There’s not a whole lot I can say about this, except that I’m looking forward to his retirement soon. Then, he can speak as a “private citizen” as much as he wants.
Here’s the full story.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/06/nasa-scientist-climate-change?newsfeed=true
Related articles
- Gore, Hansen, Trenberth to make Antarctic PR expedition (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Why I must speak out on climate change: James Hansen at TED2012 (junkscience.com)
- NASA’s Hansen tries to tell Slovenia not to build a power plant (wattsupwiththat.com)
- Hey Hansen! Where’s The Beef?
He should be fired.
Stand up for yourself if you really mean it James.
This is why he is uttering gibberish these days:
http://globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-14-post-6231.html#pid6231
Hansen says we have a moral duty to protect our children and grandchildren from disaster.
I agree, it’s our moral duty to protect our children and grandchildren from confiscatory energy tax burdens and other unsustainable social “welfare” programs.
how is this not a breach of his employment contract?
Slavery?
Oy vey!
Just like Mann , he does much good when for the people he hates the most , keep him in the public spotlight , encourage him to be more outlandish then sit back and enjoy the experience.
When your enemy is shooting themselves in the foot the worse thing you can do is try to stop them.
“We’re handing them a climate system which is potentially out of their control”. Does he really think that the current climate system is within our control?
Hansen should first go on a mission to China and convince them to cut and tax their CO2 emissions. What we do is irrelevant!
Of course, most of his preferred mitigations would simply do away with a portion of those future generations. Glad he’s so concerned.
Ah, yes. The old wealth redistribution, equal outcomes, socialist propaganda BS. Get a life, James.
=====================================================================
“Under this proposal, the carbon levy would increase year on year, with the tax income paid directly back to the public as a dividend, shared equally, rather than put into government coffers. Because the tax would greatly increase the cost of fossil fuel energy, consumers relying on green or low carbon sources of power would benefit the most as this dividend would come on top of cheaper fuel bills. It would promote a dramatic increase in the investment and development of low-carbon energy sources and technologies.
The very rich and most profligate energy users, people with several homes, or private jets and fuel-hungry cars, would also be forced into dramatically changing their energy use. In the new paper, Hansen, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and his colleagues warn that failing to cut CO2 emissions by 6% now will mean that by 2022, the annual cuts would need to reach a more drastic level of 15% a year.”
Where to start? Oh well….
“The very rich and most profligate energy users, people with several homes, or private jets and fuel-hungry cars, would also be forced into dramatically changing their energy use.”
nanananya Gore!
I propose a voluntary tax. If it is involuntary it is a tiny bit closer to slavery.
I like Steve Goddard’s take on it:
http://www.real-science.com/hansen-is-the-new-ehrlich
“Hansen has dropped any pretense of science. He now spends his days tampering with temperature records and running around making completely insane forecasts of doom.”
I’m not sure I agree that there was EVER any pretense of science. GISS seems more like an elaborate scheme to make his dreams of apocalypse come true, even if it means re-writing the entire temperature history to make it so.
James “If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is” Hansen.
This man is simply insane.
There’s not a whole lot I can say about this, except that I’m looking forward to his retirement soon.
Hansen started working at GISS in 1967 — he’s ‘way past the forty-year mark, and I know of gummint employees who hung on for *fifty-five* years. My take on it is that he knows the gravy train ends when his association with NASA does, and he won’t put his papers in until he becomes such an embarrassment that his boss forces the issue.
Earth to Hansen. The carbon tax window has closed. Go home.
Doomsayers, an old type of criminal now set to have impacts not just on the local tribe but upon all the people of Earth. A padded room needs to be reserved for this one before he does any more damage with his fabricated prognostications.
One and only one response: Where is Anthony’s red BS button when you need it?
In lieu of that, I can release my only response this way to Hansen’s equivocation:
. . . . . . Oh B***S*** !
.
Why does he still have a taxpayer funded job?
Hansen’s obsession over CO2 in his later years is reminiscent of Linus Pauling and his obsession over vitamin C in his later years. It’s like they’ve lost their ability to think objectively as they’ve aged.
He is loved by the Chinese and here is why:
http://globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-14-post-7812.html#pid7812
Hansen, you need to live what you are selling. Until then, what you say is just yada yada yada.
The racket is reaching a crescendo. The racketeers are falling on their swords. This passed peer review? I hope the well-known acronym ‘OMFG’ doesn’t get snipped…..he’s on a par with the smug and leering Ms. Norgaard. Come to think of it, it’s the same leer. The Guardian photograph is an astounding bit of glory art.
Someone is jousting with windmills if he thinks that we can manage the climate and hand it over to our children. A world wide tax system, no chance of that that god!
Hansen is finally showing his true Marxist color.
This has nothing to do with green, this is all about Red.
“…handing future generations a climate system that is potentially out of control…”
Since when have humans controlled climate? Or weather?
Per Hansen’s recent prediction that sea-level rise will accelerating in the coming decade, in his “Earth’s Energy Balance and Its Implications” (2012, a Google Search finds it), what Hansen now is seeking to establish is simply this:
(1) *IF* Hansen’s predictions are confirmed …
(2) *THEN* serious moral problems must be faced.
The common sense fact is, Hansen is completely correct to argue this. And needless to say, it is very largely fear of (2) that motivates many folks to argue against (1).
I wonder what the rest of GISS thinks of Hansen’s tomfoolery.
Are they in agreement? Or are they horribly embarrassed by Hansen’s literally foaming mouth advocacy?
There is a major moral duty involved. Don’t scientists have a moral obligation to do honest work and not hide the decline? How can we trust a scientist when they don’t allow for full disclosure on all of their data, including source data?
he’ll have a fine fat pension when he retires, too.
what does it matter if a few people whine – they won’t stop paying, so it’s all a joke.
and hansen isn’t the punch line.
“Because the tax would greatly increase the cost of fossil fuel energy, consumers relying on green or low carbon sources of power would benefit the most as this dividend would come on top of cheaper fuel bills.”
Bull! Bills in the Umk are increasing regularly under the Renewable Energy Obligation, a regressive tax that pasys billions in subsidies to energy firms to building subsidised windfarms & solar arrays that blot the landscape!
Slavery? How quaint & interesting! Who is it who doesn’t want Africans to escape poverty & hunger by developing? I am a AGW sceptic, I want them to ahcieve freedom, democracy, develop, reduce their engery footprint, escspe poverty through development. No Sir, not me, it’s the whole damnable Green movement that wants to Africans poor! They should hang their heads in shame, slavery be blowed! Clearly Hansen has either lost it or recently had a sharp blow upon his head! Billiobs will be handed over to venal mendacious politicans & crooks in poor countries who will enrich themselves, not the people! That was one of the primary reasons Copenhagen failed, developing countries didn’t want the west to know what they spent the west’s money on!
It is just a matter of context…
http://i39.tinypic.com/19xnkl.jpg
I was reading a first-person description of living with manic depression (“Angels of madness” by Glen Allen in “The New Brunswick Reader” June 19, 1999) and came across a memorable passage:
“Manic depression, or bipolar disorder as it is now called in these days of political correctness, touches the lives of one of every 100 New Brunswickers. It is an often devastating malaise that can strike without warning, rendering its victims subject, initially, to inexplicable “highs” that can spin out of control. First comes “hypomania” – a time of great busyness and well-being and then follows full-blown mania when the afflicted persons will make great plans, sleep not at all, feel a sense of grandiosity, spend wildly, and travel widely.
“It can also be a time of delusion or even hallucination (hearing, seeing or smelling things that aren’t there) marked by extreme irritation with family or friends who cannot share this experience. This condition leads the manic persons to believe that what they are doing is absolutely correct. They may, as I have done in the past, write floridly mad letters to everyone but the Queen simply because it seems necessary to alert the world to some clear and present danger, again the right thing to do.”
Several parts of this article put me in mind of someone else who is regularly in the news.
IanM
I hope he continue for many more years.
Just because he is making a fool of himself and his run away climate change theory.
More and more people realise that when listening to him.
Great job. Please continue with statements like this:
“Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming.”
does anyone, anywhere, still think that this fight about science and not politics? I didn’t think so.
A 15 trillion dollar national debt is an “injustice of one generation to others”. All else pales in insignificance.
A classic display of shark jumping by Hansen.
Funny how the political elite hahaha never say anything about their moral culpability in the mountains of debt they are storing up for our grandchildren, for the insanely trivial reason that its the best mechanism for enhancing own electoral prospects.
Whenever will Hansen understand that the only obligation I have to the next generation is to nurture it, clothe it, feed it and educate it till it reaches 16 (or 18 or whenever it finishes full-time education)? After that it’s on its own, like every generation before it, unless it chooses to use the wisdom of my accumulated years.
And one thing I most certainly am under an obligation not to do is to second-guess that generation’s answers to the problems that it will face because:
1 I don’t know what those problems will be and how they may play out (and neither does Hansen);
2 I don’t know what technological developments will be available to it (and neither does Hansen but the last 50 years ought to be a lesson!);
3 Experience tells me that — like generals forever preparing to fight the previous war — today’s “solutions” will be wrong;
4 And given the costs associated with the purported cures for climate change these “solutions” may well have impoverished the next generation to the extent that it could be struggling to find the means to address the serious problems that arise then rather than the minor ones which may or may not have arisen now.
Somehow I put a #1 behind my name. It’s just RobRoy. oops
If Hansen’s hyperbole casts this as a moral issue on par with slavery, maybe he should be cast as representing the slave owners.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new notion, conceived in university, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created evil.
Now we are engaged in a great climate war, testing whether that notion, or any notion, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that notion might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will note, and long remember what we say here,because we’re scientists. It is for us the activeists, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored scientists we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these scientists shall not have faked in vain—that this nation, under Gaia, shall have a new birth of activism—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth.
I extracted the following text from the self-descriptive article “Angels of madness” by Glen Allen (The New Brunswick Reader June 19, 1999):
“Manic depression, or bipolar disorder as it is now called in these days of political correctness, touches the lives of one in every 100 New Brunswickers. It is an often devastating malaise that can strike without warning, rendering its victims subject, initially, to inexplicable “highs” that can spin out of control. First comes “hypomania” – a time of great busyness and well-being and then follows full-blown mania when the afflicted persons will make great plans, sleep not at all, feel a sense of grandiosity, spend wildly and travel widely.
“It can also be a time of delusion or even hallucination (hearing, seeing or smelling things that aren’t there) marked by extreme irritation with family or friends who cannot share this experience. This condition leads the manic persons to believe that what they are doing is absolutely correct. They may, as I have done in the past, write floridly mad letters to everyone but the Queen simply because it seems necessary to alert the world to some clear and present danger, again the right thing to do.”
A lot of the text seems to describe a person well known from the news.
IanM
Mr. Green and his royalty fly around the world telling everyone that they must reduce their carbon footprint. The electorate may or may not notice. Mr. Green is still in charge and according to Gallup enjoys a 50% favorable rating.
What an idiot. I’m sure he’s arrived a bit early in Edinburgh, the comedy season isn’t until later in the year. Hope he appears via webcam. Won’t he just think of the children!
Maybe he’s sore because the West Side Highway still hasn’t flooded, even once.
Hansen used to rant merely about “death trains” carrying coal. He’s since had to expand his horizons thanks to oil sands and frakked natural gas. I suspect he’ll die as a bitter old man.
Like to see Hansen debate Al Sharpton on this topic.
How many times can this guy actually jump a shark without getting eaten?! sigh.
GISS should be terminated. We have a lot better things to do with our money. Funding nut jobs should not be high on the list.
Who knew Abe Lincoln could have ended slavery with a tax?
sunshinehours1 says:
April 7, 2012 at 7:37 am
I propose a voluntary tax. If it is involuntary it is a tiny bit closer to slavery.
The above comment, although said in jest, sums up how little some people actually understand what freedom actually is and what a “tax” is.
Tax by definition cannot be “voluntary.” Giving money voluntarily is called “charity.” Charity is a selfless act of free will. An involuntary donation (a tax) is taken by force. It is somewhat more than just “a tiny bit” closer to slavery.
Paul Westhaver says:
April 7, 2012 at 7:38 am
This man is simply insane.
No – he knows how to milk this pretend crisis for every dollar he can get before it is accepted as a scam even by the least intelligent politicians. He’s getting more income from shouting ‘wolf’ than he would for ensuring that GISS keeps good original data for real science.
Do I remember him actually postulating that we should reduce population to save the planet? What future generations?
Dr. Hansen’s form of propaganda works pretty well in communism, socialism, or liberalism.
Not so well in a democracy or in the sciences.
He is fortunate he lives in a Country where there is no foolish tax.
Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong
March 22, 2012William D. Nordhaus.
Book review
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/?pagination=false
I would say “He’s lost his mind” but that left him years ago, sometime around the “death trains” pronouncement…
And the American media actually believe The Weather Clown has a meaninful contribution to make for science rather than acknowledge that he has corrupted climate science to the point it is no more respectable than phrenology.
