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1.The 2007 statement should be simply withdrawn.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excuses, no caveats, no unnecessary embarrassment, no statement of principles, no references to future research, simply withdrawn.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
It seems that my comments are being blocked! Wattsupwiththat?
REPLY: No, they are right here.
There is much face to be lost.
Theo Goodwin says:
November 7, 2010 at 7:05 am
“Ross Brisbane says:
November 7, 2010 at 12:35 am
Tawanda W. Johnson
APS Press Secretary
202-662-8702
tjohnson@aps.org
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.”
Dr. Lewis did not say that statements are driven by financial gain; rather, he pointed to conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest should be eliminated without regard for actual financial gain.”
Lewis claim that there is conflict of interest is false. The part of the APS letter which you did not quote are:
“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.”
It seems that Lewis is making false charges of conflict of interest when there is none. This leads one to ask why someone in his position would do that. My personal assessment is that he is the sort of individual who is trying to puff up his own importance, and has found a receptive audience, and is making the most of it.
Dear Dr Lewis, you’ve written two great missives, congratulations on your courage & thoughtfulness.
You strongly intimate a financial conflict of interest between members of the Society & the performance of financial instruments in the market. Interesting. Very interesting & a great point of leverage… both ways!!!
You should do some minor investigations & determine if a significant portion of stock makes anyone an investor of significant holdings. The SEC would always be interested in conflicts of interest & any subsequent fraud involving ‘hyping’ of any public company or it’s technical capability.
I can think of more possible instances of conflict of interests involving institutions of learning & government agencies… thank about that too.
@LazyTeenager :
Often when one cares about something, be it a society, a principle, or truth itself, one has to defend it, even against itself.
It is kind of like watching a family succumb to a cult. It is very rare that any individuals therein ever break out on their own, and the first thing that happens when they do is their castigation and vilification.
An intervention is required. Interventions are rarely happy things. It is even more difficult when the family enables each other, and enforces their own beliefs, to the point of ignoring evidence and altering the nature of what is accepted as evidence in their worldview. The data is obviously wrong, not the theory. If the data does not fit the theory, they ignore or alter it.
Most often, these cult followings grow more insular over time, with power concentrated in the hands of the founders. What is required to break the programming (for programming it is) is doses of the most bitter medicine of all… truth.
Often, however, people never break their programming, having become so accustomed to the view of reality, and the idea that the ‘other side’, whatever it is, alters the argument in order to win. While this would seem to mark the ‘skeptic’ position, the grave difference is in communication, discussion, and argument.
When any side refuses to debate, refuses to engage in that discourse of principles and conflict that is science, that side has engaged their beliefs into dogma that ignores fact, ignores truth, and reinforces itself against those medications. It is by conflict, by discourse, and by debate that science grows and is advanced.
Consensus protects the status quo… and is not science at all, never has been, and never could be. Often cults operate with reward/penalty conditioning. In this case, the reward is a grant, recognition, or publishing, and the penalty is the withdrawal of that benefit. Slowly, over time, the body of research becomes flooded with the status quo position, without regard to its accuracy, because that is where the reward lies.
And when people step out of line in the least, they must be punished for so doing. When they step out of line in major things, they are made anathema, excommunicated, and declared as heretics that must be destroyed.
That… is the most disturbing development of all. When the belief becomes more important than the reality, and it must not be discussed… there is a major illness in the body scientific.
Must apologize for my earlier post re-naming the American Physical Society (APS) under the description “Academy of Science”. One should not post when jet lagged!!
Can anyone provide a link to Roger Cohen’s deconstruction of the APS response ? It might clarify a few points of contention here . Thanks in advance .
Robb876 says:
November 7, 2010 at 1:33 am
Most of the carbon from past aeons are bound up in sedimentary rock. This is also circulated through plate tectonics. Nature does not care if the CO2 is from “natural” sources. Both geolocial and biological processes are involved in carbon circulation. Carbon based life forms has been used as fuel since man conquered fire. That the life form died millions of years ago or yesterday makes little difference to nature. So the use of a natural/unnatural distinction is quite meaningless.
“kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
November 7, 2010 at 4:24 am
Peter Plail said on November 7, 2010 at 3:09 am:
John Andrews
“As any competent scientist knows”. Who needs years of scientific training when a few seconds practical experience tells you all you need to know about pissing into the wind.
Aim low with your legs and feet spread apart.
That’s the practical knowledge. The years of scientific training are needed to computer model it. If it’s for climate science purposes, using a fixed wind speed from an unchanging direction is acceptable and expected. ☺”
I disagree, I believe the climate science model would be more complicated.
