Dr. Harold Lewis sent this today via email with a request to make it public here. I’m happy to oblige. Read the letter to understand the movie poster.- Anthony
Dear Curt:
When on October 6 I sent you my letter of resignation from APS , I of course expected the Empire to strike back in one way or another. It pleased me however, when I read your response, to find a very minimum of ad hominem attacks, confined mostly to apparently irresistible eruptions of “Lewis is a liar.” (“His statements are all false” is the equivalent.) So I thank you for that courtesy.
What took me by surprise was the pusillanimous, almost puerile, tone of the comment, which reads more like an ad for a used-car lot than as a declaration of a great scientific society. All our products have passed a complete inspection by our factory-trained mechanics. We’re making no money on this, take it and be thankful. Etc. Not a single major issue confronted in any substantive way. Yet everyone knows about the sloppy handling of the 2007 statement; everyone knows about the financial investments of many of the major players; there is plenty of dirt in the public domain, yet you continue to pretend it is all in a different universe.
Curt, you cannot have written such a shabby document.
Roger Cohen has written an incisive deconstruction of your response, and I can add little, so let me turn to the repair options. For the record, though my resignation from APS gives me no standing, my objective here is to help slow the APS rush toward the cliff. This is what I think must be done at the proximate meeting of the Council.
1.The 2007 statement should be simply withdrawn. No excuses, no caveats, no unnecessary embarrassment, no statement of principles, no references to future research, simply withdrawn. It was a mistake. This is the sine qua non for restoring the honor of APS.
2. The Council should promulgate a transparent confict-of-interest policy, comparable to those used by the government. Those offended by this might even serve under reasonable constraints. Others should not serve. Many know how to do this. It is insane to have people with millions of dollars at stake determining APS policy on such matters.
3.The APS management has become a conglomerate force in itself. This is largely through neglect, because the Council is drawn too specifically through its major fields, and in all too many cases the policies are drawn by very few members, often with an axe to grind. It is too easy to push them through the Council, the members of which are in the dark. There is a wise observation (not due to Archimedes) that if any organization is left alone, the lightweights will rise to the top.
Cheers,
Hal
Dear Curt:
When on October 6 I sent you my letter of resignation from APS , I of course expected the Empire to strike back in one way or another. It pleased me however, when I read your response, to find a very minimum of ad hominem attacks, confined mostly to apparently irresistible eruptions of “Lewis is a liar.” (“His statements are all false” is the equivalent.) So I thank you for that courtesy.
What took me by surprise was the pusillanimous, almost puerile, tone of the comment, which reads more like an ad for a used-car lot than as a declaration of a great scientific society. All our products have passed a complete inspection by our factory-trained mechanics. We’re making no money on this, take it and be thankful. Etc. Not a single major issue confronted in any substantive way. Yet everyone knows about the sloppy handling of the 2007 statement; everyone knows about the financial investments of many of the major players; there is plenty of dirt in the public domain, yet you continue to pretend it is all in a different universe.
Curt, you cannot have written such a shabby document.
Roger Cohen has written an incisive deconstruction of your response, and I can add little, so let me turn to the repair options. For the record, though my resignation from APS gives me no standing, my objective here is to help slow the APS rush toward the cliff. This is what I think must be done at the proximate meeting of the Council.
1.The 2007 statement should be simply redrawn. No excuses, no caveats, no unnecessary embarrassment, no statement of principles, no references to future research, simply withdrawn. It was a mistake. This is the sine qua non for restoring the honor of APS.
2. The Council should promulgate a transparent confict-of-interest policy, comparable to those used by the government. Those offended by this might even serve under reasonable constraints. Others should not serve. Many know how to do this. It is insane to have people with millions of dollars at stake determining APS policy on such matters.
3.The APS management has become a conglomerate force in itself. This is largely through neglect, because the Council is drawn too specifically though its major fields, and in all too many cases the policies are drawn by very few members, often with an axe to grind. It is too easy to push them through the Council, the members of which are in the dark. There is a wise observation (not due to Archimedes) that if any organization is left alone, the lightweights will rise to the top.
Cheers,
Hal
I think skeptics are making real progress but still a long way to go. The climategate emails have had an impact on the press. It seems that some have understood that just because a scientist says they are telling the truth doesn’t mean they are.
The 2007 statement should be simply withdrawn.
Well, no, there has to be more. There has to be acknowledgment that is was poor work.
It is pissing into the wind, not pissing in the wind. Any competent physicist should know why.
Off topic, but maybe not.
