By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Journalist In what some are calling the most important moment in recent scientific history, a prestigious scientist has quit the American Physical Society (APS) because of the contoversy surrounding climate change, which he calls "the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist." Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, has resigned from the APS after more than six decades. In a resignation letter sent to Curtis G. Callan Jr. of Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society, which has been released to the press, Lewis denounces the widespread corruption in the field, which he claims has become the norm. "For reasons that will soon become clear, my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society," his letter begins. "It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist." The Former member of the President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee goes on to express his disappointment in the way the APS handled the ClimateGate scandal, when the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. "It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity." He was very critical of the APS statement in support of ClimateGate, which included the word "incontrovertible" to describe the evidence supporting climate change. Calling it a "poison word", Lewis said it can be used to describe very few items in physics, and certainly not climate change. However, when he and other scientists requested that the statement be revised, the APS responded by appointing a secret committee "that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe." Later, when he and a few other scientists tried to initiate a "Topical Group" to discuss the scientific issues surrounding global warming, the APS thwarted the effort and effectively shut down any discussion with unbiased scientists who wanted to analyze the issue from a purely scientific point of view. "APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?" He goes on to call the scheming at APS headquarters so "bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it." While some believe the errors in the global warming hypothesis is because physicists aren't as smart as they used to be, Lewis disagrees. " . . . I don’t think that is an issue," he writes. "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." He believes that when Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing in ClimateGate, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, "they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing." He concludes by saying, "I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation." Meanwhile, governments around the world, including the U.S., are moving forward with costly green initiatives in spite of the growing controversy over whether or not climate change is man-made. © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com