First they would factor out the “piss” as it is too complicated to predict it’s path.
Secondly they would adjust the wind data to show that it is all blowing north.
Finally they would run around with their scientific pants about their ankles trying to prove humans are creating the wind.
Just to pile on with the lightweights rise to the top theme, I am reminded of this quote:
“Napoleon once said when asked to explain the lack of great statesmen in the world, that “to get power you need to display absolute pettiness; to exercise power, you need to show true greatness.” Such pettiness and greatness are rarely found in one person.”
The Contender (2000) – President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges)
Even though Napoleon didn’t say it exactly (he spoke French ;-)… ), it’s still a beauty.
“Eadler says:
Ron,
Thanks for posting this. It shows how unfounded Lewis’s statements impugning the integrity of the officers and members of the APS.
Lewis seems the type of person who gets off on puffing up his own importance, and has apparently found a receptive and uncritical audience here.”
Actually, no it doesn’t. The statement from APS is pure bafflegab. Commentary is made in the statement with holes big enough to drive a Brinks truck through. Broad sweeping statements so generalized that they can’t possibly be true, even though some would desperately wish to believe. Spend some time and break down the APS statement and parse it out.
P Walker says:
November 7, 2010 at 10:59 am
Can anyone provide a link to Roger Cohen’s deconstruction of the APS response ? It might clarify a few points of contention here . Thanks in advance .
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/13/aps-responds-deconstructing-the-aps-response-to-dr-hal-lewis-resignation/
P Walker says:
November 7, 2010 at 10:59 am
“Can anyone provide a link to Roger Cohen’s deconstruction of the APS response ? It might clarify a few points of contention here . Thanks in advance .”
For P Walker and others interested:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/13/aps-responds-deconstructing-the-aps-response-to-dr-hal-lewis-resignation/
I’m sure the resignation letter and this follow-up were aimed squarely at the membership of the APS. In every organisation there is a silent majority. Here’s hoping Hal’s message gets through to them and prompts a grass roots sea change.
It’s not just climatology that has forgotten the scientific method and physics itself is full of the same unfalsifiable premises, with lots and lots of pixie dust created to cover the ever widening cracks.
@ur momisuglyKenB – sorry, wasn’t intending to suggest I disageed with what Hal’s doing, just that I perceive it to be pointless.
@ur momisugly John Andrews – perfectly correct and for obvious reasons. My peer group almost always contract the ‘into’ as ‘in’ though, as I did in my post.
From Scott Covert on November 7, 2010 at 11:21 am:
What’s so complicated? It’s just a liquid with identical properties to water that emerges from a perfectly straight and circular tube at a constant pressure and rate of flow, said tube pointing in a fixed direction, with the flow controlled by an instantaneously-acting on/off valve. This is confirmed as this is the physical model used by the other computer models.
Nah, towards the South Pole if in the Northern Hemisphere, the North Pole if in the Southern Hemisphere. Standard Hadley cell circulation pattern, although since such a small phenomenon relative to the size of the Earth is being modeled, any East/West air movement from the Coriolis effect can be left out.
They already basically proved that. (C)AGW Science©® states that Anthropogenic Climate Change will lead to more frequent and extreme weather events, thus ones with greater wind speeds. Since the models show a linear relationship, working backwards one finds the y-intercept where with no humans there are much lower “normal” wind speeds. Indeed, current modeling efforts have demonstrated that if there were no humans remaining but conditions existed for further carbon
dioxide reductionssequestration, such as new rainforests and open fields left to become forests, essentially having negative humans, the x-intercept would be hit and there would be no wind whatsoever. That point, of course, would be quickly passed as all the winds changed direction thus they would then be possessing negative speed.Side Note: More from the Scientific Consensus©® showing the wonders of models (emphasis added):
Three cheers for Climate Science©®, and its chief defender, the APS!
dkkraft , Darrel C Phillips ,
Thanks – actually read this last month , but it slipped my mind . Probably should have checked the archives myself . Apologies , and thanks again .
Physics cares not about political posturing. However those who study the physics cannot do what they do without financial support so inevitably the politics creeps in. When we have conflicts like this we are witnessing a battle over rhetorical and ideological positions, not a battle over physics. If the rot is setting in as Dr. Lewis argues, then the APS is nearing the end of its useful life as a physics institution.
