physicists will lead the way.” (I think it’s in the Bible or something!) Michael Mann should be in jail.
desmong writes:
“Who are you to claim that the climate researchers know no science?”
Sir, I have a standing challenge to you and all pro-AGW scientists: produce one reasonably well-confirmed physical hypothesis about climate that cannot be deduced from the description of the CO2 molecule and that is not simply taken from a computer model. You cannot do it. No climate scientist can do it. There are no such hypotheses. There is no AGW science.
You are very talented at fallacious reasoning. Your earlier response, quoted above, manages to be an “appeal to authority,” “question begging,” and an “ad hominem” all in just one brief sentence.
Jeff T says: October 8, 2010 at 7:07 pm
The fault lies further back, with APS. What right do they have to issue a statement about climate science without consulting their members and allowing their members to speak freely?
Memo to UK Govt, I think Professor Lewis has identified some cost saving opportunities for you.
Cliff says:
October 9, 2010 at 6:13 am
I don’t see this guy doing anything to prove AGW is wrong. He’s just whining
The proof is already in peer reviewed literature. The warmers are ignoring it.
Any physicist who reads seriously the “physics justification” chapters of IPCC’s AR4 knows that most of it is nonsense. When I read it I would stop and walk around in my office literally pulling my hair, some statements, claims and plots were so preposterous and self evidently nonsense. Hal Lewis has just put it down in words.
It is the AGW community that has to come up with papers whose physics would support CO2 produced catastrophic warming. Not playstation models, physics models. And let me tell you that modeling is decades away of the precision necessary to remotely reproduce the complexity of weather and climate. And if you want wrong, consider, even weather predicted for a few days is wrong very often, and it is the same type of computer models used to justify AGW for the next century!!!.
Yeah, Cliff, he also sounds depressed and perhaps suicidal, don’t ya think. (wink wink)
desmong says:
October 9, 2010 at 3:00 am
T. Goodwin: The core of AGW science is a bunch of computer nerds who know no science, have produced none, yet have managed to convince government agencies that they should be funded.
Who are you to claim that the climate researchers know no science? You spew your conspiracy theories on climate science, when 97% of climate scientists support the research on climate change. Are 97% of climate scientists on an elaborate conspiracy?
Of course, I will never find out because I am not worthy for your reply.
————————
97% of climate scientists agree with their position on climate science (climate change) which brings in billions of dollars of funding. Well that’s a consensus and the science must be correct. By the way, have you ever been an academic researcher like me? Have you ever had to “grub for funding”? Interesting research gets funding. “hot topics” get funding. Boring climate research that shows the climate has been naturally variable for millennia does not get funding. Follow the money!
Your logic is like saying 97% of Republicans believe in Republican dogma, (ergo their dogma must be correct).
In matters like this, every physicist must ask himself “What would Richard Feynman do?” I believe that this gentleman has done exactly what Richard Feynman would do, and I applaud him.
I dropped my APS membership many years ago. It’s a political organization, not a scientific one. I am strongly considering canceling my IEEE membership for exactly the same reason.
APS, AAAS, ACS, even the National Academy of Sciences… they were all corrupted by the siren song of funding associated with AGW alarmism. Don’t believe me? Take a look at their full statements on AGW. Invariably their statements about “incontrovertible evidence” are followed by a laundry list of urgent funding priorities related to our ability to predict, prevent, and/or mitigate the effects of AGW. It may not be good science, but it’s good business for the professional societies.
Rudy Baum’s reprehensible posturing as editor of the ACS’ membership magazine, Chemical and Engineering News, may not be a direct result of this, but it is certainly tolerated since it fits into the self-serving party line. ACS has a small splinter group, loosely organized by Peter Bonk, that proposed a rather mildly alternative statement on AGW. I don’t know where that ended up. ACS mostly ignored them, I think. Peter also had the temerity to propose a symposium attempting to really expose the state of the science (18-24 months ago), and he invited all the other ACS Divisions to cosponsor it. It was astonishing to see how quickly the bicoastal professorial class trashed his proposal.
As for Hal Lewis, bravo for his letter. But I expect APS will ignore it. There will always be thousands more physicists standing in line to be dubbed APS Fellow. Few may be so digtinguished as Dr. Lewis, but there are so many scientists who hunger for the approbation of their peers. APS will simply continue as before.
Cliff, you say whining. Nearly everyone else here says standing up for his principles.
Dr Lewis resigned because the voices of himself and two hundred colleagues were effectively silenced and the true science ignored. Whining is what Michael Mann has done in the Washing Post op-ed.
Cliff says on October 9, 2010 at 6:13 am
Fail. Science is not a democracy, not a popularity contest and not a contest to see which ideas are pleasing or persuasive. The word consensus is also not a mechanism of science.
Do the concepts of testing hypotheses, and falsifiability mean anything to you?
desmong says:
October 9, 2010 at 3:00 am
… 97% of climate scientists support the research on climate change. Are 97% of climate scientists on an elaborate conspiracy?
Anyone who quotes the 97% number only prove how little they understand. As has been well documented, most skeptics would have answered that particular question exactly the same. We all know that CO2 by itself has a warming effect.
So, by quoting this idiotic number you have now shown everyone how little you know about the debate. Not surprising given your previous posts above.
Cliff says:
October 9, 2010 at 6:13 am
“persuasive. The skeptical scientists may be right, but they should stop whining and do more science to prove they are right. ”
So you say reconstructions of the past are not the only battlefield, fine, so what do we have besides that? Guys like Hansen who say that in the year 2000 Manhattan will be underwater (which didn’t happen), models that projected a warming that didn’t happen over the last 10 years, more models that project more warming in the future that may or may not happen, ….
What should the skeptics do in your opinion? Create equally power-hungry models that project a cooling?
What you call the “science” that is so “persuasive” about AGW are mere model projections, and the AGW scientists know full well that there are many physical processes like cloud formation and convection that cannot be realistically modelled for the time being, – the emperor has no clothes, it’s only politicians, prechers like Al Gore and scientifically illiterate journalists who believe or are led to believe there is any certainty. If there is any serious consensus at all, it must be the consensus that all the AGW climate projections come with huge error bars and huge assumptions.
There is nothing to be done for the skeptics to dismantle this edifice; it is self-dismantling.
Cliff says:
October 9, 2010 at 6:13 am
Cliff, the concept of falsifiability is that measured data which contradicts the original hypothesis nullifies it, i.e. when the earth’s climate failed to behave as the hypothesis predicted – (think cooler despite a continuing increase in CO2) – the AGW hypothesis was blown.
Changing the data, inventing data, inverting data in an attempt to maintain that the hypothesis was still valid – that’s not science. Tweeking computer programs to torture data until it confesses, that’s not science. Computer programs don’t generate data, they generate numbers. Real scientists try to see if the little numbers correspond to the real world.
So the upshot of this is, Chris, you need to associate a little more with real scientists, and a little less with programming dilettantes pretending that IT is real science.