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
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When will these goons realise that Britain will NOT HAVE ENOUGH ENERGY TO SATISFY ITS NEEDS if that power station doesn’t get built?
The vote should be:
a) If you vote to block this power station, do you agree to live without power in the winter months as we will need volunteers to do precisely that in order to get by?
b) If the answer to a) is no, why do you expect those who voted to have it built to sacrifice their warmth for you moralisers in sandals?
And finally, what the hell is a US citizen doing INTERFERING IN UK DOMESTIC POLITICS?
We’re not killing anyone here, which is different to I-RACK when we were protesting about your Yankee apostles of shock and awe………
Luis Dias (07:49:05) : “shameful”
I told a veeeery liberal member of a local school board about Hansen and he felt as you do. Then I asked, “What would the school board do if one of its teachers promoted and helped barricade the high school doors so neither teachers, students, staff, or emergency personnel could go in or out?”
He said, “We’d arrest such a person and prosecute.”
In Hansen’s case the issue is he is supposed to be leading a science based organization. If he wants to promote his wild ideas about “death trains”, declaring skeptics as mentally deranged, and civil disobedience, then he should resign and go do that. There would be no call for censorship then – he would be totally free to speak his mind. As is, because of him we can no longer trust NASA. That’s shameful.
Aron (08:51:49) :
“For those in the UK, watch BBC2 tonight at 9PM – Horizon : Why Can’t We Predict Earthquakes?”
Health warning to UK viewers.
“Follow the Catlin Arctic Survey on the BBC 6:00pm and 10:00pm news today.”
6:00 pm I’ll be watch Eggheads where Science questions start with “In what year did ….”
10:00 too late for me I’m a pensioner.
Yet the BBC are doing a very good documentary on “Yellowstone”.
The BBC at its best Educating and Reporting. No Political messages.
The way that Lord Reith foresaw the BBC.
I think that he would so ashamed now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Reith,_1st_Baron_Reith
I think it is highly likely that Hansen is showing his true colors because he sees the writing on the wall. I think he knows he has based his entire professional career on a scientific lie that is soon to be exposed, both by science and by nature. He’s stepping off the scientific train and onto an emotion-driven, radical politics train because that is the only place where he won’t have to defend and explain himself to his fellows.
I think we are witnessing Mr Hansons next career move here. By soapboxing as much as possible and getting his name around he can look forward to a lucrative semi retirement doing the speeches/expert opinion scene.
Its quite simple, he is not young any more, and does he want to continue driving to the same place every day doing the same job…esp a job that might get demoted or disappear in a few years time if climate continues to stick two fingers at his predictions. I’d prob do the same in his position, heh!
It worked for Al Gore n’cest pas?
US Constitution; Article IV, section 4 (in part); “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union, a Republican form of Government; and shall protect each of them against invasion; ….. ”
Sorry if I got the punctuation wrong; I’m typing this from memory; and I haven’t memorized all the punctuation yet.
So the USA is NOT a Democracy; it is a Republic; but it does use Democratic principles in some of its processes; such as electing Congressional Members. The States of course are free to organize theri Republican form as they wish; and of course they elect the President of the USA through the Electoral College process.
But as to Dr James Hansen; probably according to the rules of Government service jobs, he should be fired; but not for his public utterances; but for his official job performance, in publishing “official data” that is sufficiently suspect, as to not be believeable by anyone wishing to make use of it.
Other than that, I see no gain in firing him in relation to his public views, or with relation to Hatch Act violations. Maybe he does need to be on the carpet, having those rules explained to him.
But as a “Scientist”, history will judge him, and people who have misused science for their own ends, have eventually been ostracised by history. Nothing can be more scurrilous than for scientists to use their positions of special knowledge to mislead the lay public about important scientific results fo personal agendas.
George
From the telegraph.co.uk link at 7:26:26
————————————–
Peter Stott, Climate Scientist at the Met Office, said: “Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future.
