Hal Lewis Resignation--an important moment in Science History!

[Cindy Seeley]

The news media is blatantly silent regarding this. We need to get the word out. For information regarding who to contact, my source and follow-up information can be found here...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/16/hal-lewis-my-resignation-from...

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)

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Often times true scientists are so completely involved with their projects that nothing else is important.
It's only when WISDOM equals the level of Scientific knowledge, within those who study science, that they realize the consequences of their studies upon their fellow citizens.
Like you've pointed out, for Harold Lewis it's late . . . . maybe too late.

[Cindy Seeley]

Philip, until the MSM stops being complicit in the postulation of Junk science, and begin assigning REAL investigative journalists, who understand the true concept of Science really being nothing more than HYPOTHESIS and THEORY, on par with Calculus, which is well known to be nothing more than hypothesis and theory, the corruption and cover-up will continue. Even going back to Darwin's THEORY, which he disproved himself and the news media neglected, back then and to this day, to report has been a part of all of this. While I admire Mr. Lewis for speaking out now, I also think it's too little too late. It appears that he himself was complicit in the whole thing while a career-man and since. With whistle-blower laws in place, why has he waited until now? Why now, after just celebrating his 87th birthday (Oct. 1, 1923) has he chosen to resign? He acknowledges his awareness of the corruption going back as far as 35 years ago. Why hasn't he spent the last 35 years petitioning the news media to investigate this corruption BEFORE it gained such a strong foothold into every aspect of America as we know it today?

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Thanks Cindy for placing this reminder that we don't yet know who is behind the corruption of SCIENCE and the investigation of natural phenomenon.
MONEY has driven scientists to put selected results before the actual testing has occurred. It's been a disaster for the REAL "scientific method".