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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Scientific facts must now be decided democratically in majority vote. Hurray!
Go here to read up on it. There is also a discussion on how to file a complaint.
http://www.osc.gov/hatchact.htm
[snip]
Andrew
Nat McQueen has it right on: I think James Hansen WANTS to be fire and he’s going to keep pushing until it happens.
As a scientist, he must lie awake at night trying to figure out how to get out of this global warming trap he set for himself. If he goes out in a blaze of glory he’ll be a hero to the culture of protest we’ve cultivated in this country.
And by the time the world figures out he was wrong, he’ll be long since retired on the sands of Bimini with a mai tai in his hand.
Mr. Dias,
I am a US Federal employee, the same as Dr. Hansen. I respectfully submit your view is wrong. Employees of the Federal Government (of the US at least) are subject to the restrictions of the Hatch Act, which DOES limit free speech to an extent for Federal Employees. He is identified as a NASA employee in all of these articles, and, if he is wearing that ‘mantle’ to presumably enhance the impact of his views I think that makes a case that he is doing so ‘on duty’ and represents the views of NASA itself. In so doing he is arguably in violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits such political activity while ‘on duty’. For instance, members of the military are allowed to attend political rallies of whatever persuasion, but they cannot wear their uniforms when doing so. Similarly Dr. Hansen can attend whatever rallies he desires as long a the government isn’t paying for his travel (people traveling on the government’s dime are ‘on duty’), and he does not identify himself as a NASA employee. Doing so is the equivalent of ‘wearing a uniform’.
If Dr. Hansen is not being censored. He has been interviewed and quoted over a thousand times in the last couple of years, more than any other scientist I can think of. If he truly wants to pursue his advocacy, he should resign and do so to his hearts content, I have no issue with him doing so. I do have an issue with him doing what he is currently doing.
Also, I think you should reconsider the use to the descriptor ‘evil’ in describing actions/statements of people on the blog. ‘Evil’ is a religious term and has no meaning in the context of this discussion. ‘Evil’ is not the opposite of ‘good’, it is the opposite of ‘Holy’. The term you’re looking for most likely is ‘bad’, not ‘evil’.
Had a few comments on the Guardian about James Hansen, before the comments were closed…
With over 500 comments, indeed the Guardian allows both sides to comment (even if there view is 100% pro AGW) and only extreme or personal attacks are deleted. My first comment (#2 in the overview) was:
jtom (07:17:04) :
[snip}
Is no one interested in enforcing the Hatch Act anymore?
Which part of the Hatch Act do you think he’s breaking?
Every strongman everywhere and everywhen was just trying to make things better. The Benevolent Dictator model always beguiles some folks. When things weren’t going well in the early years of the American Civil War, there were many references to this Union General or that (Fremont, McClellan, etc) just about to march on Washington and take over the government to save the country.
So far Hansen is still trying to line-dance. He says A (the race is in peril but democracy isn’t working) but won’t quite say B (therefore to save the race we must jettison democray). At least not yet. Perhaps he is waiting for the peepul to rise and overthrow current institutions and offer him the crown and sceptre.
This infact is also the work of Hanson: from http://www.icecap.us
The biggest tax increase in US history:
March 24, 2009
Obama’s Climate Tax and EPA Ruling
By The Institute for Energy Research
When President Obama released his budget plan three weeks ago, it included a whopping $1.6 trillion in new taxes. The plan contained $989 billion in various tax increases and a $646 billion cap and trade tax. As we previously noted, if enacted, this would be the largest tax increase in American history.
But it turns out the Administration’s budget did not reveal the entire truth. A top White House aide told Senate staffers that cap and trade tax would be much higher than the initially reported $646 billion. In fact, Jason Furman, the deputy director of the National Economic Council, told Senate staffers the tax would cost American taxpayers between $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion. A $1.6 trillion tax raise is huge-but a tax increase of $2.3 trillion or $2.9 trillion is astonishing. To put that in perspective, that is a tax increase of $7,500 to $9,500 per American. Let’s hope the cost of the President’s budget does not continue to escalate.
By Ian Talley, Wall Street Journal
See in this Wall Street Journal report on the EPA sending the White House a proposed finding that carbon dioxide is a danger to public health, a step that could trigger a clampdown on emissions of greenhouse gases across a wide swath of the economy. If approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the endangerment finding could clear the way for the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to control emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases believed to contribute to climate change. In effect, the government would treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The EPA submitted the proposed rule to the White House on Friday, according to federal records published Monday.
Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers warn that if the EPA moves forward on regulation of CO2 under the Clean Air Act—instead of a measured legislative approach—it could hobble the already weak economy.
Coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and domestic industries, such as energy-intensive paper, cement, fertilizer, steel, and glass manufacturers, worry that increased cost burdens imposed by climate-change laws will put them at a severe competitive disadvantage to their international peers that aren’t bound by similar environmental rules. Environmentalists have called for the endangerment finding, and say action by Congress or the Obama administration to curb greenhouse gases is necessary to halt the ill effects of climate change. (H/T Dr. Benny Peiser, CCNET)
Judging by the poll so far it’s a win for the ‘sack him’ view by a N. Korean landslide. I wish I was surprised…
Can someone tell me how many ‘Sack Hansen’ posts there have been here?
I am having a difficult time uncovering exactly which part of the Hatch Act this guy is in violation of. While being a federal employee, he can participate in political events and activities but not while on duty. If he is on personal leave, he can do what he appears to want to do unless I am misreading the revised act.
Here is a gross bit of manipulation that shows you how the Guardian works.
Eco Soundings is the Guardian’s environmental editor John Vidal’s way of contaminating the internet with as much disinformation as possible. Small, almost bare articles that he can post often throughout a day instead of well researched articles that takes days to write.
This is Vidal’s latest Eco Sounding
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/mar/24/lovelock-chernobyl-nuclear-waste-wildlife-radiation
The whole thing from start to finish is one act of anti-nuclear manipulation.
Vidal says “The hospitals of Ukraine and Belarus really are abnormally full of leukaemia victims.”
Very few, around 60 people, died directly because of Chernobyl. Even the UN cut the number of deaths from the often mentioned thousands to dozens instead. Long-term deaths from radiation etc was less than 4000, this is less than the number of people who die from the cold in Britain each winter. Today it would be irrational to link a new sufferer of leukemia to Chernobyl.
The UN wrote in its 2005 report on Chernobyl that the worst effects were not the deaths but the “damaging psychological impact due to a lack of accurate information…manifesting as negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance from the state.”
In other words, Ukrainians were made to believe they had little to look forward to, so they became hopeless.
Vidal goes on to link to a BBC article to back up this selective factoid,“US scientists working in Ukraine for the last 17 years publish data showing that low-level radiation has actually led to a major reduction in bird and insect populations.”
But that same BBC article isn’t as black and white as he thinks it is (he knows this of course but is being selective). The article in question goes on a bit, quoting a Ukrainian scientist:
But some researchers have challenged the study, claiming that the lack of human activity in the exclusion zone has been beneficial for wildlife.
Dr Sergii Gashchak, a researcher at the Chornobyl Center in Ukraine, dismissed the findings. He said that he drew “opposite conclusions” from the same data the team collected on birds.
“Wildlife really thrives in Chernobyl area – due to the low level of [human] influence,” Dr Gashchak told BBC News.
Gashchak is correct. Those US scientists Vidal quotes have not been in Ukraine long enough to know that before the Chernobyl disaster the whole area was unfit for bird species due to poor Communist environmental standards.
There you have before your very eyes an act of manipulation by John Vidal (the same Champagne Socialist who thinks McDonald’s should forget about teenagers, the poor and other people on a right budget, and start serving haute cuisine instead!).
Re: The Guardian piece, a lively online debate evolved immediately in the comments section of this articles. Perhaps surprising was how many skeptics, disbelievers, appeared. Out of 500 comments (lordy, five hundred) I reckon skeptical postings equalled or outnumbered those of Hansen’s Kool Aid drinkers, and the skeptical postings received significantly more ‘endorsements’ than did the other side. I stumbled on the article fairly soon after it appeared so my entry was third in the sequence (I’m registered with the Guardian as ‘mascamote’) and was amused when the uncool started talking about ‘paid conspiracies’ and all that nonsense. Anyway, I dunno whether the volume of ‘skeptic’ postings represented a shift in opinion or what. I hope it was one more example of rational thinking and decent science winning out over the dopes.
From Costa Rica…
Imagine if you will, crowds “demonstrating” for lowered living standards worldwide, increased poverty, malnutrition and disease and higher mortality rates particularly among children. Then, imagine a “scientist” not only advocating such a thing, but leading the charge, and complaining that the only reason they haven’t been successful so far in their endeavor is due to “corporate lobbying”.
In a normal world, these freaks would be reviled and ostracized. But, because AGW ideology has become an industry, supported by the MSM, politicians, and “scientists” going along to keep their careers and funding, along with the masses of gullible and scientifically illiterate believing it, or thinking “better safe than sorry”, we’re left in a sort of Orwellian/Twilight Zone nightmare.
In the transportation system of modern day thought and belief, the “Death Trains” are those promulgated by the AGW/CC ideologues such as Hansen.
I believe people are waking up, but the question is, will it be in time?
Apparently Mr Hansen knows as little about the U S federal government (for which he works) as he does about CO2 being a climate driver. The U S government is a representative republic not a democracy. Democracy stops at the State level. Sorry James, you don’t get one person one vote at the federal level.