“The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850.”
————————————–
Man I envy your climate scientists. They can predict 1000 years into the future!
I’m not frustrated. Am I not a people?
James Hansen doesn’t seem to believe very strongly in his own convictions. If he really does he’d divest himself of any perceived confict of interest by retiring and crusading full time for carbon controls just the same as Steve McIntyre spends his retirment years analyzing data. Hansen must be in the position financially to do so since he’ll be 68 next week and he’s been Director of GISS since 1981 according to Wikipedia.
Indeed “one vote, one person” never seems to work when it doesn’t go your way… Mr. Hansen is a dangerous man and a totalitarian at heart.
Phil,
“NASA’s chief climate scientist is in hot water with colleagues and at least one lawmaker after calling on citizens to engage in civil disobedience at what is being billed as the largest public protest of global warming ever in the United States.” 2/27/09
Hansen’s testimony in defense of vandalism of a British Coal Plant is, in effect, an endorsement of ‘civil disobedience, of British law.
It seems to me that a certain Dominican named Giovanni Maria Tolosani had the same problem with the “democratic process” way back in 1546
alec kitson (08:37:38) : “ Kool Aid drinkers”
This won’t do much good but I say it anyway. I don’t know what Hansen and friends drink (Chardonnay?) but the reference to “kool aid” isn’t the best analogy here because the reference usually refers to the Jonestown tragedy. The idea was to kill everyone – not to induce them to follow you. And the kicker is – it was not Kool Aid!
It was a British product, Fla-Vor-Aid.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27204411/
I think direct action is needed to stop these environmentalists. Anybody with me?
Further to Bill Marsh, I hope he does go to China and try and organise demo against the Chinese building 1 coal fired station a week! I think the Chinese would accuse him of Imperialism. I also don’t think he would be treated with kid gloves. But isn’t that where Gavin Strong is based – him of Quebec Hydro, who can’t come back to the west as he has a few questions to answer about the Iraq Oil for Food programme.
They think they’re making progress…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7961957.stm
Did they ever take photos of the supposed ice that was cracking around them as they slept?
Pamela,
Reference to the Hatch Act is intriguing. I’d be curious to know which part of the act or its subsections Hansen violates, and how that violation could be used to take him out of office. Of course, the danger of dealing with Hansen under such legal parameters would give some credence to the accusation that he was being “muzzled”. He’s been claiming this for some time, notwithstanding his 1,000 appearances and publications.
I think the only strategy for dealing with Hansen is to keep picking away at his bad science. His dependency upon predictive models and their fallacy, and his refusal to provide information are ultimately a betayal of public trust.
In his end-of-conference address at Heartland, Hansen’s former supervisor, John Theon describes how he was disabused of his own global warming notions and came to be suspicious of Hansen’s models. The idea of predicting the future from models calibrated to (proxy-derived) past temperatures struck him as ludicrous. If you know the answer to begin with, he says, of course you can come up with a simulation that replicates (those graphs) every time. Yet, he says,
and
On the same note, if anyone here can tolerate a little additional AGW advocacy, tonight’s (check local PBS stations) NOVA promises some aggravation. How does one respond to those pointing with great Cassandra-eyes at the shrinking glaciers?
The program is “Extreme Ice” by James Balog. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/extremeice/
Anthony (per your reply to Luis): you’re upset simply because Hansen disregards the Hatch Act, and it has nothing at all to do with his stance on AGW?
Mark (10:29:22) :
I consider myself environmentally conscious but what I resent deeply is people using “environmentalism” as a hook to hoodwink well-intended people into supporting a cynical grab for power. People are being duped in this case. Many people want to do what is right and ensure the Earth they leave behind for future generations is cleaner than the one they inherited. The problem in this case is that nobody has shown that CO2 is a problem.
