Sunday, October 10, 2010

Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis: "Global warming is...pseudo-scientific fraud"


In a shot, heard around the world, across the bow of global warming fraud, Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara has resigned from the prestigious American Physical Society in disgust for their participation in the global warming fraud. Lewis lays the blame for the fraud bare. It's all about money.

Here are some highlights of the letter via Powerline.
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'ĂȘtre 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. ...

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. ...

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.

Read the full letter here.

Wow!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Climate Science used to be the redheaded stepsister of the scientific community. After Al Gore and politicians got involved, they became the rock stars of science. Money and fame poured out on them. They are addicted now and can not/will not admit the truth. The whole global warming thing is a sham.

konrad said...

Lewis resigned because the APS rejected his petition to again review the APS analysis of the threat of human induced global warming. Lewis and his group spent 7 months seeking signatures from the APS membership, including access to part of the APS email list and several ads. The result was only 206 out of 47,000 members signed! That's less than half of a percent! This is a clear message from the American physicists that we do NOT need another review. The scientific evidence is clear and we should do something about global warming now.

Lewis and his group represent a very small, very noisy minority. I agree with them about the influence of money, though. Look up the the largest corporations in America. 5 of the top 7 are oil and car companies. Any reduction in America's dependency on oil is likely to reduce their revenue. That's truly BIG money at stake. So of course they fund the pseudo-science noise makers like Lewis's group.

Look, we all wish global warming weren't happening. But it's time to stop yelling at the science and accept responsibility for our own actions as human beings. We need to address this issue, not deny it.