Lewis: quitting the physics club
Professor Harold Lewis has resigned from the American Physical Society in protest over AGW and how it has been treated by the organization. Lewis—who has been a member of the Society for sixty-seven years—doesn’t pull his punches:
The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’éªtre 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.
Lewis is an elderly man who has had a long and distinguished career, mostly in the field of nuclear physics. One would imagine he has the capacity to understand the science involved a little better than a few journalists and politicians such as Al Gore. But one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that what he is arguing against here is an anti-scientific attitude that refuses to entertain valid threats to its belief system, and that such a stance on the part of scientists is antithetical to the spirit of scientific inquiry itself.
My favorite quote from his letter:
Which is more or less what I’ve been saying literally for years. I’ve always believed that AGW was about destroying capitalism and imposing socialism. I’m not a scientist, but I don’t have to be one to see that.
The single best analysis of how dodgy science leads to dodgy economics and thence to dodgy politics is from the Devil’s Kitchen, late last year.
You can’t completely understand the use of the word “deniers” without looking at this.
rickl, I agree, but would say capitalism tamed, not capitalism destroyed, is their goal. I think they largely know that it is the free market (my preferred term over capitalism, which is a touch antiquated and not precise, to my mind) that makes money. They want it. The goal is the higher status for themselves by making their views appear fashionable, kind, helpful to the little folk, who they intend to retain as second class citizens, just dependent enough on the government (and hence, the government class) to keep their place, but not enough that they stop working. Their goal would be a society of concentric circles, with 80% of us making a just-comfortable amount when one includes government largess; another 19% making thrice that doing the important work of running the government, writing opinions, indoctrinating the young; and a 1% of central figures raking it in because they call the shots. That’s why they think of themselves as kind, because they don’t want their enemies destroyed, just without status, tamed. Once they’ve finished their banquet, they don’t mind if there’s plenty of leftovers for the rest of us.
It’s an inflated version of the USSR, except with actual money. Or, if you prefer, feudalism.
Harold Lewis isn’t walking away from much.
The American Physical Society has just amended its constitution:
The ‘international councillor’ position was added in the last ten years or so. Apparently the position didn’t “meet the needs” of the 25% minority, so this educational-elite society caved and gave them parity. (Heaven forbid that noncitizens be given nonvoting membership in the American Physical Society.)
IMHO, per the new Mission Statement, the name should be changed to ‘International Physical Society’. Such a change would reduce the organization’s impact on Congress and the US media, so it won’t happen immediately.
(But it might happen if the organization becomes controlled by people who are indifferent or hostile to the USA. That would be a fitting demonstration of where the multiculti transnationalist program is taking us: not that a demonstration is needed.)
What’s happened to the American Physical Society is similar to what happened to mainstream American religious denominations: takeover by people who were indifferent to the organization’s original goals but found its resources and prestige useful for their alien purposes.
AVI, consistently with your post, ‘unregulated’ is being converted into a dirty word.
There are two other noteworthy resignation related to climate science: Chris Landsea and Roger A. Pielke Sr.
The Landea resignation relates to a press conference which promoted the idea that Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming and likely used as a green light by Gore to build his movie around it.
The Pielke resignation hints at a conspiracy of scientists working behind his back to write a chapter for a report he was supposed to be the lead author of.
Anthony Watts at WUWT is also comparing the Lewis resignation letter to Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the Church door.
Watt is also trying to get people to ask the Washington Post to publish this letter, since they have just published something from the Hockey Stick author, Michael Mann.
Warmist blogs are likely loath to discuss this letter, so far I see no comment from them.
Well that was a mess, three missing s’s and an extra also!
This resignation comes just a week after the 10:10 fiasco they would also like to keep quiet. It’s taken on the unfortunate name: “Splattergate”
Those who don’t know about this can see a bunch of video clips here:
http://tiny.cc/1qv6t
While watching the first clip, ask yourself if it’s a spoof or if it’s real.
According to the late Stanley Jaki, Christianity was the condition of possibility of science.
