Hansen’s resignation from NASA GISS may not be what it seems
Guest Post by Chris Horner, CEI
So, NASA’s in-house celebrity activist James Hansen says the following in explaining his departure from a lucrative perch — salary alone: $180k per year — one that proved extremely lucrative while there was a useful foil in the White House:
“‘As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,’ he told the Times.”
Hogwash.
Not that “Job 1” for Hansen at NASA was attentiveness to ethics guidelines or anything, but the rules say no such thing. See 5 C.F.R. Part 6901.103 (c) and 5 C.F.R. 2635.805.
Indeed, on top of that cool $1 million-plus in outside cash tossed Hansen’s way after he ratcheted up the alarmism and — more important to many — politicking, he presided over an elaborate document removal/destruction operation run by his protégé and presumptive successor, Gavin Schmidt.
Now, we are to believe that Hansen is so concerned with his ethical obligations as a government employee that he is willing to operate by his own set of rules that, this time, are more restrictive than the real ones.
The fact is that Hansen, as a government employees, is not barred from testifying against the government. Ethics rules applying to Hansen at NASA simply say that he must seek permission to testify, just as he (usually, but not always) sought and, as the world knows in deed if not according to the rhetoric, received permission for his other global warming advocacy.
That requirement that Hansen first receive permission before testifying exists “to prevent an employee from using public office for the employee’s personal private gain”. Which (chuckle) is the same rationale behind the other ethics provisions under which Hansen sought and was routinely granted permission to make lots of outside money on his advocacy. Under George W. Bush.
So Hansen had no reason to believe he would not be permitted to do as he says he wishes.
Unless…
Ah, yes. Hansen’s current attention-getting story, when squared with the ethics rules, is that he has been denied approval to serve as an expert witness per 5 C.F.R 6901.103(d) and 5 C.F.R. 2635.805(c) (serving as a fact witness requires overcoming no such impediments).
Further curious is that his testimony would be a particularly easy approval if “the subject matter of the testimony does not relate to the employee’s official duties”. Which we know would be the case — despite our having argued the absurdity of the idea — because since 2006 he has been absolutely cleaning up with outside income only made acceptable by the supposed reality that his various speeches and prizes, etc., were apparently deemed by NASA as not relating to his official duties. Under Bush.
But now, suddenly, under President Obama, it seems that the subject matter of his activism would indeed relate to his professional duties. Per the administration. According to Hansen’s clear implication. Huh.
If we are to believe Hansen — and face it, we all want to believe him — he was denied permission to serve as an expert witness. If this occurred, it is clear that this is a recent development. That is, during the Obama administration.
Which administration is, apparently, “muzzling” Hansen.
Surely you’ve seen the stories.
Of course, it could be that Mr. Hansen is talking through his hat. Some might argue, not for the first time. For example, what case or cases did he inquire about? Or, did someone who mattered merely let on that, if he asked to testify against the administration, they would deep-six the idea?
It is entirely plausible that Hansen has simply found that his NASA gig isn’t what it used to be in better times for the global warming advocate. Times when, for example, the media had no torn allegiances between Hansen’s bombast and the White House.
For example, that whole “Bush muzzling Hansen” mythology was just that; useful to everyone pushing it to superstitiously or conveniently explain the world, but not supported by much evidence (and belied by thousands of interviews).
Notwithstanding this, it remains worth noting that Team Obama putting the squeeze on Hansen is far less far-fetched.
Sure, early on their Department of Justice did work hard to protect him, a valuable advocate in pushing “the cause,” from having his ethics records disclosed to us, maintaining specious legal claims well after we filed suit.
Then, after Hansen made a pain of himself by drawing even more unwanted attention to the festering Keystone XL pipeline decision, getting arrested with (other) celebrities in front of the White House, the caginess suddenly evaporated. I received a call asking where I would like to have a messenger deliver the entirety of Hansen’s relevant ethics records we had sought.
Which is how we, and anyone else interested, learned about just how lucrative Hansen’s NASA employment had become for him.
So long as the right foil was in the White House. Then, a government astronomer could make an astronomical sum off of global warming alarmism. Whatever the rules said. Maybe Keystone XL really is proving to be the “game-changer” the greens have said.
