Fox News hypes the resignation of one single (albeit a one time Nobel Prize winning) physicist from the American Physical Society (APS) because he disagreed with one single phrase in the official statement from the society regarding climate change.
Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Resigns Over Global Warming | Fox News.
This is much ado about nothing.
But Fox and now the denial blogosphere will make a big deal of this as part of their partisan effort to try and sow public doubt about global warming theory pushing the denial meme that climate scientists are still debating the science. (Hint, no they aren’t, the science is settled)
Interestingly Fox while emphasizing that the scientist, Dr. Ivar Giaever, was a Nobel Prize winner makes no mention that Drs. Leo Esaki and Brian D. Josephson, who won the Nobel Prize with him are part of the 100 Nobel Laureates Warn Our Planet! effort as signatories behind this statement:
The most profound danger to world peace in the coming years will stem not from the irrational acts of states or individuals but from the legitimate demands of the world’s dispossessed. Of these poor and disenfranchised, the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most. Their situation will be desperate and manifestly unjust.
It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich. If then we permit the devastating power of modern weaponry to spread through this combustible human landscape, we invite a conflagration that can engulf both rich and poor. The only hope for the future lies in co-operative international action, legitimized by democracy.
It is time to turn our backs on the unilateral search for security, in which we seek to shelter behind walls. Instead, we must persist in the quest for united action to counter both global warming and a weaponized world.
These twin goals will constitute vital components of stability as we move toward the wider degree of social justice that alone gives hope of peace.
Some of the needed legal instruments are already at hand, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Convention on Climate Change, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. As concerned citizens, we urge all governments to commit to these goals that constitute steps on the way to replacement of war by law.
To survive in the world we have transformed, we must learn to think in a new way. As never before, the future of each depends on the good of all.
Months ago you might recall (actually probably not because it was pretty insignificant too) that the denial blogosphere was all abuzz with the news that the Dr. Harold Lewis had resigned from APS over pretty much the same thing, a general disagreement over the official APS position regarding global warming and APS chose to issue a statement on Lewis’s comments as he resigned (APS Comments on Harold Lewis’ Resignation of his Society Membership). Dr. Lewis apparently thought that the Climategate non scandal was a big deal and threw a hissy fit over the APS’s non attention to the matter.
The whole event was seen by the climate science community as much ado about nothing at the time and I will expect the response amongst the professionals that matter will be the same this time too. As for the APS we will just have to wait and see if they have anything to say about Dr. Giaever’s resignation.