BUMPED for visibility. Originally published on 6/24. Bumped on 6/28 and again on 6/30
This poll will gauge reader perception to the issue that Dr. Hansen of NASA has recently raised that I cover in my post here. One vote per computer, and please spread this permalink to the poll far and wide to get a good mix of input across the blogosphere.
Click on a dot, then click the little yellow vote icon. Poll closed.
I will run this poll 1 week until next Wednesday at 9AM PST, at which time it will close. The results will be submitted to a member of the U.S. Senate for distribution, NASA’s director, and will also be mailed to Dr. Hansen at NASA GISS.
You can subscribe to the results of this poll by RSS. Simply copy the link below into your RSS reader.
http://polldaddy.com/pollRSS.aspx?id=49940E93EC30ACAF
NOTE: A couple of Pro-Hansen sites have staged a “crash party” for this poll. This has accounted for a huge increase in the votes for the first question overnight. This sometimes happens with online polls when agenda driven activists decide to skew it, which is the biggest weakness of online polls.
Addendum: Some other sites that are not Pro Hansen have also now linked to this poll, so I suppose it is becoming a battle between opposing views now. Agenda driven activists on both sides are at work now.
Update 7/1 It appears that about 8000 votes were added for question 1 overnight. -Anthony
Update 7/2 9 AM PST Poll is closed, more here
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You didn’t have the choice I really want.
Put Hansen on trial (at least a civil trial for defamation of character, libel, etc).
If one were to investigate deeply, one might find grounds for criminal prosecution of treason. Like all government employees this scoundrel took an oath of office and may have broken it, which would be treason.
Vote to ignore.
He very badly wants to be fired; it would give him martyr status.
Treat him like the two-headed chicken hatched from a square egg that he is.
REPLY: Interesting insight.
What concerns me more, as someone who is ex-NASA, is that James Hansen is director of GISS. If you are a NASA employee, any research paper you write has to be submitted for agency approval before you can submit it to a journal. (The more important or controversial the paper, the higher up it goes within the agency, with the Life-In-Mars-Meteorite paper going all the way up to Goldin). Hansen is clearly not someone who can be relied upon to make objective judgements about climate science research results.
Perhaps Hansen should only be denied a heated office for the rest of his career. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
I imagine Hansen did not mean his statements literally.
He was merely making a “statement” that he doesn’t like seeing anti-global warming science being promoted (because obviously his research is right and ignoring his research has vast consequences for the planet.)
Hansen, however, IS the problem because he refuses to accept that there is problems with his research and his models. There are numerous problems with it, some of which are more than serious enough to call into question whether there will be negative impacts from global warming at all.
If Hansen wants less CO2 emissions, he needs to convince the PEOPLE to use less fossil fuels, not prosecute oil executives. He himself should be using less fossil fuels and not trying to force it on the rest of us by prosecuting people and enacting new laws (making electricty usage illegal for example).
Hansen is the problem. Let’s get rid of him and let some other objective scientists tell us what the impact of global warming is likely to be so we can properly plan for the future and enact proper policy.
He’s got a stated intent to violate the Hatch Act. That should be fun. Perjury could be fun, too. Discovery would be lots of fun.
Does anyone know if his statements Monday to the select committee were under oath? I saw that 20 years ago, it was “testimony”. Monday was described as “a briefing”.
First oil execs, then the rest of human kind. 6.7 Billion people on earth emitting 1 kg of CO2 per day = 2.4455 Billion metric tonnes of CO2 per year. With 2042 world population projected to be 9 Billion people, will Hansen say STOP BREATHING AND MAKING BABIES???
James Sexton,
I agree with the folks here that say that data is data. Let’s say that the assumptions of the opinions of oil-funded research is correct? Is it still wrong even if it ends up being correct just due to association. How about like another reader suggested, we find an alarmist paper not supported by government agencies or the good-ole’-boy, umh, I mean pear-reviewed, network?
