Every undergraduate member of the Society of Physics Students counts as a member of the APS, even SPS members in Canada, so take the APS membership totals with a grain of salt.
Is there any organization without corruption? Disgusting. Of course, that is the history of mankind in a nutshell.
“Was it always this politicized?”
Yes. The schoolbook story of Galileo doesn’t cover it, but there was a whole lot more vicious infighting and politicization than just, “Inquisition chases man with heretical idea.”
You can be politicized, but still not corrupt. They were practicing “political” science when they attacked the Star Wars ABM funding, but they didn’t have any financial gain there. Now they’re political interests align with their monetary ones and they have finally achieved true corruption.
You only have to have followed “Scientific American” for the last 3 decades to know that American (and European) science has been heavily Lysenko-ed.
At some point, real scientists or at least people with integrity are going to have to clean up the rather stinking mess that massive government funding has created, both in the science community and the academic one. This won’t happen until it becomes more widely accepted that anyone, even the modern priest scientist figure, can be corrupted by money; even if it’s origin is the government and not corporations.
The APS became more political about the time that it moved its headquarters from New York City to Washington, D.C. Their stated goal was to facilitate interactions between the APS and the political establishment.
I am not a prominent scientist, like Hal Lewis, but I cancelled my memberships in the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society over their stands on man-made global climate change. Many more have as well.
The committee appointed to review the APS stand on climate change included at least one prominent member of the global climate change committee—despite ethics guidelines designed to prohibit this kind of conflict of interest.
One reason Hal Lewis’ stand is so news worthy is that he is a member of the academic community, which has come to dominate the APS leadership structure. By and large, academics are far more liberal than their colleagues in industry.
As a former member of the APS, I can say that it hasn’t always been this way. Hopefully it won’t be this way much longer.
It is incredible that in the 21st century we can have so many, so called, educated people, swallow the scam that is ‘global warming’. No one apparently wants to take the time to do their own research into the matter and are ready to jump on the political bandwagon that would ruin or economy, and even our society, for an unproven computer driven idea.
Simple high school science will tell you that “when your beer gets warm, it goes flat”. Why, because the CO2 comes out of solution. The same thing happens when oceans warm up – CO2 comes out of solution. The CO2 is released as a result of warming, it does not cause it.
Now, what happens to the plant life when it gets an extra shot of CO2? It grows better. Crops are better, more food, less starvation. If its warmer then man survives better as well along with the better food supply. So if we really have ‘global warming’, which has not been proven, we should rejoice in it.
We do not want to ruin our economy with ‘Cap & Trade” and other silly ideas. We really should take advantage of all our cheap carbon sources, think coal, to benefit the world economy with cheaper energy. I agree we should still fight pollution but CO2 is not pollution.
Every undergraduate member of the Society of Physics Students counts as a member of the APS, even SPS members in Canada, so take the APS membership totals with a grain of salt.
Is there any organization without corruption? Disgusting. Of course, that is the history of mankind in a nutshell.
“Was it always this politicized?”
Yes. The schoolbook story of Galileo doesn’t cover it, but there was a whole lot more vicious infighting and politicization than just, “Inquisition chases man with heretical idea.”
You can be politicized, but still not corrupt. They were practicing “political” science when they attacked the Star Wars ABM funding, but they didn’t have any financial gain there. Now they’re political interests align with their monetary ones and they have finally achieved true corruption.
You only have to have followed “Scientific American” for the last 3 decades to know that American (and European) science has been heavily Lysenko-ed.
At some point, real scientists or at least people with integrity are going to have to clean up the rather stinking mess that massive government funding has created, both in the science community and the academic one. This won’t happen until it becomes more widely accepted that anyone, even the modern priest scientist figure, can be corrupted by money; even if it’s origin is the government and not corporations.
The APS became more political about the time that it moved its headquarters from New York City to Washington, D.C. Their stated goal was to facilitate interactions between the APS and the political establishment.
I am not a prominent scientist, like Hal Lewis, but I cancelled my memberships in the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society over their stands on man-made global climate change. Many more have as well.
The committee appointed to review the APS stand on climate change included at least one prominent member of the global climate change committee—despite ethics guidelines designed to prohibit this kind of conflict of interest.
One reason Hal Lewis’ stand is so news worthy is that he is a member of the academic community, which has come to dominate the APS leadership structure. By and large, academics are far more liberal than their colleagues in industry.
As a former member of the APS, I can say that it hasn’t always been this way. Hopefully it won’t be this way much longer.
It is incredible that in the 21st century we can have so many, so called, educated people, swallow the scam that is ‘global warming’. No one apparently wants to take the time to do their own research into the matter and are ready to jump on the political bandwagon that would ruin or economy, and even our society, for an unproven computer driven idea.
Simple high school science will tell you that “when your beer gets warm, it goes flat”. Why, because the CO2 comes out of solution. The same thing happens when oceans warm up – CO2 comes out of solution. The CO2 is released as a result of warming, it does not cause it.
Now, what happens to the plant life when it gets an extra shot of CO2? It grows better. Crops are better, more food, less starvation. If its warmer then man survives better as well along with the better food supply. So if we really have ‘global warming’, which has not been proven, we should rejoice in it.
We do not want to ruin our economy with ‘Cap & Trade” and other silly ideas. We really should take advantage of all our cheap carbon sources, think coal, to benefit the world economy with cheaper energy. I agree we should still fight pollution but CO2 is not pollution.