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
Big Oil provides us with energy, at an affordable price. There are $trillions of dollars available for anyone, who can do a better job at providing energy to the world.
Taking that system apart, and replacing it with a better system, is not going to be done by the government. Providing goods and services at market prices, is not what they do well.
So here is the bottom line. There are people that rant and rave, and people that produce. Jim Hansen’s rantings, are a distraction to the fact that his “prophecies” have not come true.
Trying to make Big Oil the bogeyman, is a classic distraction to that “inconvienent truth”.
I agree that big oil is not the bogeyman. However, a private company is beholden to its stockholders, and stockholders buy stock only when there is money to be made tomorrow. We are short on investor “make money later” stock buyers and long on “make money now” stock buyers. But even they can’t get a bid in edgewise. Right now, speculators, not stock holders, are trying to make money. That makes prices even higher. Worse, it provides no incentive for oil companies to pump more oil or create new refineries. I believe that there needs to be some regulation on price speculation so that market forces can work. I also believe that we will never see low fuel prices ever again.
“Fractional reserve banking does not cause inflation. The fed printing money faster than the growth in the economy does.”
MarkW,
Even during those times before the Fed and when the US did not have a central bank, local banks could and did cause inflation by printing more bank notes than they had reserves to back them up with. Sound dishonest? Anyway, when the public got wise there would be bank runs. It was not just because the depositors’ money had been lent out as in “It’s a wonderful life”.
It was also because money had been created out of nothing with nothing to back it up. There were more outstanding bank notes (or money in checking accounts) than reserves which were supposed to back them up. A form of musical chairs.
The Fed is the head of the government backed banking cartel. It allows the banks to inflate uniformly which helps prevent bank runs. The Fed can and does cause inflation but your local banker shares in the loot too. That is why banking is so popular, it is a form of legalized counterfeiting. Yet another opportunity for rhyme:
banksters
To counterfeit,
what a silly thing to do!
It’s a crime;
you could do time;
you’d certainly be blue.
No, become a banker
if you hanker
to make money that is new.
You’ll be respected
and not rejected
by the people that you screw.
It’s theft the same
but you won’t be blamed
by those that you undo.
(And you’ll do no time for your crime sublime.)
But at the end, can your money bend
the rules that condemn you?
Pamela,
The idea that companies don’t care about future profits is one often portrayed by those on the left, and those with absolutely no understanding of how business works. (Not that there isn’t a tremendous amount of overlap between the two groups.)
If your notion was true, then it should be easy to demonstrate that no company, anywhere, engages in R&D. After all, research won’t pay off for many years, and according to you, know company cares about anything past this years profits.
If you want short term thinking, the place to go is govt. Very few politicians care for anything past the next election.
Russ,
Let me see if I have this straight. You want us to beleive that in order to keep oil cheap, we need to have govt make it expensive?????
When it makes economic sense to develop alternative sources of energy, the companies will do so. Trying to entice them to develop those sources prior to that point is a waste of money.
Secondly, if you don’t think speculators play a valueable role in the market, then you haven’t been paying attentions. Speculators smooth out price swings by gambling on what tomorrow’s prices are going to be.
“I believe that there needs to be some regulation on price speculation so that market forces can work. ” Pam Gray
Pam loves freedom,
within reason, of course.
And that reason, of course,
is her’s.
It don’t rhyme too well, but it reminds me of Mr. Ed.
Pamela (8:32):
Please explain to me how HIGHER prices do not provide an incentive for pumping more oil and creating new refineries.
I think an Econ101 class is in order…
Good god. Let me say it one more time. Stock buyers, not companies, are interested in short term gains right now, not long term gains. Don’t put words into my mouth I did not say. Companies would love to have investors come on board that are thinking long term steady gain. You think me liberal. You think me wrong.
Not to be left behind, Koffi Annan has gotten into the game! I guess he just couldn’t stand his life of disgrace and seclusion and had to let the world know he’s still relevant.
In the bad old days hard currency was scarce and only accessible to the wealthy at high interest rates. The common folk had no access to credit and the economy and freedom suffered as a result. Fractional reserve banking may not be perfect but it is a lot better than the alternatives.
I hate to chime in now that things are so far off-topic, but:
1) Hansen’s Antics, I hope, are a symptom of the realization that the “Fraud Train” is going off the rails, and the attempt to shut down debate has failed. Forced to actually defend their ideas, the core AGW crowd switches to to spittle-flecked attacks because they can’t defend the idea. This could be a really bad year for Soros.
2) Hansen should definitely be fired. He’s used his position as a government bureaucrat for many years to attack his bosses and campaign politically – not to mention he can’t possibly be spending his work hours wisely and be giving hundreds or thousands of interviews. If nothing else, from what I hear of his code, he should be fired for incompetence.
3) It will be interesting to see if some major law firms jump on the AGW-lawsuit bandwagon – I doubt it, as it’s becoming more and more obvious they would get their clocks cleaned. It probably won’t (and probably shouldn’t) change public opinion too much, but we can use all the coffin-nails we can get at this point to at least cut off the “funding machine” for AGW and let people obtain funding the same way everyone else does. Some people have pointed out that Bush should have fired more bureaucrats when he came into office, and it’s hard to argue at this point – especially heads of departments.