As general Christian belief diminishes, so does science. It is degrading before our eyes. I’d say that the scientists who have the conceit that they practice it for the “love of truth” are lying, if any of those even existed anymore.
Love of money, prestige and security is more the norm now.
As it devolves further, the day will come when it is unrecognizable from Shamanism and/or alchemy. It’s already losing its bearings.
In an intellectual climate of epistemological and moral relativity – where there is no truth – there is no foundation for science intellectually or morally either.
Take a gander at your average University science faculty these days. They parrot the liberal party line on global warming, fetal research, environmentalism, the ‘green’ movement etc. etc etc to a person.
There is no dissent. The heretics are banned before they can even be heretics.
Euthanasia and Eugenics are next to be put in the open.
Very soon after that they will be dancing around totem poles instead of doing lab work.
Since the left definitively lost the debate over which system, free market or collectivist, could best provide for its citizens, they have retreated to their last line of defense, radical environmentalism. If Anthropogenic Global Warming is similarly discredited, will leftist theory be essentially destroyed?
If Anthropogenic Global Warming is similarly discredited, will leftist theory be essentially destroyed?
Leftism will never be destroyed until Judgment Day.
It was there in the Garden of Eden in the guise of the serpent. It is exactly that voice of temptation there has always been, and will always be.
You must know, there is that human desire for dark things, for the dark side, for being god in appearance if never in fact.
That is what Leftism is and will always be. From Day 1 there has been the destroyer for destroying sake. Today, this is what every Democrat is in their hearts. Pay no attention at all to what they say, or how they sound, or what clubs they belong to. Don’t believe a word of what they say, or what they want you to see. Instead, look only at what they do, and the results of their actions.
They are abomination. They are not an abomination. They are the thing itself. What they do is what abomination looks like in human form.
You’ll never get rid of that dark drive. You can only ever defeat and contain it.
The trouble with resigning is that it is an altogether outmoded form of protest. It used to mean something, but today a principled resignation changes few opposing minds. It is a form of surrender, a defeat.
However, it is also an expression of unwillingness to be seen as adhering to and implicitly supporting the will of the group; an individual statement offered without hope of inducing corrective change. This was my thinking as I recently resigned from my state Board of the Nature Conservancy. I’d supported TNC for quite a long time because it did not view corporations as ipso facto evil. It still doesn’t, but it sees carbon credits as a huge funding opportunity and sent several platoons to Copenhagen in support of cap & trade.
If Anthropogenic Global Warming is similarly discredited, will leftist theory be essentially destroyed?
Nah, they’ll find something else. First it was global cooling, then it was the ozone layer, now, it’s global warming. Never underestimate the power of a leftist to find some “disaster” waiting in the wings that only greater centralized control, higher taxes, and increased restrictions on free enterprise can “fix”.
I’m one of those 200+ signatories that Lewis mentioned. The group in nominally lead by Roger Cohen. We’ve been trying for over three years to get this resolved by internal means within the APS. It has sadly not worked.
We were initially thrown a bone with a very minor revisions of the APS statement, and then the latest slap is the denial of the formation of a new topical group. All of this is outlined in the Lewis’ letter.
It should be pointed out that within the APS the formation of a topical group is very non-controversial, up until this time. It is generally a way for a group of physicists to have their subspecialty more focused. For such a formation to be denied speaks volumes of the politics within the APS. I take this to be the last straw for Lewis.
All of this is not too surprising. Reading Physics Today for the last 10 years one finds a column called the Beltway Insider which in the past featured regular Bush bashing. The monthly APS newsletter would often have political columns. People have protested this, but unfortunately, even physics is not immune to the disease. And yes, the prepetrators of this disease are of the Baby Boom generation.
Physcicsguy,
People have protested this, but unfortunately, even physics is not immune to the disease. And yes, the perpetrators of this disease are of the Baby Boom generation.
Is it that physics is diseased, or that it is dead? Is it a biopsy or an autopsy you and Lewis are doing?
Who should believe physics, even physicists if it is so corrupted at its very heart?
Why have HS students and College students in the USA become less and less interested in physics over the past 30 years? It’s the political nature of it.
