Even the very liberal UK Guardian picked up on this. What next Jim, the Constitution? NASA, please fire this man. (h/t to Barbara)
Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
From the UK Guardian:
Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.
James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. “The democratic process doesn’t quite seem to be working,” he said.
Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: “The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.
“The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I’m not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we’re running out of time.”
Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. “I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society’s attention to the issue are not inappropriate,” Hansen said.
He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the “urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments”.
Read the entire story in the UK Guardian
Just Want Truth: “One last question : is James Hansen a climatologist, or meteorologist?”
He is a revolutionary!. If the US Congress doesn’ t approve Cap and Trade he will make a ‘coup d’etat” 🙂
It is very difficult to prove a violation of the Hatch act, and most complaints come from within the organization. Only the egregious examples result in administraitive action.
More troubling are possible violations of the Code of Ethics if he did recieve money from agencies outside of the government (other than from an approved teaching position). Should to be proven that he recieved money, even an honorarium from and external agency, while in a position equivilant to GS-15 or greater, he would be subject to criminal sanctions.
To date, considering his actions in the press and with civil disobediance, I have seen little ethical behavior displayed.
As for Climatoligist or meterologist, his degrees are BA Physics/Math, MS Astronomy, PhD Physics all from the University of Iowa.
DR (17:48:44) :
I’m not sure what your point is. Are you misunderstanding me?
Brendan H (02:47:31) :
James Hansen endorsed John Kerry for president. That hurts your argument.
derise (16:18:47) :
I knew about his education. But I asked this question for those who constantly talk about field of study. They somehow think you must be a climatologist in order to know what your talking about in climate. They do this to discredit people like Timothy Ball. This only shows they don’t know what they are doing.
They also find reasons to discard Richard Lindzen though he is an atmospheric physicist and holds the Alfred P. Sloan Chair of Meteorology at M.I.T. He may be the most brilliant mind in the area of climate in the world. But that somehow means nothing to them. They have double standards.
So I ask if they know if James Hansen is a climatologist or not. He is not. So by their standards he is disqualified to talk about climate.
I try to hold them accountable to their double standard.
Our tax dollars are supporting this activist? He needs to be removed from NASA immediately.
Eric wrote “Hansen has a right as a citizen to advocate whatever policy he wants to speak for. This is not prohibited by the Hatch act.”
When there are plenty of other reasons to fire the [man]…oversight of deliberately falsified data, willful misrepresentation, malfeasance, woeful incompetence, megalomania, and insanity….the Hatch Act is irrelevant.
I think you are not distinguishing here between what he should be fired for (all of the above) and should be TRIED for (violation of the Hatch Act).
I am just saying fire him, not try him.
On second thought….lol
CHRIS
Norfolk, VA
RE: the Champery snow article. At this point, save for breaking one or another arcane canton law, one may well be able to ski into Champery instead of downloading on the Telepherique. One may be able to actually ski down the edge of the road from the base of the chairlift that is about a mile or so up the road from the village, the one that runs along the West side of the creek. Not bad for a town thats under 3000 ft elevation and is technically in a rain / snow shadow.
Adolfo Giurfa (13:55:38) :
Just Want Truth: “One last question : is James Hansen a climatologist, or meteorologist?”
Adolpho : He is a revolutionary!. If the US Congress doesn’ t approve Cap and Trade he will make a ‘coup d’etat” 🙂
Ah, be fair. Hansen is on record that he does not want Cap and Trade. It is too slow in its effects. He wants direct taxation.
Soon he will need restraints. He believes he has the truth and will save us whether we want to be saved or not.
Thanks for the heads up on the English Bill of Rights; I stand corrected. On recollection of history classes many years ago, this piece of information was lurking there somewhere in my memory.
I have only just now finished briefly reading through the “Human Rights Act 1998” you referenced. So far I cannot agree/disagree definitively there is a First Amendment that is analogous to the US First Amendment in meaning and intent.
Just Want Truth: “James Hansen endorsed John Kerry for president. That hurts your argument.”
Which argument, and why does Hansen’s endorsement of Kerry harm it?
Here’s a link. I was slightly mistaken: Obama didn’t do the decoupling, himself — congress did it for him!
But carbon caps are out of the budget bill.
http://www.examiner.com/x-2928-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2009m3d25-House-and-Senate-Omit-Obamas-Carbon-Trading-Market-from-Budget
However, this is but a temporary reprieve. The anti-CO2 steamroller will proceed down the legislative pike, as the Examiner article indicates:
With Democrat majorities and ‘moderate’ Republicans (including John McCain) on board, the only obstacle to draconian ‘carbon’ taxes and/or cap-and-trade (another form of taxation) will be the reluctance of Congressmen from fossil-fuel producing states to go along, and a strong public challenge to climate Alarmism by Realist scientists.
Next month Carol Browner at the EPA is going to promulgate rules to ‘regulate’ CO2 as a ‘pollutant’. The only thing that can stop her is legislation, or legal action by affected parties (that will be you and me, when they come after our trucks and backyard grills).
We need someone prominent, whom the media cannot ignore, who is willing to stand up and declaim, “CO2 is NOT a problem! STOP the madness!”
Who will that be?
/Mr Lynn
However, this is but a temporary reprieve. The anti-CO2 steamroller will proceed down the legislative pike, as the Examiner article indicates:
Could be. But if it’s in the budget bill it means it doesn’t get debated. Different procedure. If it comes up in the normal way of things it has to stand or fall on its own.
The EPA angle is worrying, though.
