Nobel Prize Winner, Ivar Giaever, Resigns from the American Physical Society Over Global Warming Stance

onSep 16, 2011 @ 15:08 PDT

On September 14, renowned Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Giaever announced his resignation as a Fellow at the American Physical Society (APS). The reason? His grievance over their stance on global warming, which they believe, rightfully so, is conclusively real and man-made.

Their stance on global warming reads,

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

This is a fairly straightforward statement on global warming, and one that is in line with the overwhelming scientific consensus. One would think Giaever, a trained and renowned scientist himself, would agree with the statement himself.

One would be wrong.

In an article appearing in Fox News he said he had a beef with the APS‘s use of the term “incontrovertible,” in particular.

He stated, “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

Yet even Exxon, a major funder of climate change denial campaigns, now admits that climate change is the real deal, according to a great investigative report recently produced by University of California-Berkeley scholar Christopher Jones.

When a climate change denier leaves a prestigious organization like APS, there is really one appropriate response – a few hearty choruses of the Steam‘s classic song, “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” of course.

Hey hey, goodbye, Ivar Giaever!

By Steve Horn

Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.