Physics is practiced by other people in or from other nations now. There are basically no more American Physicists being produced? Is that true?
Harold Lewis is a senile old emeritus crank, who doesn’t have a clue what planetary science is, and how it operates. Yes, you do have to be a scientist to see it.
Elifritz is an Alinskyite.
No, physics is not dead. There’s a small, younger generation coming up that I think will do alright.
At Elfritz: ad hominem is the best you can do? When you have some substantive arguments, come back, otherwise you just invalidated your entire comment.
Oh, by the way: to be a planetary scientist one must first be either a physicst, chemist or geologist. I suggest you get a clue.
Thomas Lee Elifritz:
Let’s see: Over the past 100-150 years, we have been told that war is caused by capitalism, slavery is caused by capitalism, poverty is caused by capitalism, racism is caused by capitalism, and sexism is caused by capitalism.
In each and every instance the prescription was socialism. As I said, I’m not a scientist, but I do believe I detect a pattern here. So you’ll pardon me if I don’t get exercised about the notion that capitalism is destroying the very planet itself, and that once again, socialism is the solution.
Assistant Village Idiot Says:
October 9th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Good comment, which adds some nuance to my rather blunt remark. (I don’t mind the word “capitalism” since Ayn Rand used it proudly, but I often use it and “free market” interchangeably.)
You’re right; the socialists/progressives/transnationalists perceive themselves as being kind. No doubt in their theories the 80% would have a comfortable if frugal existence. But I think we can probably both agree that in practice, given the historical record of socialism/collectivism, they would have a less than adequate standard of living, and be constantly told that they must sacrifice for the common good. You’re spot on about the 19% and the 1%.
If the hardcore greenies ever get into power, many if not most of the 80% will be eliminated for the good of the Earth.
At Elfritz: ad hominem is the best you can do? When you have some substantive arguments, come back, otherwise you just invalidated your entire comment.
Mr. Lewis doesn’t have any planetary science papers to criticize. He has made zero points against any established science, except make himself a fool.
Oh, by the way: to be a planetary scientist one must first be either a physicst, chemist or geologist. I suggest you get a clue.
I am a physicist and a chemist, and I’ve done a little field geology in my time. but I guess that’s not good enough for a bunch of neoneocons, though.
Good luck overturning a paradigm in planetary physics on a political blog, though, without a single published paper on the subject, no less! Awesome.
Elifritz: let’s see some of your published papers.
Mike Mc. Says:
October 9th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
“That is what Leftism is … Pay no attention at all to what they say, or how they sound … Don’t believe a word of what they say, or what they want you to see. … look only at what they do, and the results of their actions.”
=====================
Take a look at
http://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2010/10/real-programming.html
Gist: TV or radio programming is usually understood as “featured content” being the POINT of its existence with commercials being the MEANS by which it exists. He flips this understanding on its head, saying the POINT of the programming is to get the commercials into the minds of consumers, and the MEANS is the entertainment offered (like plants make nectar-producing flowers to get bees to do the work of pollination). He then carries the analogy to politics, saying that corruption and favor-swapping are the POINT, and all the talk about the nobility of our Constitution and “draining the swamp” are the MEANS by which they can achieve it — “The corruption is not an unfortunate necessity which they hope to reduce, but the actual product they are in business to make.”
Very interesting take on things…
I am discovering a few things about Elifritz. He seems to be in Madison, WI. He is said to be Director of Research of Formation, Inc., an entity that otherwise seems to be an oline unknown. No degrees cited.
In a recent blog post, he complained about the “Koch-funded George Mason University”, and in another blog complains about the “new fascist America” while objecting to Holder’s early (and unexecuted) vow against marijuana, apparently believing Holder was continuing the policies of the Bushies.
Alinskyite? Scientist in name only? Narcissist?
Q.E.D.
A paradigm in planetary physics, huh!
The worthy Lewis was not attempting to bring down the paradigm. It is down and not just by his authority or scientific ability. It is down because it was never properly up.
