I checked first, thinking this was some April Fools joke, it appears legit. (h/t to Tom Nelson and Skiphil)
Climate Alarmist Jim Hansen leaving NASA on Wed. to devote himself to legal and political activism:
Hansen retiring from NASA to press legal and activist efforts
At the same time, retirement will allow Dr. Hansen to press his cause in court. He plans to take a more active role in lawsuits challenging the federal and state governments over their failure to limit emissions, for instance, as well as in fighting the development in Canada of a particularly dirty form of oil extracted from tar sands.
“As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,” he said in an interview.
…
In the interview and in subsequent e-mails, Dr. Hansen made it clear that his new independence would allow him to take steps he could not have taken as a government employee. He plans to lobby European leaders — who are among the most concerned about climate change — to impose a tax on oil derived from tar sands. Its extraction results in greater greenhouse emissions than conventional oil.
…
Dr. Hansen says he senses the beginnings of a mass movement on climate change, led by young people. Once he finishes his final papers as a NASA employee, he intends to give it his full support.
“At my age,” he said, “I am not worried about having an arrest record.”
Full story at The NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/science/james-e-hansen-retiring-from-nasa-to-fight-global-warming.html?pagewanted=all
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In reply to
Jimbo says:
April 1, 2013 at 4:51 pm
William Astley says:
April 1, 2013 at 4:04 pm
James Hansen did not say CO2 increases would turn the earth into Venus….
Mr. Astley YOU ARE A LIAR.
James Hansen alleged said the following:
“If we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the run-away greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus Syndrome is a dead certainty.”
http://www.vernonmorningstar.com/opinion/letters/120387379.html
The top-rated climate scientist in the world, James Hansen from NASA stated, “If we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the run-away greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus Syndrome is a dead certainty.”
Venus has a temperature of 450°C (842°F), hot enough to melt lead. It once held water but the runaway greenhouse effect heated the planet so much that the water molecules were destroyed.
The sun’s energy hitting Earth is slightly more than half that of Venus. Burning the tar sands and tar shale could, over time, put Earth’s temperature to around 225°C (437°F).
William:
Jimbo,
Hansen could not possibly have stated that if we burn all the fossil fuel on this planet, which will take roughly 150 to 200 years, the earth will become like Venus.
Venus has an atmospheric pressure that is 90 times the earth’s. The Venusian atmosphere is around 97% CO2. Under very high pressure a gas becomes like a liquid. The quantum states broaden which explains why Venus is so hot.
Currently atmospheric CO2 is around 394 ppm or 0.0394 % on our planet. If we burned all the fossil fuel on the planet atmospheric CO2 will reach around 1000 ppm or 0.1% with no change in atmospheric CO2. Currently the greenhouse CO2 greenhouse effect is saturated in the lower atmosphere. The IPCC predicted that there would be warming due to the additional CO2 in higher in the atmosphere at roughly 10 km. That has not happened when the planet started to warm there were increased clouds in the tropics which reflects more sunlight off into space. (i.e. The clouds in the tropics regulate the planet’s temperature.)
As plants eat CO2 increased atmospheric CO2 is very beneficial for plants and indirectly for animals.
The optimum level of CO2 for C3 plants (trees, scrubs, cereals, almost all plants except for grasses which have evolved to survive in very, very, low CO2 is 1000 ppm to 1200 ppm. Greenhouse inject CO2 to reduce growing times and increase yield. The increased cereal crop yield for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm is around 40%. Highly levels of CO2 will cause the biosphere to expand. Plants eat CO2.
For almost the entire history of this planet atmospheric CO2 has been at or above 1000 ppm. Atmospheric CO2 has been as high as 5000 ppm. (0.5%) The earth did not turn in Venus.
The following graph shows how planetary has changed and atmospheric CO2 has changed with time for the period in which higher forms of life have been on this planet. As you can see temperature and atmospheric CO2 do not correlate.
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
The greenhouse warming effect on the earth saturates. Additional atmospheric CO2 will not significantly warm the planet. The estimate warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm (0.028%) to 560 ppm (0.056%) which will occur by the end of this century under the so called business as usual is less than 1C with most of the warming occurring at higher latitudes which will cause the biosphere to expand.
