That headline is NOT a typo, that’s what they say:
If there was even any doubt about Hansen changing from scientist to advocate, that doubt is now shattered.
Meanwhile, amazingly, James Hansen has agreed to a debate. Hansen is going to debate with Don Blankenship of Massey coal company.
This just in, from NASA climate scientist James Hansen, in response to Massey Energy President Don Blankenship’s challenge to debate global warming, the coal industry and the West Virginia economy. I received this note from Dr. Hansen, who asked that I forward the information on to Blankenship.
This is going to become ground zero for the issue. Word has it the people of WV are becoming quite energized.
Hansen has a new commentary on Yale’s Environment 360 blog called “A Plea to President Obama: End Mountaintop Removal.”
Stay tuned. This is going to escalate most likely.
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Big Jim ought to check the thermometer.
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It is past the time to grant Hansen his wish, martyrdom. He should be fired immediately for multiple violations of the Hatch Act.
Sounds like a bad idea to me. Blankenship is an accountant not a scientist. I doubt that he would have the scientific knowledge to successfully debate Mickey Mouse. This debate will likely be a huge loss for the skeptics side. Maybe there is something in it for the coal company, like a billion dollar grant for clean coal research of some such thing.
Here is a picture of last winter in London… http://thechive.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/amazing-photography-49.jpg
That should be a reminder of where we are heading, and it is not going according to their climate models… that poor girl!
Hopefully they’ll prove Hanson for what he is, a political advocate and no longer a scientist.
I’d love to know how the debate turns out, and whether Hanson will use the prospect of El Nino as an attempt to say the upward trend will continue.
BTW: What happened to the common El Nino cool pool, it was there yesterday, now look at the new map of subsurface SST’s for today, it vanished
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/jsdisplay/plots/gif/Dep_Sec_EQ_5d.gif
Clearly in past El Ninos it doesn’t show up for a whopping one day and then just disappear?
Is there someone at Massey who will be helping Blankenship prep for this encounter? Might they be interested in some well-documented bullet points from the skeptic’s arsenal? Anyone know of an email address for such a person?
kim (09:48:31) said :
Big Jim ought to check the thermometer.
AND the sun. We’ve got TWO of the cutest little Sun Flecks going at the same time (a NEW RECORD FOR SC24!!), but tellingly the 10.7 cm flux is hovering around 67 again. Looks to me like vestigial spots (to coin a phrase) which are doomed to rapid extinguishment (another one) as there are insufficent Joules behind them.
Where is that big uptick in flux that NASA was crowing about?
Flecks do not a cycle make.
In fact, the more this short-life fleck pattern repeats itself, the more Livingston & Penn are lookin’ good. Imagine YEARS of this [expletive preemptorily deleted]. Yikes. Buy coal.
JumboTron Jim’s claim to being a Climate is settled Scientist is based on the output of a computer model?
Now, the moniker of Climate Killing Coal is a subliminal message if I ever heard one. That one could get someone in a lot of trouble or cause a tsunami of a flap.
That is really below the belt and uncalled for.
I would be insulted, Mr. President.
To be fair, removing entire mountaintops on scale is an extreme approach to mining of coal. He’s using that as a “guilt by association” to unfairly villify buring coal. That’s the trick here.
Can’t I be against mountain top removal, a hideous insult to the environment, and also be a climate skeptic?
The Protest Warriors need to re-open their website with a new direction. It would be hilarious to protest against the coal protesters and walk amongst them.
The pictures alone would be pure comedy.
Now how is this going to help bring alternative energy into the mainstream? Science does not happen just because people wish it to. Research and development takes time and money and many promising leads never pay off.
If all the people who believe global warming is being caused by man-made carbon emissions would just go ‘off grid’ (just turn everything off), then this ‘crisis’ could be delayed for years.
The debate will be declared by the media to be a major win for Hansen no matter what the outcome. The best hope is that a lot of people actually hear the debate because Hansen’s dementia will be obvious. Let him go off on one of his “death train” rants and he will alienate far more people than he could ever convince.
Some of Hansen’s more recent speeches reveal a man at the end of his rope. His theories are in shambles, his predictions wildly inaccurate, his demeanor increasingly shrill. He will be unable to control himself and the reckless verbiage that he will unleash will probably bring an end to his long and dubious career.
I sure hope this guy has his ducks in a row. If he’s not entirely up to speed on the “issues” Hansen will slaughter him. Hansen is nothing if not very intelligent. Misguided, but intelligent nontheless….
