Patrick J. MICHAELS: China-style dictatorship of climatologists
NASA’s Hansen prefers rule by decree to fight ‘global warming’
Excerpts: From the Washington Times Monday, January 17, 2011
November’s election made it quite clear that the people of the United States do not want to radically change our society in the name of global warming. Pretty much every close House race went to the Republicans, while the Democrats won all the Senate squeakers. The difference? The House on June 26, 2009, passed a bill limiting carbon-dioxide emissions and getting into just about every aspect of our lives. The Senate did nothing of the sort.
The nation’s most prominent publicly funded climatologist is officially angry about this, blaming democracy and citing the Chinese government as the “best hope” to save the world from global warming. He also wants an economic boycott of the U.S. sufficient to bend us to China’s will.
…
According to Mr. Hansen, compared to China, we are “the barbarians” with a “fossil-money- ‘democracy’ that now rules the roost,” making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change. Unlike us, the Chinese are enlightened, unfettered by pesky elections. Here’s what he blogged on Nov. 24:
“I have the impression that Chinese leadership takes a long view, perhaps because of the long history of their culture, in contrast to the West with its short election cycles. At the same time, China has the capacity to implement policy decisions rapidly. The leaders seem to seek the best technical information and do not brand as a hoax that which is inconvenient.”
Read the whole story at the Washington Times
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
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I am content to rest with a paragraph from the Washington Times as linked above:
On second thought, I’m with Hansen on this. Why can’t we be more like China and build a power plant a week?
He isn’t even a climatologist in the US. He is an astrophysicist.
Chaveratti says:
January 18, 2011 at 1:41 am
If China has got it so right why doesn’t he go and live there!
_____________________________________________
Uhmmmmm……censorship. I meeeeeeean, can you imagine this man under tight control? He’d be in such a low, there would be a typhoon called Mann.
It would be easy to spend a day finding fault with the US and other western democracies. The time needed to consider the faults of China would be at least one year.
It is not only toys which are cheap in China, live is also cheap, unless of course you are a member of the party.
Hansen’s encouragement of terrorism is disgusting. Imagine if it was Al Quaeda who were attacking our power stations, would they have got off scot free?
Hansen is wrong about the science and also politics. Is there anything else he wishes to advise us on using his great lack of wisdom?
@ur momisugly Sleeptown
“He’s long past retirement age. Surely some suitably qualified person could look at his ramblings and make judgements about his state of senility/paranoia/Alzheimers?”
None of those just plain stupidity?
Can’t they use that button that was so effective in the 10:10 debacle?
Steeptown said on January 18, 2011 at 1:56 am:
Senile dementia took my father.
So it should mean something when I say: I don’t find your remark offensive.
I will note though that Hansen may just be exhibiting what happens to a lot of older people. They lose their “internal filter,” no longer “give a damn” about anything resembling any kind of “correctness” (political, social, or otherwise), and just say what’s really on their mind.
It’s not like what he’s saying is all that new and different from what he’s said before. We’re probably just seeing the raw unvarnished version of what he’s believed all along.
PS: A fair amount of our regular WUWT expert commenters are “long past retirement age.” I ain’t speaking for them. They will have their own opinions about the implied “long past retirement age” -> “senility/paranoia/Alzheimers” link.
I hardly think China is an example for anyone to follow. However Hansen is right in one respect, democracy is somewhat limited when it comes to dealing with AGW.
Incidentally, it is often said that we just can’t afford to deal with AGW. Its just too expensive. Funny thing though, it seems to me that much of our money is spent on frivolous things like clothes, flash cars, and houses which are much bigger than we need them to be. We buy these things as “rewards” or “status symbols”. Girls dress better to attract a mate. Its a competitive activity. They buy expensive handbags for status. The same is true of big houses and flash cars – they are functional, but essentially they say, “I’m better than you”. Of course at this stage, the “we can’t afford it” crowd point out that this is not true of the poor. Its the only time they show concern for the poor.
Peter H — nice legalese try. Yes literally he did not, but Chinese being enlightened? HMMM. Other than disliking Jews and various other groups, Hilter was just an enlightened nationalist.
The Left is in love with China. There are plenty more, look at Van Jones, Anita Dunn, and Robert Reich. China is an ecological basket case yet the Left keeps calling them green. It seems they like China because it is there that govt can get things done. But this cuts two ways.
Such talk is dangerous. These people are termites, eating away at our Nation’s foundation.
There seems to have been a glut of these global warming “scientists” making a fool of themselves just recently?
Can it be that the global warming tide has turned and now those fish which raced in at the front of the tide are suddenly finding themselves flipping and flopping on the sand?
Among the many thoughts I have when I contemplate the various Climategate official inquiries are “who do they (UEA) think these ‘vindications’ will persuade?”
As someone with enough time around China to be able to see some things from the Chinese perspective, I would only imagine that they would think that the inquiries were an insult to their intelligence. I can’t see China being willing to slow its growth even a fraction, when the AGW proponents are so eager to cite a series of whitewashes in their support.
OK…Hansen has never made ayn sense to me…but this is the straw…this is just plain ludicrous.
