Don’t Be a Denier, The Science is In!

This is a letter of resignation to the President of the American Physical Society, Curtis G. Callan Jr, from Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It should have been printed on the front page of every newspaper in the country. If you have a blog, please copy it and post it on your blog. It might be one of the greatest thing I’ve ever read.

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

No further comment from me is necessary.

Global Warming and Global Cooling at the Same Time?

The ecoEnquirer has a new piece about the “seemingly contradictory research” showing that Antarctic ice is increasing and decreasing. While this may seem strange, paraphysicist (don’t ask me what that is) Dr. Elizabeth Frost has an answer: both conclusions are true.

“What we believe,” Dr. Frost told ecoEnquirer, “is that a new paradigm is needed in scientific thought. Since mutually exclusive sets of scientific results usually are published in respected scientific publications, we suggest that they are both true. There is a higher level of physical understanding that must be developed, one where the Yin and Yang of scientific findings are reconciled, better understood, and appreciated.”

When asked about whether or not sea levels would rise or fall Dr. Frost said:

“That is quite simple. The predicted result is that sea levels will both rise and fall, depending, of course, upon the perspective of the observer.”

While this explanation might seem absurd I think it makes total sense. Today it seems that scientist in general are less interested in finding “scientific truth,” and more interested in keeping their grant money flowing. Therefore, a scientist is more likely to come up with a conclusion that is in line with the agenda of the person or organization(s) funding their research. Ask yourself this, if you were a climatologist, and Al Gore was funding your research, what conclusion would you be more likely to come up with: one that contradicts Mr. Gore or one that validates his cataclysmic claims? 

Just something to think about.

 

Media Weapons of Massa Distraction

The big story out of Washington this week is the resignation of New York Congressman Eric Massa. The details are a quick Google search away if you’re interested. Massa went on Glenn Beck’s show this week to tell his story. It was a boring interview and nothing interesting came out of it. Beck himself said he wasted our time by having the interview and that the story didn’t matter to any of us personally. I agree with Beck in this instance. This story doesn’t matter to any of us at all.

In the realm of political sex scandals, Massa’s scandal is farm league. There were no hookers or blow, no oral sex, no dead bodies- only ‘tickle fights.’ This should have been a one day story in the news at the most but it’s turning into a huge cabal. Today, the House Republicans are spreading rumors that they are going to ask the House Ethics Committee to investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader for their handling of information about misbehavior by Congressman Massa. This is completely unnecessary and it’s obvious they’re doing this to get back at the Democrats for the whole Mark Foley scandal in 2006. Thank you House Republicans for standing up and fighting for the American people, I can’t wait until you guys are in charge again.  

This is a total waste of time. As Glenn Beck said, this story doesn’t affect any of us personally at all. It’s about as important as the Balloon Boy or Tiger Woods story. Unfortunately, stories like these that pass for ‘news’ today.

While everyone is distracted by this stupid story, Pelosi is no doubt behind the scenes, working alongside the White House, arm twisting the fence sitters in their caucus to vote for the unpopular health care bill that will literally affect every single person in the country. Did you know that they want to add a provision to the health care bill that would completely overhaul the nation’s student loan program and require the Education Department to originate all student assistance loans, effectively eliminating a role for banks and other private lenders. For those of you keeping score, Obama has taken over two car companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and potentially the entire health care system and the student loan industry.  Still think Obama isn’t a socialist?    

 Health care isn’t the only thing they’re working on right now either. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are meeting with Obama today to talk about immigration reform. According to the Politico, the Schumer-Graham plan “includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants (a liberal must-have) while sweetening the pot for moderates by proposing tough new safeguards, including a biometric national ID card for workers.”

A biometric national ID card!?!? Are you f***ing kidding me? ‘Moderates’ are in favor of this? Apparently so. Bill O’Reilly talked about it on his show this week with Lou Dobbs and they were both all for it. The Wall Street Journal said the proposal was only “potentially controversial.” I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Does liberty even matter anymore?

As if a government takeover of health care/student loans and the National ID cards aren’t bad enough, ABC News reported that the Tresasury Department announced yesterday that “the government racked up a record-high monthly budget deficit of $220.9 billion in February.” (Remember, February is the shortest month of the year.)

According to ABC: 

The latest flood of red ink brings the total deficit for the first five months of the current fiscal year to $651 billion, far exceeding the $589 billion shortfall for the same timeframe in the last fiscal year. The government ended the 2009 fiscal year with a record $1.4 trillion shortfall. The Obama administration has forecast a $1.56 trillion deficit for this year.

 That speaks for itself. If you still believe anything that Obama says about ushering in a new era of responsibility, cutting deficits, deficit neturality, or reducing the national debt you’re an idiot. 

 So while everyone in the media is using the Massa scandal to get ratings the government takes away more of our liberty. I guess it’s just a slow news day.

Barney Frank’s String Theory

A recent New York Post article talks about how this election year is a bad year for Congressional incumbents regardless of party. Republicans are polling slightly better than Democrats, but only slightly. Conventional wisdom says that Democrats will bear the brunt of this anti-incumbent momentum. The article goes deeper into the CNN poll numbers and makes some comparisons to 1994 when the Republicans took over Congress while Bill Clinton was president.  

