From the Telegraph (because for some reason the Liberal Media here in the U.S
don’t like this stuff getting out).
The following is a letter to the American Physical Society released to the
public by Professor Emeritus of physics Hal Lewis of the University of
California at Santa Barbara.
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 LInk will bring you to page
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)
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