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Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis: "Global Warming is a Scam"

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by ToyCen428, Oct 19, 2010.

  1. ToyCen428

    ToyCen428 Member

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    Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis Resigns from American Physical Society

    The following is a letter to the American Physical Society released to the public by Professor Emiritus 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

    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)

    ------------------------------------------------------

    Source: http://my.telegraph.co.uk/reasonmcl...lewis-resigns-from-american-physical-society/

    Pretty interesting he admits to this. There's a legitimate dark curtain out there that people are afraid to look behind, or even speak of what's going on behind there.
     
  2. Ottomaton

    Ottomaton Contributing Member
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    [rquoter]
    When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

    --Arthur C. Clarke

    [/rquoter]
     
  3. droxford

    droxford Member

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    ^^^ You sound like you didn't read the article.
     
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  4. Ottomaton

    Ottomaton Contributing Member
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    What makes more sense?


    • There is a massive conspiracy where every climate scientist in the world is corrupted and zombified by conspiracy cash like Sauron corrupts people's minds in the Lord of the Rings (with the exception of the author who messianiacly stands against the tide like Gandalf the Gray).

      or

    • Old crusty senile dude is old, crusty, and senile and can't pass up the opportunity to scream, "Get off my lawn!" at the world that has left him behind?

    I understand what the author alleges. And I understand that that sort of thinking (i.e. they don't agree with me because they are bad people who know they are wrong but conspire against the truth for personal gain and nefarious purposes - not because they really and truly believe something else) is modus operandi for every ideologue ranting in the D&D.
     
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  5. Ubiquitin

    Ubiquitin Contributing Member
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    Where is this trillion dollars for climate change coming from and why was i not aware this money was available?

    Oh wait, it is not.
     
  6. Pole

    Pole Houston Rockets--Tilman Fertitta's latest mess.

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    That the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. More to the right than you'll ever admit, and more to the left than some old crusty senile dude will ever admit.
     
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  7. Ottomaton

    Ottomaton Contributing Member
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    So, what? You assert that people are partially zombified? How does that work in practical terms. Most zombie movies I've seen have a fairly straightforward and well defined transition from living to undead.

    I knew that Arthur C. Clarke quote before I ever knew what defined right/left in the USA. It isn't a left/right issue for me.
     
  8. Ubiquitin

    Ubiquitin Contributing Member
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    Or young brunette in Delaware for that matter.
     
  9. thadeus

    thadeus Contributing Member

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    The truth doesn't care about left, right, or middle.

    If Team A says 2+2=4
    If Team B says 2+2=6
    Then those seeking the middle ground say 2+2=5.
     
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  10. ToyCen428

    ToyCen428 Member

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    Im sure I could find a conspiracy in the 2+2=5 ordeal lol
     
  11. mylilpony

    mylilpony Member

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    um. i thought it was trendy to buy stuff that's green. green toilets, green light bulbs, green cars (which i think is ironic since plants need CO2 to produce sugars), green appliances, green energy, green clothes, green food, green water bottles, no water bottles, no farting livestock unless we can tax the ranchers that allow this atrocity.

    The old dude may sound ornery, but he makes a good point when he says, "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." The crux of science is questioning. The guy was just trying to have open dialogue about a science that has been sketchy as of late.

    but i guess "the debate is over." and manbearpig exists. I'm so cereal.
    [​IMG]
     
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  12. durvasa

    durvasa Contributing Member

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    So ... what exactly are the claims he is disputing?
     
  13. zoork34

    zoork34 Contributing Member

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    It sounds to me like he is mainly angry about the fact that the APS would not even convene to have a discussion on the matter. He may be a global warming skeptic, but he mainly doesn't want them to use the word incontrovertible when referring to global warming, and why would he? Think about how many "incontrovertible" facts have been disproved over the years.

    I do agree with him that money does corrupt, or at least control, a lot of original researchers. The government controls the grants, and, as a result, controls what is researched. Professors write grants to some degree based on what they think will get funded, not necessarily what they want to research (although sometimes the two do match up).
     
  14. Lynus302

    Lynus302 Contributing Member

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    You've got to be kidding....

    There's this:
    And think about this: Al Gore was nearly the leader of the free world and he's a huge figurehead in the Green movement. Think about how much heat Bush and the US took with regard to Kyoto. And how much heat the industrialized world (the US especially) still takes over oil, carbon emissions, deforestation, recycling (or the lack thereof), etc., etc., etc.

    "Green" as an industry is worth trillions upon trillions of dollars. Anything that could mark it as a scam or even call it into question could drop the bottom out of that industry and make some very wealthy and powerful people suddenly very poor and impotent.

    Also: In before the inevitable move to D&D.
     
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  15. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"

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    speaking as a physicist, this seems like some sort of organizational semantics absurdity (on the part of the emeritus professor.)

    APS doesn't really have conferences on climate science. There's no new physics in climate stuff. That's a whole different field of applied and computational sciences.

    So this guy could just have easily complained that APS doesn't have a session on making ice cream. Yeah, they don't cover that.

    By the way, and I hate to say this, "emeritus" means "please retire already. Okay, thank you" from the university. At least 9 times in 10.
     
  16. orbb

    orbb Contributing Member

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    Scientists agreeing with one another even when unconvinced is nothing special. You'd be crazy to risk tenure after the decade or more of crappy work labeled as research for crappy pay.

    The zombie red herring is a nice touch tho. Its weird how climate change defenders cant definitively give you proof, but they jump on any attempt to question the validity of their claims.
     
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  17. tomato

    tomato Member

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    Hoops-fan or not, I look for a little more credibility than Grandpa Munster, and that's... The Bottom Line.
     
  18. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    You realize that anything more energy efficient can be considered "green"?

    Let's say I buy a smaller car. It's by virtue green because it emits less pollutants than a minivan.

    Same with LCDs vs. cathode ray tubes.

    Companies that pursue cost cutting measures through sustainability plans and reducing waste are also considered green, yet the savings benefits are never accounted for in these wild projections.

    If there is a literal trillions spent on the accounting sheets, that's where it would come from, capitalism doing its thing and getting the most bang for the buck.

    Hybrid engines and CFL bulbs are more the exception than the rule.
     
  19. heypartner

    heypartner Contributing Member

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    I wonder if this article would have a different feel if the thread title was "Retired Professor" rather than the latin form "Professor Emeritus" ... and what if a woman wrote it, "Professor Emerita"?

    This reminds me, I need to start a thread in the GARM about The Dream Emeritus.
     
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  20. Bandwagoner

    Bandwagoner Contributing Member

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    Industry does not like to put much cash down for research that might not produce for them though. When researching completely new methods or materials instead of a modification, the money needs to come from public sources.

    the best source is the space program, as energy and water conservation are pretty important in that environment. I wonder how much better our solar panel and thermoelectric generator technology would be if we had a few white guys on the moon in the 1980's.
     

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