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.

Tax Cat Out of the Bag

When President Obama was candidate Obama he said over and over again that he would cut taxes for 95% of Americans, or that they would not see their taxes go up. Well I have news for you Obamabots, let me be clear, that was a big lie! Here’s a good rule of thumb: WHENEVER A POLITICIAN IS A DEMOCRAT (S)HE WILL RAISE TAXES AND INCREASE GOVERNMENT SPENDING! IF THEY SAY THEY WILL DO OTHERWISE THEY ARE LYING! 

On Tuesday, White House adviser Paul Volcker said that we might need to adopt a European-style value added tax and a carbon or other energy tax. He said we might have to do this to get entitlement cost and the U.S. budget deficit under control. 

Here’s a crazy idea: STOP SPENDING OUR F***ING MONEY! How about we try that as a way to get our budget deficit under control. Maybe we could reform our entitlement system so that we can ween people off of it and eventually abolish it instead of creating new entitlements, i.e. healthcare. Oh wait, the Democrats run everything so those aren’t options, failure is the only option.

Using Big Brother To Stop Immigration

Now that the healthcare bill has been signed into law by President Obama the next big political issue in the horizon is Immigration Reform. Senators Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham are already working up a plan to “solve” our immigration problem. They penned an editorial piece in The Washington Post I encourage all of you to read. The bedrock of their plan is biometric ID cards for EVERY U.S. citizen. These ID cards will be required to get a job. In short, the immigration issue, much like the terrorism issue, will be used to take more liberty away from U.S. citizens.

Just in case you’ve forgotten….  

After the attacks on September 11, 2001 the government quickly took advantage of the situation and passed the Patriot Act which, for all intents and purposes, took away our 4th Amendment rights by allowing the government to conduct warrantless wiretaps on any telephone they wanted. The Department of Homeland Security was created which gave us the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) which have turned our country’s airports into locations fascist have wet dreams over. You can’t carry liquid in any container over 3 ounces in size, you have to put you liquids in a clear plastic bag, and you can forget about bringing a bottle of water in from the outside. You have to go through multiple security “checkpoints” where you either have to walk through a naked body scanner or be groped by a TSA agent and while your bags are on the conveyor belts going down the x-ray machine they belong to the TSA. All of these ridiculous measures have done NOTHING to make our airports safer and amount to little more than security theatre.   

 This is America today, let’s talk about America in the coming months….  

 On this season of the hit Fox TV show 24 the fictitious CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) has the ability to use “drones” (unmanned aircraft with cameras on them) for surveillance. They can control these drones from a central location to provide surveillance for any location in New York City. Drones like this do exist and our military has been using them in the Middle East to fight the War on Terror. The drones in Iraq and Afghanistan not only have the ability to spy from the sky, but they also have advanced weapons systems on them capable of blowing up buildings.

So far, these drones haven’t been used in the United States. However, that is about to change.

According to the Dallas Morning News, the government may start using drones in West Texas and along the coast in an effort to beef up border security. Governor Rick Perry requested the use of these drones a few weeks ago and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Bill White is on board as well. This request was made because Perry doesn’t feel the Feds are doing enough to help with border security in regards to illegal immigration and the recent drug violence in border towns. While the drones haven’t started flying yet, it’s only a matter of time before they are spying on Texans. Who’s to say that they won’t have weapons systems on them?   

So today in America, the supposed land of the free, our phones can be tapped (and now tracked) with out our knowledge, naked images of our bodies can be scanned at the airport, drones can spy on us thousands of feet in the air, and we won’t be able to get jobs with out a biometric ID card. All in the name of “security.”

Didn’t Ben Franklin say something about people willing to give up liberty for security?

The Sun Will Still Rise in the East Tomorrow

The unpopular health care overhaul bill passed in the house tonight, 219-212. We all knew this was going to happen and you were fooling yourself if you believed otherwise. Already, Republicans are planning on repealing the bill should they win back the majority in Congress in November. You are fooling yourself if you think the Republicans taking over Congress in November will change anything. It won’t, I’ve seen that movie before.

The natural tendency of government is to get bigger, no matter which party is in charge. This is the natural way of things just like the sun rising in the east. Will this health care bill increase the size of government and take liberty from us? Probably, but no more than the Federal Reserve, the IRS, the Social Security system, Medicare, Medicaid, and countless other unconstitutional government programs already have. The politicians and pundits on the right have been ranting and raving about how this health care bill will destroy our country and our liberty, but our liberty is long gone. We are all slaves to the debt. Our debt didn’t just happen overnight or under one President, but we are doing nothing to stop it. If you think the Republicans taking over Congress will solve our debt problem, you are fooling yourself.

It’s easy to see what will happen to us if we keep going down this road. Just look at Greece. The only way to solve our debt problem is to drastically reduce the size of government. A 50% reduction would be great, but that would be only a start. A limited government with a responsible citizenry is the only way out of the mess. I know it’s a lot to ask for but with liberty comes sacrifice and responsibility.

First, we need to dismantle our empire. Our military occupies land in over 150 countries or territories. Why? What are we gaining from this? We need to bring our military back home to their families. We need to remove ourselves from the UN and stop giving them money. We need to remove our embassies from other countries. Our founders gave us a republic, not an empire.  Anything other than a republic is unconstitutional.

Next, we need to abolish our entitlement programs. All of them. We can no longer allow people to think that the government can or will be their “safety net.” We all need to learn to weave our own safety nets of personal responsibility. Asking for help from your family, neighbors, community or religious institution is fine, but you shouldn’t be able to ask the government.

