I Should Have Known

But then again, how could I?

I thought I was going to move on to ELS codes, but after thinking about it for quite a spell, it seems to me that this issue of someone like Paul  is what I need to deal with and get it over with.

I didn't chase after Paul.  He came to my Blog, I didn't go to his to try and proselytize for my side.  I won't go to his blog and comment there, because, quite frankly, I don't see any point.  From here on out, I expect there will be those who won't like my tone or some such thing. While my rhetoric will be sharp and uncompromising, and I will not entertain warm and fuzzy methods of persuasion, I am not trying to hurt feelings for the sake of scoring points.  Eternal destinies are at stake.

I started out making it clear that I had spent most of my youthful years of development coming to a dedicated belief in evolution.  I was so very gung ho about evolution that watching the movie Inherit The Wind was almost a religious experience for me. Watching Clarence Darrow just make an idiot out of William Jennings Bryan had me pumping my fist in the air.  I actually grew up believing that the movie was a documentary.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm not defending Bryan, he went into that trial completely unprepared and with little understanding of what he was dealing with.  This is very much like most people who claim the title of Christian today.  The vast majority of Christians don't understand the importance of having reasoned, logical answers that help prove Christianity.

I thought and pondered, pondered and thought, gathered notes and copied links to websites regarding ELS codes in preparing for my next post, but I couldn't stop thinking about Paul my commenter.  In Knowing God: Part 3, I made the point that he reminded me of other people who just seem to be able to pull one part of their brain out and isolate it from the conclusions that logic demands in order to maintain something else they want to believe.  I almost started to go back over the scientific evidence and facts to show that Paul doesn't even understand the science, because he simply parrots stuff that he has heard or read and can't explain it in his own words.  But there is the rub.  If he truly understood the science, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, he would KNOW that the stupid stuff he's been told about energy being added to an "open" system doesn't overcome the chaotic nature of entropy.  I can use the simple analogy that if you pour gasoline on a bonfire, it doesn't result in carbon crystallizing into more complex shapes that contain coded information. I dare anyone to take a power supply for a computer and create a voltage and current amplifier system so that you can just vary the current input for days, weeks, or years on end and then explain to me how that will result in more complex, or any kind of programming language being developed inside the CPU.  Build yourself a little terrarium and set it out in the sun and then show me how, other than adding heat to the enclosure, you ended up with more complex structures just because of the sun's radiation. No, going over the science again and helping to actually understand how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics works is not going to change Paul's mind, because some guy with a Ph.D. who Paul respects more than the Bible is going to tell him that's how it is, and Paul will just accept it.

Now, because I try my best to think logically, and would like to think that anybody who would take the time to read my posts values logic as much as I do, I figured a few responses to Paul would at least send him away thinking for a while. I try to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who claims to be a follower of Christ, that their loyalty is to the Creator and what He has to say about His own creation, and that a follower of Christ understands that man is inherently flawed.  Problem is, I forgot that just like in the issue of firearms and hoplophobia, there are people  who can seem reasonable at first, but upon further inspection reveal themselves to be happy with a condition of cognitive dissonance.  Then again, maybe the human mind is so complex that we'll have to come up with a new label.  Or maybe I just don't understand Paul's condition, or the last option is that Paul is just crazy or evil.   WHOOAAAAHH!! Did I just say that?  Not that I wanted to.  To go to Paul's website, you would think he's such a nice guy.  Far nicer than me.  He has six kids.  I'm sure he's a loving father and his kids and his wife adore him.  What in the hell is wrong with me for picking on Paul?

You know, I've got other people I like and respect in the blogosphere.  Let me use Kevin Baker as an example.  Kevin runs The Smallest Minority.  Kevin and I think the same about a lot of issues regarding personal liberty, firearms and government.  I like Kevin and consider him a friend.  In the interest of full disclosure, I've never met him.  I feel I know him based on his rather candid writings.  Kevin is a self proclaimed atheist.  Religiously, he's my polar opposite.  How could I possibly like him so much?

I would much rather be in a combat situation with Kevin Baker than with Paul.  Kevin is an engineer by trade.  A logical thinker.  His essays display a deep, thoughtful character.  I have read so many of Kevin's essays and the sources he cites to explain how he comes to the conclusions that he does.  His writing reflects a deep desire to find real objective truth, regardless of feelings or wishful thinking.  Kevin says he is an atheist because as far as he has wanted to search, he has found no reason to believe in a deity.  Thus proving that you cannot and will not find something that you are not looking for, even if it is right in front of your face.  This is profoundly important.  While I may feel regret in the idea that I won't see Kevin in the next life, I understand that the worst thing I could do would be to preach at him about his soul when he sees no need and would merely be irritated by my efforts.  If the subject of the afterlife came up because Kevin was sincerely interested, I would have no doubt that his logic and engineering type mind would demand that he make some decision either way, but I can tell from his writings that there would be no sitting on the fence or compartmentalization when it came to deciding on what is real and what makes sense.  In that regard, I feel confident that given all the good evidence, Kevin would choose the right way.  I respect that about Kevin.  Regardless of his decision, I respect that.