Darell C. Phillips says:
November 7, 2010 at 12:48 pm
P Walker says:
November 7, 2010 at 10:59 am
“Can anyone provide a link to Roger Cohen’s deconstruction of the APS response ? It might clarify a few points of contention here . Thanks in advance .”
For P Walker and others interested:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/13/aps-responds-deconstructing-the-aps-response-to-dr-hal-lewis-resignation/
Thanks for the link.
The deconstruction of the APS’ reply by Happer, Cohen and Lewis is a bunch of twaddle.
They claim:
This passes over the fact that carbon dioxide absorption lines are nearly saturated.
The radiation transfer model takes the level of radiation and the shape of the spectral lines into account. The term nearly saturated is immaterial.
Well, it depends on what you mean by “dwell time.” If it is the conventional half life of an impulse loading of carbon dioxide, the statement is wrong – by a lot.. The IPCC’s Bern carbon cycle model http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/model_description/model_description.html gets a 16 year half life. If it is the time for the last molecule to get picked up by a sink, the statement is meaningless. At the very least, the statement is sloppy and hardly befitting a world class scientific society.
The dissenters are displaying ignorance of the science. Susan Solomon has written a paper showing how elevated levels of CO2 is going to last hundreds of years, even after the increase in emissions is stopped. Check out figure 1.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html
This paper got a lot of publicity It would be surprising if the dissenters didn’t know about it.
Cohen has no produced no evidence that there is a scam, which involves intent to deceive, associated with any aspect of climate science or the APS.
The fact that a small number of scientists disagree with the position of the APS, and that other scientific societiest have adopted similar positions, doesn’t prove that there is intent to deceive. None of the investigations associated with the stolen emails have pointed to any scientific scam or fraud either.
The charges against unnamed individuals who supposedly have conflicts is hard to debunk because the names are not mentioned. I have traced the first one and find that the individual seems to be Robert Scolow.
The presence of Scolow , an expert on carbon on the Climate Change Advisory Board of Duetsche Bank is not a conflict of interest. His research career began in 1971. He was appointed to the DB board in 2008. He is advising DB on how to be a good corporate citizen with respect to climate change. Looking at his CV, it is not a significant activity for him, and I doubt that it contributes much to his income. He is currently a member of a dozen boards which tap his expertise in the field of carbon mitigation.
https://www.princeton.edu/mae/people/faculty/socolow/2010SocolowLongCV.pdf
In this case the charges of unethical conduct objecting to Scolow’s use of his expertise to help BP do good and be a “carbon neutral” corporation are nonsense. It casts severe doubt on the validity of the other specific charges he makes without naming names. I am not inclined to track them down.
The quality of this reply is so lame, I don’t see a need to continue dealing with it further.
These guys are really nobodies who are feeding their egos with the adulation they are getting from the skeptics of AGW, who are impressed that there are scientists with enough courage to go against the AGW juggernaut. They really have no scientific case, so they resort to letters and petitions rather than scientific publications. They really have very few followers among physicists.
REPLY: Note, because your posts are getting increasingly long and contain a lot of links, they are getting flagged as commercial SPAM and being trapped to the wordpress.com SPAM filter. Save yourself and the mods extra works and shorten your response. – Anthony
Robb876 says:
(November 7, 2010 at 1:33 am) “Animals are co2 neutral because the co2 they release, originated from the atmosphere and it is a natural part of the carbon cycle”.
I agree about the basic carbon cycle, and perhaps its semantics but
I would not call processing carbon by one of the steps in a cycle the same as
being carbon-neutral. The plants, not the animals, move the carbon back
out of the atmosphere. Without animals there would be a lot more
fixed carbon, and a lowering of atmospheric co2 would result; without plants the
opposite would occur. (Neither process could go on for very long without the
other, of course). Consider an animal eating tree-bark. Without that animal,
the carbon in the tree bark would not become co2 for perhaps a few hundred years.
With the animal it becomes co2 in short order. Now consider coal – in that case the
carbon was removed from the atmosphere in much the same way as the carbon in the
tree bark. Its been out of circulation for a few tens of millions of years instead of just
a few hundred years, but we are now recycling it. Of course, we are changing the
relative amounts of carbon in the different phases of the cycle, hence ” greenhouse
concerns” but ultimately it still cycles. Both our fuel-burning activities and the
ratio of living animals-plus-fungi to living green plants on the planet affect
the relative partitoning of the amount of carbon in the gasesous and fixed stage.