The irony of a a senior bloke from NASA wittering on about “profligate energy users”. But I forgot, NASA no longer has anything to do with space exploration …
A doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C of warming, with most of the warming occurring at higher latitudes (Canada and Russia in the Northern Hemisphere, for example.) where the growing season is limited by the number of frost free days, as planetary clouds in the tropics increase or decrease to resist forcing changes. The IPCC extreme warming predictions – an increase of 3C average warming – require temperature amplification. The so called safe limit in warming is 2C. Mission accomplished. There is no global warming crisis due to the rise of atmospheric CO2 from 0.028% to 0.056%. CO2 is not a poison. Greenhouses inject CO2 into the greenhouse to 0.1% to 0.12% to increase yield. The biosphere will and is expanded due to atmospheric CO2 rise.
The real crisis is massive public spending and a massive increase in taxes which will force all primary industry and most secondary industry to leave Western Countries. The government does not have a magic wand to change engineering facts or to create the economic growth required to waste trillions of dollars without sovereign debit fault. If the US follows California the US will be turned into an economic version of Spain, unemployment of more than 20% and massive public debit.
The schemes which are being proposed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are scams. The actual cost of the schemed is four to five times greater than what is proposed if the costs for massive storage systems such a compressed air or liquid sodium batteries to enable wind power or solar power to be available on demand, is included. Those advocating for wind power ingeniously reference Denmark knowing full well Denmark is a special case, Denmark is a small country located in region where there are high winds due to the proximity of the ocean and the arctic. Denmark is the Saudi Arabia of the Western world as it has a small population and large amounts of oil revenue to pay for wind farms. Denmark (population 5.5 million) uses the hydro electrical power of Norway and Sweden as a battery. Wind power requires a battery. Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, New York, Houston, and so on do not have a source of wind and even if they did could not possibly afford the cost for both wind generation and a storage system. Reality is reality.
Even if the Western governments had a magic wand to create the trillions of dollars to spend on scams and ignoring the fundamental engineering issues such as it takes roughly 170 years for the direct energy savings of high speed trains over airplanes to offset the energy required to construct a high speed medium distance train (think road bed and rails, electric lines, and so on.), assume the scams could reduce Western emission by 20% by say 2020, CO2 will continue to rise due the emissions of the Asia countries. The Asia countries will not follow Europe into economic ruin. Atmospheric CO2 will therefore continue to increase.
The end of this madness will be two eminent events:
1) Obviously, Greece will default and Spain will follow, as surely as water flows downhill. The question is not if but when.
2) The planet will cool due to the interruption of the solar magnetic cycle. There are 1500 year cycles of warming and cooling – Dansgaard/Oescheger cycles (also referred to as Bond cycles named after the late Gerald Bond who tracked 23 of the cycles) – which coincide over and over again with solar magnetic cycle changes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-21/spain-risks-default-now-more-than-ever-buiter-says-tom-keene.html
“Spain’s Default Risk Is Rising, Buiter Says: Tom Keene
Spain has never been so close to default and Greece, Ireland and Portugal may need further bailouts, Citigroup Inc. chief economist Willem Buiter said. “Spain is the key country about which I’m most worried,” Buiter, a former Bank of England policy maker, said in a radio interview today on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt. “It’s really moved to the wrong side of the spectrum and is now at greater risk of sovereign restructuring than ever before.”
‘ He argues that storing up expensive and destructive consequences for society in future is an “injustice of one generation to others”. ‘
Too right, Jim! Please stop them building those damned wind turbines and solar panel arrays – and, for heaven’s (or even earth’s) sake, do some proper research into thorium and get fracking!
It is a moral issue and Hansen should be ashamed of his lack of the same. What he and his ilk are proposing is to condemn the third world just because they are non white. So yeah the slave masters are people like Hansen.
Well he is a well known doomsday-er propagandist who works for someone who has a vested interest in scaring people over anything to help them feel miserable and guilty.That will make him feel better and be relevant to his true boss:
http://globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-14-post-7807.html#pid7807
“Then, he can speak as a “private citizen” as much as he wants”
I’m sure he will.
Buried is our psyche is an ancient archetypical fear of the cold.Just as religion protects us from fear of death,warming delusions protect us from fear of cold.
As a tax slave, I demand that this individual who is earning large quantities of money outside of his public employment be fired from that employment. “Hunger Games” comes more and more to mind each day.
Trouble is if elected will the current front runner in the Republican
Party Mitt Romney have the guts to fire Hanson…?
Does anyone have information on Hansen’s lifestyle? Or others on the so called team. What I mean is, does he or others walk the talk? Of course we know about Gore, but the others. Not meant to pry into their lives, but general lifestyle.
Apologies for the double posting. I got a message that I was not logged in, etc. The format seems to keep changing, one time calling for me to type in my information and then sign in, other times my name and e-dress are already filled in, as they are now (the first time in ages).
IanM
Hansen just insulted everyone with an ancestor who experienced slavery.
“The situation we’re creating for young people and future generations is that we’re handing them a climate system which is potentially out of their control,” he said.
============================
…so no one is upset about cancer, plasticizers in their water, lack of jobs, or any of those other things
The whole problem boils down to the youth are just not pulling their weight and living up to their obligations of paying more taxes, working more hours, and doing without…..to support the world Hansen wants to leave them…………..
ChE says:
April 7, 2012 at 8:47 am
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new notion, conceived in university, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created evil.
——————-
This was brilliant, ChE, but I’d like to hope that we’re on the right side of Gettysburg. Oh, and presumably Hansen gives new meaning to “Little Roundtop.”
This man is really without any shame.
About the peer review process at PNAS:
Wikipedia citation from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proceedings_of_the_National_Academy_of_Sciences_of_the_United_States_of_America
Peer review
All research papers published in PNAS are peer-reviewed.[1] The standard mode is for papers to be submitted directly to PNAS rather than going through an Academy member. Members may handle the peer review process for up to 4 of their own papers per year—this is an open review process because the member selects and communicates directly with the referees. These submissions and reviews, like all for PNAS, are evaluated for publication by the PNAS Editorial Board. Until July 1, 2010, members were allowed to communicate up to 2 papers from non-members to PNAS every year. The review process for these papers was anonymous in that the identities of the referees were not revealed to the authors. Referees were selected by the NAS member.[2][3][4] PNAS eliminated communicated submissions through NAS members as of July 1, 2010, while continuing to make the final decision on all PNAS papers.[5]
Hansen is member since 1996.
That’s how it works. Simple.
He’s making lots of money now and as someone said in an earlier post-his pension is building fast.
He won’t be fired because the current leaders follow the same themes. We are in a real mess in this country and with 47% dummies and lemmings we probably won’t get out soon.
============
Ian E: “For heaven’s (or even earth’s) sake [Jim Hansen] do some proper research into thorium!
============
James Hansen has already taken Ian E’s advice.
It’s not that Hansen thinks nuclear power is perfectly safe. Yet Hansen does appreciate that (for example) the half-life of radiation from cesium at Fukushima is far shorter than the half-life of AGW from CO2. Although other folks may differ, Hansen’s analysis seems rational, moral, and factually solid to me.
Bottom Line: Advocates of nuclear energy have a strong ally in James Hansen.
[You are posting under numerous screen names. Please use one screen name only. ~dbs, mod.]
“We’re handing them a climate system which is potentially out of their control”.
If this loon believes we could control the climate he needs help and medication, reading between the lines its clear he has become infected with the desire to control humanity. Its clear Hansen is just another petty tyrant unable to control his inner most desire for authority of the lives of others, just one of the little Napoleons humanity has been cursed with since we climbed out of the trees. And as for future generations? We would be doing them more favours by supplying them with a sound industrial base itself supplied with cheap plentiful and reliable energy resources from which they themselves can add to and improve over their own life spans.
Think if the Luddites had gotten their way and no industrial revolution had occurred, all the wonderful miracles of an industrial society denied to us in this age, in fact Hansen is simply a modern Luddite and for the sake of future generations he should be treated as such. Future generations really would curse us if we listened the ravings of jumped up little Napoleons like Hansen and his comrades. Let us hope and pray that the likes of Hansen fail and become the laughing stocks of the future generations to come.
I’ll match his slavery and raise him a genocide – every government and private dollar wasted because of his fraudulent record keeping is a dollar not available to supply clean water to the truly needy in the world or to develop or provide medicine to save others. Someone needs to estimate the number of deaths caused by the mis-allocation of capital caused by Hansen.
Sunset, excellent pic, maybe we should call him Chairman Hansen.
On par with Slavery?
Sweet jeeebus, slavery was a quicky par 3. Now your Climate Change is like slavery, capitalism and general snapage all rolled into one mother of a bitch of a dawg-leg par 5.
I wonder what he is going to do about the hundreds of volcanoes around the world?
This makes me very angry. I could keep writing but I doubt the mods would allow the comment through.
It looks like the sceptics’ Photoshop skills are catching up!
I don’t know why the mainstream media gives this idiot publicity… oh, wait, the mainstream media is just as nutty as Hansen. Scaremongering stories makes money.
To comment about a non existing problem means to keep it alive, like a phantom.
R.I.P. (Requiescat in pace) Global Warming/Climate Change/Sustainability.
What on earth has possessed the Guardian to provide a public forum to Jim Hansen, a man who is clearly quite insane?
Um, isn’t hurting future generations by forcing them to not use the results of the human mind, that give food, shelter, mobility, good materials, etc. an immoral behaviour?
He is headed in the direction of people who directly harm their children to protect them from something they are paranoid about.
Kestrel says:
April 7, 2012 at 10:13 am
“…Hansen does appreciate that (for example) the half-life of radiation from cesium at Fukushima is far shorter than the half-life of AGW from CO2. Although other folks may differ, Hansen’s analysis seems rational, moral, and factually solid to me.”
Wrong on both counts.
CO2 persistence is very short, only 5 – 10 years. If more CO2 was a problem, which it is not, then by reducing CO2 emissions, the higher CO2 concentration would be gobbled up by the expanding biosphere in short order. But of course, more CO2 is not a problem, except in the deranged minds of the scientifically ignorant.
And anyone who believes that Hansen’s position is “moral” has no moral compass of his own. Every proposed action by Hansen would be to the detriment of the poorest among us. I don’t see Hansen opening his wallet to help them, although he could easily afford to take a few dozen senior citizens on low fixed incomes under his wing, and pay their fast rising electric bills.
But he won’t. Hansen is just a scold, a crank, and a hypocrite. He has no redeeming features.
Hansen is repeating history:
— distant past —
(1) scientists observe increased rate of lung cancer
(2) smoking confirmed as the cause
(3) sale of tobacco regulated to diminish risk
— more recent past —
(1) scientists observe decrease in planetary ozone
(2) fluorocarbons confirmed as the cause
(3) sale of fluorocarbons regulated to diminish risk
— present —
(1) scientists observe collapse of bee populations
(2) imidacloprid pesticide confirmed as the cause
(3) sales of imidacloprid-class pesticides (soon to be) regulated to diminish risk
— decadal future —
(1) scientists observe increase in male autism
(2) [pesticide?] confirmed as the cause (?)
(3) sale of [pesticide?] regulated to diminish risk (?)
— centeniall future —
(1) scientists observe increase in planetary temperature
(2) CO2 confirmed as the cause.
(3) sale of CO2 is regulated to diminish risk
——————
Bottom Line: History teaches that scientists like James Hansen often are speaking common sense about a common class of problems … even when their truths are socially inconvenient — or even frightening — and their solutions require market regulation.
I thought this was pretty obvious as they already have climate reparations being demanded.
Ned Borh says:
April 7, 2012 at 8:07 am
…what Hansen now is seeking to establish is simply this:
(1) *IF* Hansen’s predictions are confirmed …
(2) *THEN* serious moral problems must be faced.
The common sense fact is, Hansen is completely correct to argue this. And needless to say, it is very largely fear of (2) that motivates many folks to argue against (1).
The common sense fact is, Hansen knows that the louder and more outrageous a con artist’s claims, the more eager the gullible are to accept them.
“R. Shearer says:
April 7, 2012 at 10:39 am
It looks like the sceptics’ Photoshop skills are catching up!”
To make sure everyone who sees the photoshopped cartoons at my climate skeptic site understand that I did NOT make these photoshopped cartoons.
They were found in various places on the internet and copy posted to my forums cartoon section.Some of then are linked back to the source such as Josh’s cartoons blog.
There is no global warming.. how many times do we have to repeat this? The Hansen, Mann etc ideas are dead but should be keep alive by them to self destruct.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_March_2012.png
So far the sinusoidal shape predicted by RS is spot on just like DA’s solar temps predictions LOL
Hey Janet, you forgot that blood-letting was the medical treatment of choice for over two thousand years and everything revolved around the earth.
Cheers
James Hansen is the polar opposite of William Wilberforce.