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Christopher Horner is a fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author, his most recent book being “The liberal War on Transparency
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I think you are being a little hard on Perlwitz. What he said is correct he can be a contractor or academic working with GISS with a GISS email, phone number etc. but is not an employee of GISS. NASA has a lot of mixed employee installations and non civil service employees have to be careful to differentiate themselves even if laymen would consider them working for NASA. This is also true at many DOE facities where almost no one is a Government employee yet they are Government Laboratories. I started my work at NASA in the old days when onsite contractors were considered contract civil service. This practice ended in the 90’s after a IG investigation, so now contractor employees are much more separate in terms of how the contracts are constructed and employee supervision is handled. They also get instructions to maintain the distinction.
Hanson had over 40 years of service so he probably is making as much in take home as when he was working. His retirement is less then his salary but a lot less is deducted from it. Not being in a federal job opens up some opportunities he would not otherwise have and he is famous enough now not to need the GISS title.
Wally626 says:
April 8, 2013 at 3:45 pm
I think you are being a little hard on Perlwitz. What he said is correct he can be a contractor or academic working with GISS with a GISS email, phone number etc. but is not an employee of GISS
==========================================
even if you grant him that splitting of the semantic hair on the word “employee” (though an indirect employee, via contractor status, is still technically an employee), it still does not make his follow on that “I am not employed at GISS” true. He is still employed by GISS (whether it be as a direct federal employee, which no one has claimed, or indirectly via being a contractor) to do work. He has even admitted that he does work for GISS. So to claim that he is not employed by them is a blatant falsehood. He admits he works for GISS ergo he is employed by GISS (that’s what the word *MEANS*) and his claims that he is not employed by GISS is demonstrably not true.
John Endicott on April 8, 2013 at 3:26 pm in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/08/hansen-finally-muzzled-by-obama/#comment-1269537
That is just a confused and absurd argumentation. Anyone who is employed by a federal agency is a federal employee. “Employment” is the term for a legal contract between two parties, where both sides, like with any contract, have commitments and specific rights within the contract. I do not have any contract with NASA GISS, I can’t make any legal claims regarding my employment toward NASA. I have a contract with Columbia University, which is a private entity, not a government entity. I am employed at the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics at CU. All of the administrative matters regarding my employment go through this department and Human Resources of Columbia. I work “for GISS”, insofar I collaborate with NASA researchers, who are civil servants, on specific topics of research within the research profile of GISS.
Trying to display my employment status as a mere semantic question suggests that statements about it weren’t of any legal relevance. Really? If someone claims to be employed by the federal government, although he/she wasn’t, is this legally of no relevance? I would be afraid that it could have negative legal consequences for me, if I made false statements in public about that. And if the view it was just semantics, instead of an issue with legal relevance, is majority view here, then it will be quite strange, considering what efforts are being shown here to construct accusations against scientists to have allegedly violated laws and regulations.
In the speculative case, GISS was closed in NYC, I still would be an employee of Columbia University. My status would not change as long as I get in federal grant money to support my research. I might have to find another office, though. Or, perhaps, I even could stay in the building where GISS resides now, since it is owned by Columbia anyway. Not that I expect that such a thing happens in the foreseeable future.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
April 8, 2013 at 12:43 pm
That’s true, but I want everybody to see that you didn’t deny Anthony’s charge that you waste it, which is “the very model of a modern government employee”.
Typical obfuscating, quasi-wasteful CU employee, Mr. Perlwitz. And now the rest of the world knows it, too.
@Jan P Perlwitz says:
April 8, 2013 at 4:56 pm
You work at GISS. As part of the team working at GISS. Regardless of your administrative stautus. You say now if GISS closed you would have to find a new office.
So you work full-time at GISS. As a fully integrated part of GISS.
I find this incomprehensible. You have gone to absurd lengths to avoid stating a simple fact. A fact that so far as I can see should not be in any way contentious or compromising.
A simple fact about the place you work.
Anyone whose instincts compel them to do this in a matter of no consequence is pathological in that behavior.
You have established beyond doubt that you are evasive and that no one can can have any confidence that you are trustworthy.
Anything – anything at all – you produce should be viewed with that in mind. Anything you contribute to that has not been carefully independently mediated cannot be relied on. If those you work with are of like mind, any output at all from such an association can have no value.
You are a disgrace. Not just to science or inquiry, but to human standards.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
Sorry, but you are speaking total nonsense here. I’m a contractor who works for a federal agency. I am not and never have been a federal employee but I am employed by them, as a contractor, to do certain work.
Re: NASA GISS employment…
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck… Ipso something or other duck.
