Prominent Scientists Publish an Open Letter: "Climate Change and the Integrity of Science"

The great Russian scientist Dr. Roald Sagdeev, a member of both the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the American National Academy of Sciences (NAS), opposes politicized junk science in both the U.S.S.R. and in America.

"Roald Sagdeev is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland and Director of SilkSat, a telecommunications project utilizing small satellites. He is also Director Emeritus of the Space Research Institute, the Moscow-based center of the Russian space exploration program.

Sagdeev, one of the youngest scientists ever elected a full academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, served as Director of the Space Research Institute for fifteen years. Under his direction, many important projects were realized, including the joint US-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz, the Venera series to Venus, as well as the international missions to Halley's Comet and later to Phobos, a moon of Mars. These last two projects were devised and implemented by Academician Sagdeev, in cooperation with more than twelve countries.

...Sagdeev has been elected a member of many scientific academies and societies around the world, including the National Academy of Sciences (USA), The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (USA), the Royal Swedish Academy, the Royal Astronomical Society (UK), The Max Plank Society (Germany), The International Academy of Astronomics, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the Third World Academy. He was the first Soviet scientist ever elected to the Vatican Academy of Sciences."---The Eisenhower Institute

Below is the text of an open letter published in the journal Science (5-7-10) and reprinted in the U.K. Guardian (5-6-10). All the signatories are members of America's National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

One name I recognize in the list of signatories is Roald Z. Sagdeev (pictured above). He is the former director of the Russian Space Research Institute and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences who currently works at the University of Maryland. When I read the open letter, I thought Dr. Sagdeev might be a signatory; and I was not disappointed.

When Dr. Sagdeev lived in the former U.S.S.R., he bravely published a 1987 letter in Izvestia that distanced the Soviet Academy of Sciences from the KGB's campaign to spread the lie that the U.S. Army made AIDS to kill blacks.

Acording to The New York Times (11-7-87):

Soviet scientists have disavowed charges in the Soviet-sponsored press that the AIDS virus was artificially cultivated at a secret American military base.

The scientists, Roald Sagdeyev and Vitali Goldansky, publicly distanced the Soviet Academy of Sciences from the accusations about American responsibility for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. They said they had protested the appearance of Soviet articles that repeated those contentions.

The disavowal was contained in Izvestia, the Soviet government newspaper...

Dr. Sagdeev is one of my heroes because he spoke on behalf of less powerful Soviet scientists who probably were afraid to challenge the KGB propaganda about AIDS. Dr. Sagdeev defended reason and science instead of pseudo-scientific propaganda that served the regime's political agenda instead of scientific progress. Indeed, the Soviet regime's official ideology, Marxism-Leninism, was a pseudo-scientific ideology that masqueraded as science.

In 1992, KGB chief Yevgeni Primakov finally admitted that the KGB had spread this propaganda:

The Russian newspaper Izvestiya (3-19-92) reported on March 19, 1992:

[Primakov] mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' 'crafty' plots were fabricated in KGB offices.

The KGB's code name for their active measures campaign was Operation Infektion.

Below I have posted the open letter that was published in the journal Science (5-7-10) and reprinted in the U.K. Guardian (5-6-10). Click on the signatories' names to learn about their scientific careers. They are all heroes for standing up for reason and science instead of superstition and ideology masquerading as science:

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should wait until scientists are absolutely certain before taking any action, it is the same as saying society should never take action. For a problem as potentially catastrophic as climate change, taking no action poses a dangerous risk for our planet.

Scientific conclusions derive from an understanding of basic laws supported by laboratory experiments, observations of nature, and mathematical and computer modelling. Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. This process is inherently adversarial— scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation. That's what Galileo, Pasteur, Darwin, and Einstein did. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of "well-established theories" and are often spoken of as "facts."

For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today's organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category: there is compelling, comprehensive, and consistent objective evidence that humans are changing the climate in ways that threaten our societies and the ecosystems on which we depend.

Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other scientific assessments of climate change, which involve thousands of scientists producing massive and comprehensive reports, have, quite expectedly and normally, made some mistakes. When errors are pointed out, they are corrected.
But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Much more can be, and has been, said by the world's scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business- as-usual practices. We urge our policymakers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.

We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them. Society has two choices: we can ignore the science and hide our heads in the sand and hope we are lucky, or we can act in the public interest to reduce the threat of global climate change quickly and substantively. The good news is that smart and effective actions are possible. But delay must not be an option.

• The signatories are all members of the US National Academy of Sciences but are not speaking on its behalf or on behalf of their institutions.

Adams, Robert McCormick, University of California, San Diego
Amasino, Richard M, University of Wisconsin
Anders, Edward, University of Chicago
Anderson, David J, California Institute of Technology
Anderson, Wyatt W, University of Georgia
Anselin, Luc E, Arizona State University
Arroyo, Mary Kalin, University of Chile
Asfaw, Berhane, Rift Valley Research Service
Ayala, Francisco J, University of California, Irvine
Bax, Adriaan, National Institutes of Health
Bebbington, Anthony J, University of Manchester
Bell, Gordon, Microsoft Research
Bennett, Michael V L, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Bennetzen, Jeffrey L, University of Georgia
Berenbaum, May R, University of Illinois
Berlin, Overton Brent, University of Georgia
Bjorkman, Pamela J, California Institute of Technology
Blackburn, Elizabeth, University of California, San Francisco
Blamont, Jacques E, Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales
Botchan, Michael R, University of California, Berkeley
Boyer, John S, University of Delaware
Boyle, Ed A, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Branton, Daniel, Harvard University
Briggs, Steven P, University of California, San Diego
Briggs, Winslow R, Carnegie Institution of Washington
Brill, Winston J, Winston J. Brill and Associates
Britten, Roy J, California Institute of Technology
Broecker, Wallace S, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University
Brown, James H, University of New Mexico
Brown, Patrick O, Stanford University School of Medicine
Brunger, Axel T, Stanford University
Cairns, Jr John, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Canfield, Donald E, University of Southern Denmark
Carpenter, Stephen R, University of Wisconsin
Carrington, James C, Oregon State University
Cashmore, Anthony R, University of Pennsylvania
Castilla, Juan Carlos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Cazenave, Anny, Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales
Chapin, III F, Stuart, University of Alaska
Ciechanover, Aaron J, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
Clapham, David E, Harvard Medical School
Clark, William C, Harvard University
Clayton, Robert N, University of Chicago
Coe, Michael D, Yale University
Conwell, Esther M, University of Rochester
Cowling, Ellis B, North Carolina State University
Cowling, Richard M, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Cox, Charles S, University of California, San Diego
Croteau, Rodney B, Washington State University
Crothers, Donald M, Yale University
Crutzen, Paul J, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry
Daily, Gretchen C, Stanford University
Dalrymple, Brent G, Oregon State University
Dangl, Jeffrey L, University of North Carolina
Darst, Seth A, Rockefeller University
Davies, David R, National Institutes of Health
Davis, Margaret B, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
De Camilli, Pietro V, Yale University School of Medicine
Dean, Caroline, John Innes Centre
DeFries, Ruth S, Columbia University
Deisenhofer, Johann, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas
Delmer, Deborah P, University of California, Davis
DeLong, Edward F, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
DeRosier, David J, Brandeis University
Diener, Theodor O, University of Maryland
Dirzo, Rodolfo, Stanford University
Dixon, Jack E, Howard Hughes Medical Center
Donoghue, Michael J, Yale University
Doolittle, Russell F, University of California, San Diego
Dunne, Thomas, University of California, Santa Barbara
Ehrlich, Paul R, Stanford University
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Eisner, Thomas, Cornell University
Emanuel, Kerry A, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Englander, Walter S, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Ernst, W, G, Stanford University
Falkowski, Paul G, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey
Feher, George, University of California, San Diego
Ferejohn, John A, Stanford University
Fersht, Sir Alan, University of Cambridge
Fischer, Edmond H, University of Washington
Fischer, Robert, University of California, Berkeley
Flannery, Kent V, University of Michigan
Frank, Joachim, Columbia University
Frey, Perry A, University of Wisconsin
Fridovich, Irwin, Duke University Medical Center
Frieden, Carl, Washington University School of Medicine
Futuyma, Douglas J, Stony Brook University
Gardner, Wilford R, University of California, Berkeley
Garrett, Christopher J R, University of Victoria
Gilbert, Walter, Harvard University
Gleick, Peter H, Pacific Institute, Oakland
Goldberg, Robert B, University of California, Los Angeles
Goodenough, Ward H, University of Pennsylvania
Goodman, Corey S, venBio, LLC
Goodman, Morris, Wayne State University School of Medicine
Greengard, Paul, Rockefeller University
Hake, Sarah, Agricultural Research Service
Hammel, Gene, University of California, Berkeley
Hanson, Susan, Clark University
Harrison, Stephen C, Harvard Medical School
Hart, Stanley R, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Hartl, Daniel L, Harvard University
Haselkorn, Robert, University of Chicago
Hawkes, Kristen, University of Utah
Hayes, John M, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Hille, Bertil, University of Washington
Hökfelt, Tomas, Karolinska Institutet
House, James S, University of Michigan
Hout, Michael, University of California, Berkeley
Hunten, Donald M, University of Arizona
Izquierdo, Ivan A, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul
Jagendorf, André T, Cornell University
Janzen, Daniel H, University of Pennsylvania
Jeanloz, Raymond, University of California, Berkeley
Jencks, Christopher S, Harvard University
Jury, William A, University of California, Riverside
Kaback, H Ronald, University of California, Los Angeles
Kailath, Thomas, Stanford University
Kay, Paul, International Computer Science Institute
Kay, Steve A, University of California, San Diego
Kennedy, Donald, Stanford University
Kerr, Allen, University of Adelaide
Kessler, Ronald C, Harvard Medical School
Khush, Gurdev S, University of California, Davis
Kieffer, Susan W, University of Illinois
Kirch, Patrick V, University of California, Berkeley
Kirk, Kent C, University of Wisconsin
Kivelson, Margaret G, University of California, Los Angeles
Klinman, Judith P, University of California, Berkeley
Klug, Sir Aaron, Medical Research Council
Knopoff, Leon, University of California, Los Angeles
Kornberg, Sir Hans, Boston University
Kutzbach, John E, University of Wisconsin
Lagarias, J Clark, University of California, Davis
Lambeck, Kurt, Australian National University
Landy, Arthur, Brown University
Langmuir, Charles H, Harvard University
Larkins, Brian A, University of Arizona
Le Pichon, Xavier T, College de France
Lenski, Richard E, Michigan State University
Leopold, Estella B, University of Washington
Levin, Simon A, Princeton University
Levitt, Michael, Stanford University School of Medicine
Likens, Gene E, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Lippincott-Schwartz, Jennifer, National Institutes of Health
Lorand, Laszlo, Northwestern University
Lovejoy, Owen C, Kent State University
Lynch, Michael, Indiana University
Mabogunje, Akin L, Foundation for Development and Environmental Initiatives
Malone, Thomas F, North Carolina State University
Manabe, Syukuro, Princeton University
Marcus, Joyce, University of Michigan
Massey, Douglas S, Princeton University
McWilliams, Jim C, University of California, Los Angeles
Medina, Ernesto, Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research
Melosh, Jay H, Purdue University
Meltzer, David J, Southern Methodist University
Michener, Charles D, University of Kansas
Miles, Edward L, University of Washington
Mooney, Harold A, Stanford University
Moore, Peter B, Yale University
Morel, Francois M M, Princeton University
Mosley-Thompson, Ellen, Ohio State University
Moss, Bernard, National Institutes of Health
Munk, Walter H, University of California, San Diego
Myers, Norman, University of Oxford
Nair, Balakrish G, National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases
Nathans, Jeremy, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Nester, Eugene W, University of Washington
Nicoll, Roger A, University of California, San Francisco
Novick, Richard P, New York University School of Medicine
O'Connell, James F, University of Utah
Olsen, Paul E, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Opdyke, Neil D, University of Florida
Oster, George F, University of California, Berkeley
Ostrom, Elinor, Indiana University
Pace, Norman R, University of Colorado
Paine, Robert T, University of Washington
Palmiter, Richard D, University of Washington School of Medicine
Pedlosky, Joseph, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Petsko, Gregory A, Brandeis University
Pettengill, Gordon H, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Philander, George S, Princeton University
Piperno, Dolores R, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Pollard, Thomas D, Yale University
Price Jr. Buford P, University of California, Berkeley
Reichard, Peter A, Karolinska Institutet
Reskin, Barbara F, University of Washington
Ricklefs, Robert E, University of Missouri
Rivest, Ronald L, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Roberts, John D, California Institute of Technology
Romney, Kimball A, University of California, Irvine
Rossmann, Michael G, Purdue University
Russell, David W, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center of Dallas
Rutter, William J, Synergenics, LLC
Sabloff, Jeremy A, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology
Sagdeev, Roald Z, University of Maryland
Sahlins, Marshall D, University of Chicago
Salmond, Anne, University of Auckland
Sanes, Joshua R, Harvard University
Schekman, Randy, University of California, Berkeley
Schellnhuber, John, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Schindler, David W, University of Alberta
Schmitt, Johanna, Brown University
Schneider, Stephen H, Woods Institute for the Environment
Schramm, Vern L, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Sederoff Ronald R, North Carolina State University
Shatz, Carla J, Stanford University
Sherman, Fred, University of Rochester Medical Center
Sidman, Richard L, Harvard Medical School
Sieh, Kerry, Nanyang Technological University
Simons, Elwyn L, Duke University Lemur Center
Singer, Burton H, Princeton University
Singer, Maxine F, Carnegie Institution of Washington
Skyrms, Brian, University of California, Irvine
Sleep, Norman H, Stanford University
Smith, Bruce D, Smithsonian Institution
Snyder, Solomon H, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Sokal, Robert R, Stony Brook University
Spencer, Charles S, American Museum of Natural History
Steitz, Thomas A, Yale University
Strier, Karen B, University of Wisconsin
Südhof, Thomas C, Stanford University School of Medicine
Taylor, Susan S, University of California, San Diego
Terborgh, John, Duke University
Thomas, David Hurst, American Museum of Natural History
Thompson, Lonnie G, Ohio State University
Tjian, Robert T, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Turner, Monica G, University of Wisconsin
Uyeda, Seiya, Tokai University
Valentine, James W, University of California, Berkeley
Valentine, Joan Selverstone, University of California, Los Angeles
Van Etten, James L, University of Nebraska
Van Holde, Kensal E, Oregon State University
Vaughan, Martha, National Institutes of Health
Verba Sidney, Harvard University
Von Hippel, Peter H, University of Oregon
Wake, David B, University of California, Berkeley
Walker, Alan, Pennsylvania State University
Walker John E, Medical Research Council
Watson, Bruce E, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Watson, Patty Jo, Washington University, St. Louis
Weigel, Detlef, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology
Wessler, Susan R, University of Georgia
West-Eberhard, Mary Jane, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
White, Tim D, University of California, Berkeley
Wilson, William Julius, Harvard University
Wolfenden, Richard V, University of North Carolina
Wood, John A, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Woodwell, George M, Woods Hole Research Center
Wright, Jr Herbert E, University of Minnesota
Wu, Carl, National Institutes of Health
Wunsch, Carl, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Zoback, Mary Lou, Risk Management Solutions, Inc