Not so with Paul.  I wouldn't trust Paul as far as I could throw him. Paul says he's a Christian. He found his way to my blog, and has gone out of his way to defend evolution as if it can somehow be compatible with a belief in Jesus of Nazareth.  Mind you, Paul doesn't just speak of some passing, shoulder shrugging acknowledgement of Jesus as a figure of history.  I don't get the impression that Paul's Jesus is like that of the Unitarians or the Mormons or some strange cult, but I'm not really sure.  According to Paul's blog, he claims to love and glorify Jesus.  But when I take in the whole picture of Paul and what he writes on his blog and in my comments section, I have to say, "Nonsense!"  Or at least I have to understand that the Jesus Paul worships is a God of Paul's own making and not that of the Bible.

Yeshua HaMashiach who was prophesied about for thousands of years and proved Himself to be God incarnate, referred to the Torah as being Holy and incorruptible. Eternal and transcendant over even the world itself.   The very Word of God. The Gospel of John declares that the Word of God and Jesus are one and the same entity.  If the Bible is a liar and cannot be trusted, then Jesus is a liar and cannot be trusted.  At every turn, Paul would take the words of fallible, sinful men with limited knowledge that they in turn learned from men of limited knowledge about a theory that was dreamed up by men who's primary goal was to explain the world in such a way as to eliminate a Creator.  In any argument with me about science or origins, Paul would choose  Darwin, Dawkins, Gould, Hawkings or anybody else but Jesus Christ to make his case.  Yet he tells the world from his blog that he loves Jesus.

I made the points in my earlier posts that Genesis doesn't leave us any room to compromise with evolution.  As if He knew that the controversy would arise before and after Charles Darwin, God went to the trouble to define each of the days of creation as having evening and morning, i.e. regular 24 hour days. He went to the trouble of waiting until day four to create the sun, moon, and stars.  He specifically made the point that until man sinned in the garden that there was no bloodshed, no death or dying.  He created all the land animals and man on day six, so there were no millions of years between them. There is a lot more there that  Does all of this sound absolutely bat-$h0t crazy to an evolutionist or someone who has been indoctrinated in the government schools?  Of course it does.  I don't mind being thought of as crazy to people who think that man knows better than God. I quit worrying so much about that when it dawned on me that over the centuries, science has had to revise its thinking about so many things. At the same time, while man has had to adjust his interpretation of what the Bible means, at no point has anyone been able to point to something the Bible says and say, "We know THAT can't be true, because of THIS."  The Bible obviously conflicts with the interpretations and theories of scientists who only allow for a materialistic explanation of the universe, but the Bible doesn't conflict with things we know to be established fact. Believe me, I've pissed off several guys with Ph.D.s when I made them admit that fact.

 Evolutionary scientists love to crow about how science is "self-correcting," even though it can spend decades or longer wallowing in whatever the most accepted theory is before they are dragged, kicking and screaming, into a better understanding of the evidence.  Problem nowadays, as evidenced by movies like EXPELLED, and even lots of cases I studied before that movie, any heretic who presents hard evidence that goes against the dogma of neo-darwinian evolution is fired and ostracized from mainstream academia, without anybody demonstrating why the evidence is bad.  There are perfectly good explanations as to why the creation story of Genesis works with the science we know to be fact today.  Creationists don't need to be embarrassed by what the mainstream scientists think they know.

Paul's insistence on defending evolution raises the big question.  Why?  What's his motivation?  To help people accept that they can have a warm, fuzzy, non-judgmental Jesus who doesn't care what they think, regardless of the evidence? In order to do that, you have to dismiss the Bible as nothing more than allegorical stories and poetry and just a tiny smattering of wisdom.  The rest just shouldn't be taken seriously.   Is he trying to get evolutionists to say, "Hey, I can have evolution and Jesus too!"  Why bother?  If evolution is true, and it renders the Bible just so much religious nonsense that can be taken or left with or without the salt, then why waste my precious time?  Since Darwin's time, and actually even before that, the champions of evolution theory have made the main body of their argument not about scientific evidence, but rather about how crazy creationists are for going against the conventional "thought" of those who accept evolution.