There is a strange non sequitur at the end of the article, however, that I found interesting and revealing. Here’s how it appears in the article:

President Obama isn’t doing much to boost his party, either — with his approval rating at 49 percent. Just 44 percent think he deserves to be re-elected.

The survey was taken from Friday through Monday of 1,023 people and had a 3-percentage- point margin of error.

Several members of Congress have expressed frustration over the partisan gridlock.

“People are almost in a parallel universe,” Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said yesterday. “They are not getting a common set of facts and most of the people they talk to are those who agree with them.”

It goes from talking about the survey to talking about Congressional frustration over partisan gridlock. Maybe this isn’t a non sequitur, but a way to explain why there is such a strong anti-incumbent sentiment, I’ll let you decide. 

What amazes me is how off his rocker Barney Frank is. The people are in a parallel universe? You mean the parallel universe where we have no jobs and are forced to live beneath our means and make sacrifices in our lifestyle because of the recession caused by the actions of people like Barney Frank? Maybe it’s the parallel universe where your roommate can run a prostitution ring out of the downstairs of your house without you knowing about it. Either way I am impressed by his reference to theoretical physics.

No Consensus?

In an interview this past weekend with the BBC, Professor Phil Jones, one of the professors in the middle of the ‘Climategate’ scandal, admitted that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995. Here is the question asked with his answer word for word:

Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming?

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

Fair enough. The period from 1995-2010 isn’t long enough to achieve statistical significance, I’ll buy that. However, I thought the most revealing part of the interview was this exchange:

When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean – and what don’t they mean?

It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

Is Professor Jones saying that the debate isn’t over and there is no scientific consensus? I thought the “warming of the climate was unequivocal.” That’s what the 2007 Nobel Prize winning IPCC report claimed. It appears no one actually bothered to even read the IPCC until now because it seems like every day a new error or flaw in the report is discovered. Errors like serious typos leading people to believe that the Himalayan glacier would be completely gone by 2035 instead of 2350. I’d say that’s a pretty serious typo. This isn’t the only mistake that’s been found either. London’s Sunday Times has a nice article summing up some other problems with the report.

The Washington Post also reports on some of the errors in the IPCC report but claims that, “climate researchers say the errors do not disprove the U.N. panel’s central conclusion: Climate change is happening, and humans are causing it.” Apparently there is an “industry of climate-change denialists” trying to destroy the credibility of the IPCC. At least that’s what Jeffrey Kargel, a professor who studies glaciers quoted in the Post article thinks. I wonder if this industry of climate-change denialists is a part of the vast right-wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton tried to warn us about.

I’ve been a skeptic for a long time and these recent revelations and events have provided some vindication for what I’ve felt about global warming. The ‘Climategate’ scandal, the holes in the IPCC report, cap-and-trade gathering dust in the Senate, and the Big Firms that have dropped their support for President Obama’s green agenda are most definitely statistically significant events. I wouldn’t dare claim that the debate is over, on the contrary, it has only just begun.

The New Left MediaTea Party Hit Piece

There are a couple of college students with a video camera and video editing software who call themselves “The New Left Media.” They specialize in producing hit pieces against conservatives. Lately, they have gone to Tea Party rallies and Sarah Palin book signing events to document “right-wing, fringe sentiments.”

What these guys do is intellectually lazy and dishonest. Their newest hit piece takes place at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, TN.

First, some background information on the convention itself.

This Tea Party convention was not without controversy from the beginning. It was a for profit event with a price tag of $550 per attendant and limited media access. There was a lot of criticism from various other Tea Party people about this convention since the Tea Party movement is a grassroots, leaderless political phenomenon and it seemed like the organizers of this event were neocons trying to take advantage of that.

The New Left Media guys took advantage of the situation also. In their video hit piece they interview roughly 30 different people out of  the roughly 600 people who were there. That’s about 5%.  Most of the people they interviewed were either “birthers*,” were awkward in front of a camera, or unable to articulate complex ideas very well.

I’d be willing to bet that you could go to any large gathering of Obama supporters and you would find that about 5% are nutcases. The fact that these guys found a bunch of birthers and a couple of guys dressed up in weird outfits doesn’t prove anything about the Tea Party movement.

That doesn’t mean that this video won’t go viral over the next few days. They will probably send their video to all the major left-wing blogs like the Daily Kos, firedoglake, and the Huffington Post, who will then post it on their home pages under big headlines like “Tea Party People Are Friggin Crazy.“

Then major media outlets like MSNBC, CNN, CBS and NBC will pick up on the video from the blogs and use it in their nightly news shows. The New York Times, The Nation, Time, and Newsweek will probably write editorials about the video too.

And that’s how these media hit pieces work. They paint a picture of the Tea Party people that fits into the narrative they’ve created to polarize and personalize their enemies. It’s a typical Saul Alinsky tactic. Please don’t fall for it.

Yes, there are some crazy fringe elements in the Tea Party movement like the birthers, but reasonable people in the movement denounce them. The fringe is the fringe for a reason. It only makes up about 5% or less of the total movement.

*A birther is someone who doesn’t believe that Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen as the Constitution requires to be President.