Wilberforce dedicated his life to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire – and finally succeeded, as depicted in the movie Amazing Grace
By calling for a worldwide tax, James Hansen – in the name of the public good – effectively seeks to enslave everyone under a dictatorial global government.
Wilberforce invested his inheritance to free others. Hansen takes public funds to enslave them.
In Blue Planet in Green Shakles, the late President Vaclav Havel laid out the stark challenge of preserving freedom or submitting to environmental tyranny. See: President Vaclav Klaus: Climate Control or Freedom? Havel strove to preserve freedom. Hansen works to destroy it – in the name of utopian environmentalism.
Whom will you emulate?
Whose goal will survive? Freedom or Tyranny?
Janet Goudahl says:
April 7, 2012 at 10:47 am
Bottom Line: History teaches that scientists like James Hansen often are speaking common sense about a common class of problems … even when their truths are socially inconvenient — or even frightening — and their solutions require market regulation.
You are making the entirely unwarranted assumption that Hansen is speaking the truth.
Kestrel says:
April 7, 2012 at 10:13 am
“Yet Hansen does appreciate that (for example) the half-life of radiation from cesium at Fukushima is far shorter than the half-life of AGW from CO2.”
No he doesn’t; he believes that CO2 leads to a positive feedback loop via water vapor, turning Earth into something hot like Venus. There is therefore no “half-life of AGW from CO2.”; it is in his believes a one way trip to a runaway feedback. Removing the CO2 after it has initiated this runaway feedback would not make enough of a difference to flip the system back.
Calling that a “rational analysis”, which you do, is frankly ludicrous, but if I have mischaracterized his opinion, point me to utterances by him where he mentions “the half-life of AGW”.
Kestel obviously doesn’t know much about science. A half-life of an isotope is fixed for that atom. The half-life of a chemical species is dependent on reaction conditions that are highly variable.
David L. Hagen says:
April 7, 2012 at 11:14 am
“In Blue Planet in Green Shakles, the late President Vaclav Havel laid out the stark challenge of preserving freedom or submitting to environmental tyranny. See: President Vaclav Klaus: Climate Control or Freedom? Havel strove to preserve freedom. Hansen works to destroy it – in the name of utopian environmentalism.”
“Blue Planet in Green Shackles” was written by Vaclav Klaus, and he is alive and well.
Great lecture by him:
The Guardian should be ashamed of this article if no other reason than for lowering themselves to Bbc levels of editing. They even have a photo credit from the Ap, and refer to Co2 in the story, cannot they be consistent? The Uk education system must be in shambles to allow such an execrable error to be made.
I wrote this letter back in 2008 and Griffin is now retired, but the sentiment is apparently timeless.
Dr. Michael Griffin June 24, 2008
NASA Headquarters
Suite 5K39
Washington, DC 20546-0001
Dear Dr. Griffin.
I am writing today to urge you to terminate the services of Dr. James E. Hansen. Dr. Hansen is not simply an embarrassment and blemish on the reputation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; he is responsible for great harm to the credibility of science. Worse than that, as the world cools (due mainly to reduced solar activity), we will find that his repeated, absurd warnings about human-caused global warming leads many to complacency when a more proper course of action would be preparing for cooling and all it carries with it, i.e. compressed food-producing latitudes and shorter growing seasons.
I have no idea what benefit the public gets from the employment of Dr. Hansen, but I doubt that “projecting humans’ potential impacts on climate” is part of his legitimate job description or a role that justifies the consumption of tax dollars.
Again, please terminate the services of Dr. Hansen. The soapbox he enjoys at tax-payer’s expense must be removed.
Thank you very much for the consideration of my plea.
Best regards;
Ken Coffman
Prof. Jim Hansen: “We’re handing future generations with a climate system that is potentially out of their control.”
I agree! However, it is not only ‘potentially’ out of their control. It is completely out of their control!
As for ‘forcing’ anyone to comply with his myopic views, we all must directly challenge and confront these socialist green attacks. I offer the following example, to illustrate the point.
After a 2 year long battle with the King County “Environmental Services” department, I finally have a building permit to construct a detached garage. (Sidebar: Love that name ‘Environmental Services’! Sounds like your attending church doesn’t it?!) Although my planned structure was deliberately sized to NOT exceed any of their criteria that would involve extraordinary measures for ‘run off water abatement’ or ‘sensitive areas’ nonsense, their ‘specialist’ (billed at $250/hour) was insisting that I was bound by these requirements and their very expensive requirements. My ‘environmental services fees’ (aka: permit cost) grew to $4,500 , for a 780 sq. ft. detached garage permit!!!
My last meeting with the ‘permit specialist’, I refused to agree to their unsubstantiated requirements and all of the costs associated with them. There were no other citizens seeking permits in the office at the time, because the local construction activity is virtually nonexistent and the permits process has become so difficult and arbitrary. I pointed this out to the fellow. I explained to him that I had cash in the bank that was not ‘stimulating the economy’ by being spent on materials and construction manpower because he was needlessly obstructing the building permit. He just smiled and insisted that I was going to have to ‘comply’ with his ‘requirements’.
When the smirking little comrade departed on an extended vacation, I finally got the permit elevated to a 2nd level management review, to address the issues in conflict. This fellow, I’m delighted to report, made short work of the ‘extraordinary measures’ his subordinate was trying to impose! All of the onerous and costly special environmental requirements were removed, the basic permit approved, and the charges reduced to $1,373, which I paid.
Was this a case of a ‘green’ zealot, trying to use the permits bureaucracy to push his personal views? I think it was…. I’ve had to delay several projects because I did not have sufficient space to pursue them. In addition, no one was hired to excavate and prep the site. No one was paid to mix concrete and pour the foundation. No lumber, siding, wiring, doors, or roofing materials were bought. No gravel was delivered or driveways paved. No construction crews were hired to convert those materials into a 2 car garage and shop! No bushes, flowers, topsoil mix, fertilizer, or grass were bought or labor hired to complete the landscaping after construction. None of that happened. Why is the economy sooooo anemic? Multiply my experience a thousand times and you begin to understand the impact of this soft green infection!
Was it worth it, to refuse for 2 years to comply with unreasonable and unsupported demands from an ‘environmental services specialist’? You damn betcha! We must not yield!
max says:
April 7, 2012 at 11:23 am
“The Guardian should be ashamed of this article if no other reason than for lowering themselves to Bbc levels of editing. They even have a photo credit from the Ap, and refer to Co2 in the story, cannot they be consistent? The Uk education system must be in shambles to allow such an execrable error to be made”.
Guardian = BBC
Didn’t you know that?
Maybe Hansen should team up with Durbin.
“Sen. Dick Durbin reacts to the tornadoes in Dallas, Texas earlier this week. Durbin calls for more laws regulating carbon output while he sends a dire warning that we must convert to hybrid cars or lose our life. Durbin says we must spend money now to fix the problem.”
“It’s your money or your life,” he said a press conference.
All this would make a great Monty Python sketch.
Hansen is desperate for action because then he can say “look it’s cooling” and thus save his reputation. The thought of a normal cooling cycle unrelated to volcanoes must absolutely terrify him. This, I believe is the cause of his wild outbursts. Imagine what it could do to his reputation?
Janet Goudahl says:
April 7, 2012 at 10:47 am
=========================
gosh Janet, every example you gave is false….
….and you go on to use that as a reason that hansen is right
DirkH
Thanks for catching my dyslexia. mea culpa over mixing up my Vaclavs.
Václav Klaus is 2nd President of the Czech Republic following Vaclav Havel. See BBC: Vaclav Havel and a climate of ‘freedom’> where Klaus is quoted:
d
Future generations, says he?
The only modern situation on a par with slavery is abortion. 100 million children have no future. Zero. Nada. Nil. Nichts.
These warm-earth Kult Klowns are not able to think before they open their mouths.
See further on Vaclav Klaus environment freedom including WUWT’s
President Vaclav Klaus: Climate Control or Freedom
Environmentalism and Other Challenges of the Current Era, April 20, 2007 Economic Development Bulletin no. 10
See: Vaclav Klaus on YouTube
I hope he keeps it up. The Satanic choir love their preacher, but the unconverted are simply tired of all moral crusades, whether Christian, Muslim or Gaian. The “vague”, as Rowan Williams neatly describes them, are now too poor to feel the need for further sacrifice.
The contrast between Hansen and Klaus is shown in:
Skeptics, Deniers, and World Class Scientists -Why do you want to raise my energy prices? by: alan caruba | published: 03 11, 2009
Vaclav Klaus lecture “From Climate Alarmism to Climate Realism” 2008 International Conference on Climate Change
Czech President Vaclav Klaus gives a speech to the UN on climate changes, Sept. 24, 2007. – emphasizing the need to evaluate costs even if unpopular.
Further on Vaclav Klaus from PolicyBot
In reply to Janet Goudahal
“Janet Goudahl says:
April 7, 2012 at 10:47 am
Hansen is repeating history:
— distant past —
(1) scientists observe increased rate of lung cancer
(2) smoking confirmed as the cause
(3) sale of tobacco regulated to diminish risk
— more recent past —“
You present an emotion argument because you have been taken in by the scam.
Hansen is trying to create the belief that the world will end if CO2 emissions are eliminated. The crisis is the AGW warming issue is the most costly scam in the history of western civilization. You do not presenting facts and logic to support the AGW position. You do not even acknowledge that there might be a down side to spending trillions of dollar on CO2 reduction scams.
A doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C of warming, with most of the warming occurring at higher latitudes (Canada and Russia in the Northern Hemisphere) where the growing season is limited by the number of frost free days, as planetary clouds in the tropics increase or decrease to resist forcing changes. The IPCC extreme warming prediction – 3C average warming by 2100 – requires temperature amplification. With no amplification (i.e. Feedback is neither positive or negative the IPCC models predict 1.2C warming.) The satellite data indicates the planet’s feedback response is negative. The so called safe limit in warming is 2C. Mission accomplished. There is no global warming crisis due to CO2 rise. CO2 is not a poison. Greenhouses inject CO2 into the greenhouse to increase yield. The biosphere will and is expanded due to atmospheric CO2 rise.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039628-pip.pdf
On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data
Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi
Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE…
How much would it cost to reduce CO2 emissions to change atmospheric CO2 from 0.039% back to 0.35% to meet the 350.Org movements’ goal? What is the cost benefit of spending trillions of dollars on scams Vs practical energy conservation which makes economic sense (i.e. there is a logical evaluation and selection of alternatives based cost and the benefits).
The money spent on green scams will not significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They will however result in a massive reduction in primary industry and secondary industry in the Western countries. The path the 350.Org movement advocates for would turn the US into a financial version of Spain or Greece. Even if Western countries has trillions of dollars to spend on the scams the atmospheric CO2 rise would not be significantly reduced as China and India are not going to stop building coal fired power plants or stop driving gasoline power cars.
The problem with your argument by analogue is the analogues you select “cigarettes cause cancer” is a correct statement. Hansen and the IPCC statements are not correct. The IPCC predicted warming of 3C is not correct, as it requires positive feedback to amplify the CO2 greenhouse effect. The planet’s feedback response is negative (clouds in the tropics increase or decrease reflecting more or less sunlight off into space) which resists rather than amplifies the greenhouse warming.
Dot.com scam. Billions of dollars spent on startup companies that could never not possibly make a profit.
Y2K scam. Billions of dollars spent on panic credit by computer support companies. Southern Hemisphere spending on Y2K. Less than $50 million. Instances of problems caused by Y2K in the entire world. One reported, reported by an Australian utility. No specific details provided.
Morgage scam. Trillions of tax payer funds used to clean up the scam.
Green energy is a scam. An example to support that statement is the food to biofuel conversion program. In the US the program to requires corn to be converted to ethanol results in 7% increase in carbon dioxide emission if the all of the energy inputs required to grow the corn, harvest the corn, grind the corn up, and to triple distillate the ethanol produced based on the energy value of the ethanol produced. 25% of the US corn crop is now been diverted to convert to ethanol. The result is food prices in third world countries has gone up.
There is limited agricultural land to feed people. The food to biofuel program is madness. Hansen is yelling Fire! Fire! Fire! in a crowded theater. It is natural some people will following him. It is natural there are crooks such Bernard Madoff who will take advantage of an opportunity to profit from a scam.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
The Clean Energy Scam
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.’s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn’t exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-14/biofuel-production-a-crime-against-humanity/2403402
Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’
Massive production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices, a UN official has told German radio. “Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity,” UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio. Many observers have warned that using arable land to produce crops for biofuels has reduced surfaces available to grow food. Mr Ziegler called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to change its policies on agricultural subsidies and to stop supporting only programs aimed at debt reduction. He says agriculture should also be subsidised in regions where it ensures the survival of local populations. Meanwhile, in response to a call by the IMF and World Bank over the weekend to a food crisis that is stoking violence and political instability, German Foreign Minister Peer Steinbrueck gave his tacit backing.
http://news.yahoo.com/prime-indonesian-jungle-cleared-palm-oil-065556710.html
Prime Indonesian jungle to be cleared for palm oil
Their former hero recently gave a palm oil company a permit to develop land in one of the few places on earth where orangutans, tigers and bears still can be found living side-by-side — violating Indonesia’s new moratorium on concessions in primary forests and peatlands.