In Florida cooler waters are forcing fish and mammals to seek shelter at power plant exhausts. Note the picture of the spewing ‘pollution’ the manatee and fish are congregating around as the sea cools.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/nov/06/061940/cooler-weather-moves-manatees-fish-to-warm-water/sports-outdoors/
There is no irony among Warmists. lol
This deserves a weekday re-release.
Also, it isnt the lighweights rising to the top, but the biggest turds.
Its based upon Imhofs Law of sewerage treatment.
“”… and in all too many cases the policies are drawn by very few members, often with an axe to grind.””
This so describes the UK government. Many other governments come to think of it.
Tawanda W. Johnson
APS Press Secretary
202-662-8702
tjohnson@aps.org
APS Comments on Harold Lewis’ Resignation of his Society Membership
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a recent letter to the American Physical Society (APS) President Curtis A. Callan, chair of the Princeton University Physics Department, Harold Lewis, emeritus physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, announced that he was resigning his APS membership.
In response to numerous accusations in the letter, APS issues the following statement:
There is no truth to Dr. Lewis’ assertion that APS policy statements are driven by financial gain. To the contrary, as a membership organization of more than 48,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous ethical standards in developing its statements. The Society is open to review of its statements if members petition the APS Council – the Society’s democratically elected governing body – to do so.
Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding. Moreover, relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support.
On the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree with the following observations:
Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity;
Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; and
The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.
On these matters, APS judges the science to be quite clear. However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain. In light of the significant settled aspects of the science, APS totally rejects Dr. Lewis’ claim that global warming is a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud.”
Additionally, APS notes that it has taken extraordinary steps to solicit opinions from its membership on climate change. After receiving significant commentary from APS members, the Society’s Panel on Public Affairs finalized an addendum to the APS climate change statement reaffirming the significance of the issue. The APS Council overwhelmingly endorsed the reaffirmation.
Lastly, in response to widespread interest expressed by its members, the APS is in the process of organizing a Topical Group to feature forefront research and to encourage exchange of information on the physics of climate.
I thought it was scum that rises to the top.
@Noblesse Oblige, November 6, 2010 at 8:16 pm
That’s it in a nutshell! Thank you for the apposite observation. – and if my brain serves me correctly, he gives the scarecrow a diploma.
@Jeef
Its all a matter of where you are standing and, from my perception of the winds of change, scientifically its those at the helm of the Academy of Science, that are effectively showering themselves and those that dumbly stand behind the published ‘pusillanimous reaction’ of those controlling the Academy to dodge the real issue.
I support and defend the right of Hal Lewis to reply to their attempt at reframing the debate on this personal level to avoid looking at the science.
It takes courage to step outside the confines and comfort of a professional organization you loved, respected, and give timely, if unwanted advice in the hope others might think and consider the issues that prompted your resignation.
In a septic tank, it is not the lightweight weights, but the big chunks that rise to the top.
All of the hysteria generated in the ‘Green’ debate about Carbon Dioxide merely serves to illustrate the point that ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ There are far to many ‘sound bites’ emanating from Greenpeace and Fiends of the Earth which distort fact and scientific papers and far to little understanding by the foot soldiers who swallow the fictions as fact.
All power to Dr Lewis, though I suspect his suggestions will be ignored. The expression is, I believe, “F*rt*ng against thunder.”
I sincerely commend Hal Lewis for bringing this information to the international community prepared to question “top down decisions” on any issue. I suggest that the problem that Hal faced in the APS has been often faced by dissenters within powerful groups. As an Australian, I had the opportunity 30 years ago to examine the policy of having an offical dissenter who would not be punished for giving a problem analysis to a proposed executive plan . Their job was picking up problems in underground mining before the management decisions caused a major disaster.
This great mining company of it’s day employed Kepner Tregoe of the USA to run the course, and the most informative section for me was based on a book called “The victims of groupthink”. I am of the opinion that every school child in the world should read it. Should you read it, you will fully understand Hal’s dilemma. I find it hard to believe that the USA scientific elite are choosing to ignore these principles now.
John Game says:
Its true of course in the strict sense that animals are carbon neutral – but they are not carbon dioxide neutral. They take in fixed carbon and release carbon dioxide.
Animals are co2 neutral because the co2 they release, originated from the atmosphere and it is a natural part of the carbon cycle. Burning of fossil fuels is not neutral because it takes a source that has been removed from the cycle and adds it in an unnatural process, throwing off the balance between atmosphere, land and ocean.
