The following resignation letter was sent by Hal Lewis,
professor emeritus of physics at the University
of California , Santa Barbara
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19
Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University
6 October 2010
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
I want no part of it, so please
accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still
friends.
Hal
* The Hockey
Stick Illusion by A. W. Montford
Harold Lewis is [was, see below] 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)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Professor Lewis only lived for a few months after his
resignation from the American Physical Society, dying on May 26, 2011. see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/09/obituary-hal-lewis/
Afterword by the
Blog Author
See also my own critique of global
warming on my locked companion blog at: http://coyotequiddity.blogspot.com/2010/12/liberals-faith-in-global-warming-104.html
No comments:
Post a Comment