This graph is an analysis of sediment from ocean floors that shows how the planet’s climate has changed in the last 5 million years.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.svg
This graph is an analysis of the an ice core from Antarctic that shows how the planet’s climate has changed in the last 450 thousand years. We are at the end of the current interglacial period. During the glacial period Canada, the Northern US states, and Northern Europe are covered with a thick ice sheet (average depth over Canada 2 km) for 90 thousand years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
P.S. Could someone in the forum please confirm the above statements!!!!
Hansen could not possibly have stated that burning fossil fuels on the earth will turn the earth into Venus!!!
If Hansen did make the above statement, Hansen is either a liar or Hansen has the onset of dementia. Stating that burning fossil fuel on the earth will turn the earth into Venus is not an exaggeration that is a statement that an ignorant elementary student might make.
Darren Potter, point taken, so sometimes I feel like the April fool. My parents met the Clintons. I had my shot at being taken under the wing of the Walton clan, of EPA & EDF fame. Nevertheless… oh, I don’t know what to say. What was I thinking? They wanted to tie me to a tree.
Congratulations on the new awards, Anthony, you’re a good man and we are proud. You are living proof… don’t knock the weather… do you realize how many people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while?
Posters here often use the quote “Science advances one funeral at a time” but, in the private sector, it can advance upon firings, sometimes wholesale, and “retirements” such as this. Perhaps real NASA scientists have noticed this, and are getting more hard-nosed about it, as maybe it’s the loudest liars within their organization getting the funding recently.
….. and Jim, before you go, can we have our climate record back please ?
TomRude says:
April 1, 2013 at 6:16 pm
In Canada, even the National Post is becoming a shill to the green lobby:
Becoming?? What fantasy land do you live in? The NP has been shill for socialism and the eco-cultists for at least 7 years! The only thing “national” about them is their masthead.
Lady Life Grows says:
April 1, 2013 at 3:52 pm
So well said lady. This is a religious war the Hansen fanatics are fighting and why should we be surprised? The crusades killed thousands upon thousands of people. Why should Hansen and his army be denied their lust for human suffering.
According to the fawning NY Times article, he said it. Doesn’t give an exact quote or source, I’ll search for that.
Hansen on greenhouse effect
“As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,”
Well, I suppose there is solace in knowing your work contributed to the undermining of NASA’s reputation.
Like Dave @6:37, my main interest in Hansen was his access to the raw data. If that has been properly kept then everything Hansen said or wrote can gradually be confirmed or debunked. It might take a long time.
We should watch to see if Hansen now becomes a consultant to NASA and, in effect, still maintains his influence there.
@ur momisugly William Astley says: April 1, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Why are you quoting science? Whats that got to with this?
Hansen is a liar. Hansen is a manipulator. Hansen will do or say whatever he calculates is of advantage to his cause. Which, whatever clothing it wears, is him.
This is going to be be real funny, he is now free to make an even bigger fool of himself. The scaremongering will now be at full tilt.
One small sidestep for a man, One giant leap for NASA’s credibility
Yes, evidently Hansen speaks of the “Venus Syndrome” (boil the oceans etc.) as a “dead certainty” if humans burn all the fossil fuels. It’s both the topic of a Dec. 2008 AGU presentation and for Chapter 10 of his book, “Storms of My Grandchildren”
[snip – off topic, and this is “slayers” junk, you’ve been duped. – Anthony]
[snip -off color – mod]
Whether Hansen was pushed, encouraged, or chose to go, this rings the bell on AGW. It is the beginning of the end.
This has the same character as Greenspan leaving the Federal Reserve at the beginning of 2006. There had been plenty of warnings from outside the mainstream in the years prior, which were ignored by those filling their pockets.
Greenspan functioned as Daddy for the whole ensemble of opportunists and spivs from 1987.
Just as Hansen has been for Global Warming/Environmentalism since 1988.
Like the paper-shufflers of the financial world, the operators in the structures of Climate Change, and the investors/activists hanging off this, continue to ramp up their working of the system in the belief that they are riding a sure thing.
When Daddy left the Fed. Reserve they continued to push it along in the face of increasingly obvious realities that showed it was bogus until November 2007. Then reality started to bite in the mainstream and it all unraveled over the following 12 months.
That’s what is going to happen here. A Prediction no less. By the end of next year, it will be obvious to all that things are seriously amiss. And then it will all collapse in a screaming heap by the end of 2015.