Dismantling our empire and abolishing our entitlement programs would be the first of many steps we need to take to solve our debt problem and limit the size of government back to what the Constitution demands, and they couldn’t happen overnight, but they need to start happening soon if we want to remove from our necks the yoke of debt we have burdened ourselves with. Will the Republicans or Democrats start to make this happen? No, they won’t. They are too busy arguing about federal funding of abortion.

Am I happy about the health care bill? No. Am I happy about anything government does? Not really. Even if this health care bill were repealed, don’t fool yourself, it wouldn’t be a great victory for liberty. To have the liberty our founders wanted would require much more that repealing this health care bill. It is well worth fighting for, but no one in government from either party except Ron Paul is truly fighting for liberty right now. As much as I love Dr. Paul, he cannot lead us to the promised land. We will have to lead ourselves there, one individual at a time, rising up for liberty. I see hope in the Tea Parties, but they must fight from being overtaken by the Republican party or people like Sarah Palin. But that is a topic for another post.

The natural tendency of government is to get bigger and more powerful. It is the natural way of things, just like the sun rising in the east.

You Call it Art, I Call it a Bunch of Orange and White Road Barriers Piled on Top of Each Other

What is orange and white, weighs over 35,000 pounds, and cost $4,300 of Austin, TX hotel-motel taxpayer money?  

 This:  

  

 Steve Dubov, an Austin-based “sculptor” is the man responsible for this work of “art” nicknamed the “Barton Barriers.” Dubov says that there is “no deep meaning” to this work. An understatement if there ever was one.  

 In all fairness, Mr. Dubov and his team contributed thousands of dollars of their own money to construct the Barton Barriers. However, $4,300 was taken from Austin’s hotel-motel tax. According to Vincent Kitch, the cultural arts program manager for the city of Austin, “it’s not local tax money that’s being spent … it’s the visitors who help pay for this public art.” So if you come and visit Austin a portion of your hotel-motel tax pays for things like the Barton Barriers. Doesn’t that make you want to come and visit?  

When you look closer though, it cost taxpayers more than just $4,300. According to Mr. Dubov, in addition to the $4,300 from the Austin hotel-motel tax, he received grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He did not say how much he received from these groups but since those groups receive most of their money from taxpayers it is inaccurate to say that the Barton Barriers only cost $4,300 of taxpayer money.  

I’m going to be completely honest here, I think every dime in taxpayer money that was given to this project is a total waste. This is not art. Any dude with a truck, some beer, and a couple of buddies could construct something like this. It irritates me to no end that taxpayer money was contributed to this project. If Mr. Dubov had paid for the entire thing himself I’d have no problem with it, but the fact that taxpayer money was used for this project should outrage everyone here in Liberty Market Nation.

I am completely against taxpayer money being used to fund art and I think the National Endowment for the Arts should be abolished. The NEA has given taxpayer money to projects like this and propaganda like this. What’s ironic is that the motto of the NEA is “A Great Country Deserves Great Art.” 

Would you consider the Barton Barriers great art?     

If you’re an artist and your art is good then people will buy it or pay money to see it in a gallery or museum. Artist are not special and don’t deserve any taxpayer to fund their stupid projects. Our country is over $12 trillion in debt. Institutions like the NEA are doing nothing but adding more to the debt and driving us further down the road to bankruptcy. So I guess that as taxpayers we need to ask ourselves, is funding projects like the Barton Barriers worth going bankrupt over?

No Salt For You!

New York Democrat Assemblyman Fleix Oritz for now on will be known as the Salt Nazi here in Liberty Market Nation. The Brooklyn douchebag Democrat has introduced legislation in New York that would ban restaurants from using SALT. That’s right salt, you know, sodium chloride, the white stuff next to pepper. The bill reads:

No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off the premises.

If you get caught using salt in your restaurant, you’ll get hit with a $1000 fine. I’m guessing the food police will monitor this?

The Salt Nazi said that the goal of this bill is to “save lives.” He says that banning salt would save billions of dollars and thousands of lives. I’m not sure how he came up with that calculation.

Eating too much salt can cause high blood pressure, which can cause heart attacks, but “you can live with salt in your diet” according to Sonia Angell, director of the cardiovascular disease and prevention program for the [New York] Health Department.

Many New York chefs are not too happy about the Salt Nazi’s proposal. Star of Top Chef  Tom Colicchio says, “anybody who wants to taste food with no salt, go to a hospital and taste that.”  For those of you who don’t understand the reference, hospital food sucks.

I’m guessing this bill has no chance of passing, but they did ban trans-fats in New York so who knows. Needless to say, I have a big problem with things like this. It is none of the government’s damn business how much salt we use. I think Jeff Nathan, the executive chef and co-owner of Abigael’s on Broadway, said it best: “The consumer needs to make their own health choices. Just as doctors and the occasional visit to a hospital can’t truly control how a person chooses to maintain their health, neither can chefs nor the occasional visit to a restaurant. Modifying trans fats and sodium intake needs to be home based for optimal health. Regulating restaurants will not solve this health issue.” 

This is the downside to letting government control our health care. It starts off with banning trans-fat. Most people agree trans-fat is bad so they go along  with it and raise little protest. Next they ban salt. People say whoa, hold on, you can’t ban salt, but it’s too late. Next they ban red meat, or fast food, or sugar. Once the government controls health care they can regulate or ban anything and everything, because everything affects our health one way or another.

The Salt Nazi is not alone, there are many more like him in local and state governments all over the country. The Federal Government is full of them. They are people, from both parties, who think they know better than you and that they can make better life choices for you than you can make for yourself. These are the people who’ve stealing our liberty for over six decades. These are the people who should be eliminated from government. The sooner the better.