BTW, I hope the Greenpeace activists are charged with piracy…
David Segesta (09:53:21) :
Sounds like a bad idea to me. Blankenship is an accountant not a scientist. I doubt that he would have the scientific knowledge to successfully debate Mickey Mouse. This debate will likely be a huge loss for the skeptics side. Maybe there is something in it for the coal company, like a billion dollar grant for clean coal research of some such thing.
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Typical AGW debate menatality (regardless of whose side you are on, I suspect not the side of Fair and Open Debate) , elevating science to some sort of unreachable height that is the sole domain of the chosen few. Then even before the debate discount and maginalize the participant, then bring the “evil coal industry lookign for money” argument at the end.
Your arguments are old and tired, talking points from the “man without a point” handbook, and lack any sort of relevance to the debate. If it is like other debates on the subject, he will talk down and lecture instead of concentrating on coherent arguments.
If Hansen’s debate points are as persuasive as yours I think he is doomed, Blankenship is a seasoned speaker and has a good grasp of the relevant science and has been vocal in communicating his positions.
I believe that Hansen, who surrounds himself with yes men and is shielded from dissent, will find that a prepared non-scientist foe is far more dangerous than he is as an arrogant irrational advocate who never has to defend himself or his “science”. Yet he could surprise me and I do not totally discount his arguments, he has been known to moderate his rhetoric at times.
Should be fun to watch though no matter which way it goes.
That, of course, is what they demand that YOU do, but they don’t have to because they’re “getting the message out”.
I wonder if the debate moderator will halt any ad hominem and other logocal fallacies in their tracks, assume he or she can identify them.
Hansen should look at the USHCN gauges in WV. He’ll be nearest to the one of top of the roof of the Army Corps of Engineers Winfield Lock and Dam control building, surrounded by concrete and asphalt. Funny, the temperature is said to have gone up a little over a degree in that part of the state during the last century…no wonder, considering where the gauges are.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/17/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-64/
If he doesn’t like the one at Winfield, he should visit the ones in other parts of the state at the water treatment plants, or the ones at the airports. For a rural state, with lots of open spaces, you’d think this would be a perfect state to get reliable long-term temperatures from. In fact, all the USHCN gauges are considered rural, however none appear to be following the correct location rules for reliable temperatures. And, of course, the historical record is lacking for most of these sites in the Meta data.
Yes, you can be against Mountaintop Removal, as I am, but also be against the use of junk science to say that C02 is driving the temperature and climate. The two should be approached as separate issues.
The USHCN temperature gauges themselves in this rural state show the lack of trustworthy science and data gathering techniques which Hansen is among the prime users of.
Maybe skeptics shoud attend to balance the audience – maybe ask the really tough questions that might not get aired. Has the arctic been warmer in the past 300yrs? -(the recent post on Arctic exploration history 18th Century and on). Why has it been cooling for the past 10 years and particularly the past two ro three. Get him to repeat his forecast a world record high temp in the next year or so. Get him to agree to abandon the models and the settled science if it doesn’t come to pass. Get him to forecast when the Arctic Ocean will be essentially free of ice……
Go, Jim! Go!
He is making the arc of a prophet, and the profits of AGW, whom he is oging to inevitably annoy, will not tolerate him.
What Climate Heretic said . Except that Don Blankenship can be a bit of a hothead , from what I understand .
Hansen probably thinks this guy won’t be much of a challenge. Maybe he’s right. Or maybe this guy will kick his can. Wait and see. All I know is, personally I’d prefer someone up against Hansen whose knowledge I’m more familiar with. Who knows what this guy knows? I don’t.
I’m going to go against the the general tone here and say I support any method of getting coal that people want to do. If “mountain-top removal” is profitable, then they will do it. The alternatives may also be highly undesirable. Underground mines, for instance, that are mined manually, are notoriously dangerous to work in. I suspect that technology will eventually sort out the issues with most approaches, perhaps by making them totally obsolete. All I know is that if you really don’t want people doing it, asking the government to coerce them is sinister…why not just boycott power generated from coal mined in such a way? As a consumer, you have that power.
I want to know what time the debate is going to be (preferably relative to Greenwich Mean Time) so that I (everyone here??) can hold it in prayer…
Climate Heretic (10:47:35) :
Spot on.
Stopping coal mining will be good for the economy of West Virginia? What else, pray tell, will they be doing for money there then?
Any chance a pinch hitter can be sent in for the debate?
One would have to have a ready-to-go presentation given there is only one day’s notice.
“..as many friends as you can muster..”
They may have trouble mustering : do they wish to be parted from their bongs due to a stay in jail?