APS’s Curtis Callan has likely forgotten the physics behind band saturation when he writes: “Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming”. We all know that the CO2 absorption bands are already nearly saturated and that increasing CO2 cannot contribute to significant additional energy absorption. He and his members must be relying on some unknown, phantasmagorical positive feedback mechanism(s) for rising CO2 to have anything other than a minor warming effect or,…. money must be involved somewhere.
He must also be worried about the shower curtain falling around their Standard Model, which is so full of “patches” that it also has become phantasmagorical.
But,… if one wants to work one does not go up against ones trade union. Arp is a classic example.
HURRAH for Dr. Lewis!!!
Jeef says: (November 6, 2010 at 8:05 pm) Us Poms have a phrase for what Hal’s doing.
Isn’t that INTO the wind, Jeef?
Ross Brisbane says:
November 7, 2010 at 12:35 am:
Tawanda W. Johnson
APS Press Secretary
202-662-8702
tjohnson@aps.org
APS Comments on Harold Lewis’ Resignation of his Society Membership [ … ]
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.
The first assertion is correct.
The second assertion is meaningless because the amount of warming is not quantified. In fact, its contribution to global warming is too small to be reliably measured.
The third assertion is flatly contradicted by numerous peer reviewed studies.
For the official spokesperson of a professional society of physicists to make such a sloppy and incorrect statement is a reflection of the degeneracy of the APS, from a formerly esteemed scientific organization that has devolved to simply another political NGO pushing their debunked CAGW agenda.
LazyTeenager says: (November 6, 2010 at 9:54 pm) So he resigned throwing out insults freely on the way. So now he is offering gratuitous advice and additional slime […] …speaks of someone very, very confused.
Robert Morris says: (November 6, 2010 at 10:07 pm) Don’t mean to be rude, but when you resign.. you resign. […] this just looks weak and detracts from the force of his resignation.
Take a broader view, Lazy and Robert. In his resignation letter, Dr. Harold Lewis set out quite clearly the steps he had taken to be heard within the American Physical Society, and the stone-walling (to be polite to the APS) which had met his legitimate attempts to be listened to and to make his case to the membership.
Considering the seriousness of his concerns he had no reasonable option but to resign as a means of making his concerns known.
Publicity did what reason could not. That resignation established a high ground from which he could be heard; and now we are hearing.
BACullen says:
November 7, 2010 at 7:04 pm
“APS’s Curtis Callan has likely forgotten the physics behind band saturation when he writes: “Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming”. We all know that the CO2 absorption bands are already nearly saturated and that increasing CO2 cannot contribute to significant additional energy absorption. He and his members must be relying on some unknown, phantasmagorical positive feedback mechanism(s) for rising CO2 to have anything other than a minor warming effect or,…. money must be involved somewhere.
He must also be worried about the shower curtain falling around their Standard Model, which is so full of “patches” that it also has become phantasmagorical.
But,… if one wants to work one does not go up against ones trade union. Arp is a classic example.
HURRAH for Dr. Lewis!!!”
It is Lewis et. al. and you who have fallen behind because of a lack of understanding of how CO2 causes global warming. The argument about saturation is only looking at the lowest levels of the atmosphere, where the concentration of CO2 is the highest, and the path length of radiation is the lowest. At the highest elevations, where the upward radiation escapes into space, the absorption is not saturated, and the concentration of CO2 will make a difference. Here is a link which explains why this is wrong.
[Note: Please make your own arguments. See the site Policy for clarification. ~dbs, mod.]
As we have seen, in the higher layers where radiation starts to slip through easily, adding some greenhouse gas must warm the Earth regardless of how the absorption works. The changes in the H2O and CO2 absorption lines with pressure and temperature only shift the layers where the main action takes place. You do need to take it all into account to make an exact calculation of the warming. In the 1950s, after good infrared data and digital computers became available, the physicist Gilbert Plass took time off from what seemed like more important research to work through lengthy calculations of the radiation balance, layer by layer in the atmosphere and point by point in the spectrum. He announced that adding CO2 really could cause a degree or so of global warming. Plass’s calculations were too primitive to account for many important effects. (Heat energy moves up not only by radiation but by convection, some radiation is blocked not by gas but by clouds, etc.) But for the few scientists who paid attention, it was now clear that the question was worth studying. Decades more would pass before scientists began to give the public a clear explanation of what was really going on in these calculations, drawing attention to the high, cold layers of the atmosphere. Even today, many popularizers try to explain the greenhouse effect as if the atmosphere were a single sheet of glass.
This is proof that Lewis and his buddies are ignorant of climate science, and don’t understand the fundamentals. They have no standing to criticize climate science, and are correctly regarded by the APS as crackpots.