Also, I would like to see the oil people brought to court. All and both sides of the data shown in court is a great avenue to expose both sides of the AGW argument purely, as John Coleman said at the NY conference a few months ago.
Hansen should be retired. But based on his proclivity for playing the martyr and his love of media adulation and grandstanding, I am sure both Houses of Congress will launch an immediate investigation into his termination. Remember, Senators Schumer and Clinton represent him in the Senate. As a senior employee of the Federal Goverment Hansen is bound by a Code of Conduct. However, a good lawyer in a court filled with the right jurors could probably prove that Hansen was fired for political reasons. In the mean time, NASA and its management would be run through a political grilling by various Congressional sub-committess.
In the end, Congress would force NASA to hire another Hansen type personality. It the GOP ever regains control of Congress again, it should shutdown the Climate and Atmospheres Branch of Goddard Space Institute altogether.
Who is going to decide who the objective scientists are? And how will we know that their opinions of what the impact of global warming might be are correct? Hansen isn’t the problem. The problem is that people treat him and others like gods. A great number of people do not seem to understand the difference between science and the opinions of scientists. Hansen is one scientist and he has his opinions. If he had a real theory that after testing was shown to be correct, that would be one thing. But he doesn’t. Rather, he and Al Gore engage in shameless self-promotion, proclaiming themselves to be the lone warriors battling all the evil deniers in the moral crusade for the survival of the planet. They gain power not because of proven scientific prowess, but because of people’s propensities to believe in conspiracy theories and their fears of cataclysm. This stuff sells. Just look at how many disaster shows there are on the Weather, National Geographic, Discovery, TLC, and History channels.
Einstein had a cult-like status in his day, but at least he had come up with brilliant theories that were tested and validated. Even so, he originally didn’t think the atom bomb was possible because he hadn’t considered chain reactions using neutrons. Even though his theory was correct, his opinion of it’s application to atom bombs was incorrect. We need to learn to separate the science from the scientist.
Jack,
The right to free speech is not absolute. There are times when it must be limited. For example, when you are speaking in some official capacity for another party then you must limit your statements to only those which agree with the other party. In the specific case of James Hansen he is clearly speaking in his capacity as a NASA manager and researcher, so the scope of what he can say should be limited by NASA, which I’m sure has policies in place regarding these issues.
Every employer I’ve ever worked for had clear policies that if approached by the press or a customer we were supposed to refer them to the company. If we didn’t and something we said was out-of-line (in the opinion of the company), we could be fired and potentially sued. Government employees are generally under even more restrictions in this regard, so I don’t understand why Hansen gets away with it.
The bottom line is, if he wants the most unfettered speech possible, all he has to do it quit NASA and then he’ll be free to say (almost) anything he wants.
I guess I’m a shill for Big Oil. Back in the 70’s I got a free set of steak knives from Shell Oil. My degrees are in Political Science and Computer Science with a minor in Engineering. Because I spent many years in electronics, particularly communications via radio waves, I have been a student of natural influences on radio wave propagation. That leads one to solar cycles and orbital mechanics. Amazingly [said with tongue in cheek], it turns out these also have a great influence on weather and climate, as does vulcanism. With new research on multi decadal oscillation patterns of the Earth’s major oceans (think El Nino) one can readily find the drivers for climate change without even considering puny humans. However, you can’t tax Mother Nature or pass laws controlling her, so that’s a non-starter. Thus… AGW. It’s the answer to a fascist’s dreams. The whole scam is very incestuous. Government funds “scientists” who then tell the government they “have to do something” which then requires millions more for the scientists to work out what to do which then requires laws and taxes which cause effects the scientists need millions more to study…. ad nauseum.
While I know people are saying they want the oil execs put on trial only because they believe it will allow discovery to take place and thereby bring the scientific basis of the theory into legal review, think of what kind of precedents would be set for bringing people to trial on the basis of thought crimes? I’d much rather put up with jerks like Hansen then open up that Pandora’s Box.