Mr. Lewis speaks not as a scientist in his resignation, but as a moral agent. The subject isn’t AGW, but the corruption of first, APS: specifically, men and women for whom truth is expendable.
I suppose if Mr. Lewis had wanted to publish a paper he would have done a credible job. He did mention Montford’s book and the Climate Gate documents.
But then arrogant pseudo scientists still trying to protect their income will show defensiveness, set up straw men, and finally resort to name calling, and I suppose, if we could see them, would have their tongue stuck out.
I, for one, am not beyond delivering a well-deserved punch to the nose. Make no mistake, let me be clear, Mr. scumbag Thomas Lee, we will drag you down from your snooty perch and trample your form into the mud.
Nothing Elifritz said made any sense.
One presumes he’s an expert at planetary science. At least he implies as much.
My point is that there are no “expert” scientists insofar as they are political. They are hacks with letters after their name. Period. Total. The end.
They deserve and have merited no respect at all. They are to be feared and guarded against, and never listened to.
They do not rise to the level of true expert by any stretch of anyone’s imaginations.
Who is Thomas Lee Elifritz?
Here’s an example of his rhetorical style:
“Buzz Aldrin is an American coward and an American retard.” That’s compelling stuff and the product of an overmastering intellect, I’m sure.
I looked through 10 pages of Google hits on his name. I didn’t learn much except that he likes referring to people as “retards.” He is described as Director of Research at Formation, Inc., of which I don’t find a lot of references. And the first ten pages of google hits are all blog comments, with no references to any papers published by anyone, reputable or not.
Just a passing troll. Do not feed.
Tom, you are way ahead of me. I wasted too much time reading his comments.
They are to be feared
You are very afraid. My suggestion to you is to stay off of airlines and out of hospitals. They use instruments, developed by SCIENCE. Very scary.
Elfritz
Actually, by engnieers.
engineers.
Who, as Michener had one of his characters say, is what scientists would like to be, except they have no manual skills.
Mr. Elifritz, give it a rest. Can’t you come up with something to counter Lewis’s phrase “the poison word incontrovertible”? Because that’s the heart of his complaint and ultimately the reason for his resignation – that scientific evidence can be incontrovertible.
When I was a baby geologist, I remember one of my professors telling us that there were old-time geologists on the craton (that is, for us in California, in the area of the North American continent far from plate boundaries) who did not yet subscribe to the theory of plate tectonics. He thought they were old cranks, but at NO TIME, even with a theory as apparently self-evident as plate tectonics (look at South America and Africa – that alone!), did he say that the evidence for the theory was “incontrovertible.”
What’s your excuse?
“the poison word incontrovertible”?
Albert Einstein definitively rendered classical mechanics incontrovertibly wrong, they can even measure the difference from different floors on skyscrapers now. However, classical mechanics is still widely used by ‘enginieers’ worldwide, to design structures that you use every day of your life, and upon which you trust you and your children’s lives.
Harold Lewis has got nothing. But by all means, continue to delude yourself that all of quantum physics, astrophysics and classical mechanics, and thus by default, planetary physics, is wrong. And also by all means continue to attempt to overthrow these paradigms. You’ll find that it is harder than you think.
I’m just trying to help you, honestly! I just don’t want you to descend into total dementia and insanity when you discover that everything you think you know – is wrong. And with respect to global warming, it is. But since you haven’t applied any scientific methods to that particular problem, it is entirely understandable.
Elifritz, you have nothing. There is an audience here for a compelling argument to support the AGW theory. What we get, however, is name calling, hysterics, and strong-arm tactics. That doesn’t incline most of us to believe that sweet reason is at work.
I searched World Cat for references to “Thomas Lee Elifritz,” or simply “Elifritz.” A dissertation or thesis of a scientist ,either masters or doctoral level, should be in some library. No such luck for “Thomas Lee Elifritz.”
There is an Andrew D. Elifritz who has an M.A. dissertation/thesis at the Baylor University library: Hydrocarbon potential of the Triassic-Jurassic interval, Horn of Africa.(1989)
Perhaps the Elifritz who comments here has an M.A. or M.S., but it would appear to be one with only coursework.
