WUWT may recall the late Dr. Hal Lewis led the way on this last year as I covered at WUWT and in an op-ed at the Christian Science Monitor.
From Climate Depot, who got the exclusive:
Nobel prize winner for physics in 1973 Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society (APS) on September 13, 2011 in disgust over the group’s promotion of man-made global warming fears. Climate Depot has obtained the exclusive email Giaever sent to APS Executive Officer Kate Kirby to announce his formal resignation.
Dr. Giaever wrote to Kirby of APS: “Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I cannot live with the (APS) statement below (on global warming): APS: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’
Giaever announced his resignation from APS was due to the group’s belief in man-made global warming fears. Giaever explained in his email to APS: “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.”
Read the full story here at Climate Depot
Here’s the resignation letter:
From: Ivar Giaever [ mailto:giaever@XXXX.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 3:42 PMTo: kirby@xxx.xxx
Cc: Robert H. Austin; ‘William Happer’; ‘Larry Gould’; ‘S. Fred Singer’; Roger Cohen
Subject: I resign from APS
Dear Ms. Kirby Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I can not live with the statement below: Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.
Best regards, Ivar Giaever Nobel Laureate 1973 PS. I included a copy to a few people in case they feel like using the information.Ivar Giaever
XXX XXX
XXX
USA
Phone XXX XXX XXX
Fax XXX XXX XXX
================================
h/t to WUWT reader David L. Hagen
She did not state they are the only reviewers or even that they always review such papers. All that can be interpreted from that statement, is one out of the likely three reviewers on those specific papers may be a respected climate skeptic. All E&E reviewers have the relevant credentials to peer-review the content of the papers they are selected for.
It is fascinating you have a problem with one of the reviewers being a credentialed climate scientist who happens to be a respected skeptic. Do you have the same problems with the reviewers of AGW proponent papers? Because most pro-AGW papers are reviewed by other AGW proponents.
Yes the list comes from WorldCat and it shows any library that has any issue on file. All of which is irrelevant in today’s online word.
I don’t take James Hansen’s papers seriously wherever he publishes them.
[i]Orson Olson says:
September 14, 2011 at 3:02 pm
I found the CCs from the email interesting: “Cc: Robert H. Austin; ‘William Happer’; ‘Larry Gould’; ‘S. Fred Singer’; Roger Cohen”
Happer is a physicist at Princeton; Singer, the founder of the NWS Satellite Division in the 60s, and formerly environmental science prof. at UVa (until he was pushed out for AGW-heresy).
But will anyone enlighten me about the rest?[/i]
Larry Gould is a physicist and husband of an acquaintance of mine from another list. He is one of those actively involved in the effort to get the APS to change its policy statement.
Orson:
Here’s some info on Robert Austin: http://www.aps.org/about/governance/councillor1.cfm and http://austingroup.princeton.edu/ As I understand it, he was the APS Councillor who actually brought up the issue of changing the APS policy statement at one of the meetings of the APS Councillors.
Poptech says:
I don’t have a problem with that…but I also think that this is an extremely generous way to interpret her statement. While her statement is strictly not logically incompatible with your interpretation, it is certainly a bizarre interpretation of what she said, requiring us to believe that she specifically made an argument that tends to undermine her claims of how objective the peer review process is when it is in fact much more objective than she has led us to believe. It is sort of akin to believing that if some place advertises that “all our teachers have at least bachelor’s degrees in what they are teaching” that you might in fact be taught by a Nobel Laureate.
I have to say that I also question the judgement of who is a “respected skeptic” coming from an editor who has Richard S Courtney ( http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-s-courtney ) as a member of the editorial board.
Well, the fact that you refuse to take seriously any work of one of the most respected scientists in the field while actively advertising papers such as G&T’s and Jaworowski’s speaks volumes as to where you are coming from.
There is nothing bizarre or generous about it, as that is all that can be objectively concluded from her statement. The statement you are focusing on was part of a larger argument defending her “political agenda”. Her reference to “respected skeptics” would likely be scientists like Dr. Lindzen, or Dr. Christy. No one would question scientists like these having the scientific credentials to review climate papers. I have spoken to authors who have had papers published in E&E and they stated that the E&E peer-review process was comparable with other scholarly journals. They found it to be very helpful in correcting and pointing out mistakes in their papers.
You need to stop relying on propaganda from sites like DeSmogBlog,
http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/04/truth-about-desmogblog.html
Have you attempted to speak with Mr. Courtney? As he would be glad to correct all the nonsense off the link you provided.
He is only “respected” by alarmists, I consider him a shrill alarmist scientist who is pushing a political agenda. My list attempts to be comprehensive and does not discriminate based on what alarmists complain about (which is everything). It’s purpose is to both demonstrate that these papers exist and to provide a resource for skeptics.
Poptech says:
Well, if she does send papers to a much broader community of climate scientists than just skeptics, why doesn’t she say this in her own defense? If she doesn’t, I am back at my original question of why you think it is reasonable to have papers reviewed only by the tiny minority of actively-publishing climate scientists who share a certain point-of-view?
Unless you use “alarmists” as a synonym for all but the select few of the scientific community who share your ideological and scientific views, then that statement about him is not correct. You don’t win prestigious awards from AAAS, APS, AGU, AMS, and NASA ( http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansencv_201106.pdf ) without being well-respected within the scientific community.
You may not like his point-of-view or agree with all his scientific work, but to deny he is generally highly-respected in the scientific community is simply denying reality.
I think what it demonstrates is to what extremes AGW skeptics have to go to find papers that they claim agrees with their point-of-view.
Because her response you are quoting was to charges of having a “political agenda” not the question you are asking. Politically she is a social democrat which makes the whole charge to begin with laughable.
I have seen no evidence that she doesn’t. So you believe all pro-AGW papers should have a skeptic as a reviewer?
Winning an award has nothing to do with how “well-respected” you are with scientists who did not give you the award. You are making unsupported claims.
I have not surveyed the “scientific community” nor have I seen any such survey to determine how respected he is in the “scientific community”.
There is nothing extreme about the existence of scholarly peer-reviewed papers that support skeptic arguments. They simply exist and there is nothing you can do about it.