Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society
This speaks for itself.
Published in GeneralThe 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.
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. …
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.
Bravo. 60 Minutes would have fodder for a year of Sundays if they had the inclination to look into Gore and his gang.
This guy is obviously an anti-science Republican teabagger.
He needs to be prosecuted for his criminal denialist tendencies.
By the way, did you know that steel doesn’t melt at 1,300 degrees and Dick Cheney told the Air Force to stand down on 9/11?
Can you believe that the President, and major fractions (if not majorities) of governments here and abroad actually plan to act on this BS? There is nothing, NOTHING more telling about the limitations of men and government that climate change is taken seriously. We are supposedly more enlightened than men of the past? Than the Dark Ages? This is utter and complete madness, Heston Planet of the Apes audio file omitted.
Everytime I hear GREEN, I see RED. Only abject fools of industrialized countries allow themselves to be punked by this fraud of a con.that is AGW, or Global Warming or, even more hilarious, Climate Change. How does one deny there is Climate Change? No matter…just send us your money. We, the effete elite, will tell you pawns how to live on less while we luxuriate at your expense.This has never been about science or saving the planet. It has always been a tax scheme. Re-distribution from the makers and doers to the fakers and takers.
I like this part:
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition …
“Constitution be damned” should be on a T-shirt. It would have been all the rage at that One Nation rally.
If Stephen Hawking is right and our universe is just one of an infinite number of randomly occurring universes within the “multiverse,” then anthropogenic global warming is bound to be happening somewhere or other. Why not here?
It becomes comprehensible only when you consider they truly believe that they are smarter, possessed of a higher calling and deeper morality, and will act more sensibly than the rest of us poor unenlightened slobs. Hubris is as old as climate. One changes all the time, the other does not.
Kenneth’s right, Behe’s book is devastating.
Government-sanctioned global warming messages were everywhere in Sweden. Everywhere I went was a constant barrage of directives to both recycle and save the planet from our gluttonous consumption. Here are some pictures I took with examples…
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31915&id=100000641707630&l=3fae4df87f
In one of the pictures is a random display I came across when I walked through a hallway. It was completely in your face with an enormous red footprint with the word USA below it, then several tiny footprints in other colors next to it representing other countries. The sign above said “Ecological Footprint” and posted a statement by the WWF. Of course, they didn’t mention where the WWF gets their funding.
They also didn’t include China or Brazil among the footprints.
Two can play the same game. I hereby call on all world governments (or, if you prefer, the “world community”) to ignore the APS statement on Climate Change. Also, since you won’t be doing anything on climate change, please spend some time doing away with the BCS, stop the Yankees from winning another world series, solve the Darfur genocide (sorry, I know you’ve been hectored on this one before, and for some reason you’ve failed to act), and stop aliens from controlling my mind with secret rays that cannot be detected. Thanks in advance to all world governments who do what I ask, especially Latvia and Samoa (you’ve always been my two favorites).
Now we need a prominent biologist to do this with the Origin of Species.
andrea ryan…. ayn rand with rea leftover! slow sunday morning , sorry!
so the EPA comes out with a stat that says if we plant food next to our teepees, bicycle to work and read in the dark we will control earth’s fever by .001 degress C. The absurdity comes at so many levels its…well…absurd! One, they think we can have an effect (dont forget to fill your tires to the proper pressue) and more absurd, they think they can figure out to what degree it will help. .001 degree in 100 years. laughable. Take it to another level and they think .001 would make a difference anyway. Lisa Jackson was a fool for NJ and now she is a fool for the EPA
Michael, nothing wrong with “Origin”. It’s a fascinating book. Just as there is nothing wrong with serious scholarship on the influence of man on the earth’s climate.
The problem in both cases is the conversion of scientific inquiry into religious dogma.
That word “incontrovertible” ought to be anathema to any serious scientist. It was to Mr. Lewis. The fact that so many others seem comfortable with it exposes them as political rent-seekers and cheap poseurs.
The other unfortunate (for them) truth is that the US is likely carbon neutral these days. Peter Huber describes the CO2 measurements conducted in troposphere over the US from West to East (because of rotation, the prevailing winds are, of course, from the West), and the readings over Maine and Nova Scotia are noticeably lower than those off the California coast. The US agriculture and forest lands are massive carbon sinks.
That is why every UN or IPCC document concentrates only on carbon generation. It is as though you never stepped on a scale, your weight was established by adding up the weight of everything you ate and drank, with no consideration of elimination or calories burned.
AGW combines animism with socialism. How can it lose? We save Mother Earth while putting big corporations under strict government control. Hippies and ex-Marxists unite!
It’s already been done: Darwin’s Black Box, by Michael Behe.
…and somewhere Al Gore’s not a dork.
My mother in law says that she’ll believe that global warming is really a problem when those proposing to solve it recommend something other than more taxes an greater government control of our lives. Smart lady.
badswing: andrea ryan…. ayn rand with rea leftover! slow sunday morning , sorry! ·Oct 10 at 5:44am
Now do that with “Wasenius”.
badswing: andrea ryan…. ayn rand with rea leftover! slow sunday morning , sorry! ·Oct 10 at 5:44am
Oh, no! I leave for a day and miss the fun. That’s pretty cool. Duane, I couldn’t even order pizza with that name. Good luck.