J. T. Jones wrote on April 8, 2013 at 6:28 pm in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/08/hansen-finally-muzzled-by-obama/#comment-1269698
With whom do you have your employment contract? With the federal agency? Against whom would you have to make legal claims with respect to your employment contract? Could you make any legal claims against this federal agency? If you can’t in what way are you employed by this federal agency?
I have been accused of using semantics to obfuscate. I think the ones who really use semantics here are the ones who want to claim that being employed by an organization and being an employee of this organization is supposed to mean something different. What is supposed to be the legal basis for such a claim?
Gah, I messed up the second blackquote on my last post 🙁
Ah, well gives me an excuse to point out something else I noticed in Jan’s last post
Jan P Perlwitz says:
If they were a contractor doing the work the government contracted them to do, it would be entirely legal and relevant to refer to them as being employed by the government as they (or the company that hired them) would indeed have a government employment contract. on the other hand, It wouldn’t be legal or relevant to refer to them as a federal employee, as they are not directly employed by the government.
That’s the distinction you seem not to understand that several people in this thread (including Anthony) have been argueing with you.
The simple facts of the matter is NASA is footing the bill for work that you do on their behalf. That is what is called employment. Regardless of whether they hired you as a federal employee, contracted with you directly, or as the case may be, contracted your services via Columbia’s human resources department, the end result is the same -you are employed by them to do certain work. That fund money they supplied came with a contract, you know, they don’t just hand out the money for nothing (or so all of us taxpayer hope). It’s why they give you an office to work out of and an email account with which to do business – so that you can do the work that they employ you to do on their behalf. That work is that which you describe as “collaborate with NASA researchers, who are civil servants, on specific topics of research within the research profile of GISS.”
jc wrote in April 8, 2013 at 6:10 pm in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/08/hansen-finally-muzzled-by-obama/#comment-1269719
Yes, but not a new employer. This seems to be way beyond your comprehension.
Do you really think I care whether any member of the delusional fake skeptic crowd here doesn’t find me “trustworthy”? That you already don’t by preconception anyway.
Wow. And all this because I clarified that I am not employed with NASA, contradicting the repeated false assertions by Anthony Watts and others here. Anthony Watts likes to call anonymous participants like you sometimes cowards. Of course, only when they don’t agree with him.
REPLY: Actually it is a term from slashdot.org and it gets automatically applied to anyone who doesn’t provide any account profile or basic ID. JC doesn’t fit that description because he has a valid email address, I can contact him if there is an issue. “Anonymous coward” is an accurate label for people that wish to be derogatory with being responsible for their words. Yes, you work at NASA GISS, strange that you don’t want to admit that. – Anthony
Your arguments, Mr. Perlwitz, are what we’ve all come to expect from a less-than-honest person, regardless of your employment (although the fact that you work at GISS makes it far less surprising).
Your attempts at obfuscation aren’t working.
Jan,
You seem as one who has spent his life in the tower to have no conception how things are arranged in the real world. In the real world office space, titles, server space, janitorial services, secretarial services, etc. are not provided for free. It just doesn’t happen.
“In the speculative case, GISS was closed in NYC, I still would be an employee of Columbia University. My status would not change as long as I get in federal grant money to support my research. I might have to find another office, though. Or, perhaps, I even could stay in the building where GISS resides now, since it is owned by Columbia anyway. ”
This is an excellent suggestion, Jan. I propose we move GISS out of the expen$ive Columbia University property altogether, and move all operations to North Dakota, where they will be at least two times cheaper for the American taxpayer. Those who actually work for NASA can make the adjustment, I’m sure…
Par for course behaviour for Climate Scientists. Lying, obfuscating, trolling, being obnoxious etc. is normal behaviour for them. Jan’s behaviour is no worse than before. That would be impossible, anyway.
John Endicott:
Thankyou for the answer to my question which you provide in your post at April 8, 2013 at 2:58 pm where you write
Thankyou. That is very clear. And it concurs with the US employment experience of J.T. Jones which he reports at April 8, 2013 at 6:28 pm.
Obviously, my difficulty in understanding was not caused by a significant difference between UK and US employment laws. It was induced by Perelw1tz having difficulty stating truth. And the difficulties Perlw1tz has in managing to tell the truth is no surprise to anyone – including me – who has interacted with him previously. Indeed, one reason why I thought I may have been being misled by my past experience was my knowing Perlw1tz has problems with agreeing facts.
Again, thankyou.
Richard
I agree with commenter “steveta_uk” earlier. Chris Horner’s post needs a rewrite to fix those few sentences that are “badly written. With odd partial. Sentences.”