Think of this another way. Imagine this improbable scenario.  Paul says he loves his wife.  And to everybody who sees the family that seems to be true. But there are some "well respected" people in academe who say Paul's wife is a good for nothing whore and he's wasting his time giving her any devotion or attention.  Out in public, Paul doesn't want to be thought of as being less intelligent than the average guy by disagreeing with those "well respected" guys in academe, so he actually defends those guys, while at the same time saying he loves his wife and is completely devoted to her.  Does this make sense?

Since Paul would never consider heresy against his beloved champions of evolution by considering anything the Bible has to say as being authoritative, I suppose Paul cannot be offended when I say that he brings to mind the passage where Jesus says that many will come in "that day" and say to Him, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and heal the sick and do this and that in your name." And Jesus will look at them and say, "Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.  I never knew you."

You know, I will be very careful to not offend an unbeliever, because my goal should be to bring him to God. However I must do so while being faithful to God and not compromising the truth.  There are lots of believers who need to be disabused of errors that have been taught as the traditions of the churches over the centuries. I know I am constantly learning, and have regretted being taken in by some stuff in the past, especially when it comes to keeping the commandments and understanding eschatology.  I can be understanding and deferential up to a point, but when someone shows his self to be hell-bent on taking the teaching of man over the teaching of God, I have to draw the line.

Fighting Revisionist History

I have spent about 24 hours fighting the urge to fisk this one little section of the very long screed by Mark Ames. I mentioned it in this post earlier.  It had me going around the web and looking up information I already knew, but needed to check references on.


Let me just get on with it.  Mr. Ames' words are highlighted.  

"Ever read the preamble to the Constitution? There’s nothing about private property there and self-interest."

For those of us who actually know the history of the United States and actually read the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers; you read a statement like that and your mouth drops open. It's like the reaction you have to followers of Louis Farrakhan who believe in that mother-ship stuff, or that the Apollo moon landings were faked.  The statement is so ridiculously wrong.  It almost seems silly to point out why it is so wrong, but then I realized; if Mark Ames is this clueless, there's a good chance that others are as well.  I was watching Glenn Beck the other night and he pointed out that one in four Americans don't know who we won our independence from, so how could they know why?  So, in the off chance that one of them comes to this blog, I want them to be exposed to the truth.


The events leading up to the Revolutionary War, the war for independence from Great Britain, was all about liberty, and if there was one thing that the founders of the United States saw as a fundamental right, it was private property.  Don't believe me?  That's okay, they spoke for themselves.

"Among the natural rights  of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can."  -- Samuel Adams

"The constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press."

 -- Thomas Jefferson

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence."  --  John Adams

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."

-- James Madison, National Gazette essay, March 27, 1792

There are many more quotes, but that should suffice.  Even if I didn't have those, one of the most well known slogans of the Revolution was "No taxation without representation!"  What are taxes?  Taxes are a way to take some of the fruits of one's labor, their property.  If a person doesn't understand that simple concept, they'd better hope that someone else is going to be available to bring a tray of food on occasion and change their diaper regularly.


Then there's the issue of self-interest.  It would have been amazing enough had Ames only mentioned property, but to then assert that the Preamble was written without regard to or that it wasn't about individual self-interest is mind-boggling.  How much dope does one have to smoke to come up with that conclusion?  If the founders weren't concerned with self-interest, then what was it?  Ames is really begging the question.  What is the opposite of self-interest?  The collective?  All this talk about freedom and liberty is so we can then create a government powerful enough to enforce neighborhood covenants and deed restrictions?  Make sure that nobody earns too much money or eats what they want?   Are there some secret writings of the founders that we don't know about?  Is there a secret decoder ring or enigma box that tells us what the founders really meant?


The entire contents of the Declaration of Independence is about the freedom of the people as individuals to pursue their own interests without interference from government. In essence, freedom is about being left alone.  Freedom to associate or -- and this is important -- NOT associate with anybody you choose.  Liberty is about not having to worry that someone is going to demand part of your life, embodied in the fruits of your labor, for the benefit of others, regardless of your consent.


What taxes needed to be collected, were for very restricted and well defined purposes.  
 In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, 

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." 

-- James Madison, 4 Annals of congress 179 (1794)

This was said by James Madison, considered the father of the Constitution because of his leading effort in writing the document.  He was also the 4th President.  Notice he is saying that such a right was not granted to Congress.  Yet we live in this upside down world today, where when someone asks the former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, where they [Congress] think it is in the Constitution that they have the authority to pass the totalitarian medical care bill known as "Obamacare,"  the best she can come up with is: "Are you kidding?" 

Mark Ames continues:

This country, by contract, was founded in order to strive for a “more Perfect Union”—that’s “union,” as in the pairing of the words “perfect” and “union”—not sovereign, not states, not local, not selfish, but “union.”

What would Thomas Jefferson say about that?  Here you go:

“The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government.”

