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