Prime Indonesian jungle to be cleared for palm oil
Their former hero recently gave a palm oil company a permit to develop land in one of the few places on earth where orangutans, tigers and bears still can be found living side-by-side — violating Indonesia’s new moratorium on concessions in primary forests and peatlands.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-14/biofuel-production-a-crime-against-humanity/2403402
Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’
Massive production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices, a UN official has told German radio. “Producing biofuels today is a crime against humanity,” UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Bayerischer Runfunk radio. Many observers have warned that using arable land to produce crops for biofuels has reduced surfaces available to grow food. Mr Ziegler called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to change its policies on agricultural
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
The Clean Energy Scam
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil’s filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
David L. Hagen wonders “Whose goal will survive? Freedom or Tyranny?”
***
David, pretty much everyone appreciates that America’s founders, by their wise impost of checks and balances, established a moral, legal, and constitutional principle that has served America well: Your freedom ends where my nose begins,
So never call “freedom” your license to blow tobacco smoke into our eyes, or spray fluorocarbons to ozone’s demise, or sow pesticides in our beehives, or spread autism that everyone decries, or loft CO2 that heats our skies.
From the article:
“Under this proposal, the carbon levy would increase year on year, with the tax income paid directly back to the public as a dividend, shared equally, rather than put into government coffers.”
====================
No matter the variations of this theme, it is just government control of the energy sector.
The “dividends” are just another hand-out of monies, the government never should have taken in the first place.
Where does the “tax income” come from ?, and who (but a politician) could imagine themselves as being capable of equally sharing the rape of the economy.
TG McCoy (Douglas DC) says:
April 7, 2012 at 9:39 am
I’m betting he will. When Newt brought up the idea of a colony on the Moon, Romney’s response was that if a subordinate brought such a lame project for his approval in these trying economic times, he’d fire him on the spot.
Romney’s a businessman and tight as a wad*–he won’t mess around with unsubstantiatable “dreams”, crooked deals, bogus plans, and a plethora of “splendid ideas” people cook up to waste taxpayer money or require additional $Trillion loans from Big China.
If Romney wins, I predict we’ll hear howls and lamentations from the “takers” like you’ve never heard before.
Hansen’s job? Good question: I’ll send Romney a request that he be terminated, too; I suggest we all do.
And if Obama wins, Hansen will probably get a raise and maybe even a bonus. That demonstrates the stark contrast between the two ideologies.
*Ann Romney got after Mitt for his old winter gloves he used while sledding with the grandkids–they were falling apart and she told him to get some new ones. Instead, Mitt just put them back together with a lot of duct tape, which saved him a trip to the store and the expense of new gloves. Having somebody that frugal at the helm of our runaway spending machine would be revolutionary, perhaps even breath-taking.
If Hansen believes carbon dioxide emissions are on par with slavery, in terms of immoral equivalency, and as a result should be taxed accordingly is he, in turn, saying that slavery be re-instituted and those who take part in it simply taxed? Essentially, this is the absurdity of his claim.
Imported “cough cough” bee farmers came to the Willamette Valley to bee keep. Much to their dismay field burning debris landed in their backyard pool so they sued the old time farmers to get them to stop burning their fields.
A few years later said bees decided to swarm an old nearby farm house, invading the siding causing extensive damage. The bee farmers went back to California.
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 12:36 pm
“So never call ‘freedom’ your license to blow tobacco smoke into our eyes, or spray fluorocarbons to ozone’s demise, or sow pesticides in our beehives, or spread autism that everyone decries, or loft CO2 that heats our skies.”
Now there’s a series of strawman arguments for everyone to savor: this article is not about secondhand smoke, or ‘spraying’ fluorocarbons, or ‘sowing’ pesticides in beehives [who would do that?], or spreading autism [huh?].
As for CO2 ‘heating our skies’, the relevant questions are: 1) how much, if any, and 2) is it any problem? The planet’s temperature has risen about 0.8ºC in a century and a half. That warmth is entirely beneficial. And there is no proof that CO2 is the cause.
Why fuss about Hansen this was the Guardian’s editorial on Friday 6 Apri (please note NOT Tuesday 1 April).
“As gardeners in eastern and southern Britain hang up their hosepipes for the summer, it may be worth considering one way of soothing their pain and at the same time easing the current water shortage in the UK’s most populous regions. Discourage the growing of grass. Specifically, grass that is purely aesthetic, kept short, and which absorbs thousands of gallons of mains water in every dry year. Lawns, once a celebration of status, are nowadays an affront to changing climate. They are an environmental desert, generally a monoculture where any tendency to biodiversity is vexed by the application of noxious weedkillers. Clover, buttercups, daisies and dainty speedwell are all unwelcome. Even worms are to be deterred. Meanwhile, keeping the sward green and encouraging it to grow requires – as well as copious water – regular applications of oil-based fertiliser. And having got it growing, cutting it back again takes more resource-intensive machinery. Some claim that lawns have a certain benefit as a kind of natural air conditioner. But they serve no socially useful purpose, or none that would not be better served by turning the space over to vegetables. If that sounds over-prescriptive, it would be less effortful to allow a wildflower meadow to develop. Golf courses, commons and sports fields are shared public spaces and fall into a different category. But, while a property tax remains a distant dream, a tax on private lawns beyond a certain size is within the gift of every chancellor”
Golf courses next?
William Astley says:
April 7, 2012 at 12:36 pm
“The problem with your argument by analogue is the analogues you select “cigarettes cause cancer” is a correct statement.”
It is not. Smoking is one of many ‘risk factors’. See d1002391.mydomainwebhost.com/JOT/editorials/vol-1/e1-4.htm
This site is rightly suspicious of junk science. Junk science is not exclusively found in climate science.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/12/quote-of-the-week-dr-james-hansen-of-nasa-giss-unhinged/
“the oceans will begin to boil”
If he truly believes it he needs really help to understand physics, but can NASA-GISS pay such a person who believes the oceans will boil because of CO2? “Runaway greenhouse to destroy all life on this planet”??
We are talking of the head person at NASA-GISS. This is beyond embarrassing. It is beyond discussing about CO2 sensitivity. It is beyond skeptics/alarmist discussions.
Based on this he should be fired. Not doing so is accepting his alarmist these.
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 12:36 pm
So never call “freedom” your license to …loft CO2 that heats our skies.
Yikes!
We all have to stop exhaling else we infringe on someone else’s “freedom”!
Perhaps those who feel we must act this way would stop exhaling first and show us the way to act properly?
🙂
Goddard Institute for Space Studies is getting a biased picture of the climate, located as it is in the heart of a large city. They should move out into the heartland, say maybe Lenexa, KS.
I’ll suggest that to the President next time I see him.
those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
*****************************
Smokey asks: “‘sowing’ pesticides in beehives [who would do that?]”
*****************************
Smokey, economists call it “the tragedy of the commons”. Namely, corn-growing farmers can increase their profits by spraying corn with imidacloprid pesticide. It’s true that imidacloprid collapses bee populations … but corn doesn’t require bees … and so unregulated markets provide corn-growing farmers with a perverse incentive to do harm.
How do we protect the rights of (say) apple farmers, whose trees depend utterly on bees? It is a well-established constitutional foundation of American law, that under the above circumstances, there can be no unregulated market in imidacloprid … or in any similar commons-degrading chemical.
Bottom Line: Regulated markets in commons-degrading chemicals are plain common sense, plain moral right, and plainly constitutional law, as a matter of plain legal precedent.
“Describing this as an issue of inter-generational justice on a par with ending slavery, Hansen said”
Describing abolitionism as having been based on scam in a cAGW like manner is a pretty un-PC stance, is not it, Dr. Hansen?
“Trouble is if elected will the current front runner in the Republican
Party Mitt Romney have the guts to fire Hanson…?”
Romney, the first king of cap and trade in America? Romney, the first king of the corportist insurance company scam to use government police powers to force the people to give money to the insurance companies, ie, the percursor of Obamacare? No way. Just like when Bush got elected, all the solar scams and similar just started throwing money the Republicans way. Also, the Republicans are running this year on the “Ryan Plan”, another insurance company written scam, which without shame, openly forecasts–with its enactment–40 more years of deficits. That is, continual debt rating downgrades, continual crises.
Nope, Romney,like Obama, is not going to make cuts in anything other than Medicare, Armed Force troop levels (they don’t give much in campaign contributions), and will advocate contiual raids on Social Security.
The AGW scam is there for all to see and they know it…..as their desperation increases they have to face the awful truth. The mantra they backed has blown up in their faces and they are in big trouble. Their reputations will be in tatters, their careers at an end and the politiciians who thought it sounded so credible will take revenge through the courts to leave the blame fairly and squarely with the “scientists” who have created the mess. That is the reason for the increasing desperate statements from the likes of Hansen and the stupid Norwegian woman. The end gane has started!
Slavery alright. We work & earn our money honestly, they take said money away in a dishonest fashion. The UN defines slavery as something along the lines of working against your will for little or no money. Working to pay off an extortionist in the form of the AGW movement & their crony governments is definitely against my will, but I am forced to do it anyway due to government regulation based on a knowingly fraudulent premise. Who’s the slave driver again James?
One other thing Mr. Hansen, can you remember who freed the slaves (Republicans) and who were opposed to it (Democrats)? In fact Abraham Lincoln lost his life in the pursuit of freedom, as he was gunned down by yet another raving leftist nutjob.
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 1:22 pm
“It is a well-established constitutional foundation of American law…”
And:
“Bottom Line: Regulated markets in commons-degrading chemicals are… plainly constitutional law, as a matter of plain legal precedent.”
If that were so, it would be a simple matter to file a restraining order. I get the impression that Marcella gets her talking points not from farmers, but from heavily biased sources like Mother Jones.
FYI, bee mites are the primary cause of colony collapse, not pesticides. And I note that there aren’t many apple trees in cornfields.
RockyRoad says:
April 7, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Romney’s a businessman and tight as a wad*–he won’t mess around with unsubstantiatable “dreams”, crooked deals, bogus plans, and a plethora of “splendid ideas” people cook up to waste taxpayer money or require additional $Trillion loans from Big China.
The problem is that Romney’s current and past ideas of “good business” usually entail using government to tell you what to buy. For example, Romney mandated the purchase of state-approved health insurance, and the program is now running billions over projected costs. This businessman – did you call him? – has repeatedly said that this was a “good plan” for his state. In fact, he is running his campaign on the success of Romneycare.
He also mandated GHG reductions and renewable energy programs aplenty in Mass, so certainly you can argue that he is a tight businessman – one who has been deeply involved in government coercion in such industries as autobuilding, energy, and health care, claiming it is “good business.”
These are rather bizarre views.
Does he also believe in Hockey Sticks, missing heat reservoirs and perceive Peter Gleick a high-profile climate scientists ?
NASA has given up spaceflight and space exploration robotics. Now, it is only concerned about Global “climate change” and appeasing muslims. The former rightly is the responsibility of NOAA and the latter is the responsibility of … ?
Talk of losing its way.
When, eventually, people give up flogging the dead horse, the scientists will say:
“We used the best information available and changed our minds in the face of further evidence. The scientific process worked”.
The politicians will say: “We followed the best scientific advise available”
Neither will admit that the scientists were paid by the politicians to provide the scientific support they wanted for their own hair-brained schems for further control of society.
Zeke says:
April 7, 2012 at 1:56 pm [ … ]
I could agree with everything mentioned. But compared with the alternative… there is no comparison.
Berényi Péter,
This follows from countless “Communicating Climate Science” seminas. Remember that the Warmistas consider their propaganda is ailing because of a lack of
propagandacommunication.This tack is to equate denialism with racism … and we all know racism is very bad. Hansen is following the script and master plan … hey two can play at that propaganda game. The master plan phrase suggests Hitlerian intent.
I thought the same thing during the last presidential elections, Smokey. I overlooked the Republican candidate’s support of cap-n-tax and ghg regulations because the alternative was obviously a disaster.
Now, four years later, with Europe and Australia implementing carbon taxes and with the full devastation of worthless wind turbines to national economies in Europe on display, I have decided that the right thing to do is vigorously campaign against all green candidates and policies on offer, no matter which party they belong to. It will not be long before the AGW farce collapses. Otherwise, you have voluntarily accepted a two-party system in which the parties do not differ on Energy Freedom.
Smokey says “Bee mites are the primary cause of colony collapse, not pesticides.”
Please see “Pesticide exposure in honey bees results in increased levels of the gut pathogen Nosema” … and a flood of similar recent scientific articles.