Hansen, as a government employee, is guilty of misconduct and should be immediately terminated and his government pension forfeit. He is using his government position, title, and implied authority to deliberately defame and slander highly successful people who provide invaluable services to humanity. Unlike himself, they provide true value and should be respected, not trashed by insignificant pieces of drivel like him. Hansen recently engaged in similar behavior when he used his implied authority, without any consent of his superiors or executive department heads (even using NASA stationery and letterhead), to try to threaten and intimidate a textbook company (Houghton Mifflin) into recalling textbooks that didn’t adhere to Hansen’s lunatic scriptures.
In his actual responsibilities for data collection and interpretation, he not only engages in the suspect fabrication we are all aware of, but he has actually destroyed taxpayer-funded data by writing over original data sets thereby deleting them. Is this so his work can’t be reviewed nor his adjustments questioned? By law, as a government servant using data technically owned by the taxpayers, he is required to archive his data, algorithms, and processes for public review. He defiantly refuses to obey and adhere to this mandate.
This man has gone on too long. He is a very dangerous fanatic. Grounds for civil and/or criminal legal action against him should be examined. Perhaps if he was fired, being the megalomaniac that he is, he would bring the lawsuit on his own that everyone wants to see. Only if he is personally involved as a litigant would his work be subject to discovery. In any case, he needs to go.
Fire.
I think the precedent of having a corrupt ideologue in charge of just about anything at NASA, not to mention reviewing papers for publication, is worse than his having “martyr status” with the press… he already gets more coverage that Britney Spears, for crying out loud, what harm could it do?
Hansen’s rants are symptoms of an underlying problem that has the potential to discredit sound science for years. He is a spokesman for a cabal that is hijacking the culture of professionalism and integrity in scientific research.
The cabal includes radical environmentalists, opportunistic politicians, global socialists NGOs and bureaucrats, investors, and collaborating scientists and media. They have succeeded in promoting an unproven hypothesis that is contradicted by years of empirical research and climate data into an orthodox belief system. This orthodoxy is applied to regulate funding for research from governments. To date the cabal’s success is phenomenal.
Scientific journals and peer review have been corrupted e orthodoxy. Contradictory research is answered by smears, false accusations of conflicts of interest, and deamonizing that is enabled by the willing media.
One of the most serious problems that undermines research is the monopoly from government funding. The cabal is succeeding in forcing scientists to collaborate with the AGW hoax through their dole of funding.
Two bad things happen. Research, analysis and innovation become mediocre. Honest and legitimate research funded by the private sector is discredited without justification. It is this source of funding that produces much of the innovation and discoveries in applied research.
Undermining research for perceived bias or conflicts based upon the source of funding alone, whether public or private, cannot be justified. The expertise and experience of funders is a critical to honest assessment of research, whether is the government of private sector.
Perceived conflicts of interest are best dealt with by complete disclosure of funding, methodology, controls, and data sets used. The research of Hansen, his minions and fellow travelers, is more questionable than any funded by Exxon because it is secretive, based upon suspect data that is revised without disclosure of methodology or justification. Many observers the product of GISS and IPCC to be dishonest, even fraudulent.
More broadly, in todays environment it is difficult for scientists to get research grants from NSF and NIH without conforming their work to the prevailing narrow minded orthodoxy. Sadly, government operates as a blunt instrument in most of the areas it influences or regulates. The legitimacy of research should be determined by its substance, not it form.
I would rather trust oil company-sponsored scientists because the companies have a profit motive in getting the science right. Betting on a warming climate when things are going to cool off can put a lot of resources in the wrong place, as can the converse. Selling air conditioners to eskimos isn’t a great profit prospect if a new ice age is pending. Likewise for selling furnaces in Tahiti if AGW is correct. Government money is more likely to lead to higher taxes and greater restrictions so I really do worry more about that side of financing!