On the other hand the news of Hansen’s departure at the hands of Obama might bode well for Keystone XL.
Also looking forward to Chris Horner posting the contents of those Hansen ethics files online because inquiring minds want to know in black ‘n white exactly how lucrative the GreenEnergy-GlobalWarming racket is.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
That is just a confused and absurd argumentation.
=========================================
I’m sorry that you are so easily confused by the English language and the meaning of words within it. That, however, is entirely your own problem. There’s remedial classes for that, you might look into whether or not Columbia offers any.
And the only absurdity here is the lengths you go to to distance yourself from your relationship with GISS. I don’t know what you think you gain by doing so, but I can tell you what you lose: All credibility. as another poster mantioned: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus applies.
The funny thing is, if you had limited your retort to Antony at “I am not a federal employee”, that would have been a true statement. Though no one was ever claiming you were. Heck, you could even get by, semantically atleast, with insisting that you are “not a GISS employee”. However you went a step too far by insisting on the demonstrably untrue “I am not employed at GISS.” Though I see your difficulty in understanding that stems from your failure already noted to understand the English language and the meaning of words with in it as exhibited when you posted “I think the ones who really use semantics here are the ones who want to claim that being employed by an organization and being an employee of this organization is supposed to mean something different”
back to remdial English for you:
EMPLOYEE: a person working for another person or a business firm for pay
EMPLOYED: To engage the services of; put to work:
As you can see, those definitions are not exactly the same as you try to pretend. one discusses pay, the other does not. Since Columbia cuts your paycheck (even though, ultimately that money comes from GISS), I can see your semantic arguement that you are just an employee of Columbia. However you are confusing that bit of semantics with the meaning of Employed. GISS engages your services, GISS provides you with work. therefore GISS employes you/your serivces in order to get that work done. It’s what the word “employed” means. It’s why they give you an office, an email account, list you in their “body of persons employed” directory, etc. They even pay for those services. Those who pay the piper call the tune. pretending otherwise does not change the facts of the matter one iota.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
With whom do you have your employment contract? With the federal agency? Against whom would you have to make legal claims with respect to your employment contract? Could you make any legal claims against this federal agency? If you can’t in what way are you employed by this federal agency?
==========================================================
It’s obvious you have no clue how the real world outside the hollowed halls of acedamia work. Not knowing JT’s exact situation, I’ll try to clue you in on a more general level.
Contract workers come in two flavors. Those who work for a third party contracting company, and those who are their own contracting company. In answer to your questions
1) the employment contract would be between the federal agancy and the contracting company (either 3rd party or the individual)
2) legal claims would be made against the contract. The federal government has departments that handle those kind of claims on their end. How the individual contractor handles it depends on if he works for a third party contracting company (in which case his claims are funneled through their department for handling it) or if he is the contracting company, in which case he’ll have to handle it or hire someone, unusally a lawyer, to handle it for him.
3) any legal claims he can or can’t make depend on the terms of the contract.
4) the contractor is employed by the agency via the terms of the contract between them.
Jan P Perlwitz says:
Yes, but not a new employer. This seems to be way beyond your comprehension.
================================================
You say you’d need to find a new source of funds. New sources of fund don’t come free. They usually have work attached to them. That work would be your new *employment* even if your *employer* technically remains the same (Ie Columbia collecting the money on your behalf and then cutting you a check every pay period).
Jan P Perlwitz says:
April 8, 2013 at 7:25 pm
jc wrote in April 8, 2013 at 6:10 pm in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/08/hansen-finally-muzzled-by-obama/#comment-1269719
You work at GISS. As part of the team working at GISS. Regardless of your administrative stautus. You say now if GISS closed you would have to find a new office.
Yes, but not a new employer. This seems to be way beyond your comprehension.
You have established beyond doubt that you are evasive and that no one can can have any confidence that you are trustworthy.
Do you really think I care whether any member of the delusional fake skeptic crowd here doesn’t find me “trustworthy”? That you already don’t by preconception anyway.
You are a disgrace. Not just to science or inquiry, but to human standards.
Wow. And all this because I clarified that I am not employed with NASA, contradicting the repeated false assertions by Anthony Watts and others here. Anthony Watts likes to call anonymous participants like you sometimes cowards. Of course, only when they don’t agree with him.