Needless to say:
• Tobacco companies denied that smoking causes cancer
• Fluorocarbon companies denied harm to the ozone layer
• Japan’s TEPCO denied the Fukushima reactors had melted-down, and now
• Pesticide companies are denying their products kill bees, and of course
• Coal companies deny CO2 raises global temperatures.
Given the above history, it’s evident that James Hansen stands firmly in the tradition of scientists whose findings were highly “inconvenient” to established corporate, political, and ideological interests. In which event, scientists have a special obligation *NOT* to be silent.
There seems to be a problem. Perhaps a solution is in order.
Marcella Twixt,
Hansen is a pseudo-scientist preaching baseless gloom and doom. Haven’t you read the article and comments here?? And how many times must it be pointed out to you that there is no proof that CO2 causes warming. It may. I personally think it does cause some minor warming. But empirical, testable evidence is non-existent.
Furthermore, the hypothesis that at current and projected levels CO2 is harmless and beneficial to the biosphere has never been falsified. You should save your criticism for actual problems. CO2 is not one of them.
Why should the government let Hansen retire? He should be fired for using tax money to advocate a political position.
Smokey says: “Hansen is a pseudo-scientist preaching baseless gloom and doom”
===================
Smokey, folks who read Hansen’s well-conceived 31-year-old predictions from 1981 mostly appreciate that Hansen’s scientific track record looks better with each passing year. That’s why Hansen’s corporate critics commonly are switching to “Gish Galloping” modes of criticism. It’s because purely on his scientific publication track record, Hansen’s reputation is looking better-and-better, with each passing year.
Robert of Ottawa says: “NASA has given up spaceflight and space exploration robotics.”
=========================
Robert, your burger is somewhat lacking in beef ….
‘Slavers’ is a Scottish word meaning childish gabble, non-sensical utterings and pointless rambling.
Does Hansen have Scottish roots?
Marcella Twixt
You appeal to the principles of the Constitution established by the founding fathers.
Then I encourage you to focus on “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” which all States have mutually required for equal standing in the Union by enabling acts. Science is founded on discovering those laws by objective evidence testable models resulting in validated and verifiable theories – not environmental politics.
You object to lofting “CO2 that heats our skies.”
Then you bear the burden of proof to show that CO2 is in the same category as tobacco smoke, fluorocarbons, pesticides, or (xyz) that causes autism. To do so, you must show that:
1) increasing CO2 causes warming that is statistically distinguishable from natural climate variations, 2) the increase will cause more harm than good, and
3) that mitigating CO2 is more cost effective than adaptation or doing nothing.
None of the current climate models have been validated nor have they been run sufficient runs to account for chaotic climate variations, nor have the systematic biases or the full range of natural variations been accounted for. Search ClimateEtc on those issues to understand more of the details involved.
Earth was most organically productive during periods of very high CO2, as evidenced by the massive quantities of coal that were laid down. Why do you object to returning the earth to those abundant Eden like conditions?
The logical consequence of your objections to “lofting” CO2 is that you seek everyone to:
1) Stop using electricity to post on this site,
2) Stop working as that embodies CO2,
3) Stop eating as that requires farmers to emit CO2, and
4) Stop breathing, as that also emits CO2.
By contrast, I prefer to do all of the above to reduce the higher rate of deaths from colder temperatures over warmer temperatures. I further seek to so benefit the 3 billion poor by:
Increasing their agricultural productivity with higher CO2;
Increasing precipitation, helping them capture water for irrigation.
For supporting evidence, see the NIPCC reports and CO2Science.org.
I wish you a long and healthy life with an abundance of CO2.
Guardian needs to reassess the way it reports this type of extreme ideology which is well beyond the more ‘moderate’ AGW pronouncements.
As he ages he seems to look more possesed by something.
In that brief delusional statement he makes it clear he does not understand slavery and climate change. But at least he’s talking about it. That is the first step to recovery.
My greatest interest is the comparison between the AGW hysterics and the similar responses and actions of the Feminist movement. They both appear to being desperate as they raise issues that are totally without foundation or facts. Relying more on hyperbole and emotions to try and keep their “movement” on the front pages and in the public view. They do however demonstrate their desperation by introducing unfounded and ludicrous statement like Hanson does here and the Feminists have done with the “contraception” hysterics they have introduced. Interesting how both those movement appear to be from the same side of politics.
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 2:22 pm
“• Coal companies deny CO2 raises global temperatures.”
Can you point where did any coal company deny CO2 raises global temperature?
Can you further point what is your understanding what does CO2 do? What will happen if we continue to burn coal?
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Needless to say:
• Tobacco companies denied that smoking causes cancer
Not all persons who smoke suffer from cancer. Not all cancer sufferers smoke.
Marcella,
You indict civilization. Without it, we could expect to live, what, twenty, twenty-five years? I’ll take civilization and the occasional screwup that goes with it.
If Hansen wants to push a politicl agenda he should fund it himself and not on the back of the tax payer. Another global socialist agenda trying to control all of our lives without a democratic mandate. A coward who hides behind his goverment position.
Lars P. says:
April 7, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Can you further point what is your understanding what does CO2 do? What will happen if weontinue to burn coal?
I know, Teacher! I know! We will be warm in the winter and cool in the summer. We will have fresh food and we will prosper! And we won’t have to live in a cave!
Saying it’s a moral issue doesn’t make it so.
Lars P. asks: “Can you point where did any coal company deny CO2 raises global temperature?”
———————
Yes, even in the present day. For example, it is easy to check the web site CO2 Science, which is a house organ of the “Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change ()” confidently asserts: “global atmospheric warming as a result of increasing anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission is a myth”
Past publicly acknowledghed funding sources for CO2 Science have included ExxonMobil and the Western Fuels Association…. at present, though CO2 Science takes steps to ensure that the identities of its corporate donors remains strictly secret.
Has that answered your question, Lars?
I note that Hansen is being awarded with the same honor as James Lovelock, the fruit loop ‘scientist’ who brought us Gaia. Makes the Edinburgh Medal slightly less valuable than a McDonalds employee-of-the-month badge
I think he must have got to Edinburgh early to practise for a spot in comedy shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which runs each August. He could be a hit with the children if he puts on a clown costume!
Zeke says:
April 7, 2012 at 1:56 pm
RockyRoad says:
April 7, 2012 at 12:45 pm
So you’d rather that freeloaders sponging on the public purse take my taxes for their health care?
And that’s “fair and equitable” how?
If it’s an 88% to 12% split (those with health care and those without), it should be incumbent on the few getting the service to pay their way (and if they couldn’t, there was always state assistance to get them private health insurance); or do you somehow think “the rich” should have to continuously pay for freeloaders?
That’s what happens when the Democrats change the program and include a boatload of benefits that weren’t in the original legislation–similar to New York State and Washington State, where insurance premiums are some of the highest in the nation because of a Democrat-controlled Dept of Insurance, through which all policies must pass before being offered for sale in their state.
A lot of people were (and still are) hoodwinked with the UN, the IPCC, and other supposedly-honest sources about climate. Romney is no longer a believer in “Global Warming”; he’s seen the “light”. I think a number of us here are in the same boat.
I appreciate your “talking points”, Zeke, but you really should do some in-depth investigation into the issues before making blanket statements that are only marginally accurate (and seem to reflect DNC propaganda more than anything).
It’s a curious formulation: Apparently being a slave is to experience something (weather) over which no one has any control (climate) and this (slavery) is apparently now equivalent to the classic definition of a slave being an owned human whose production and consumption is entirely controlled by another human. And apparently the solution to (normal) uncontrolled climate change is that all humans have to have their production and consumption controlled for there own good by an elite human vanguard that knows better. I could be wrong, but it looks like more slavery is Hansen’s proffered solution to being a “slave”. What a self serving idiot. I bet he thinks everyone is a slave to the capitalist uncontrolled market, and wet dreams in the night.
I kind of agree with Hansen on this one. His policy for combating climate change is on a par with slavery. That’s why I’m against both. Hansen would enslave the entire world to a police state in the name of saving the planet. Its not that he wants to live by the rules he demand for others. He plans to continue flying to lucrative speaking engagements all over the world and has no intention of lowing his carbon footprint one bit. But he does want everyone else to live in such a world so he can set the rules for the rest of us to follow. He and his elite friends will be issued waivers.
“James Hansen – on crack” should have been the title. What a lunatic.
You have made the statement that Romney is no longer a believer in global warming and has “seen the light.” So this indicates you are aware of how commited he has been in the past to ghg regulations, including mandates, regional ageements, carbon emissions restrictions on cars which were 30% stricter than national standards?
You are also aware that he has written extensively in his book about breaking our “addiction to oil,” and how a carbon tax could be revenue neutral for the government and encourage the use of renewables?
You are aware that he has made statements as recently as June of 2011 saying that he supported worldwide carbon emissions reduction agreements? He has certainly been in the dark on a very serious issue, I will grant you that, Rocky Road. Now that we have est. that, can you show me what makes you imperviously announce that he has changed his mind, without any documentation for your source of information?
Professor Hansen, I’d like to introduce you to Kari Marie Norgaard, professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon.
There’s a whole CAGW psychology thesis on its own.
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Marcella, did you know that most bee colonies are not natural – they use imported queens for better honey production. So forget about bee mites and pesticide exposure. We are dealing with a man-made unnatural problem.
I won’t comment on your idiotic points.
Hansen is an alarmist. This does not make him right. There used to be a day when scientists did not use their position of influence to peddle their personal agenda. Those days are gone.
Steve from Rockwood says: “Marcella, did you know that most bee colonies are not natural – they use imported queens for better honey production. So forget about bee mites and pesticide exposure. We are dealing with a man-made unnatural problem.”
——————
Steve, the assumptions of your post are verifiably incorrect: the plain fact is that wild bee populations are collapsing too. The emerging consensus of scientists is that excessive use of inadequately tested and poorly regulated pesticides is the primary cause of this collapse … and one implication, which increasingly many scientists are wondering about, is whether the accelerating incidence of male autism disorder may have similar chemical origins.
James Hansen is warning us that a similar dynamic is in-play with atmospheric CO2. Except that CO2 doesn’t wash out of the atmosphere nearly as rapidly as pesticides … nor do humans reproduce as fast as bees … and so the possibility of a CO2-induced “Civilization Collapse Disorder” is exceedingly sobering.
“We’re handing future generations a climate system which is potentially out of their control”.
You couldn’t make this stuff up – people would think it was just far too contrived to be funny.
He talks about slavery and in the same breath demands a worldwide tax be levied on everyone! The Orwellian truth-inversion of it all. It’s mind numbing.
These people really are literally, figuritively, entirely and without question stark raving bonkers.
Marcella Twixt
By your logic, all the IPCC reports are inadmissible since:
James Delingpole Climategate: peak, oil, the CRU and the Oman connection
Your selective quote is equivalent to saying that you support coal companies because you linked to that statement. Look at the full quote and you will see that CO2Science was just reviewing and citing a statement by Khilyuk and Chilingar.
If possible, please rise to objective evaluation and scientific logic rather than rhetorical ad hominem denigration.
Corrected link: James Delingpole Climategate: peak, oil, the CRU and the Oman connection The Telegraph UK December 18th, 2009
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020304/climategate-peak-oil-the-cru-and-the-oman-connection/
Bishop Hill observes:
forgive me if I am wrong, but I cant find the link or the quote.
Didnt Hansen at one point believe that humanity could jump a spaceship and migrate to another planet
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 12:36 pm
Trees “exhale” Co2. Are you mad at them too?
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 4:52 pm
The emerging consensus of scientists is that …
Ahhhhhh! Consensus! Lovely consensus! The most wonderful of words! That seals the deal for me! Gleick! Set! Match!
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Needless to say:
• Tobacco companies denied that smoking causes cancer
• Fluorocarbon companies denied harm to the ozone layer
• Japan’s TEPCO denied the Fukushima reactors had melted-down, and now
• Pesticide companies are denying their products kill bees, and of course
• Coal companies deny CO2 raises global temperatures.
===========================
Yet, you seem to live in a country, where opinions are tolerated, even if expressed over the CO2 spewing internet.
Your story might have been believable, but it lacked children.
Try again.
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 12:36 pm
What you are seeing in posts like these, are the people who are gullible enough to accept what “scientists” like Hansen are spewing. Anyone with even the slightest scientific background can see the omissions and obfuscation. The bastardization of the scientific method.
You have to feel sorry for someone who makes statements like Marcella has made. Lacking any understanding of what they are talking about, following the pied piper blindly. The “civilization collapse disorder” is particularly funny. Another “boogyman” to scare the populace. The kool-aid must have some hallucinatory effect as well.
We are witnessing the death of critical thinking.
Completely absolving the part the legislature played in this Zeke?
You are aware of the three-branch make up (and bicameral legislative branch) of most state governments in the US … right?
You are aware that the legislature drafts, debates, then perhaps ‘passes’ legislation for eventual signing by the lop level manager in the executive branch?
Are you aware that a veto by the executive branch can be overridden by the legislature in most states?
