Posted on 12/12/2009 6:36:55 PM PST by AndyJackson
Dear APS Member:
Recently, you may have received an unsolicited email from Hal Lewis, Bob Austin, Will Happer, Larry Gould and Roger Cohen regarding the APS and climate change. Please be assured that this was not an official APS message, nor was it sent with APS knowledge or approval. A number of members have complained to APS regarding this unsolicited e-mail. If the e-mail addresses used to send this message were obtained from our membership directory, this was contrary to the stated guidelines for members' use of the directory. We are continuing to investigate how the senders obtained APS member email addresses.
As many APS members are already aware, the Council of the Society has tasked the Panel on Public Affairs to examine the 2007 APS statement on climate change for issues of tone and clarity. Duncan Moore, the current chair of POPA, is in the process of convening a subcommittee to carry out the task. The subcommittee, which he is also chairing, will report its recommendations to POPA in early February, and shortly thereafter POPA will post the text for a three-week APS member comment period. We will alert the APS membership by email when the posting occurs. Duncan Moore's subcommittee will use the comments it receives to finalize the wording in time for the April Council meeting.
Some members of the APS have asked the Society to craft a statement regarding the issues surrounding the release of climate files stolen from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The CRU maintains the repository for temperature measurements used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The APS leadership has concerns about both the improper release of private e-mails and any premature rush to judgment regarding scientific integrity at the CRU. Both the CRU and the IPCC are in the process of investigating the affair. Once the full range of information is made available, the APS Panel on Public Affairs will examine the case and recommend how APS should act.
We will continue to keep the APS membership informed about climate change issues through postings on the APS home page; articles in APS News; commentaries on the APS blog, Physics Frontline; and direct email alerts to the membership when necessary.
Best Regards,
Cherry Murray
APS President
This is an amusing response to a serious concern. Instead of using the resources of the physics profession to understand and evaluate the serious question of whether climate change is real, her response is a witch hunt into who stole the APS mailing list and gave it to five prominent members of the society to mail their concerns to other physcists.
Second is to suggest that ladies and gentlemen don't read each others mail, and therefore, even though everyone else has read the CRU correspondence, and the public has serious questions, she rises above this and suggests that it would be improper for her society to rush to judgment on the integrity of the CRU by reading stolen emails, although there are members of her society prominent in the IPCC efforts, and on which the public has already passed judgement in her abstentia.
It is a sad day when a scientific society would be brought down to the level of yet another Harvard professor bending to whichever way the political winds blow. Al Gore's Nobel counts more than the justly prominent Nobel winners in her own organization.
I guess it just proves that the august “scientists” who run the APS organization are no better than the rest of the political hacks leading other membership societies.
Cherry (is that a real name) were you just as upset over the Pentagon papers leak, or Deep Throat
The world would be a better place without Harvard or its alumni, *given* their current political proclivities.
Cheers!
"Science" is as "science" does. We will know them by their fruits.
You need to stay on message. The real scandal here is who leaked the APS mailing list. That is the story that has legs and will sell newspapers. /s/
Thanks. When I put in one source for the email I was told I could not post this. I agree with the policy of not flogging blogs, but the APS itself has not yet seen fit to post their President’s letter on their own site. Maybe the webmaster is embarrassed too. It would be funny if he had more taste and discrimination than another laughing stock of a Harvard professor.
When their fruits are lies and only a few manage to call them on it, we can quite readily rank "scientists" alongside "charlatans", "witch-doctors", "snake-oil salesmen" and "congressmen."
I leave out "used-car salesmen" because they serve a useful function. Line all the rest up against a wall and shoot them, if only to eliminate their carbon footprint.
tsk tsk. You are rushing to judgment.
What this means is that ALL of us now have to ask ourselves every single time we hear a “scientist” speak, “Is this a scientist that collects data and theorizes, or is this a “scientist” that looks for data to support a very UNscientific socio-political agenda?”
Sounds like an Affirmative Action appointment to me. Presumably in response to Larry Summers' complaint that he hadn't hired more women scientists because there didn't seem to BE a whole lot of women at the top of those fields.
Maybe she really is that good. I see she worked at Bell Labs and Lawrence Livermore. But I kind of doubt it. She just got this new appointment last June.
Well the good news is all the political hacks claiming to be scientist are being exposed on a grand scale.
Facts and truth will win this. And many are going to find themselves on the wrong side of history as time goes on.
Climate “science” is about to get a major house cleaning.
Dear Cherry
I suspect the list was “leaked” by one of your minions sending a mundane notice to the membership and placing the distribution list in the cc field instead of the bcc field.
Happens all the time, ya know.
So they're not worried about whether or not the scientists at East Anglia fudged the data, and spread lies about what will happen to the climate on Earth, based on their political agenda. They're just mad because someone published the e-mails that these folks sent to one another that PROVE their duplicity.
I agree with the email 100%. By using the words “climate files stolen” she tips her hand as to her personal bias. She can’t know whether those files were stolen or leaked.
Not only that but in spreading the word that folks where engaged in academic fraud, these guys used APS email lists that they could only have stolen from one of the 1000's of members who might have had the list. The last thing that any physicist wants is for another physicist to find his email and engage in a debate about the meaning of some scientific data. They HATE it when that happens. /s/
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