Another Two Predictions:
If Hansen does turn up as part of any court cases, he will appear surprisingly – and disappointingly for the faithful – reasonable.
When the media starts looking for those responsible, Hansen will be tucked away on his “farm” playing with his bulbs and talking about butterflies with his grandchildren. Any comment anyone will be able to extract from him will be along the lines of vague but solemn recitation of “the mysteries of nature”. The media will then set off to hunt down the second-tier operators still in the firing line like Schmidt.
You can bet your life on this last.
….as well as in fighting the development in Canada of a particularly dirty form of oil extracted from tar sands…At my age,” he said, “I am not worried about having an arrest record.
———————–
For the better part of a century the US was the biggest polluter on the planet; and now is second only to China which is hardly any sort of recommendation. And now Hansen wants to tell Canada how to clean up its act? Canada, one of the greenest places in the world, being lectured by a activist from one of the biggest polluters? How about cleaning up you own backyard first?
News Flash: except that you are an American, the good old USA would not even let you in the door with a record. Why should Canada? Well, we do because we are green. We let in folks that didn’t think the Vietnam war was all that good an idea. Folks the US would have gladly put in jail – no surprise in a country with the highest rate of incarceration in the word. So we are likely going to let you in, even though your own country would kick you out if the tables were turned. Hell, we even took in US slaves when the US thought it was a good idea to keep them locked up as well.
Now we in Canada are cleaning up the biggest oil spill nature left on the surface of the planet. You bet its dirty work, but dirty work doesn’t bother Canucks. Well, not those of us outside of Toronto. Now you say the oil is dirty, even after we cleaned it up. Well, as dirty as it might be, our oil probably has a whole lot less blood mixed in with it than for instance the oil you bring in from your good buddies to the east who would just as rather see you dead and buried.
But hell, if you don’t want our oil, let us know and we aren’t going to trouble you any. There are a billion of so reasons to the west that would be more than happy to get our oil and right about now they have more US $$$ than the Uncle Sam. Long as all of us remember the reason that Japan was so out of sorts with the US ahead of Pearl was the US efforts to blockade oil to Japan. A lesson that is probably not lost on China.
Get the government to limit emissions? common that’s playing in their hands….
Rather tell them to stop Nuclear power plants then…and what are they doing with the nuclear waste??
@ur momisugly Eugene WR Gallun says: April 1, 2013 at 9:21 pm
Congratulations on your literary skill and insight. Tasteful too.
Do you know any bands? Preferably of a punk variety?
Set to music it would pack them in.
perhaps Hansen will use all the cash he has “won” from Heinz etc to fund his activities? I doubt it, I’m sure there will be plenty of funding from green groups
So Hansen has decided to file a few messy lawsuits against dirty oil to make a little filthy lucre.
I wonder if Hansen’s successor will take as lenient a line about the activities of Gavin Schmidt at ‘Real Climate’?
It is probably not a good idea to be seen to spend quite so much time on an external activity that in no way supports your salaried job.
In reality will this make much difference to Hansen’s behaviour , well it may make it a bit madder which is in itself no easy task. But his more activist than scientists for years now.
Will it make a difference to NASA, that depends on ‘what’ he laves behind , if he any say in it its highly likely that the next person will carry on ‘the good work’ his been doing , when it actual been doing any work . For his more than enough of a fanatic to pick one to replace him who promotes fear over fact .
And its on that point that I hope NASA give him a dam good shake down before he goes , make very sure his access to all systems are cut off included any he may have set up under other names , and make very sure indeed that all information and especial raw data is where they think it is and not on ‘his ‘ laptop or USB drive . Frankly I think audit on his area would be more than called for given that Hansen is more than able to leave a ‘stain’ behind him that will take some cleaning up.
Just doing my little happy dance!!!!!!
Perhaps, we can expect the return of some sanity to NASA GISS, I won’t be holding my breath, but I will temporarily engage “healthy optimism mode”…………….
So Hansen is going to put his mouth where the money is! (Yes, I did get that the right way around)
The good ship Global Warming has lost Beddington and Hansen overboard in the last week……and Gore is in a very expensive lifeboat paid for by the oil rich Arab’s.
Looks as if reality has dawned.
Should Roy Spencer’s monthly global temp anomally fall out of even the lowest IPCC predictions it is somewhat understandable that it was time to abandon ship.