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 Defence Science Board, chairman 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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