BTW, my MSc is in management and I had to disect a lot of BS to determine where money and resources really had to be placed – and there were a lot of agendas to obscure the proper path.
I got a fellowship from NASA in graduate school and they made me sign a form including an oath to uphold the Constitution. (Unlike Hansen, I take these things seriously).
By calling on the government to censor and even prosecute oil executives for their ideas and for exercising free speech, Hansen should be fired. He violated his oath. For that, unlike the production of anthropogenic CO2, there are consequences.
Not quite off-topic: I know it’s a popular myth that the Church came down on Galileo like a tone of bricks. It did so but not really because of Galileo’s view but because of Galileo’s ineptitude at politics.
Galileo was convinced of the heliocentric view — mostly because of the phases of Venus. We know that later evidence supports him but that evidence wasn’t available to Galileo. Heliocentrism was a politically sensitive topic. Galileo argued (not entirely unsuccessfully) that heliocentrism wasn’t contrary to scripture. Nonetheless, he was placed under injunction not to advocate or defend heliocentrism however NOT restricted from discussing it as a hypothetical concept.
His friend and supporter, Pope Urban VIII, agreed with him, in fact, encouraging him to give arguments both for and against but cautioned him against advocacy of heliocentrism without stronger proof. The resulting Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems however was written in a manner that made the Pope look like a fool. Additionally, it came across as advocacy for heliocentrism. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! The part that everyone remembers was the backlash resulting from Galileo’s (perhaps unintentional) insult.
Oddly, there’s more of a parallel between James Hansen and Galileo than not — at least in Hansen’s mind. He’s obviously convinced of his position; he’s a tad short on overwhelming evidence; and he obviously perceives of himself as being at odds with the political establishment. And, apparently just like Galileo, he can’t resist arrogant posturing.
His previous “muzzlings” at NASA were deletions of his advocacy of AGW from official documents. Regardless of how Hansen saw them, I think NASA was in the right. The fact that NASA is now seemingly backing off from its previous position is showing perhaps a disconcerting change in the political atmosphere.
The idea of getting this thing into court has some appeal. It would be a great way to get the facts in the open. The oil companies can certainly afford the very best lawyers. But congress cannot put anyone on trial except in the case of impeachment. A trial could only happen if Hansen convinced a prosecutor that the oil execs committed a crime or if Hansen sued them. But to sue them he would have to show that he was somehow harmed by them. That seems unlikely. So I think the court case will not happen.
BTW this is a bit off topic but it is an interesting comparison.
The federal government is in debt to the tune of $9 trillion. In addition they have $45 trillion in unfunded future liabilities. David Walker, the past Comptroller General of the US government, has publicly stated that it could bankrupt America if something isn’t done about it.
On the other hand the oil companies are making profits.
So which one is more fiscally responsible?
Do not lobby to get Hansen fired.
Sure, you might feel better but nothing of substance results. He and the AGW cult want a martyr. He’ll be feted in the media, interviewed everywhere ad-nauseum. Instead, his excesses may actually repel some thinking people and his outrageous stances soe those first seeds of doubt that may lead some more thinking people to become skeptical warmists or whatever. I was a skeptical warmist until I saw the cooling data.
Did this frightening individual row to Washington? Or did he ride a pushbike? If he did either, did he eat to fuel his internal combustion? Likely he used calories that were assisted in their growth, transported to his local shop and packaged using “fossil” fuel as fertilizer, fuel and wrapping.
If he did neither his carbon footprint for the trip would be a sight to behold.
Guilty. Banish the man to a cave.
I say try the Executives with the prosecution having to carry the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. And if we could just have Richard Feynman as the judge.
“Oddly, there’s more of a parallel between James Hansen and Galileo than not — at least in Hansen’s mind.” DAV
LOL! Fighting yesterday’s battles! I call it the Carl Sagan Syndrome.
Anybody who seriously believes AGW is seriously deficient in either scientific ability, or integrity, except AL Gore. He is seriously deficient in both.