When scientists attack

October 10th, 2010

Its been a rather good week for real scientists, clear thinking and men with balls.

First, watch this scientist (Dr. Art Robinson — homeschooler, a former assistant to Linus Pauling) take apart the appallingly irrational, hysterical, sarcastic lie repeater Rachel Maddow, who has her  flesh flayed from her bones and scorched by this very satisfying encounter:

Visit msnbc.com for the latest lies, State Propaganda, and Keynesianism

Savour the sapor of her roasted flesh.

And now for the next course; read the resignation letter of Harold Lewis (Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara) to Curtis Callan, President of same:

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

Well, that certainly is refreshing!

Of course, many people understand that the idea of Anthropogenic Global Warming is nothing more than a lie and a scam, and now it seems that the taboo is wearing off, and the floodgates of real scientists with either nothing to lose or real integrity no matter what have opened. This is a classic post tipping point event.

Now there are at least two things to consider.

We still have the American Physical Society in place and intact, as well as many other fatally compromised organisations, all parroting AGW and other dogma. The scientists who are real scientists, need to group together to form new associations that are strictly and purely scientific in function. If this is not done, then the organizations that dominate the making of bad policy will continue to rape, rob and pillage.

Which brings us to the cause of all these problems; The State.

It is the entirely corrosive influence of the state that has caused these scientists to lose their way, and even their souls. Without a state to steal money from people to fund boondoggles like ‘Global Warming’, ‘Climate Change’ and whatever else they decide to change the name of the cause to, there would be no financial incentive whatsoever to collude in fraudulent work in order to garner a salary.

There would be no incentive for scientists to push for public policies that in turn feed back into their lies, be they AGW or unnecessary vaccines.

The problem of the state is not just about money; it is a problem that reaches into every corner of human life, from your health, right up to and into your mind, where lies are implanted at its behest.

Thanks to the state, the practice of science is being corrupted to such an extent that human progress is being derailed; it may or many not be possible to catch up to where the collected knowledge of man might have been had there been no state… who knows? What is for certain is that if the state is not stopped, then its evil and retarding influence will continue to hold everyone and everything back.

Scientists who are thinking clearly (as opposed to those who can barely think at all) turn to Libertarianism as the only way to ensure that real science can be done, without the distorting influence of the inherently evil state.

Until this destructive state of affairs is brought to an end, resignations and one or two scientists running for congress will not be able to stop the juggernaut that is the state, and of course, if the state were run entirely by scientists that would be a bad thing, since this is not a problem of the right people being in charge of the machine; the machine itself is the problem.

Thankfully, the economic collapse is coming, and this may give great impetus to the final destruction of the state. With this collapse we can expect at a minimum, for the scope and reach of the state to be drastically limited.

Now is the time for scientists and Libertarians to build the foundations of new voluntary, ethically based organisations to replace the broken, corrupt, venal, unscientific, discriminatory and evil institutions that currently spread lies and misery.

3 Responses to “When scientists attack”

  1. Alun Says:

    When British Scientists Attack…. you get a petition.
    http://scienceisvital.org.uk/sign-the-petition/
    Oh, and a march.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11508105
    So that’s the science funding cuts sorted then.

    ‘Artists’ are also on the attack. Leading the line is David Shrigley with… a cartoon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6rYDaORe3k
    A cartoon in which he does all he can to convince you that British arts are economically viable, free-standing, world-class enterprises which /make money/, while asking for the retention of handouts. Watch it and weep.

  2. irdial Says:

    “The costs of David Shrigley’s animation have been covered with a grant from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.” You see? You dont need to steal money through violence to ‘fund the arts’; voluntary philanthropy is the only moral way to do it. These artists are all violent socialists who use the state to steal money for their industry. No matter how well meant the intentions are, stealing is always wrong. Period!

  3. meaumeau Says:

    Are you individualists?
    GILBERT: Yes, working and earning money. Even when we were students we never asked the State for help.
    GEORGE: In some European countries, artists are completely dependent on the State. Like in Holland.

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