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
He’ll probably make more money.
He was always a full time activist.
Made my day!!!
Glad he has the balls to leave the backing of the NASA name. Now who will listen to his rants? Also no one to get him out of jail free.
Leaving to be a full time activist?
Not much change there then!
Let’s hope more information will come forth about the process of his departure from NASA. Such a public figure, and such a low-key exit, that seems strange, and not at all like the normal process when a very famous person takes his leave from an institution like NASA.
When was he due to retire anyway? Could he have continued getting paychecks from NASA for the rest of his life, or is there an age limit? 72 is a pretty late retirement age already.
Thank God. Now I won’t have the money we (the USA) are borrowing from China to fund our excessive spending going to pay his salary (probably it will be going to pay his retirement tho, so it isn’t a total win). 😉
Always loved that hat he stole from Freddie.
Catastrophic global warming in your dreams?
He is leaving because he knows the show is over. I think very soon indeed you will find that most of the team will simply disappear. If anything withdrawal of the Marcott paper will completely destroy the core of AGW movement. Fringistas will hang around but will slowly give up. BTw I dont think Marcott will now be retracted it will be withdrawn totally (is that possible?)
“At my age I’m not worried about getting an arrest record”. Presumably he’s happy for younger gullible fools to get arrested and possibly damage his career?
Also whilst he his happy to challenge the government I’m sure he’s even happier to keep his pension.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The mass movement he senses is a lower GI tract contracting to excrete him. Another loaf of Brown-25 ®, from The Uranus Corp. Good things come from Uranus.
With apologies to “The Groove Tube”.
@William Howard Astley
I’m having a hard time understanding exactly what your issue with comprehension is on the comments attributable to Hansen.
Just because you copy and paste some work that claims the Venus-earth theory is not possible it does nothing to alter the facts that Hansen made the comments.
He said it both in a letter and in his book. The quoted words have even been reported on the alarmist biased BBC Just yesterday:
Dr Hansen’s pronouncements were sometimes seen as extreme. In his 2009 book, Storms of my Grandchildren, he argues that the Earth could one day become like the planet Venus, where temperatures are warm enough to melt lead.
“I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty,” he wrote.
Dr Hansen has also argued that the executives of oil companies should be tried for crimes against humanity. Critics suggested that these type of remarks did little to convince sceptics. Even environmentalists sometimes objected to the nature and detail of his comments.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22000810
It’s the very fact that he did say it and that it’s not a possibility that makes the man a charlatan as well as an activist whilst a government employee.
you seem to think that because it’s not a possibility that Hansen therefore could not possibly have said it. That is a logical failure of momentous proportions.
Louis says:
April 1, 2013 at 11:45 pm
So Hansen has decided to file a few messy lawsuits against dirty oil to make a little filthy lucre.
——————————–
Hansen will no longer be an embarrassment being paid from NASA’s budget but instead his income will come from the government employee retirement system.
He could always sue almost anybody including big oil or big coal just not the federal government and the taxpayers.
He’s after the EPA and any other government departments with loads of taxpayer cash they are willing to give away to NGOs without actually going to court.
The EPA will settle out of court with him and whatever new not-for-organization he starts. It’s a great gig because the EPA won’t appeal but just give him however much money he says needs to continue suing them. That’s how the other groups offering to save humanity get the big bucks. Sue the government to make them stop an activity and pay all your attorney fees and other costs.
cn
Klench Mychiques says:
April 1, 2013 at 3:41 pm
“Say what you like about him, but it’s clear he’s willing to stand up for what he believes in.”
It is a well known tactic of the EPA to fund “NGO’s” who then sue the EPA to enforce the goals that EPA wanted to achieve anyway.
A very similar tactic is used here in the EU, where NGO’s get 70% of their money from the EU Commission and then send their shocktroops e.g. to COP15 to demand that the EU “do something”.
The normal revolving door of the international apparatchik.
Classic case of jump before you’re pushed. There’s only so much embarrassment even an organisation like NASA can take.
