Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis Resigns from American Physical Society
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Quote: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)
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.