He’s got the whoooole woorld in his hands…
This troubling news from the Guardian, UK
“James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.
Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech to the US Congress – in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming – to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the “perfect storm” of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.
Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.”
I suspect he’ll be calling for the jailing of bloggers like myself next. I think Mr. Hansen has lost all sense of reason, and his last shred of credibility.
UPDATE: Apparently Mr. Hansen has made the claims above on live radio on the Dian Rehm show this morning, audio files of the interview will be up shortly here:
http://wamu.org/programs/dr/08/06/23.php#20635
When the audio file is up, I’ll post a direct link.
AUDIO CLIPS NOW AVAILABLE:
Listen to this segment
Joe D’Aleo created this graph this morning:
click for a larger image.
Satellite measured global temperature trend from the University of Alabama, Huntsville show sthat it is cooler now than when he made his testimony in 1988.
UPDATE2: See the reader poll on this issue here
The man deserves a padded room. To even compare the outright falsehoods of the tobacco industry to global warming, I mean, “climate change” is utterly absurd.
174 comments, oh what the heck, I’ll post this here instead of a newer thread.
Off topic – sort of. Given:
1) If you’ve read this far in this thread you need a break.
2) George Carlin died this week.
Go watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbFD4NC60EA – the science isn’t perfect, some of the arguments are flawed, but just remember it’s for amusement purposes only.
hansen from radio interview. “Within five years the Arctic ice will be completely melted. Now the sea ice is very important because if it… i mean WHEN it melts…”
HAHAHA even Crazy Jim hansen doesn’t believe his OWN lies…
MattN: Read my post again. I said McCarthy wasn’t “entirely” wrong. Your response seems to indicate I said he was “entirely” right. It’s ironic McCarthy’s name is still dragged through the mud by the liberal press and leftists despite the unearthing of the Venona Papers.
Pofarmer (21:39:14) said:
“How does anybody get this full of themselves?”
Richard (23:43:49) said:
“Is he raising his own profile because Al Gore got all the kudos?”
I think you’re beginning to see the tip of the iceberg (metaphorically speaking).
Hansen has put his life into GISS, which for a while, was the ONLY chart. Now there’s 4, and his is the outlier.
Hansen sees his work being used by others, and Gore gets the Nobel.
Hansen sees his codes and data under serious attack, and the nasty truth is being uncovered.
He may even begin to see his own mortality (at least his NASA job), and realize that history won’t be too kind to him. So he’s got to start SOMETHING, and soon.
There’s an election coming up, and maybe, just MAYBE, his side won’t win. A change of administration, a change of leader at NASA, someone who may hire their OWN scientists and friends.
Between now and November, he’ll start getting more and more strange. I predict his comments will get so wild by mid-October, that NEITHER party will want his support. Then comes the implosion…
i sure hope show the next thing he will be saying is we all should be sent to the moon because we are ruining Earth and that is the only way to stop the earth from melting.
Well Anthony Foxnews finally picked it up
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,370521,00.html
REPLY: Cool, thanks
“They do not make a profit equal to the amount of the loan despite what some might say.” Raven
Raven,
I never said this. The banks make money from the interest they collect from the loans they make with money-from-nothing. With a 10% reserve requirement, if I deposit $100 in cash into a bank, up to $1000 can be created in new money by the banking system as a whole. This is called the money-multiplier effect. The whole process is detailed minutely in The Mystery Of Banking by Murray N. Rothbard for free at: http://www.mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf
The history of banking is quite revealing. It makes obvious that fractional reserve banking originated when bankers found they could cheat and get away with it most of the time. Governments have supported it because the banks would use some of the newly created money to buy government bonds. The Bank Of England, for instance, financed Charles II after its foundation in 1694.
Hansen as McCarthy. An interesting comparison. Both are (were) obnoxious, for whatever that’s worth, which isn’t much.
It’s ironic McCarthy’s name is still dragged through the mud by the liberal press and leftists despite the unearthing of the Venona Papers.
Well, my mother was tight with the Browder brothers. She was a good friend of Earl (head of the Communist Party, USA) and wife, and dated brother Bill. (She also spit in the eye of HUAC, but that’s another story.) So I didn’t need outside education about the Communist threat. I heard about that firsthand.
And, yes, it was a real threat. (And the State Dept. was a snakepit.)