“..There is a wise observation (not due to Archimedes) that if any organization is left alone, the lightweights will rise to the top…”
I am unaware of the source for this observation – could someone please enlighten me? The only similar one I know about is the famous ‘Peter Principle’, which states that employees will rise to the level of their own incompetence (which is not necessarily anywhere near the top) – could this be what is being implied?
There are virtuous cycles and there are vicious cycles. Science in the 20th century was propelled along by a virtuous cycle of technological discovery. However with the loss of around a quarter of that technological industry to Japan and now China science in the UK and US (particularly) have become disconnected from technological reality.
As I said before, I think climategate was a Mash-stype “dropping of the shower curtain” on science revealing a pretty ugly set of affairs with in-fighting, manipulation of peer review the removal of those with a scientific difference of opinion and the wholesale massaging of data to fit PR. And, from the way the scientific elite quickly “threw in the towel”, it seems obvious to me that they all share the same phobia that if the proverbial climategate type shower-curtain were dropped almost every subject would look pretty ugly in the flesh.
I can’t help noticing how little has changed in the decades since I did physics at University compared to the massive changes that occurred between my father and grandfather’s time. The text books from 1910 could not be understood let alone used today. Those of the 1940-50s are little better. But my own written about the 1970s contain virtually the same syllabus.
It’s as if science has stood still for the last 30 years! At least at the fundamental conceptual areas taught to undergraduates.
Why?
*Because as I said the technological base needed for scientific progress has been undermined and left the UK and US where much of the “science” is being done?
*Because we’ve “discovered” virtually every important thing?
*Because science has become so inward looking and run by people whose only interest is in self-promotion, petty political pushing of ideas and “hiding the decline” in “science” generally?
*Because after the “big” discoveries of the early 2oth century, the effort has gone downstream to smaller but equally important practical applications which whilst important, don’t have the same effect on undergraduate physics.
I’d welcome anyone’s thoughts – but I still can’t get away from the hunch that climategate shows something very rotten at the heart of modern science which could be a fundamental block to innovation.
Oh Lordy …
and also …
Two comments from people who themselves sound like they never had to take a stand against someone or something, particularly when it is politically incorrect to do so. Most telling is the puerile analogy to a jilted lover. Yeah, that about covers it! Frankly it sounds to me like Harold Lewis is a man who DOES care a whole lot about his former organization. Sounds like someone who sees it infested with the contagious debilitating disease called political correctness and is not afraid to address it. This takes actual courage.
If Dr. Lewis DID wash his hands of APS and “move on with his life”, well, THAT would sound exactly like a man who did NOT care about his former organization. Of course, then you could both come here and write comments about him being disingenuous for NOT following up his resignation.
P,.S. Since you both thought attempting to read his mind to discern his motives was a good idea, I hope you didn’t mind me reading your minds to do the same 😉 No offense meant of course. It is entirely possible that the two of you are capable of being as courageous in real life as Harold Lewis.
“…It is entirely possible that the two of you are capable of being as courageous in real life as Harold Lewis…”
But unlikely…
LazyTeenager [November 6, 2010 at 9:54 pm] says:
“So he resigned throwing out insults freely on the way. So now he is offering gratuitous advice and additional slime to the people he slimed in the first place.
The whole: “I am your good buddy and I am going to slime you again” speaks of someone very, very confused.”
——————————–
Okay Lazy, do you see any comparison there with your persistent, hostile presence on this blog?
You obviously don’t agree with his advice, but it’s not gratuitous. His intent is to restore honor to the APS.
What’s your intent?
“the lightweights will rise to the top”
What goes up
must come down …
@jim Cripwell says:
November 7, 2010 at 12:51 am
In a septic tank, it is not the lightweight weights, but the big chunks that rise to the top.
—————————————————————————————
..and surfs the waves:
“It is clear that UNEP must take advantage of windows
of opportunity to make its case. Like a surfer, it must
spot the waves it can ride. The biggest, most
magnificent political wave at present and in the
immediate future is climate change,and UNEP should
not fail to ride it
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/113009_IISDreport.pdf
If the executive of the APS used their combined skills and knowledge to design a jet plane, using all the care and thoroughness with which they have investigated global warming/climate change/global climate disruption, would they fly in it?
Sleeptown
I suspect this may be what Prof Lewis was implying but was at the same time too polite to say outright.
Blade, points well made.
Lewis’ quote; “Roger Cohen has written an incisive deconstruction of your response, and I can add little, so let me turn to the repair options. For the record, though my resignation from APS gives me no standing, my objective here is to help slow the APS rush toward the cliff.” shows the integrity of a good man. If the face of the ‘Lewis is a liar’ response to his resignation, all he offers is a bit more advice on how to correct the seemingly incorrectable.