Like Oblio, I looked for Elifritz’s research publications: nothing on the arXiv, and maybe kinda sorta four on Google Scholar.
Draw your own conclusions, and don’t feed the trolls.
Thomas Lee ElifritzAlbert Einstein definitively rendered classical mechanics incontrovertibly wrong…However, classical mechanics is still widely used by ‘enginieers’ worldwide, to design structures that you use every day of your life
Were classical mechanics “incontrovertibly wrong,” those engineers couldn’t continue to use classical mechanics to successfully design and build structures.
Nothing on the arXiv.
There is an audience here for a compelling argument to support the AGW theory.
Oh sure. Clearly the burden is on a bunch of neocons on a blog to overturn an entire established domain of science, one that is supported by nearly every scientific institution in the WORLD
But do give it the old college try. It will entertaining at the very least. Seriously, your delusions are entertaining, if nothing else, and trust me, they are nothing. Please be sure to invoke Freeman Dyson, and Reid Bryson while you’re at it. There is nothing like a bunch of emeritus professors to tell you not how the real world really is is, but ‘how it outtta be’!
Science is a big conspiracy! That is seriously funny. Wait, let me adjust the antenna on my tin foil hat!
Elif hasn’t a clue. It is certain he is not what he claimed. Einstein rendered classical mechanics incontrovertably wrong? Amazing.
He probably thinks the uncertainty principle means that nothing is certain.
Has he made any arguments yet?
Where is that Red Button when you want it?
The troll has no understanding of Lewis’s letter. It keeps setting up the straw man (“bad, scary neocons who hate Science!”) and flinging poo at it.
BORing.
Lewis’s letter, eloquent, powerful, and damning, addresses the very process of finding scientific truth, and how the politics of the grants/grantors has corrupted it.
These people keep reminding me of Rudyard Kipling’s Bandar-log, the Monkey People, who never contributed anything solid to the jungle enterprise, but loved throwing down sticks and trash onto the heads of those who did.
When science became politicised, it degenerates into Lysenkoism. Political activists should be disqualifyed from doing science in any field where their political goals can influence their research, on the basis of conflict of interest. Big money now required for research and political interests behind these big money are death knell for the soul of science: dispassionate quest for the truth.
As a trained scientist (PhD 1969, Chemistry) I saw the beginnings of the corruption in the literature shortly after Sputnik, and the US government decided we had to pore money into science and the space program. It as always been a chase for dollars, it has just become more obvious (and corrupt) over the years. I have posted on pieces of this before (publish or perish, peer review), but perhaps an overall post as seen by a scientist would be of value.
Trofim Lysenko
I am a physicist who quit the APS about a decade ago, due to its politicization. When politics takes the fore, science lags.
Thanks for your attempt to help, Mr. Elifritz, but please observe the first rule of holes… Until you’re able to demonstrate that classical mechanics (which, I understand, operates perfectly well at the levels at which it continues to be used) and the “theory” of AGW are equivalent
Oops. Touchpad. First, as I didn’t get to edit my comment before my thumb decided it was time to post it, please consider “classical mechanics” in my partial post to be the ANTITHESIS of AGW. That’s where I would’ve ended up, except for the opinionated thumb, since the point you seemed to be trying to make was that because Einstein categorically controverted classical mechanics, therefore it’s reasonable to consider throwing around the word “incontrovertible” in (apparently) any other area of scientific endeavor. Continuing my thought:
…are opposites (not “equivalent” as I originally typed) in terms of, oh, let’s say their ability to predict future events, you don’t have a very good analogy to draw.
Probably it’s also important to note that Einstein didn’t prove diddly about classical mechanics by theorizing about it; proof comes from measurement or other observation and correct prediction. Similarly, models don’t “prove” anything; the real world sometimes bears out the usefulness of a model. And sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes the model is useful on one level but not on another (that’d be classical mechanics, for instance), and those models that tend to show global warming and tend to postulate, assume, or attempt to show that its cause is human activity are being used at a VERY high level to shunt zillions of dollars around. Shouldn’t we be a little careful?