She repudiated the Party (unlike her sister, who gamely stuck it out till the end) and actually voted for Nixon (in ’72) and Reagan (in ’84). (And, yes, she knew about Nixon in the ’50s!)
I have so far resisted applying for her FBI file. Besides, I only know one of her pseudonyms.
As for the Press, they never quite got over having to admit that not only Alger Hiss was guilty as charged, but was a fully fledged, paid Soviet agent. It’s like a family embarrassment they don’t like to talk about. (Of course neither the Hiss case nor HUAC had anything directly to do with McCarthy; he was senate.)
So I must confess to mixed feelings regarding Tailgunner Joe.
I am so happy that Jimmy is on the rampage with his delusions.He is supposed to be the “godfather” of the AGW ideology.Now that it is obviously wrong.He is lashing out from the corner of his office.To try rallying his dwindling band of dog eared egg sucking alarmists.Who for so long spreaded outlandish alarmism that compelled ignorant government officials in many nations to make panicky laws and treaties.To fight a bogeyman called AGW.
What better way to show that a basket case is running on empty.What better way to show that AGW alarmism is dying out as a credible hypothesis.What better way to show how far off the mark he is on temperature predictions.What better way to show that the subsequent 20 years.That he never learned that the 1988 speech was debunked by history that followed it.
What better way to open peoples eyes to read and hear from a man who is supposed to be Director of a wing of the NASA space agency.Only to learn that he is spaced out.
Ed Markey, D-Mass., say, “Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet.”
I thought the democrats believed in the separation of church and state? I guess the religion of AGW is exempt.
New from NASA!
REPLY: Wow, our tax dollars at work
Calling Hansen a “nutbar”, accusing him of violating the U.S. Constitution, and otherwise trying to defile his character creates distraction from his main point — Big Oil has been telling lies via the think tanks they fund to influence public opinion and diminish our perception of the threats posed to human existence by human-caused Global Climate Change. His lawsuit could pressure Big Oil to move more quickly in researching and developing alternative fuels and energy sources. Of course, Big Oil could have chosen to show some leadership and future-vision of its own by taking steps toward worldwide energy transition. Instead they chose to spend some of those potential R&D funds to Bush/Cheney 2000 and 2004, a variety of think tanks spreading their junk science, and getting their money’s worth when the Bush Administration said America’s energy policy “for the future” would rely even more on Same Old Coal, Same Old Oil and Same Old Plutonium. I’d say the Hansen vs. Big Oil suit would have been more useful in spurring on energy transition around 2002. A good friend of mine inside the beltway says Republicans are going to lose big time come November because they have jacked so many things up and America is sick of their extreme devotion to ideology in spite of the common good. Starting in January 2009, the “work” of this lawsuit will be better performed by strategic transition-driving policies of our Federal Government.
bitebybyte:
His lawsuit
Be careful what you wish for.
Of course, Big Oil could have chosen to show some leadership and future-vision of its own by taking steps toward worldwide energy transition.
Of course it’s no one’s damn business what “leadership” “Big Oil” shows so long as it stays within the law. Individual corporations are responsible only to the law and to their voting shareholders.
We call that one “freedom”.
If you think it’s so easy to come up with an alternate solution, be my guest. That’s your freedom. There are some pretty bright bulbs working on it as we speak. And I bet you it will be one of them that turns the trick, not some damn government agency.
Big Oil has been telling lies via the think tanks they fund to influence public opinion and diminish our perception of the threats posed to human existence by human-caused Global Climate Change.
You want to compare the funding from both sides? Both the amounts and the stink attached? I don’t think you want to go there!
Those think tanks you decry reveal their data and methods–like real grown-up scientists. Unlike alchemists like Hansen who conceal data and methods, and therefore only play scientist on TV.
Who knows? Hansen could be right. (Though I doubt it. His own predictions since 1988 make quite a monkey out of him.) But unless he reveals his FULL data and methods, whatever he’s doing, right or wrong, ain’t science–by definition.
“bitebybyte” says… “Of course, Big Oil could have chosen to show some leadership and future-vision of its own by taking steps toward worldwide energy transition.”
You mean like this. Alternative fuels: “U.S. oil and natural gas companies are developing and/or marketing virtually every alternative fuel, including solar power, wind, geothermal, biofuels and hydrogen power. While they must ensure Americans have the oil and natural gas they will need and demand in the coming years, they are also moving toward a future in which our energy landscape will look much different.”