.
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 4:52 pm
“James Hansen is warning us that a similar dynamic is in-play with atmospheric CO2. Except that CO2 doesn’t wash out of the atmosphere nearly as rapidly as pesticides … nor do humans reproduce as fast as bees … and so the possibility of a CO2-induced “Civilization Collapse Disorder” is exceedingly sobering.”
Now we’re equating Hansen’s illogical positive water vapor feedback theory with pesticides, calling it “similar dynamics”. Are you a political scientist? You know nothing about chemistry, physics or thermodynamics.
He uses that word, but I don’t think he understands what it means. Slavery is defined by some combination of involuntary exploitation and restricted liberty. In many societies, it is realized in progressive steps. Unless he is capable of supporting the merits of his position with respect to his claims concerning human influences of climate change, then he is, in fact, advocating for those progressive steps. Presumably for the same reasons as have others, including: wealth, power, and stature.
No. A comparable moral imperative to rejecting slavery, which was ended when society deemed (and sacrificed several hundred thousand lives) it appropriate to assign universal dignity to all human beings, is the current tragedy where mothers choose to terminate a million developing human lives annually in America alone. The next moral imperative is not to whom dignity is assigned, but when it is assigned. It is principally a philosophical question, since we have not yet been capable of defining consciousness, let alone identifying its cause.
Marcella Twixt says:
“Hansen’s scientific track record looks better with each passing year.”
That is totally wrong. Wherever are you getting your misinformation?? Hansen’s prediction was wrong, and as time goes on it is becoming increasingly preposterous.
You also stated that “CO2 doesn’t wash out of the atmosphere nearly as rapidly as pesticides…” That may be true of pesticides like Malathion, which oxidizes in under a week. But in general your claim is flat wrong, as these 36 peer reviewed papers show.
Finally, there is no evidence — none — that CO2 is harmful. It is a trace gas that is absolutely necessary to life on earth. More is better. If you can produce verifiable, testable evidence that CO2 is globally harmful, then produce it. Otherwise, think about the enormous amounts of money flowing into the “carbon” scare. That is the real motivation for the false alarm over CO2.
_Jim, Romney is the author of the bill. He said in a 2008 USA Today column that it would make an excellent model for a federal program. He said when he started his campaign for 2012 that it was good for his state. His aides helped draft Obamacare. And it is a fiscal disaster:
“Former Romney/Obama advisor Jonathan Gruber has written that RomneyCare was already costing the state $50 billion more than projected by 2009. Of course, supporters have been hiding RomneyCare’s costs (and exaggerating its benefits) all along.”
This isn’t that difficult. The facts about your global warming/Romneycare candidate are there for anyone to look up.
Hansen says we have a moral duty to protect our children and grandchildren from disaster.
We must also protect them from multi-trillion dollar defecits as well.
Hansen is a collectivist and a historical revisionist. There’s nothing like centralised power to enhance slavery, social degradation and cartelism.
Take the great emancipator’s words -Abraham Lincoln for example:
‘I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.’
The AGW alarmists accept the extreme AGW paradigm without questioning. James Hansen’s role has become that of priest as opposed to scientist. The observations do not support the hypothesis that Hansen is promoting.
Hansen has become Lord Kelvin, an old man who is incapable of objectively seeing that new data does not support his extreme AGW hypothesis. Hansen is an old man who is incapable of changing his belief. Hansen’s believe have become dogma for his followers. The extreme AGW supports appear to be unaware that current observations and the paleoclimatic record does not support Hansen’s dogma.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2008/4/mistakes-were-made
Mistakes Were Made
“To the Editors:
“Great men,” wrote science philosopher Karl Popper, “often make great mistakes.” The great Lord Kelvin made more mistakes than just the Earth’s age (“Kelvin, Perry and the Age of the Earth,” July-August 2007). Another one, less known perhaps, made near the end of his life (after tenure as Royal Society secretary) was that the Sun was isotropic (that its magnetic waves are issued in all directions, all of the time). This turned out not to be the case, either observationally or mathematically. Mathematically, he wrongly assumed that the field strength of the magnetic waves decreased as an inverse of the distance to the cubic power. It is actually less rapid and perhaps an inverse of distance squared. Less is known about how he responded to solar observations that falsified isotropic behavior….
…Kelvin never replied to Maunder’s address and it is not clear if he was even aware of Maunder’s speech. Lord Kelvin’s mistake still showed up in textbooks 40 years after he made his claim. Some say it held back solar science research in some crucial ways for years. In more modern times Eugene N. Parker, delineator of the solar wind, said that Kelvin “ignored the suggestion that the geomagnetic variations might be the result of a beam of corpuscular radiation” (which today is often called plasma).
Great men make great mistakes. It is perhaps inevitable: so much good comes with some bad. Lest we make much of any person’s catapulting to fame and, hence, become target for invective, Kelvin was great, nonetheless. He arguably was the father of electromagnetism, giving Maxwell his basis for further study and research. Like all the true “greats” (such as Newton and Galileo) Kelvin was inventor, theorist and pragmatist all in one. An invention of his made the transatlantic telephone cable work: American and English stock markets became connected in an instant. Being one of the few ranking physicists then alive who was able to understand what Nikola Tesla was talking about in terms of alternating-current motors, Kelvin applauded it and told Westinghouse to invest in it. From Niagara Falls’ distance, Tesla and Westinghouse lit up New York City. Alternating current has been economically lighting the world ever since.”
This is the fourth published paper that supports the assertion that planet’s response to change in forcing is negative. This paper analyzes top of the atmosphere radiation changes using satellites as compared to changes in planetary temperature change. The conclusion of the paper is clouds in the tropics increase or decrease thereby reflecting more or less sunlight off into space to resist (negative feedback) planetary temperature change.
The IPCC models assume positive feedback which amplifies CO2 warming. Based on the analysis of Lindzen and Choi the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will be roughly 0.8C as compared to the IPCC predicted 3C to 5C.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
“On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000-2008) satellite instruments. Distinct periods of warming and cooling in the SSTs were used to evaluate feedbacks. An earlier study (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) was subject to significant criticisms. The present paper is an expansion of the earlier paper where the various criticisms are taken into account. ….
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI3461.1
Why Hasn’t Earth Warmed as Much as Expected?
The observed increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) over the industrial era is less than 40% of that expected from observed increases in long-lived greenhouse gases together with the best-estimate equilibrium climate sensitivity given by the 2007 Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Possible reasons for this warming discrepancy are systematically examined here.,,,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/09/understanding-the-global-warming-debate/
“The problem for global warming supporters is they actually need for past warming from CO2 to be higher than 0.7C. If the IPCC is correct that based on their high-feedback models we should expect to see 3C of warming per doubling of CO2, looking backwards this means we should already have seen about 1.5C of CO2-driven warming based on past CO2 increases. But no matter how uncertain our measurements, it’s clear we have seen nothing like this kind of temperature rise. Past warming has in fact been more consistent with low or even negative feedback assumptions.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility.
“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.
http://blogs.forbes.com/jamestaylor/2011/07/27/new-nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-in-global-warming-alarmism/
New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism
NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.
“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans…
http://economics.com.au/?p=7780
I set readers of this blog a challenge – tell me the objective of the Gillard government’s carbon tax. From the many responses I think that there are seven broadly claimed objectives:
1. The carbon tax is driven by the politics of minority government (the objective is political);
2. We need to carbon tax because it is morally the right thing to do (the objective is moral);
3. We need the carbon tax to reduce domestic carbon emissions (the objective is domestic emissions reduction);
4. We need the carbon tax to prepare us for when the rest of the world acts on carbon emissions (the objective is to ease transition in the future);
5. The carbon tax is a solution (or part of a solution) to global climate change and its terrible consequences (the objective is reducing global emissions);
6. We need the carbon tax to be an example to other developed nations or to avoid claims of hypocrisy by developing countries when global solutions to carbon pollution are being mooted (the objective is reducing global emissions by setting a global example); and
7. We need a carbon tax to help maintain a (Pareto superior) solution to the repeated n-player international prisoners’ dilemma of carbon pollution (the objective is reducing global emissions through strategic behaviour).
‘We’re handing future generations a climate system which is potentially out of their control’
What a priceless quote from Hansen! What on earth makes him think it would be possible for us to hand future generations a climate system they can control? Has he never heard of hubris?
The Op-ed piece for USA Today was written in 2009. And here is his statement on Global Warming: In June 2011, Romney stated said that “[the
U.S. should] reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.”
His book advocates for a carbon tax, offset by a pathetic cut somewherre else, I believe in the payroll tax. In that case you may be Julia Gillard’s fan as well.
Zeke,
I share your concerns. But the only credible vote will be for either Obama or for Romney. Anything else is a wasted vote — and a vote for Obama by omission.
Given the choice between Romney or another four years of Obama, what’s your verdict?
I’d like to propose a worldwide tax on James Hansen whenever and wherever he speaks.
Every time he opens his mouth, he should be taxed or fined, possibly both.
There are a lot of great scientists at NASA, how on Earth is he a “leading” NASA scientist?
Oh Marcella Twixt, I don’t get it at first “scientists” thought that global warming was causing the decline in bees. Then they found out that is not true, so now here you are arguing not that global warming causes the decline, but that pesticides causes it, and that somehow that proves global warming is a concern. Gee. No matter what has caused the decline in bee population, global warming is to blame, even if it isn’t to blame. No one can win that argument.
The right thing to do Smokey, is to continue to campaign against ghg regulations (farming, cattle, and energy restrictions), carbon taxes, mandates and subsidies for worthless wind turbines and solar, anti-coal efforts, federal coercion in “car technology,” expensive and unwanted low carbon products, expensive additional processing of coal and oil, and binding agreements with the UN to dictate where and how the US gets its energy – and also to continue to raise awareness about anyone who supports these destructive policies. The AGW scientific fraud will collapse shortly.
And now a question for you: Once you have accepted the elimination of the difference between the parties on energy security and freedom, do you honestly think you will ever get it back?
Think Obummer will call Hansen out on these obviously offensive remarks?
Zeke,
All I know is that another 4 years of Obama’s anti-American policies would be the worst of all possible worlds. Romney was never my choice, but he is infinitely better for America than the Muslim community organizer, who has hobbled the country with $Trillions of new debt, and sold us out to the UN, and who is the total puppet of George Soros and the enviro-fascist crowd.
Like every reasonable American citizen, I will vote for the lesser of two evils. Because one evil is much worse than the other.
1. Hansen and his close supporters will have a large chapter in the voluminous history called “How climate science got side tracked by snake oil salesmen”. The published text ought to be dedicated to Hubert Lamb who had a sober and balanced view of these matters. Unfortunately this history will only be commenced by the brightest and best of our young researchers when funds become available as it becomes generally accepted that the climate science wars of 2000 to 201? have been decided and that the planet won. My guess is that this point will be reached in about 2025 when the climate change global temperature indicators have registered a history of no statistically significant change or of significantly sustained cooling.
2. In Australia the worm is already turning. The MSM has commenced polling on public attitudes to the views expressed by Professor Tim Flannery who heads up our Climate Commission. The Commission is required to barnstorm the country supporting the government’s carbon tax legislation. The tax, payable at the rate of Aus $ 23 per tonne of CO2 emitted, will be payable by the top 500 corporate emitters from 1 July 2012. This is an astronomical impost when compared with other schemes internationally.
Flannery has a well earned international scientific reputation in the fields of mammology (especially kangaroos) and paleontology. He has no training in meteorology or climatology. But in his public utterances and popular writings he has chanced his arm on Hansen type scaremongering: hence his appointment as Chief Commisioner. But the first published poll confirms that he has a credibility problem. It is reported on 2 April 2012 that:
A QUARTER of Australians say Tim Flannery is an unreliable source of information about climate change, a new survey reveals.
A Galaxy poll for the Institute of Public Affairs found 18 per cent of people regard the country’s official climate change spokesman as “somewhat unreliable”, while 7 per cent consider him “very unreliable”. Less than a third, 31 per cent, found him somewhat or very reliable.
NSW residents are among the most dubious in the nation, with 28 per cent of those polled saying the Climate Commissioner was an unreliable source of information.
“By regularly making predictions that have turned out to be false, Tim Flannery is doing the carbon tax and the Gillard government more harm than good,” the Institute’s James Paterson said.
Last night, Prof Flannery said: “This issue isn’t about opinion. It is about facts. We know climate is changing and if we don’t act there is likely to be serious consequences.”
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/national/tim-flannerys-like-the-weather-unreliable/story-e6frfkvr-1226316094295#ixzz1rPkZf13b
3. I admire Flannery as a scientist in his areas of expertise. But I think he is extremely foolish to have fallen into the climate change controversy without a scientific background in any of the relevant disciplines. This has led him in recent years to make a series of crackpot predictions about rainfall, water and storage dams which have already proved to be incorrect.