REPLY: Actually it is a term from slashdot.org and it gets automatically applied to anyone who doesn’t provide any account profile or basic ID. JC doesn’t fit that description because he has a valid email address, I can contact him if there is an issue. “Anonymous coward” is an accurate label for people that wish to be derogatory with being responsible for their words. Yes, you work at NASA GISS, strange that you don’t want to admit that. – Anthony
——————————————————————————————————————–
It is a convention in blogs such as this that, for whatever reason, many or most participants use appellations that may not be an identifier readily recognized by others in situations other than the particular one they are using it in. Insofar as this usage has no implications outside the particular forum, this is of no consequence or meaning. Any comments I make here can only have the significance that they can communicate in themselves, since they make no claims to any more extensive association.
You, on the other hand, claim as legitimacy for your participation a perspective derived from a structural association with a particular body or bodies directly involved with the subject being considered, although your precise relationship with these you have been loathe to make clear.
This nomenclature you use: “Jan P Perlwitz”, means nothing to me. I have no reason to believe it faithfully represents a being with an existence beyond this interaction or associated internet presence, such as a web page which seems to be exclusively dedicated to taking issue, not with topics of scientific substance, but to claimed procedural difficulties with WUWT, and an appearance as an apparent name as being a part of GISS, which is a relationship that you have denied, even as you have said that you have a designated corporeal location within it.
I can accept that you are effectively an entity for these purposes with an unknown level of autonomy from the the more comprehensive system that has created and maintains you, but no more. The, in human terms, poverty of substance, lack of responsiveness, and narrow and repeatative nature of what you cause to appear here, does not preclude that “you” are an artifact of a computer program. And a rudimentary one.
Allowing for the possibility that you exist in human form, with an expectation of at least homo sapien characteristics – it is already established that a claim to humanity is tenuous – you have problems.
In your first paragraph above you use the word “comprehension”. Although I am quite sure that you, in your position, will be completely averse to this, this raises that issue.
In the space of one line, you almost disturbingly display your incapacity in this. I have not ever raised or shown interest in who your nominal employer is, this being an abstraction relative to the actuality of what you do. You are unable to make that distinction. This despite within the very paragraph you quote – only two lines, very simple – this is crystal clear to any literate 10 yo, and in fact it states in the preceding sentence, very short, to the one you pretend to respond to, that this is the case.
You seem to have no capacity at all to retain focus on more than one self contained point – and that the last one that swims into your view. Effectively you have no memory at all. And if you cannot retain more than one point – and that only because it is in front of you – it is impossible for you to create any coherent meaning about anything.
It is difficult to envision such limitations outside an extremely basic – junk really – program.
Unless these limitations are created by capacity for honesty. A difficult choice. If the entity is home sapien, I am going for dishonesty at this point.
Although that is a provisional conclusion given your further declaration.
A “delusional fake skeptic crowd”. Fake skeptics. Well, that fairly incontravertibly means affirmers rather than deniers to use the pseudo-religious terms that must swirl around the ice-cooler, or perhaps over the electrodes.
So you are of the opinion, or input has decreed, that WUWT is actually an exercise in what – misinformation in pretending to be at adds with this orthodoxy? Does that mean you see yourself as playing a part as a Believer when you are actually not? That this is some sort of curious inversion; played for unfathomable reasons, at least to the uninitiated?
Or are you – and yours -, really Believers, and the whole existence of WUWT, and no doubt other sites and people, a construction to – perhaps – give the illusion of the possibility of dissent, or a reason to create enemies, or just a mechanism to get funding for Defenders of The Faith – such as you?
So, the delusional? This could apply to a myriad of things depending on the person, or it could apply generally to something. I will take it that it applies directly to being “fake skeptics”. So all the people of the inclination you designate are deluded about their actual position? That certainly makes sense, since such people who comment here give every appearance that they believe what they say. They certainly seem to think they are real skeptics.
But how do you know this when it appears so convincing – at least to me – although it would wouldn’t it? Have you given too much away? Are you gloating over this condition? Are you part of a CONSPIRACY? Or, at least, are your programmers?
Or, to default to a simple explanation, are you both dishonest and in other ways a person of “low character”, which always includes cowardice shown in hiding real intent – and not very bright perhaps?
You do need a dictionary, or your handlers need to tweak you, it skirts a dangerous zone for you to use the word “clarified” in relation to any text you have caused to appear. Any level of delusion, no matter how confident you are of its strength, can be shattered by something impossible to reconcile.
You still, although I understand now this is organically or technically beyond your ambit, have not answered the simple question of what it is that you actually do. So I have had to surmise what I can.