1) China is now a greater source of fossil fuel spending and pollution than we are…and unlike us, they’re drilling off the Florida coast for more oil.
2) China’s “long view” includes…um…the murder of thousands and thousands of innocent female children? How is that good for China in the long run?
3) The romanticism some “enlgihtened” far-leftists attach to China’s “rich heritage” often borders on complete ignorance. China seeks the best technical advice? Was that true when they totally fracked up their own largest rivers with ill-conceived dams that screwed up whole ecosystems? Or when they invested millions of man hours (and thousands of lives) building a series of completely ineffective great walls? Or when they bound the feet of millions of women (and still do, guys!) for no reason other than that some tyrant in the dark ages thought tiny feet were hot? I could of course go on. China is not some romantic ideal utopia…millions of people starve in China, they police the internet, trying to keep freedom from the hearts and minds of their people, and their brilliant scientific policy apparently includes using as much fossil fuel energy as they want with no regard for anyone else if it serves their unbalanced economy…not that I blame them on that front, but HANSEN SHOULD.
I mean REALLY, Hansen? You complete and utter ignoramous…UGH
Going thru my Hansen folder, I found these☺:
click 1
click 2
click 3
click 4 [thanx to Steve Keohane]
click 5
@John Brookes: January 18, 2011 at 3:17 am
You say: ‘I hardly think China is an example for anyone to follow. However Hansen is right in one respect, democracy is somewhat limited when it comes to dealing with AGW.’
Is this another snippet of ‘knowledge’ you got from reading Al Gore’s book?
You’re OK with a little bit of tyranny then? (which is rather like being a little bit pregnant). You think that if you can’t get your (poorly informed) way with democracy, that you should go for a bit of dictatorship?
John, you seem to have a closed mind, even though you elected to take the trouble to read Gore. But you should not have stopped there. As I said in a comment in another WUWT post, go and look up Eschenbach, Carter, and Monckton. They would take Gore for breakfast, but he’s too scared to debate them. Then again, Gore is very much the tyrant, inasmuch as ‘do as I say, not as I do’.
Here’s China’s commitment to climate change.
China to buy $A70b of Australian coal
February 6, 2010
Mining magnate Clive Palmer says his company has secured Australia’s biggest export deal with a $US60 billion ($A69.39 billion) agreement to sell coal to China.
The Resourcehouse chairman on Saturday said the company’s proposed China First coal mine and infrastructure project in central Queensland had reached a 20-year agreement with one of China’s largest power companies, China Power International Development, the flagship company of China Power Investment Corporation (CPI).
“This deal with CPI is Australia’s biggest ever export contract,” Mr Palmer said in a statement.
Mr Palmer also said he had awarded Queensland’s largest engineering, procurement and construction management contract (EPCM) for $US8.013 billion ($A9.27 billion) to Metallurgical Corporation of China Ltd (MCC).
“MCC will manage a syndicated group consisting of Sino Coal International Engineering Group, China Communications Construction Company (First Harbour) and China Railway Group Limited (CREC) to build Australia’s largest coal mine along with the required export infrastructure,” he said.
“The $US8.0 billion ($A9.25 billion) China First Project has been developed by China First Pty Ltd, which is a fully-owned subsidiary of Resourcehouse.”
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/china-to-buy-a70b-of-australian-coal-20100206-njko.html
China has over 23.000 coal power plants and accounts for roughly half of the worlds yearly consumption. About 4/5 of their energy is from coal. Nice choice of champion, Jim.
They have a very easy task of making “radical” cuts in coal usage and by doing so, will sucker the EU and US to follow and commit financial suicide – and then China will bail us out and – own us. Currently China is playing it’s cards right and since there is so much invested political capital in climate issues by the western governments, we will end up losing BIG.
I don’t think it’s senility, because there are plenty of other “philosopher Kings” out there willing to throw away liberal democracy and replace it with totalitarianism in order to implement their proposed solution to the climate crisis. It would be an interesting psychology study, if nothing else.
Snotrocket,
Liberals have always been closet tyrants, though I hope that the John Brookes of this world don’t descend into the Pre-Columbian practice of human sacrifice to placate their deities. If they do then the likes you and I are in deep poo-doo.
Sounds like he’ll do anything to bring down the Western Democracies…
MikeEE
Steeptown says:
January 18, 2011 at 1:56 am
“He’s long past retirement age. Surely some suitably qualified person could look at his ramblings and make judgements about his state of senility/paranoia/Alzheimers?”
“Retirement Age” is a concept that sometimes enables us to rid ourselves of one who has been cluttering up the environment since senility set in on leaving high school. There are many of us old bozos around (old enough to regard someone of Hansen’s age as little more than a lad) that have every hope of remaining compos mentis for another decade or two.
Dr. Hansen lets the cat out of the bag. His comments illustrate what many of us have known for a few decades. The debate has nothing to do with Climate, and everything to do with the Will to Power.
This should be a sticky for ever.
Why does he still work for NASA?
I think the term used to be “useful fool”.
Isn’t China building large numbers of coal fired power stations?