4. I would be interested to see the results of an American poll concerning public attitudes to the views of Hansen. If these exist please advise me on this thread. I would be worried if his views command significant respect. Happily the state of the current US legislative process is preventing any carbon tax/emission control legislation from being enacted at present. And, it appears likely that this situation will not change in November. So perhaps it doesn’t really matter what Hansen is saying.
Several points
As indicated by others, I think it is good that Hansen’s radical positions are revealed to the public. The more he bloviates the more people with common sense distrust NASA and the CAGW mantra. WUWT is doing a service as I can spread the message to my friends that are on the fence re the global warming mantra.
Second, the more Hansen’s massive carbon foot print is exposed and his hyprocrisy revealed the less credible his message becomes. People with common sense understand when the message is so extreme it is probably has no basis in Science. This is along the lines that Gore has little credibility with the public because of his stupid exaggerated claims.
Finally since Hansen is obviously a hyprocrite re his carbon footprint, one begins to question his sincerity along the lines of Gore, Biden, (and Obama until recently) who give almost nothing to charity while constantly harping about increasing your taxes to help the disadvantaged. Is Hansen spreading his wealth around as he demands that we spread our wealth around the world with a carbon tax?
That is your choice. But I will never voluntarily elect a global warming advocate. The policies will turn deadly for Europeans and Australians. Energy is too vital. Every one has a line they cannot cross.
Marcella Twixt, I forgot to add that you are completely entitled to your own opinion. I happen to believe that technology will save us from the things you seem so afraid of. To clean our planet. To me, that is a truly progressive way to think. Positive, too.
Smokey nailed it, on the POTUS. Politicians need to be chosen by lottery. Anyone who actively pursues a political career is untrustworthy by default. IMHO.
RE
David Ball says:
@ April 7, 2012 at 8:54 pm
————-
It has been clear to me for some time now that Smokey is one of the brilliant thinkers amongst us. This is an example of ‘lateral’ beauty. I have not been unusual in thinking: the last people you want to govern you, are those who want to govern you. So: a lottery. That is, frankly, mathemtically beautiful! Mathematics, meet political economy.
Post-script: everything I said above I meant sincerely. The only question remaining for me now is – how do resolve the problem of random clumping?
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Steve, the assumptions of your post are verifiably incorrect: the plain fact is that wild bee populations are collapsing too.
North American wild bees are solitary. Wild bee colonies — except in Africa and Asia — are founded by escaped domestic bees, and since young queens seem to prefer the attics (and walls) of houses as sites for their new colony, your friendly Orkin man is responsible for most of the decline in “wild” bee populations.
… and one implication, which increasingly many scientists are wondering about, is whether the accelerating incidence of male autism disorder may have similar chemical origins.
Autism is the most overused diagnosis in America. If a kid’s attention wanders in school — *boom* — he’s suddenly declared autistic.
Except that CO2 doesn’t wash out of the atmosphere nearly as rapidly as pesticides …
CO2 is a necessary component of our atmosphere — if it “washed out,” the only thing left alive would be anaerobic bacteria.
Personally I’d defend certain aspects of what Hansen advocates, albeit the CAGW/slavery analogy is out there with the best of the loons, but he is a true believer in the warmist religion. Nevertheless Hansen essentially advocates a shift to reliance on fossil fuel taxation with countervailing reductions in other forms of taxation, largely income tax and at least that is a sensible departure from the thin air derivatives trading advocates, not to mention their attempts to pick winners, reshiftable energy programs and the like.
Taking Hansen’s advocacy to its ultimate conclusion and leaving aside the argument over the absolute level of taxation as a separate debate, we could rely totally on fossil fuel taxation(indeed CO2E methodology if that satisfies warmists in particular) and we could easily envisage some positive outcomes in doing so. Think administrative simplicity, neutrality (business, private, religious pursuits), extremely difficult to avoid (collected at the mine and well head), equity (the rich consume the most energy) as well as not penalising entrepreneurship, initiative or plain sweat and toil. When you think about that (imagineering if you like), there is no particular sound basis for believing that reliance on the current milieu of taxation is optimal. Indeed Hansen may well have stumbled on a much better paradigm for constituting our ‘free’ marketplace than the one we have inherited from creeping incrementalism or the science of muddling through over the years. There are many ways in which taxation can impact the general level of pricing and concomitant factor rewards and economic outcomes so Hansen may well be on to something worthwhile in that regard. I’ll keep an open mind on that, particularly as he appears to want to get out of the business of picking winners and interfering in our lives like so many of his brethren.
“… issue of inter-generational justice on a par with ending slavery,”
Hansen has spent to much time at NASA inhaling rocket fuel fumes…
observa says:
April 7, 2012 at 10:38 pm
…particularly as he appears to want to get out of the business of picking winners and interfering in our lives like so many of his brethren.
Oh?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/03/nasas-hansen-tries-to-tell-slovenia-not-to-build-a-power-plant/
How very unfortunate – that picture looks somewhat Chucky-esque to me.
Poor chap really does need a psych eval – paranoia and delusions of grandeur seem to be to the fore.
This smacks of panic. The pause in GW (before the Grand Global Cooling)
must be really getting to him and his Team …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9192494/Climate-scientists-are-losing-the-public-debate-on-global-warming.html
The artical is of little importance – but the comments are certainly interesting. Hope that someone at Edinburgh Uni is looking at them!
Except that CO2 doesn’t wash out of the atmosphere nearly as rapidly as pesticides
Every time it rains. All pure clean rain is carbonic acid, water vapour and carbon dioxide have this irresistable attraction for each other. Carbon dioxide is also heavier than than air, which means that it will always sink to the ground displacing air unless something works to change that.
In other words, carbon dioxide is fully part of the Water Cycle which cools the Earth – think deserts to imagine an Earth without any water.
If the “carbon” tax money is to be given back to the public, (surely he jests), then they would be able to afford the higher gas and electric prices and carry on purchasing. It is of course a good job-creation scheme, as another bureacracy would be created in the collecting and redistributing of it.
I confess I am worried about the future for my grandchildren, that it isn’t destroyed by Hansen, Gore, et al.
Marcella Twixt says:
April 7, 2012 at 3:56 pm
“Past publicly acknowledghed funding sources for CO2 Science have included ExxonMobil and the Western Fuels Association…. at present, though CO2 Science takes steps to ensure that the identities of its corporate donors remains strictly secret.
Has that answered your question, Lars?”
No Marcella it did not. The study says:
“any attempts to mitigate undesirable climatic changes using restrictive regulations are condemned to failure, because the global natural forces are at least 4-5 orders of magnitude greater than available human controls.”
which is different from what you imply.
Furthermore you answered only selectively to where you thought you were right. You need to face the whole question – what might be the consequences of our using fossil resources be.
Bill Tuttle points out that Hansen was opposed to a new proposed Lignite fuelled power station in Slovenia but I’d give him a pass on that given his stance on a switch to broad based CO2E taxing with offsetting income tax cuts. Hansen might naturally deduce such fuel would not get a guernsey under his preferred tax regime, similar to another warmist in Barry Brook from Adelaide Uni blogging here-http://bravenewclimate.com/
Barry believes CO2 warming is a problem but given what he knows about ‘reshiftable’ energy, he believes nuclear power is the only sensible solution and certainly that would fit comfortably with Hansen’s CO2E tax paradigm.
Then dennisambler notes- “If the “carbon” tax money is to be given back to the public, (surely he jests), then they would be able to afford the higher gas and electric prices and carry on purchasing.”
to which the answer is, the price effect if high enough could easily outweigh the income effect, or essentially you can protect income via econ0mising on fossil fuel use (or rather the marketplace will respond accordingly) As for jesting about giving back tax cuts for carbon taxing that is simply for the political process, sufficeth to say with a complete blanket opposition to CO2E taxing at present, we still get a mixture of that and the lunar quantitative controls to boot. It behoves us to partner sensible warmist approaches to environmentalism when we encounter it. After all we do agree on some CO2 induced warming and the friend of my adverasry on one account is not necessarily my adversary on another. The science and the economic arguments are somewhat separate issues unless skeptics are to be guilty of a head in the sand attitude by concatenating the two.
HE IS LOVED BY WORLD FOOTBALL WEEKLY AT http://www.worldfootballweekly.wordpress.com
In a way Hansen is correct: AGW is as immoral as slavery. He and his fellow AGW believers wish to enslave humanity by forcing us under the yoke of their extreme demands and fear mongering.
Smokey
I don’t know the ins and out of your electoral system and I do agree your next president will be either Romney or the incumbent but isn’t there a larger emphasis on delegates rather then outright votes?
As I understand, some states like Florida use a ‘winner take all’ system, where Romney accrued all the delegates, but others are caucuses and some are non-binding.
I’m not sure why you say a vote for anyone else is a wasted vote? Is it because of the inevitability of Romney’s nomination?
You do know that if he wins POTUS, he will carry on the torch for Obama, just as Obama carried on the excessive bailouts and middle east conflict instituted by the Bush administration.
Fighting wars for NATO and legislating through the executive branch are merely precedents now.
-Party irrelevant.
Sam Geoghegan,
Most states have a winner takes all result. And any vote other than Romney or Obama is wasted because that selection cannot possibly win. Best to vote for the lesser of two evils, where the vote actually means something.
As for the rest, we do the best we can under the circumstances.
Hansen is delusional in his thoughts:
“Runaway” greenhouse effect. That never happened in the history of the Earth. Not even during the PETM 55 million years ago.
That sounds depressing. There is really only one winner every time- the system. The two party system is a subterfuge perpetrated upon the American people.
Australia is the same but with nowhere near as much at stake.
Hansen is projectng here.
Genesis 3:19 reads, “…by the sweat of thy brow, thou shalt earn thy bread…” and ever since civilization began, we’ve been doing all we can to avoid that sweat. Until the industrial revolution, when we started producing CO2 in large quantities, we had to rely on people power -result was widespread slavery. . It’s the CAGWers who are trying to put us back on people power which would automatically put us on a return to slavery.
Andrew says:
April 7, 2012 at 9:43 pm
I’ll take “random clumping” over “rampant corruption” any day.
James Hansen’s legacy has already been irrevocably imbedded into our general culture, to the dismay of CAGW acolytes.
I think his legacy, as a longtime leader of a major US government scientific institution, is clearly his creation of systematic biasing in climate science that inherently supports his own personal form of subjective pseudo-religious ideology.
Hansen would be the high spiritual leader in any alternate universes which totally endorse the Jerome Ravetz version of post-normal science.
John
“It’s the CAGWers who are trying to put us back on people power which would automatically put us on a return to slavery.”
Whilst you could argue the IR eventually freed the masses from drudgery it’s a bit of poetic licence to think my parents and grandparents were slaves with their per capita use of fossil fuels, or that somehow they lived much less fulfilling lives as a result. I’m quite sure there are plenty of left over green/hippy/ agrarian socialists (Pol Pottyists?) who have a somewhat delusional view of what the horse, wind and millstream could produce, but a warmist like Barry Brook is under no illusions and really when you boil off the rhetoric Hansen is just arguing to up the private cost of fossil fuels to better reflect a truer social cost.
There is no doubt in my mind that CAGW gained such traction because it hit a raw environmental nerve and there is no getting away from that for the market side of politics. Yes the usual suspects stuffed up the policy responses as we knew they inevitably would, but unless the overarching concern for the environment is addressed by our side of politics, they’ll be back pressing the environmental concern buttons and perpetually trying out their lunar quantitative controls. We need to appreciate that and look for rational and responsible allies among warmists and the environmentally concerned in general. We are after all scientific people and know what sort of economic environment that requires in order to flourish. Free and unfettered markets naturally but we need to be acutely aware that the very nature and impact of taxation will indelibly set the constitution of that marketplace and there are obvious signs our currently constituted one has serious problems. That’s where warmists gained such traction in the first place with such flimsy science.
Hansen is merely repeating what is apparently the “new mantra,” that AGW denial is equivalent to slavery. Figure it out. This has also been done recently by Norgaard as well. (see: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/30/climate_scepticism_racism_slavery_treatment/) They are attempting to link climate change denial and RAAAcism. It is a purely political maneuver. Hansen has even said as much, i.e. that the issue is a political rather than scientific one. As such, why should anyone take anything he says about science seriously?
Ned Borh says:
April 7, 2012 at 8:07 am
He’s been screaming at the top of his lungs and walking the streets with a sandwich board warning of the end of the world for 30 years. How have his past doomsday predictions worked out? Everyone at this site already knows that answer.
If it weren’t for the taxpayer money he was wasting, I’d find him quite funny. Soon he’ll turn to performance art and show up at some lecture stark naked. No pictures please.
We have a moral obligation to protect our children from the government tax slavery Hansen wishes to impose.