You have a web-site. Nothing immediately apparent on it relates to anything other than WUWT. As an expression of your personal life this is plainly obsessive – all right, deranged. So if you are not deranged, this presumably is some element of your function.
Reviewing your comments, they have appeared through a working day and number 13 in total. Considering your comments, these have added precisely nothing to anyones understanding of anything – outside of course the possibility of judging you as life form or entity, and if taken seriously, the possibility that a huge number of people are unknowingly fraudulent, and given your knowledge of this, the creation of some diabolical scheme.
Since you are incapable of actually causing anything of meaning to appear here, your presence must be motivated by an intention to distract from the substance of the post, that being the bizarre and dubious nature of your now ex seer, and the reasons behind his recent elevation or demise, whichever is appropriate.
So this must be all or part of your function. Are you part of a formal or informal Political Unit in GISS, or is that just part of the job description for all?
A significant or possibly all of your working time is dedicated to this. That is, to nothing but attempts at manipulation.
I wonder what the American People will think of this when they are informed. That you and no doubt others are taking money from them – at certainly a much higher rate than applies to their employment – on the basis that you are a scientist working for the common good when in fact you are THIS.
John E & Jan,
John E – We know from GISS’s own website that Jan is considered, in a normal U.S. sense, as working for them. He is indistinguishable in his relationship with them as many others are in GISS’s personnel roster.
Jan – There is no reason to obscure your relationship / membership within GISS, it is a simple verifiable fact that is established by GISS’s website independent of your comments that make it look otherwise.
Jan – Without wishing to get into too much personal info about your employment situation, I have a Question = Does GISS currently apply you full time? I will respectfully understand if you decline to answer on privacy grounds.
John
@ur momisugly John Whitman says:
April 9, 2013 at 7:23 am
“Does GISS currently apply you full time? I will respectfully understand if you decline to answer on privacy grounds.”
I wont.
If anything is blindingly clear it is that the level of involvement this “Jan P Perlwitz” has with purely “political” considerations around this issue precludes effective full time employment dedicated to anything directly related to science.
If this function is not within his terms of employment, or he is not employed part-time, he is abusing his position and must be held to account. If it is within his terms of employment, then NASA itself must be held to account.
Whether one is an employee or contractor, the distinction is legal semantics. Is blogging is authorized during working hours? If so by who? Is blogging being funded using taxpayer money?
I’m reminded of the Monty Python skit, I’m came here for an argument. No you didn’t. Ahha, you are arguing therefore I paid you. No you didn’t, I could be arguing on my own time.
– – – – – – – –
jc,
I appreciate your comment.
It is often my impression that Perlwitz comes just to intellectually spit on us and, in doing so might be compensating for self-confidence needs.
HOWEVER, I appreciate Jan Perlwitz participating here since I like the participation of a wide variety of people here at Anthony’s wonderful intellectual venue.
So, let the dialog thrive.
I enjoy your comments and I am jealous because you are quite articulate.
Take care.
John
Actually, the whole “who employs Jan Perlwitz” thing is largely an irrelevant distraction to me. I really couldn’t care less who he works for or what he’s working on. He likely draws his salary and benefits from Columbia University. What interests me more is the financial and business relationship between Columbia and NASA/GISS. Clearly, NASA/GISS (through GSFC) funnels money to Columbia for “research projects”. Columbia takes their cut then funds workers like Perlwitz to do whatever it is they do. The researchers in turn provide their “products” to NASA (who I assume owns the IP). What I’d like to know is:
* What are the current on-going projects for 2013?
* How much are they being funded for and what is the total budget?
* How much is Columbia University getting in “overhead”?
* Who at NASA are the project managers?
* Is there a budget planning document at NASA/GISS that is available to the public (as it should be)?
I suspect that continuing this relationship with Columbia is a VERY inefficient use of precious government money. The same work could be done at any number of other university sites across the U.S. (or even the world e.g. India) for a much lower cost (my example of North Dakota is but one of many). And it irks me to no end that places like Columbia apparently seem immune to economic realities, even getting STIMULUS MONEY(!!!) while our economy was struggling back in 2009. These people truly live in a bubble. Fortunately for us paying their bills, the higher education (and related government-funded research) bubble is about to burst. Parents can no longer afford to fund colleges and universities to the tune of $50,000 / year / student, and we as citizens can no longer afford to keep shoveling government money to unaccountable researchers and bureaucrats, some of whom can’t even admit who they work for/with, or even that have a .gov e-mail address!