Failing to make his case, James Hansen uses children as legal pawns

When I was a boy in the 1950s, my father told me ‘The very worst thing you can say of a man is “He meant well”.’ At the time, I didn’t fully understand – I thought he was simply talking about failure, and I could certainly think of worse things than failure.
Men like Hansen illustrate what he was really talking about.

I know it is bad behaviour to copy a post from another thread, but it seems wise for me to copy to here what I recently wrote on another thread of WUWT which considered the same subject as this thread. It seems wise for me to copy it in the light of the “bring it on” comments above and considering that this thread directly mentions James Hansen: some people may not be aware of his past ‘form’.
The post I am copying was in the thread at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/04/desperate-measures-indeed/
and is as follows.
Please note that it provides two illustrations of the problem it explains: one court case was won by the the anti-AGW side and the other was won by pro-AGW activists on the basis of James Hansen’s testimony.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
May 5, 2011 at 3:27 am
Friends:
There is a real risk here.
Legal evidence and scientific evidence are very different.
Expert opinions of available technical information are evidence in a law court, and the most authoritative of those opinions are accepted as being “facts”.
Empirical data are evidence in science, and the data are accepted as being “facts” unless and until other empirical data disproves them. Interpretations of the data are opinions that have equal worth (regardless of the expertise of the opinion holders) so long as the opinions are consistent with the data.
Courts of law do not evaluate scientific evidence (how could they?). Instead, when confronted with conflicting interpretations of a technical issue, law courts evaluate the expertise of the holders of expert opinions. So, in a court of law, the Expert Witness with the greatest authority in a technical field provides the technical “facts” which the court accepts as being the most definitive legal evidence.
The Kingsnorth Power Station trial in the UK demonstrated the seriousness of the problem that the nature of legal evidence provides for those who want scientific evidence assessed in a court of law.
Eco-terrorists had attacked the power station by cutting through its boundary fence to effect entry, then climbing its chimney and painting graffiti on it. This cost the owners of the power station much money for repairs, removal of the graffiti and – most importantly – having to close down the power station while the eco-terrorists were removed. These facts were not disputed.
However, the law of England allows a person to damage another person’s property if that damage is needed to prevent more serious harm; e.g. a door of a burning building may need to be smashed to rescue a child trapped in the building, or property may need to be destroyed to create a fire-break that will stop progress of a fire that is out of control, or… etc.
The eco-terrorists claimed that the carbon dioxide emissions from the power station are causing severe climate change which is much more harmful than any harm and costs caused by their attack on the power station. Indeed, their case was that the interruption of the power station’s operation induced by their attack was a greater benefit than the costs and damage of their attack.
This case (presented by the eco-terrorists) is clearly untrue – it is ridiculous – according to available scientific evidence. But they won their case and were acquitted.
Their acquittal resulted from Dr James Hansen travelling to the UK to attend as an Expert Witness for their defence. He is Head of NASA GISS and, therefore, is a very authoritative Expert Witness. The government of the USA has appointed Dr Hansen to that position and, therefore, the government of the USA has declared that he is a supreme authority on climate change effected by power station emissions.
In the face of that expert opinion, the court had no option other than to accept the case presented by the eco-terrorists as being true and, therefore, it acquitted them.
Another UK legal case demonstrates the same problem.
A legal attempt successfully stopped indoctrination of children by showing Mr Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” in schools without warning that the film was a political document. The UK government was the defendant because it wanted the showing of the film without comment in schools. But the Court found against the UK government because
(a) the UK government agreed that the UN IPCC was the supreme authority on climate change
and
(b) the film did not agree with scientific statements of the IPCC.
In summation:
governments declare peoples’ authority as “experts” by appointing them,
courts accept the words of “experts” with greatest authority as being “facts”,
and law courts decide on the basis of those “facts”.
Hence, defending scientific truth of AGW in a court of law is very, very difficult.
Richard

“…. our climate remains stable enough….”
Pray tell, when has our climate ever been “stable” or even “unstable?” From what I have gleened from the information published here and elsewhere is that the one constant is that the climate changes following a pattern. Periods of cold, followed by periods of warmth, so on and so on. That is the true “stable,” change. I wonder what judge they have shopped for, because I see an inevitable overturning of any judgement in the plaintiff’s favor.