So we see the following Hansen-ian logic:
Hansen observes => In modern freedom loving cultures it is a given that slavery is universally held to be wrong
Hansen assumes moral authority in climate science (authority derived implicitly from his role at NASA/GISS) => He has alluded that a sufficient core group of IPCC centric and CAGW supporting scientists exists; who claim to know unequivocally that anthropogenic CO2 from burning fossil fuel is profoundly immoral on a global scale
Hansen reasons illogically to make a smear job on CAGW critics => He has alluded that the critics of IPCC centric CAGW ‘science’ are the same in principle as pro-slavery advocates
CONCLUSION => Hansen is not a rational thinker. I recommend (as a tax paying US citizen) that he should be forced to retire from NASA/GISS for the sake of all respectable and reasonable environmentalists. In addition, he is hurting the reputation of science in our culture.
John
No, because RINO Romney, a Trojan Horse candidate, supports the Glocal Warming-Climate Change alarmism of Al Gore and Hansen. The Republican Party primary elections and caucuses are being manipulated by the Democrats who are voting as if they were Republicans in support of Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. In one county, there were more than 3,000 voters for the Democrat candidate in the 2008 general primary election, a little more than 400 such Democrat voters in the 2012 general primary election, and more than 3,000 more Republican voters in the 2012 general primary election. After they finish nominating a Democrat friendly Republican candidate in the primary and caucuses, the Democrats will then vote for the Democrat candidate in the 2012 General Election despite voting in the Republican primary election. Massive and systematic vote fraud ranging from graveyard zombie voter ballots to thousands of non-existant and fraudulent voter registratoins is subverting the U.S. electoral system, U.S. government, and the rule of law.
We’re still awaiting the arrest and indictment of Glieck in the matter of the Heartland Institute identity fraud.
What do you suppose the chances of Hansen being disciplined for illegal activity when the attorney generals of multiple states, including Virginia’s Cuccinelli, are unable to proceed with the prosecution of the many crimes they have now officially accused the Obama Administration of committing?
“As such, why should anyone take anything he says about science seriously?”
I’m not, only insofar as there is some anthropogenic effect and what exactly is he proposing to do about it here, given that I know these people are somewhat over-emotional about their pressing moral imperative, they somehow believe is akin to the past problem of slavery. The emotion I’ll discount and so will Joe Public if they get too far out there with all that , but as I pointed out there is some considerable merit in switching to reliance on CO2E taxing, particularly if it negates the need for ill conceived quantitative control measures. That is about economics not climate science.
As well as the many merits of a shift to carbon taxing I already outlined, there is the emerging problem of peak oil anyway, not to mention a serious balance of payments problem for the US in particular due to its heavy reliance on oil. There is no sound reason to assume the current pricing regime due to the current incidence of taxation is an optimal one and indeed forseeable market forces suggest it’s not. Hansen simply raises an interesting hypothetical question. What if we inherited a marketplace where there were no other forms of taxation but straight carbon taxing? What would that good society look like? It’s not an unreasonable question to ask and indeed it is intrinsically tied up with the notion that it is the cheap use of fossil fuels that allows us to turn so much of our natural environment to our wants in such a short time. That concerns a lot more people than very emotional warmists but the warmists are adept at pushing that hot button out there quite regularly.
Or to put it another way it may be the village idiot that cries ‘The Emperor’s got no clothes on!’ to which we all reply ‘Don’t be so ridiculous!….hmmm…but now you come to mention it WHY are we all turned out in our underpants?’
“Averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a “great moral issue” on a par with slavery, according to the leading Nasa climate scientist Prof Jim Hansen.
He argues that storing up expensive and destructive consequences for society in future is an “injustice of one generation to others”.
Hansen, who will next Tuesday be awarded the prestigious Edinburgh Medal for his contribution to science, will also in his acceptance speech call for a worldwide tax on all carbon emissions.”
So in three paragraphs he compares human induced climate change (No evidence to support that view at all.) to slavery (We have plenty of evidence of slavery from our past and our present.) with the solution being a tax on energy, effectively enslaving the world in energy poverty? That’s brilliant Hansen, you deserve an award!
Puhlease Hasnen, retire, retire soon as this is one way you can save the world from the slavery of energy poverty.
I see there is alot of use of the term “CO2E” here. I’ve noticed that quite a lot in the last year especially in Australia and especially from economists, polticians and politically motivated scientists such as Tim Flannery. IMO, using CO2E in discussions about science and cliamte is about as meaningful as the phrase “global average temperature”.
O/T. On BBC tonight, a newscast about a memorial cruise to the location where the Titanic sank in 1912. Apparently, there’s no risk of an iceberg strike due to…you guessed it…global warming.
Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make make mad.
D. Patterson
were you wearing your tin foil hat whilst writing that?
But there have been a number of equally prominent cases where “scientists whose findings were highly “inconvenient” to established corporate, political, and ideological interests” were mostly wrong. These were examples of advocacy research–and so is the CACA Cult (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism). E.g.:
Acid rain
“We’re all at risk of AIDS”
Repressed memories are everywhere
Facilitated communication
“Arming America” by Bellesiles (awarded a Pulitzer)
Deformed frogs
Frog and toad extinctions
Global cooling
Silicone implants
Childhood autism caused by “refrigerator mothers”
Amount of damage from the Gulf oil spill
Nuclear winter
Mad Cow alarmism and kill-the-cows solution in UK
Swine flu alarmism
“Limits of Growth” report
Radon
Asbestos
observa says:
April 8, 2012 at 5:13 am
Bill Tuttle points out that Hansen was opposed to a new proposed Lignite fuelled power station in Slovenia but I’d give him a pass on that given his stance on a switch to broad based CO2E taxing with offsetting income tax cuts.
Three things will then happen:
1. The Libs will scream that it’s another “tax break for the rich,”
2. People below the minimum income level will get a “tax refund” in the interest of *fairness* — even though they pay no income tax (that already happens, so don’t claim it won’t); and
3. Everyone else will wind up with less disposable income.
When the premise for instituting a new tax is based on nothing but bullsh*t, it’s not merely a tax, it’s a *bad* tax.
You know, you guys should really listen to his proposal because it is rooted in the free market. Many commenters here are calling Hansen a Marxist. That’s preposterous!
Hansen is proposing a system in which the government doesn’t get to pick winners and losers and in which everybody is free to choose their lifestyle.
Since this website is an overtly one-sided political forum, you should really pay attention to proposals that lie within your political spectrum, rather than viscerally rejecting it.
Just so you’d know: I used to disbelieve the science, too. I became convinced when I saw the mountains of hard and independent scientific evidence. I’m definitely not a leftist, and so this corrected free market proposal appeals very much to me, much more than governments imposing lifestyle choices and subsidizing technologies, especially when they are already mature. (The political right really seems to have a big blind spot there: against subsidies, except for the fossil fuel industry.)
Anyway, think about it…
[I posted a response yesterday which failed to appear on the blog, so I’m posting another response today.]
Perhaps you were wearing your own little form of a “tin foil hat” when you attempted your entirely inappropriate and uninformed wisecrack.
The point of the comment was that Hansen is the beneficiary of political patronage which permits him to disregard the rule of law with near impunity. His political patrons, including the Obama Administration, stand accused of numerous gross violations of law which have gone unpunished and unprosecuted, in part because the chief prosecutor, the U.S. Attorney General, is among those accused by a number of state attorney generals who refuse to remain silent about the illegal conduct..
It is a matter of record that changing the Federal Government by electing candidates from the opposition party, the Republican Party, is problematic due to various forms of vote fraud massively employed by the Democrats to impede the normal electoral process. While living in California I was denied the right to vote after the precinct polling place was changed. The Democrats replaced my voter registration name and address with the Hispanic names of a number of people who most certainly did not live in my house at the time of the election or at any time before the election. My attempts to protest the vote fraud and report the unlawful granting of California drivers licenses to people not living at my address or inside my home were met with threats to have me arrested. The threats of arrest came from the poll workers, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, and the California Attorney General’s Office when I attempted to so much as open my mouth to report the vote fraud and identity fraud. They made it abundantly clear that they would not even allow so much as one sentence to be said in complaint before they automatically launched into a denial of the complaint and and false threats of arrest to intimidate any further efforts to pursue the matter further. This is not hyperbole. It is simply straightforward fact I was forced to experience.
The county voting results I commented upon came directly from the state’s election authority. A candidate for a state legislative office nearly succeeded in defeating the Democrat incumbent in the 2008 general election. The Republican candidate led in the vote results for the most part until one or two counties late in the evening declared they had problems with their automated vote counting machines, and they had to perform a “manual recount” of the votes. The manual recount of the votes resulted in a sudden narrow victory for the Democrat incumbent. Anonymous witness/esin the room when it happened later described how the county recorder staff manually tossed ballots for the Republican candidate until victory for the Democrat candidate was achieved. To avoid the necessity for such heavy-handed tactics in the 2012 election, The Democrats encouraged a former Democrat to run as a Republican in the 2012 general primary election. To ensure their faux-Republican won the nomination, the county chairmen were instructed to get out the Democrat vote in their counties and precincts by having the Democrats vote as Republicans in the 2012 general primary election for this faux-Republican. Having defeated the genuine Republican candidate in the primary election, the Democrats proceed to the general election in November knowing they can either re-elect the Democrat incumbent, or they can elect the faux-Republican in the event there is not enough support for the Democrat incumbent in the political backlash of this election. Either way, the Democrats succeed in putting someone favorable to and beholden to the Democrats in that elected office.
While serving as a delegate to a recent convention, I witnessed many self-described and supposedly former Democrats serving as delegates in favor of Romney. The delegates favoring the other candidates were systematically outvoted by the pro-Romney delegates, until their candidates lost all or nearly all representation among the delegates going to the state convention. The remarkable fact is the way in which the number of participants had more than tripled, and many of them commented upon how they were a former Democrat who voted for Obama in the last election..
Romney’s support of the AGW alarmists is clearly documented in his statements, and his position is clearly contrary to the 2012 election platform of the Republican Party he claims to represent. He is indisputably in favor of the AGW fraud.
Perhaps you would now retract your provocatively offensive comment?
Your false comments and attitude are a prime example of why our European and Asian ancestors emigratedto America in order to escape the insanity of totalitarian governments, seek personal freedom, and self-determination. Now you would seek to bring your social insanity to our shores and compel us to suffer its destruction of our self-determination and personal freedoms. It makes some of us wonder just how many times Americans have to sacrifice our blood and treasure to liberate Europeans from their own follies with totalitarian governments before you choose to abandon your dictatorial habits. Hansen represents dictatorial confiscations of private property and individual freedoms in the false guise of socialist misconcepts of social justice and fraudulent pseudo-science, which is about as anti-American as you can get no matter what label you attempt to hang on it to deceive people.
@Some European
>>Just so you’d know: I used to disbelieve the science, too. I became convinced when I saw the mountains of hard and independent scientific evidence.
Please make these “mountains of hard and independent scientific evidence” available here so that I can see for myself and become convinced just as you are. I have been looking for years and have not been able to find what you have found.
Some European
Not true. Hansen is a collectivist of the Paul Krugman vein. Nothing they aspire to is achieved without massive government over-reach, a lust for taxation and deficits spending. There’s nothing more they despise than a free market, or at least the notion that the free market exists and that it’s the scourge of egalitarian society
Hey wait-that’s the Republicans too 😮
And this website probably is one sided.
Some European says:
April 9, 2012 at 4:48 am
You know, you guys should really listen to his proposal because it is rooted in the free market. Many commenters here are calling Hansen a Marxist. That’s preposterous!
His proposal isn’t rooted in the free market, it’s firmly planted in wealth-redistributionist astroturf. As far as Hansen’s philosophical bent, how do Hansen’s pontifications differ from “Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias.” (Das Kapital, Vol III)
Hansen is proposing a system in which the government doesn’t get to pick winners and losers and in which everybody is free to choose their lifestyle.
Hansen is proposing a tax on carbon dioxide. Period.
Since this website is an overtly one-sided political forum, you should really pay attention to proposals that lie within your political spectrum, rather than viscerally rejecting it.
Prove your statement that WUWT is an overtly one-sided political forum. Then be prepared to be savaged by the Libs who comment here as regularly as the Conservatives and Middle-of-the-Roaders.
(The political right really seems to have a big blind spot there: against subsidies, except for the fossil fuel industry.)
That which the left calls “subsidies for the fossil fuel industry” are tax depreciation allowances. *Any* US business may claim them for equipment depreciation — that’s written into the tax code.
Hansen can’t possibly believe all that rubbish he spouts.
Well, I’m blown away again by the pertinent critiques of my comment. What can I say?
You guys are so smart, so good at logical thinking… So unbiased!
I give up!
Some European: You’re tap dancing. Put up or shut up.
. . .
Sam Geoghegan says:
April 8, 2012 at 5:02 pm
“D. Patterson were you wearing your tin foil hat whilst writing that?”
I agree 100% with the Patterson comment you were referring to.
I can’t help but notice that “Some European” has yet to present his “mountains of hard and independent scientific evidence” as I requested. These guys always lose that argument. The evidence just… isn’t… there. The king has no clothes.