That is a complete, in-your-face refutation of Mr. Ames' assumption or assertion.  There may have been some arguments among the founders early on about some details, but the States would never have ratified the Constitution had it been common knowledge that the purpose of the contract was to make them subject to a powerful centralized government that would forge them and hammer them into someone's utopian idea of a "perfect union" as seen through the eyes of a socialist.  It took three years of publicly pleading with the States via the Federalist Papers to get them to ratify the Constitution by 1789.

Now here is where Mark Ames really proves himself to be either totally ignorant about U.S. history, or he is a liar:

And that other purpose at the end of the Constitution’s contractual obligations: promote the “General Welfare.” That means “welfare.” Not “everyone for himself” but “General Welfare.” That’s what it is to be American: to strive to form the most perfect union with each other, and to promote everyone’s general betterment. That’s it.

"Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. "

-- Thomas Jefferson letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817 

 "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one...."

-- James Madison, letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 

 "With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted."  

-- James Madison in a letter to James Robertson

It really doesn't take a lot of effort to go and read the words of the founders and understand the plain meaning of what they said.  In fact, they made it a point to be well understood by the populace precisely because they were counting on the populace to agree to the system of governance that they had created.  How important was this concept of making the law clear and simple?  Let's hear from James Madison:

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow."

-- James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788

That tells me that if Mr. Madison were here today, he would be leading the march on Washington to burn the entire contents of the U.S. Code and dissolving every cabinet post and bureau save but maybe three or four.  It is with the utmost confidence from studying the words of the founders, that I can say that their concept of freedom was to only tolerate the most minimum of government.  The highest aim of this experiment in self-rule was for all men to be left alone to live  their lives as they saw fit, as long as they didn't encroach upon the rights and freedom of others.


So, now that we can see the truth in the words of the very men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, what should we do about it?  Let me use Mark Ames own words:

Now, our problem is that there are a lot of people in this country who have dedicated their entire lives to subverting the stated purpose of this country. We must be prepared to identify those who disrupt and sabotage our national purpose of creating this “more perfect union” identifying those who sabotage our national goal of “promoting the General Welfare”—and calling them by their name: traitors.

Mark Ames, if you are merely ignorant, and willing to admit it, then let us forgive you and help you to rectify your delusions.  If you insist on holding to your beliefs which are destructive and counter to all that the founders said and wrote, then you have made yourself to be a most loathsome creature in the eyes of those who yearn for freedom.  You have made yourself a lover and friend to the state and champion of the statist, and as such, you have made yourself an enemy of any people who wish to remain free.


Those of us who understand real liberty do not wish to impose anything upon you other than for you to leave us the hell alone.  If you can attract enough people to engage in your ideals of how a society should function, go and get it done. Take California or New York. They are almost completely there already.  I'm sure it won't matter to you if I tell you that it's been tried over and over and over, in places like the former Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. etc. etc.  The definition of insanity has never been a deterrent to those who believe in your cause.  As history shows, every time the schemes of creating a socialist utopian dream fails, the response of you and people like you is always to double down.  As Kevin Baker has elaborated:  "Do it again, only HARDER!"


Do what you have to do, Mr. Ames.  Just don't expect those of us with a sincere and lucid understanding of what this country was founded to be, to just roll over and let you do it.  Molan Labe.

Greatest Line Ever

I saw this once before and was lucky enough to find it.

Integrity In Science

More than fifteen years ago, I was calling BS on the idea that CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) could possibly be hurting, let alone destroying the ozone layer.  Most people who bought into that nonsense wouldn't know a triple oxygen molecule from dihydrogen monoxide.  By the way, there are tremendous amounts of dihydrogen monoxide in pretty much all of the tap water around the world.  This chemical is so deadly that if you inhale enough of it, you could die.

Today, I had the fortune of running into the post below.  All the necessary links are contained within.  I have to say that I am just a bit proud to have been on the cutting edge of reality and truth on this subject years ago.

Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society – an important moment in science history

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Anthony Watts

Hal Lewis

We’ve previously covered the APS here, when I wrote:

While Copenhagen and its excesses rage, a quiet revolution is starting.

Indeed, not so quiet now. It looks like it is getting ugly inside with the public airing of the resignation of a very prominent member who writes:

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.
…
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.- Hal Lewis

Below is his resignation letter made public today, via the GWPF.
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.
What I would really like to see though, is this public resignation letter given the same editorial space as Michael Mann in today’s Washington Post.
Readers, we can do this. Here’s the place at WaPo to ask for it.  For anyone writing to the WaPo, the  national@washpost.com, is the national news editorial desk. Spread the word on other blogs. Let’s see if they have enough integrity to provide a counterpoint. – Anthony
======================================
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
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
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Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)