William Astley says:
April 1, 2013 at 4:04 pm
“James Hansen did not say CO2 increases would turn the earth into Venus. ”
Been sleeping under a rock the last decades?
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/hansen-venus-syndrome-is-a-dead-certainty/
“At my age,” he said, “I am not worried about having an arrest record.”
No but you should be worried about no longer having your government protection from prosecution.
“As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,”
No when you testify you give evidence, and tell the truth. There is no government, it is the government that answers to itself so it can fix problems that exist. Or you should tell the truth, not that Hansen ever did. It was never about protecting the government, it was about furthering ‘the cause’. As a government employee in the position you held you weren’t also legally unable to protest said government. Why wasn’t that an issue? I guess private activism pays better.
“…He plans to lobby European leaders — who are among the most concerned about climate change”
More like more gullible. But maybe not gullible enough to fawn over a wildcard ex-NASA employee with a screw loose and was forced out because he was an embarrassment to government and to science. Probably. The embarrassment to government bit anyway.
I thought Hansen already was a full-time activist. Perhaps someone told Hansen
how much money Gore has raked in.
Hansen is not really retiring.
He is just going to do full-time what he was always doing full-time before. Being a believer in the theory he helped formulate/quantify.
There is a story to be told yet on how his theory of climate science won out over Manabe and others in the early 1980s who were predicting a lower increase in temperatures based on the same physics. This backroom fight likely set the stage for how the climate science mafia worked afterward.
Wasn’t he always a full time activist – like Gavin?
Will he get the boot too, now?
And then no doubt they will be cycling to all their demos and rallies –
no I thought not. Stonking hypocrites!
I bet they keep warm in winter, and air-conditioned in summer
I don’t any more – thanks to carbon taxes, I have to shiver, on my pension
ROCKY ROAD 9:23 pm
HAHA — Good one!!1
Eugene WR Gallun
I wonder how many bogus names and email accounts Hansen has?
Is he maybe “richardwinsor2”.
He could have 5 or so extra “names” he uses to do business with NGOs.
He could have been given free email accounts from several different NGOs like WWF or GP.
FOIA? Or do we already know?
cn
If increased CO2 would cause the earth to experience Venus-like conditions, it would have done so already, since pre-historic CO2 has been much, much higher than it is now, and much higher than if all fossil fuels were burned. (~600 ppmv is the figure I’ve seen discussed, which is an order of magnitude lower than pre-historic concentrations.)
So Hansen isn’t an honest scientist–he makes stuff up to support his ideology. Let him continue to make a fool of himself.
JC 11:40 pm April 1
Congratulations on your literary skill and insight. Tasteful too.
Do you know any bands? Preferably of a punk variety? Set to music it [my poem] would pack them in.
Sigh! Like i was hoping more for deathless poetic fame rather than punk stardom.
JC, I do not believe you are a naive reader. Poets are like attention starved children — even a smack across the mouth is valued. So i thank you for your comment.
Eugene WR Gallun
Let us not delude ourselves. In all future news articles he will be referred to as “former NASA scientist,” which is just about the same as “NASA scientist” as far a the general public is concerned. There will be no gleam off his halo because of this resignation. And the choice of his successor at GISS will be made by Obama Administration officials, not NASA career people. So they will select a trusted Hansen acolyte and the “same old, same old” will continue. His pension will be substantial, but he will also garner the largess of the green lobby who will pay for private jets to take him around the globe to bloviate. I’m afraid we are not done with ‘Indiana’ Hansen just yet. Our only hope lies with a mass movement of young people who object to being ‘carbon taxed’ for the global warming that is NOT occurring. They may view Hansen as a dinosaur best made into petroleum.
Apparently McKibben didn’t finish his description of how history will view Jim coal-trains-of-death Hansen. To wit “History will treat him as a giant”
The question is, a giant what? Several nouns spring to mind for someone willing to cause great harm and human suffering, even death, in service of ideology, and personal gain. The least objectionable would probably be a feminine hygiene product.