truth in science

"It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

Here in its entirety is Prof. Hal Lewis' public letter of resignation from the American Physical Society, from GWPF:

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?

I created this website to explore options for peace, so why do I find myself writing so much about global warming? Well, if there's disharmony in the home and you want the family to talk it through, if you find the house is on fire, you have to do something about the fire first. And the loss of truth in science to push a very bad political 'solution' to a non-problem is a worldwide fire threatening civilisation itself.

Case in point: the lost island in the Bay of Bengal. Here's the BBC, covering itself in inglory pushing political antiscience instead of truth:

A tiny island claimed for years by India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared beneath the rising seas, scientists in India say.

The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis.

Recent satellites images show the whole island under water, says the School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta.

Its scientists say other nearby islands could also vanish as sea levels rise.

Beneath the waves

The BBC's Chris Morris in Delhi says there has never been a permanent settlement on the now-vanished island, which even in its heyday was never more than two metres (about six feet) above sea level.

In the past, however, the territorial dispute led to visits by Indian naval vessels and the temporary deployment of a contingent from the country's Border Security Force.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Professor Sugata Hazra of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University in Calcutta.

Anyone wishing to visit now, he observed, would have to think of travelling by submarine.

Very tragic, the loss of that island. Let's see, the sea rose, how much? They were two metres above sea level and now require a visit by submarine? Would that be at the very least, say, three metres, would you think? And in how long a time? India didn't have a navy until after independence in 1947, which is 62 years, or a rise of about five metres per century, which is drivel pure and simple. So much for sea level rise, and so much for the BBC's journalistic skills and/or integrity in reprinting the drivel. But we can actually do much better then this. Here's The Independent's almost as uncritical take on the same story: