Conformity: "Vote Democrat," says a meteorologist and noted global warming proponent. But Democrats won't be getting the vote of the esteemed physicist who just resigned from a scientific body for silencing debate.

Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, took to the pages of the Washington Post Friday to say that while "as a scientist, I shouldn't have a stake in the upcoming midterm elections," he regretted to announce that "unfortunately, it seems that I — and indeed all my fellow climate scientists — do."

Mann warns that Republicans would launch "a hostile investigation of climate science." But investigation is, in fact, warranted.

Harold Lewis, physics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been a member of the American Physical Society, the second-largest association of physicists in the world, for 67 years — most of the organization's existence. A couple of days before Mann's piece appeared, Lewis tendered his resignation.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts called it "an important moment in science history ... on the scale of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door." (Boasting a 10-kilowatt array that powers his home and driving an electric-powered Ford TH!NK, Watts can't be called a right-wing anti-environmentalist.)

Lewis is neither a lightweight nor a crank. A student of father-of -the-bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, he studied at Berkeley and Princeton, worked at Bell Labs and advised the U.S. government on nuclear safety.

Last year, Lewis told CBS News, "Nobody doubts that CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing for the better part of a century." But he added, "If you say that the Earth is warming you are telling the truth, but not the whole truth, and if you say it is due to the burning of fossil fuels, you are on thin ice."

Lewis' letter charged that climatologists have a monetary motive to promote global warming. Then he jabbed none other than Mann, arguing that Penn State "cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for" pouncing on Mann for his role in Climate-gate.

That scandal found prominent scientists unscientifically conspiring to keep dissenting researchers from publishing their findings. As to next month's elections, the public clearly has a stake in sending people to Washington who keep the taxpayers' money from such charlatans.

See the full text of Lewis' letter of resignation at IBDeditorials.com.