'Science' Be Damned

Delingpole today carries an incendiary resignation letter from Henry Lewis, a physicist to the American Physical Society (APS). I'd recommend you read it in its entirety, but here are a few snippets.

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).

[...]

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.

[...]

[The global warming scam] is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.

He then goes on to catalogue the lengths to which the APS went in stifling any opposition to what Lewis termed 'corruption'.

This included silencing of debate; secret committees; denial of member list access; dismissal of opposing views; and contravention of the APS' own constitution. All to continue the charade that their chosen consensus is 'incontrovertible', a word that Lewis contends is a 'poison word' in scientific circles.

Now, I can't claim to be an expert in climate studies - in fact, I've not even looked at one - but boy do I recognise the methods above, and can also fully understand Lewis's damning theory for why they are being employed.

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.

Because, you see, I have looked at tobacco control 'science'. Just about all of it. And everything described by Lewis is not only replicated therein, but is more duplicitous, more resistant to debate, more mendacious, more money-oriented, and more corrupt, than anything Lewis will have witnessed.

Based on this experience, I can also offer a prediction. Lewis will be ostracised, his name blackened, his previous work dismissed as eccentricity, his future work dismissed as funded by oil companies. He will be expunged from the scientific community and threats of similar treatment will be issued to all who dare to commission him.

The debate is over, you see? The evidence 'overwhelming'. It has been written.

The problem being that if this were truly so, those subscribing to the consensus would be champing at the bit to debate the evidence at every possible opportunity. It's human nature to enjoy winning. It would be like Chelsea versus Easington Colliery every day, like David Hay versus Mr Bean.

Yet they actively avoid debate; throw a tantrum when challenged; spit vitriol at those who disagree; and condemn rather than engage. Even towards people, like Lewis, with whom they used to be a colleague and friend.

Tobacco control did the same to Michael Siegel, to David Goerlitz, and more recently to James Enstrom, simply for expressing their doubts about the motives (pharma funding and MSA cash, in particular) and/or the paucity of evidence in support of the cult club members movement.

When the science is on your side, there is no need for such avoidance. When you have all the answers, why run away from discussion? When you're confident of your assertions, why is it necessary to maliciously destroy those who disagree?

ASH routinely decline to debate, for example, preferring instead to talk only to sympathetic media. Their only line of attack towards nay-sayers is that they must be funded by tobacco companies. Their only defence is to repeat ad nauseam that the evidence is overwhelming even when it is clearly anything but. They lie and bully instead of engaging and persuading.

I've seen these methods in tobacco control. I've read the studies. I know what they are hiding. So when I see the same desperate carpet-sweeping, misdirection, marginalisation and intimidation in climatology, something niffs like a week old Camembert.

In such circumstances, there's only one conclusion to draw when seeing the rigmarole all faithfully replayed by AGW believers. It must all be bunkum. There is no other plausible explanation. And if any environmentalist wishes to disavow me of such a point of view, they must first take issue with the lucrative anti-smoking industry for peeling the scales from my eyes

It's just another non-altruistic, non-philanthropic, money chase. Science? Pah! That can go hang. It's so last century.