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The greatest and most
successful pseudoscientific fraud
We give our scientific community
a chance to read Harold Lewis,
Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of
California and an eminent
scientist's damning thoughts about "Global Warming."
He calls it the "greatest and most successful
pseudoscientific fraud...." in a
resignation letter he sent to the American Physical
Society.
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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