Climate Change Supporters Resort to Intemperate Calumny
I was disappointed to see the evident bias in letter selection that characterized the APS News discussion of the global warming issue. From the flood of e-mail that descended on the Council members before the meeting, I would judge that the membership is split more or less down the middle on the substance of the current APS official position. You published one letter, occupying 3 column-inches supporting the position that the Statement should be rescinded, and two letters, totaling 14½ column inches on the other side. Further, the letter supporting revision of the statement had in it only comments about the science, with no denigration of the motives or characters of those who hold the other view, while the other two were largely devoted to character assassination and obloquy. I give you for examples: “a blatant and political statement, that obscures the issues,” “politically based myths,” “political extreme”, “conflict with state-of-the-art climate models,” [I included that one because I hadn’t thought that conflict with models is a defect–I thought it was conflict with the facts that was], “it beggars the imagination that serious scientists can ignore this overwhelming evidence”, “obfuscating and confused deniers,” etc.
These are serious issues. When I joined APS 65 years ago reasoned argument was the order of the day, and such intemperate calumny would never have been published.
Hal Lewis
Santa Barbara, CA
Ed. Note: As best we can tell, the “flood of e-mail that descended on the Council members” was two to one in favor of the APS position (see the story “Members Bombard Councilors with Messages on Climate Change” in the December APS News.) We did not calibrate the letters by column inches–we simply printed the letters we received.