When someone controls energy production and use, they control the entire economy. There are two ways of regulating an engine … you can use the brake to regulate friction or you can use the throttle to regulate fuel. Politicians seeing pushback from the people in allowing them more direct control over the economy (modulating the brake) through taxation and redistribution of wealth, have stumbled upon this ingenious plan of a globally managed economy by regulating energy consumption. In order to do this and get away with it, they need a mechanism to make the people WANT them to do it. So they come up with “global warming” as a means to scare people into allowing them to manipulate global economic policy through the energy abstract.
For example. if you want to redistribute wealth from rich countries to poor ones, you place energy restrictions on the rich ones and no such restrictions on the poor ones. This causes economic activity to move to those locations where increases in energy consumption are not cost prohibitive. You can’t ramp up from 5 plants to 10 plants without increasing CO2 footprint. In Europe it would cost you money to do so, above and beyond the cost of the plants. It becomes cost effective to move your plants to China or Brazil employing those people instead of yours.
What “global warming” is, is a mechanism to use environmentalism as a ruse to get people to support something that exists only in theory and not in any actual observations. It the “greenhouse effect” is a brilliant way to do it because everyone has been in a greenhouse. You can tell any moron that the earth’s atmosphere is turning into a greenhouse and they will understand what you are trying to get them to understand. To refute the argument, you need math and physics that are beyond the grasp of most average people. 50% of the population is below the median intelligence level. It only takes 50% +1 for the “democratic process” to work.
The entire scheme is about getting 50%+ of the population to “just believe” and support their global socioeconomic policies under the guise of “environmentalism”.
If I, as a English person, were to come to America and take a prominent role in a demonstration, on anything, I would, quite rightly, expect to be arrested and expelled from the USA, even though you believe in free speech as much as we do.
I don’t think that will happen to him though because he is giving the UK government an ideal reason to raise taxes and that is the same reason that NASA won’t sack him; the government needs the money.
To what extent does the EPA’s CO2 emissions endangerment finding rely upon NASA, GISS and NOAA modeling and data? This finding should provide a forum in which to challenge the corrupted weather and climate data and GC model based “science.” The endangerment finding cannot be duely deemed, it must be supported by the best available science.
Get ready. This may be the best opportunity that the “deniers” will have to squelch AGWers.
perhaps he’s a secret skeptic and now he’s panicking because he realizes we’re heading back to a cold period. If he can manage to get a last minute reduction in CO2 then he’ll be proven right as the world cools and go down in history as the great saver of the planet. lol
@Luis Dias
Your anger is baseless. You need to first read about the Hatch Act and the activities it forbids. Next, read what Anthony actually says.
Requesting that Hansen be fired for violating the Hatch Act is not censorship, it’s asking that the law be enforced. It has nothing to do with the quality (or lack thereof) of his science and it is not an allegation of scientific fraud. It has to do with Hansen’s behavior and misconduct as a federal employee. Of course Hansen deserves due process in this matter, as does everyone.
I personally believe that firing Hansen for violating the Hatch Act (which he has), is legally correct but probably not the right move politically. Firing Hansen will just make him a martyr to the cause. Advocating his firing seems to just encourage more of the same.
Instead of firing Hansen, we should expose him as a political activist masquerading as a scientist. I believe he conducts very sloppy science and it appears he manipulates the data to get the results he wants.
Has Hansen committed scientific fraud? I my opinion, yes. But that’s an issue separate from his repeated violations of the Hatch Act.
John F. Hultquist:
While, technically, you’re right, the term “kool-aid drinker” is commonly used for people who swallow the pronouncements of their messianic figures so completely as truth, that they will do anything (including things which are harmful to themselves) because their leader tells them it’s the right thing to do.
Another thing you can do is to follow the money. How much did Gandhi or Martin Luther King make from their stand on non-violence? They honestly believed in these principles. It wasn’t about money. How much money do Hansen and Gore make from “global warming” and what is the total amount of money pouring into “climate research”?
I don’t exactly see Gore living in a simple off-grid shack out in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming and preaching his doctrine from the back of a horse.