This should motivate all of us

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Dawg-fan-in-TN, Feb 21, 2011.


  1. Dawg-fan-in-TN

    Dawg-fan-in-TN Monkey+

  2. Ajax

    Ajax Monkey++

    It would be scary if global warming weren't a big scam and hoax.
     
  3. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    Saw the following, and thought it would provide some context, Written
    by a REAL Scientist:


    Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of
    California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis
    G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical
    Society.

    Anthony Watts describes it thus:

    This is an important moment in science history. I would describe
    it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to
    the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in
    entirety on every blog that discusses science.

    It‚s so utterly damning that I‚m going to run it in full without
    further comment.

    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)
     
    Tracy, Falcon15, UGRev and 2 others like this.
survivalmonkey SSL seal        survivalmonkey.com warrant canary
17282WuJHksJ9798f34razfKbPATqTq9E7