And yes “bitebybyte” [edit-implied profane and abusive~jeez] and read the rest rather than getting [snip] over a nutcake being called a nutcake.
Please stay civil. It’s way less work.~jeez
Is this Hansen a sleeper radical envirometalist? The bastard child of the ’60s protest scene and the rabid ’70s & ’80s green movement? Did he decide to try to change the system from the inside, resulting in his position in NASA? Or did he just make some bad investements into Exon, Mobile, Shell or some other oil company and is still trying to ‘get then back’?
He’s one or the other, with a 90% confidence…
Evan Jones (18:18:29) commented on the dumbed down teachers’ tests. I completely agree.
My wife has been a middle school principal for the past seventeen years. In a conversation with a couple of our teacher friends, one of them mentioned how difficult the California CBEST teacher credential test was for her. On a whim, I decided to take the test, which the state allows 4 hours to complete. I was done in under ninety minutes.
I was both astonished and embarrassed at how EASY the test is. The math portion was simple arithmetic, about 6th grade level — and it was multiple choice! You could work back from the four possible answers to get the right one, if you couldn’t, for instance, convert a fraction to a decimal [and yes, they allow calculators].
The other two parts of the test, reading comprehension and writing, were equally easy; write a paragraph, and read a page or two, then answer a multiple choice test on what you’d just read — open book! This is California’s idea of a teachers’ credentialing ‘test.’
The passing results give between one and four stars. It’s not bragging to say that I got 4 stars all 3 sections of the test; any average person who went only as far as high school in the ’50’s and ’60’s would have easily done as well.
The surprise is that a significant number of teaching applicants fail one or more parts of the CBEST [once one part of the CBEST is passed, it’s good for life, and applicants can retake the failed portion as often as they need to until they finally pass].
Government education has reached the point where science is akin to astrology, and there are no really wrong answers. No wonder people accept Hansen’s proclamations without question.
statepoet,
Fractional reserve banking does not cause inflation. The fed printing money faster than the growth in the economy does.
Thanks for the audio link I’ll add it on my post too.
BTW is there any way to contact you via email couldn’t find any contact info and thought to ask for a guest post for the
http://www.mygreenpeacebuddies.com/blogs
or even maybe a blogroll link exchange
bitebybyte (22:13:21) :
“… Bush Administration said America’s energy policy “for the future” would rely even more on Same Old Coal, Same Old Oil and Same Old Plutonium.”
Plutonium? If you are referring to nuclear reactors connected to the electric power grid, I believe all of them are fueled with Uranium 235. Plutonium is a waste product. Plutonium is used in breeder reactors, but there are none in America, at least not connected to the grid.
Don’t forget natural gas, I burn a fair amount of that. Probably more as global cooling intensifies in the coming years.
I’m impressed at the reach your blog has. I stumbled across http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/1988-2008-climate-then-and-now/ just now and many of the comments reference articles from here and related sites like http://www.woodfortrees.org/ and http://icecap.us/
As always, keep up the good work.
I think they are more guilty of raising oil prices and controlling supply for profit than manipulating the public on global warmning.
” “Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet.” I corrected the obvious error ” “Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate PROFIT.”
Big Oil has been telling lies via the think tanks they fund to influence public opinion and diminish our perception of the threats posed to human existence by human-caused Global Climate Change.
Actually, you have it backwards; there is no threat whatsoever posed by so-called “human-caused Global Climate Change” – never was, and never will be, because, like a child’s “bogeyman”, it doesn’t exist. Hansen is a liar, and is proposing putting people on trial for fighting for the truth. That is an outrage which is Orwellian in nature. Make no mistake, Democracy itself is at stake here.
bitebybyte
Before you start complaining about what private interest have not done, why don’t you complain about what the government hasn’t done.
1)Streamline regulations removing expensive and transient waivers for utilizing wastes.
2)Lower CFC designation from “toxic” to “no intentional release” allowing cascading power systems (15 to 25 percent increase in plant efficiency) and low density industial waste heat recovery.
3)Set a minimum inport price for oil to prevent foreign oil dumping in order to ensure a return on investment capital in alternatives. That would lower the cost of the capital making alternatives more competative.
Instead all we get is a choice between “tax ’em blind” and “give speculators you money” through a markets created litterly out of thin air.