The American Physical Society has responded to Hal (Not Martin Luther) Lewis' Theses down.
and they ain't gonna take it no more.
There is no truth to Dr. Lewis’ assertion that APS policy statements are driven by financial gain. To the contrary, as a membership organization of more than 48,000 physicists, APS adheres to rigorous ethical standards in developing its statements. The Society is open to review of its statements if members petition the APS Council – the Society’s democratically elected governing body – to do so.
Dr. Lewis’ specific charge that APS as an organization is benefitting financially from climate change funding is equally false. Neither the operating officers nor the elected leaders of the Society have a monetary stake in such funding. Moreover, relatively few APS members conduct climate change research, and therefore the vast majority of the Society’s members derive no personal benefit from such research support.
On the matter of global climate change, APS notes that virtually all reputable scientists agree with the following observations:
- Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere due to human activity;
- Carbon dioxide is an excellent infrared absorber, and therefore, its increasing presence in the atmosphere contributes to global warming; and
- The dwell time of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hundreds of years.
On these matters, APS judges the science to be quite clear. However, APS continues to recognize that climate models are far from adequate, and the extent of global warming and climatic disruptions produced by sustained increases in atmospheric carbon loading remain uncertain. In light of the significant settled aspects of the science, APS totally rejects Dr. Lewis’ claim that global warming is a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud.”
Additionally, APS notes that it has taken extraordinary steps to solicit opinions from its membership on climate change. After receiving significant commentary from APS members, the Society’s Panel on Public Affairs finalized an addendum to the APS climate change statement reaffirming the significance of the issue. The APS Council overwhelmingly endorsed the reaffirmation.
Lastly, in response to widespread interest expressed by its members, the APS is in the process of organizing a Topical Group to feature forefront research and to encourage exchange of information on the physics of climate.
Anthony Watts doesn't exactly have the reputation of being the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but his recent pushing of Hal Lewis' resignation letter to the APS was several levels below weak, especially his trying to liken Lewis' sophomoronic bleat to Martin Luther's 95 Theses. The repost was an obvious futile attempt to distract his little lamps attention away from the furor about Wegman and Rapp's copy and paste skills. The APS response to Lewis shows that the milk of human kindness has dried up there in the light of this year's denialist follies.
Arthur Smith put it well, Lewis is incontrovertibly emeritus. Still, Eli has a rep to uphold, and Lewis' letter is a delight of folly. Let us parse gentle bunnies, let this too parse.
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. . . .
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.
Well of course it's different, Lewis, should know, having plunged the money hose into his mouth, ears, nose and places where no one wants to go, especially when he was chair at Santa Barbara. Lewis is another patricide claiming mercy as an orphan. Indeed, this sort of accusation is very prominent from the senior denialists, mostly because that is what they have done and they expect that everyone on the other side is doing just what they did. Afterall, they did it and they are the smartest nuts on the tree.