4) I was going to tick you guys off for being so hard on Pamela, but in her 8:32 post she literally got 8 of 10 assertions wrong in a single paragraph, so what can I do? Well, maybe 7, one of them was just a pessimistic opinion.
“Fractional reserve banking may not be perfect but it is a lot better than the alternatives.” Raven
It is not just imperfect, it is FRAUDULENT. Plus, it is fraud backed up by the government. Plus it is the cause of the business cycle which can have disastrous results. A little history lesson:
fractional reserve banking -> Fed -> Roaring 20’s -> Great Depression -> World War II -> 50 million dead
Just get the government out of money and the free market will do a wonderful job. Ron Paul knows what he is talking about.
I suggest http://www.mises.org for anyone who wants to learn about sound economics.
MarkW It’s a short step from regulating what one can say on a video or audio transmission (It’s been many years since a majority of people actually listened to broadcast vs. cable TV) to the regulating of what you can say on the internet.
Hm. A shorter step from here to there than you think. Rasmussen circulated a poll almost a year ago that found a sizable portion of the American public was in favor of a new Fairness Doctrine….one that included “websites that offer political commentary”, phrasing so broad that it could include almost anything. 34% in favor of internet application, if you can believe it.
Many teachers these days feel that it much more important for a student to feel good about him or herself, than it is to actually know something about the world.
Welcome to the No Child Gets Ahead program.
To reason is now treason.
But who will be tried
for a cold season?
MarkW,
My response was aimed at bitebybyte’s attack on Big Oil as the problem, and Jim Hansen was just doing his civic duty, to request that they be muzzled.
I am not sure what you are implying about government making oil more expensive. I think the root of our problem is government preventing the drilling of oil. So they currently are making it more expensive, and they should stop doing that.
If we showed the futures market, that more supply would be coming on line, in the future, the speculative bubble would deflate, and prices would decline rapidly.
I just had the chance to see the transcript of Hansen’s “testimony”. According to him, we have ONE YEAR to make a difference — maybe.
He’s decided that the maximum atmospheric CO2 content for life is 350 ppm, although he shows nothing to demonstrate how he got that number.
I’m surprised he didn’t just come out and say, “Come with me if you want to live.”
The word “megalomaniac” come to mind when I read his stuff.
[…] the policization of science, such as we’ve witnessed recently from Jim Hansen’s conduct in calling for trials, perhaps making this a requirement for all graduating science majors, plus a […]
Pamela,
Stock owners are interested in making sure the price of their stock appreciates.
The only way to do that is for the company to have good income today, and proven prosepects of good income continuing into the future.
Don’t believe me, check with any actuarial.
statePoet emotes:
fractional reserve banking -> Fed -> Roaring 20’s -> Great Depression -> World War II -> 50 million dead
—-
I’ve seen lazy, sloppy thinking in my life, but this takes the cake.
1) Fractional reserve banking has been around for hundreds of years, perhaps as early as the 1400’s.
2) There’s fractional reserve banking, and there is the fed. The only relationship is that the Fed regulates banks.
3) The federal reserves incompetance did lead in part to the roaring 20’s and the great depression, but so did hundreds of other factors.
4) The great depression was not responsible for WWII. It may have been one factor, but it was a very minor factor.
Brilliant.
I located Hansen’s rationale for 350 ppm.
The paper is:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf
And supporting material at:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1135.pdf
Haven’t yet had the chance to wade through it.
Merovign:
>2) Hansen should definitely be fired. He’s used his position as a government bureaucrat for many years to attack his bosses and campaign politically – not to mention he can’t possibly be spending his work hours wisely and be giving hundreds or thousands of interviews. If nothing else, from what I hear of his code, he should be fired for incompetence.
Hmm, I think just the reverse. Don’t get me wrong here. He has done all that you said, but…
He should not be fired, because he is looking to be fired. That allows him to go full on into martyr mode. Each of his actions has been a step further, and a step harder towards “I dare you to fire me!”
If fired, he would go on the attack full time, using his credentials “Former Director of NASA GISS” etc, just as powerful, and maybe more so. Claiming BushCo want to shut him up etc.
So much nicer to ignore him
Robert
Hi Everyone!
This site is so great! Hey, I’m wondering, why does the UAH MSU chart look different than the one at: http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_amsu_trend_map_tlt ?
The real chart shows tropospheric warming–who got the chart here wrong?
Haven’t yet had the chance to wade through it. Besides hip boots you might also want to don a good gas mask first.
Steve Moore
Read no further than the abstract. You will see that 50 million years ago that a fall from as high as 450 +-100 ppm caused a glaciation. Now if you do not want an iceball, what would you want. I would want a 3 sigma. That would be 750 ppm. He should not be saying we need to go to 1988 levels, we should be going for 2088 levels per simple math of the abstract. Perhaps the details will indicate the abstract was a mistake.