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Home IPCC News Hal Lewis: My
Resignation From The American Physical Society

Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical
Society

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)

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