Next month Carol Browner at the EPA is going to promulgate rules to ‘regulate’ CO2 as a ‘pollutant’. The only thing that can stop her is legislation, or legal action by affected parties (that will be you and me, when they come after our trucks and backyard grills).
You can always organise some Direct Action on her. As a socialist she surely can’t object to working people taking action on someone abusing a powerful position :p
“Dorf on Global Warming. I can see it!”
I would suggest “Duarf.” As in “fraud” spelled backasswards.
What has Hansen done relative to laws? He is a senior scientist, head of a Nasa lab, and the most visible person at Nasa. In this position he did:
1) Publicly supported John Kerry–violation of Hatch act. Sorry, but we don’t want members of the administration making partisan pronouncements.
2) took Soros money for legal help, and this is a violation of Hatch Act because the Soros organization is a lobby group (related to MoveOn.org). The help they provided has a dollar value.
3) Is calling for dictatorship/overthrow of democracy: this is called sedition.
4) Is calling for oil company execs to be tried for crimes against humanity.
5) As a high government official, is publicly and repeatedly contacting heads of state and telling them what to do. Big no-no.
6) He is aiding vandals (not peaceful protestors) in England.
A British anthropologist has been suspended from work after organising G20 protests and saying that bankers should be hung from lamp posts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7967096.stm
I doubt anyone is reading this thread any more, but it did occur to me that this Hansen-Hatch stuff is a overblown. I can’t stand the guy, but I have to say that if he were to come out in public and state, “You know, I think I’ve overstated my position, and this cap-and-trade idea seems dangerous and elitist”, nobody here would be complaining. It’s what he’s saying that is disagreeable, I believe, not how he’s saying it. Sorry if I’m repeating anyone.
It all started with the IPCC.
The IPCC instigated this fear-based mass-alarmism. That some governments aren’t falling for it entirely actually shows “democracy” may actually be working to keep some hot heads in check. It is sad though that even NASA and the White House have jumped on the scientific-credibility-undermining demagoguery bandwagon. in regards to changing climates.
“Rational and balanced” government policy ideally attempts to build upon what reputable scientists allegedly agree about. If the scientific community comes to a strong consensus and makes recommendations, it looks really bad when politicians ignore these recommendations. If a political body (like the U.N.), however, assembles a group of scientists to manufacture the impression of a strong consensus in order to further their personal beliefs and preferred policy changes… then, I think, we might end up in dangerous waters. Through concerted press releases and stirring up emotions, it’s easy to turn the manufactured scientific consensus into widespread manufactured public consent for certain policy changes. THE primary organization that is making recommendations, and which is being regarded as authoritive is the U.N.’s ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ (IPCC).
In their own words: http://www.ipcc.ch/about/index.htm “The IPCC was established to provide the decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change. The IPCC does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Its role is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”
So, to summarize: among other purposes, one of the main reasons for the IPCC’s existence is “to provide the decision-makers with information relevant to human-induced climate change and options for mitigation.”
The KEY PHRASE of the the Working Group I (The Physical Science Basis) of the last (2007) IPCC report, AR4 (Assessment Round #4), is that the IPCC declares a > 90% confidence (in the media often translated as ‘certainty’) that most of the observed warming over the past half-century is caused by human activities. In short:
According to the IPCC it is >90% likely that >50% of warming is due to human activity.
Then they proceed to attribute the antropogenic aspect to be primarily due to greenhouse gas emissions, in particular CO2 (carbon dioxide), but also NH4 (Methane) and NO3 (Nitrous Dioxide). And then from there on forward come the predictions and the policy recommendations. The seriousness of all the IPCC recommendations is build upon the authority manufactured by the “90% likely”, which is politically near-unquestionable.
The “over 50%” comes from tinkering with computer models, in which this value did a great job of corresponding with the warming of the second half of the 20th century. (Note: The computer model used considers climate variations caused by cosmic ray flux, and other possibly major parameters, as negligible, completely ignoring many recent scientific findings.). My question was: how did they arrive at the 90%? First thing I found out is that the “90% likely” or “90% certainly” are expressions of confidence. Second I found is that this expression of confidence what not arrived at through tests, calculations or statistics, but simply expressed “the expert judgment of the authors”. In other words, it reflects the subjective opinion of the authors about their own work. Since most people, expert or not, tend to be fairly confident when they publish something, this isn’t saying much, unless of course we’re dealing with a very large group of experts. So, then I wondered how many people we were talking about here…
There were 619 contributing authors for the IPCC AR4 WG1, of which 152 lead authors. It’s the lead authors that determine the confidence level. While 152 people isn’t exactly overwhelming, or particularly difficult to come to consensus with (particularly given the fact that the IPCC is by-invitation-only and the greatest expert critics of the IPCC findings aren’t invited), the picture is actually worse…
The” >90% likely >50% of warming is antropogenic” is arrived at over 3 chapters:
In Chapter 7, “Couplings Between Changes in the Climate System and Biogeochemistry”, the link between greenhouse gasses and temperature is established. In Chapter 8, “Climate Models and Their Evaluation”, the used climate model is covered and Chapter 9, “Understanding and Attributing Climate Change”, deals with attribution.
C7: Coordinating Lead Authors + Lead Authors: 18
C8: Coordinating Lead Authors + Lead Authors: 13
C9: Coordinating Lead Authors + Lead Authors: 9
C7+8+9 = 40 people
So, when the IPCC’s “thousands of scientists from all over the world” declared “in unison” their “consensus” that humans are “the main cause of the warming” of the climate over the last 50 years, it actually boils down to thousands of scientists and politicians having FAITH in the subjective confidence of less than 4 dozen “experts”. That’s all it means.
All the rest is demagoguery.