Hansen said:” but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes”
Absolutely correct James, [snip]
Implicit in the right to free speech is the responsibility and obligation not to yell fire in a crowded theater.
Mr. Hansen is violating that obligation and responsibility! He is intentionally (or through gross incompetence) using flawed models and manipulated data to advocate action that will result in enormous damage to the economy of the entire world and likely the deaths of thousands in the undeveloped countries due to ill conceived attempts to control the uncontrollable.
He is in love with his own press clippings and instead of doing his job, he is using his title and position at NASA for his own gain, and to serve an agenda that is counter to the interests of the people (taxpayers) who pay his salary.
Freedom of speech is not a defense against willful misrepresentation of the facts. That is why there are libel and slander laws. The right to freedom of speech is not absolute, it is only protected when it is done in good faith.
Larry
A year or so ago a group of American teenage virgins, or at least alleged virgins, took it into their heads to fly over to the UK to promote more chastity and sexual restraint here.
Some of us looked at what has become a rather familiar spectacle over the years, and wondered why they did not stay at home, promote chastity there, and when they had done that successfully, come over again and tell us about it.
Some of us wondered idly why people living in the US thought they had anything to teach the UK about chastity. Chastity seemed to be in singularly short supply there, and while it was deeply selfless of them to export the little they had, we felt rather like saying with Sir Philip Sydney, no, stay home, your need for it there is greater than mine for it here.
Well, inquiring minds are asking themselves similar questions on the occasion of Hansen’s visits: why exactly he has chosen the UK to focus his mission on. Like, are there no power stations in the US that are worthy of his preaching? And we are feeling yet again that familiar sense of being unworthy of the attentions of this great preacher. Our need of him really is less than yours. We really are not emitting so much noxious CO2. Especially not per capita.
But the view seems to be, among these visiting evangelists of all persuasions, Lord, make me chaste – but not yet. And also, when preaching to us, it seems to be, Do as we say, not as we do.
How can we say tactfully but convincingly, that your efforts are more needed at home? That much as we like and admire and value America, one of the things we are starting to find just a bit irritating is the penchant of its citizenry to fly over and tell everyone else how to do things, while not doing them at home?
Neven (07:42:07)
Having personally observed the working of the political process in the UK versus the US I have to say that I prefer the US model with its system of checks and balances versus the UK parliamentary model which Winston Churchill famously described as an elected dictatorship.
Even now with the Dems in control of the White House and the US House and very close to control in the US Senate it’s possible to block legislation. In the UK with a working Government majority in place it is not possible to do that.
The upper chamber in the UK, The House of Lords can’t reject or stop Government legislation, it can try to amend it but can be ignored.
Also by the way in terms of strict definition the US is not a Democracy, it’s a Republic.
God Bless America, I love it here.
I like that. They demoted him from “scientist” to “modeller”. =)
Luis Dias
Mr. Hansen has no right to use his title and NASA credentials as a platform to voice his personal opinion, especially if he is urging civil disobedience. This has nothing to do with free speech. If he wants to go protest somewhere, he needs to lose the NASA title and revert to “James Hansen, Private Citizen”.
He needs to be removed because he is making it impossible for objective climate scientists to do objective climate science.
They get ostracized, in no small part to what Hansen has done over the last 20 years, if they present evidence that doesn’t start with “dangerous climate change …”
Maybe we should slow down on coal-fired electricity but what global warming really needs is for Hansen to step aside so that better science can be done.
The economy has made a small (below the noise level) er…tiny dent in CO2 emissions. How do we like it so far? If Hansen and his followers get their way, we will be serving raw food in the ever expanding soup lines because no one can fire up the grill without paying a tax.
For those in the UK, watch BBC2 tonight at 9PM – Horizon : Why Can’t We Predict Earthquakes?
Should be enlightening to watch computer models fail at predicting earthquakes, yet we are asked to believe that the much more complex climate system can be modeled.
“Luis Dias (08:15:06) :
PS: I’d even add one more thing. I’d rather have a dr Hansen in his job knowing his bias than having a snob unbiased emotionless facade guy pretending to not having a bias in this story at all.”
That’s not the way it works Luis.
In the UK a Civil Servant is not allowed to participate in public political matters in case it is seen to compromise his impartiality.
EG If I was well known to be an avid supporter of AGW going so far as to call for action to be taken against people who take the opposite view (as per Hanson) how could any such member of the public have confidence in my dealings with him?
Alan
Pamela Gray,
I think a Hatch Act violation would be tough to prove, even though I personally think he is violating the act by allowing himself to be identified as a NASA Scientist at these rallies, which is probably why it isn’t being pursued.
I think there may be some other regulations he has to be running afoul of. I can’t see any federal employee being allowed to travel to another country, whether on personal leave or official travel, and encourage it’s citizens to violate the laws of that country.
I know that we would react poorly if some British civil servant came to the US and advocated that US citizens violate federal law by way of protest.