Dr. James Hansen, now no longer on a leash under NASA policy, has started what I expect will be the first of many ugly comments and actions in his new role as activist.
Niall from Canada writes in asking for help from WUWT and the readership:
This Saturday morning Canada’s state broadcaster (the CBC) aired, on their weekly politics & current affairs show “the House”, a 15 min. ‘interview’ with James Hansen, in which he denigrated our Government as “neanderthal” in it’s approach to AGW, and that climate change science is “crystal clear”.
He also angled for a carbon tax (presumably to support his desired global wealth re-distribution scheme). I know you’re a very busy guy, but if you could formally respond in writing to the CBC, and indicate the gross errors Hansen voiced, and also post to your own site, many of us Canadian climate ‘realists’ would be very grateful for your help in exposing this grotesque charlatan.
Att’d is the link for the show, and the address to respond to.
Yours very truly,
Niall from Winnipeg
the Story:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/04/26/pol-hansen-oliver.html
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
@ur momisugly Pamela Gray says:
April 28, 2013 at 6:52 am
When you get him back, can he be strapped down? He could still be wheeled out to expostulate in the illuminating way you allude to. Maybe Reality TV? You know, with his grandchildren, butterflies, reactions to a bath overflowing, that sort of thing. Could be a powerful way of getting the true message out. Entertaining too.
Lousy interviewer. He knew nothing of the subject and kept asking the same question, thus letting Hansen of the hook. And Hansen just has to keep mentioning the ‘poor children’ and ‘next generation’ who will ‘suffer’, to get oodles of support.
This is the problem with an aging population with a high proportion of widows. You only have to mention ‘poor children’ or ‘injured puppy’ and the money and sympathy flows in. Over in Holland they have several MPs from the ‘save the puppies’ party and their TV adverts over there are are a litany of limping ponies, abandoned puppies and frightened kittens – that drum up $millions a day. How can rationalists compete with that?
Hansen knows this, and is milking this sympathy vote for all it is worth. The rich widow never notices the cameraman holding back a snarling rottweiler, which is why the kitten was frightened in the first place, and nor would she believe it if you showed her.
.
@ur momisugly Alberta Slim says:
April 28, 2013 at 6:33 am
Well if they bury him won’t that just contribute to mans pollution of the earth? What a quandry.
Atarsinc, the caveman that discovered rocks that could burn has a far greater chance of having dozens of children that survived [past] infancy, several wives, freshly killed and sizziled steak at every meal, and lived a nice long life compared to the poor fellas who dug for roots, ate rotted dried meat, and slept on the cold hard ground. But be my guest. There are still lots of places you can dig for roots, dry your netted fish on rocks, and sleep under branches. Don’t forget the fig leaf.
@ur momisugly ralfellis says:
April 28, 2013 at 7:14 am
..”save the puppies party”…
————————————————————————————————————————-
I’m ready to believe any level of individual and collective credulity and stupefication can exist, but this is a joke, right?
The Neanderthals were at least as intelligent as we are. What an insult to them.
RockyRoad says: April 27, 2013 at 6:49 pm
It’s like saying a robber….. has the right to react with indignation against the cops by using the term “burgler”!
_____________________________
Sorry, Rocky, the UK has beaten you to that one. Police officers and prison guards now have to call burglers ‘sir’, as ‘con’ or ‘burgler’ might hurt their feelings and lower their esteem.
.
Some weeks ago I had cause to write to the CBC Ombudsman with regard to a statement on the CBC “National” news programme on the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. My complaint was fowarded to the producers of the programme and I did receive an e-mail in response. Below I have copied and pasted a part of the response I received.
I was “gobsmacked” when I first read the below, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. (This was ostensibly from a “senior” person in the production team although I suspect it may have been composed by a staffer). I have not included names, the purpose here is not to shame an individual but to demonstrate the level of knowledge which I believe is pervasive in much of the MSM, and not just in Canada.
And now here is your “laugh of the day”, compliments of the CBC. Josh can you do anything with this?
Verbatim Quotation:-
“With respect to your second point, you wrote that the program host said, “Carbon dioxide is the most powerful green house gas in the atmosphere”. This is “factually incorrect”, you wrote, since water vapour is the “predominant green house gas in terms of effect … by an order of magnitude”.
You are right; water vapour is by far the most abundant heat trapping gas in the atmosphere and
accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, up to about 85 per cent when clouds are included. However, it is rarely mentioned in any discussion of anthropogenic climate change. The reason is that water vapour only lasts for a few days in the atmosphere before falling back to earth again.
CO2, on the other hand, accumulates, staying in the atmosphere from anywhere from 30 to 100 years. So the more we create through the combustion of fossil fuels, say, the more there will be in the atmosphere.
Because of its quantity and persistence, scientists say C02 has contributed the most to climate change. Compared to all the other human influenced climate drivers, it is responsible for the greatest amount of energy (the highest “radiative forcing”) reaching the Earth’s surface. Ms. Mesley pointed out that global emissions of C02 in 2011 were at an all time high. Scientists who had crunched the numbers, she said, have found that since the industrial revolution atmospheric C02 levels have increased 41 percent and were likely to go much higher before being brought under control.
End of Quotation.
Ralfellis, you stepped in dodo. And I have a fan. Either walk back on the “widow” comment or I plug it in!
[If the dodo’s are from an exstinct species, do they still smell bad? …. Mod]
doodoo, dodo, horse apples, cow pies, take your pick lolol!
@ur momisugly Old Mike says:
April 28, 2013 at 7:24 am
“…I have not included names, the purpose here is not to shame an individual but to…”
————————————————————————————————————————
The purpose should be to shame – or reveal – individuals.
All of the employees of CBC are directly responsible to the people of Canada. You wrote to the Ombudsman who is specifically charged with the duty to uphold that responsibility. If there is failure it must be seen and the people who fail must be identified.
This whole issue is maintained by people. To allow proponents, acting in concert, though as individuals, to hold an institutional screen over their activities is a perversion of the entire rationale for such an organization in the first place.
Ralfelis, there is a saying about heaping coal on top of the head of a wrong doer. Calling that person “sir” and treating them with humane respect can actually be worse than calling them names.
But dang, I have too much fun calling Hansen an idiot!
Pedantic old Fart says: “The last recorded Neanderthals went extinct in the Gibralter area about 24,000 yr BP. The whole group lost its woodland-mosaic habitat, ironically, due to global cooling, They were big, smart, often blue-eyed and red haired,speaking people that hunted big animals in ambush with thrusting spears. “
I believe Neanderthal were indeed smarter … but they lost out because HomoSapiens were better at forming a consensus! … and because that consensus was wrong … we, sorry those, Neanderthals were ruthlessly hunted to death by the genocidal “consensii”
Talking of the history of European peoples. it might interest people that I’ve just written a couple of articles:
The Scots are not Celts
The Celts are French
That link is: The Scots are not Celts
jc says: April 28, 2013 at 7:22 am
@ur momisugly ralfellis says:
..”save the puppies party”…
————————————————————
I’m ready to believe any level of individual and collective credulity and stupefication can exist, but this is a joke, right?
___________________________________
No joke. These are the loons commonly known in Cloggyland as the ‘Save the Puppies Party’. And they have two seats in parliament too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Animals
You can see why Europe is sinking into a cesspit of decay. Its like the Roman Empire over here, just before its 5th century fall. The great and the good of Rome did everything in their power not to pay taxes (mainly for the army); and then these hedonist patricians proceeded to cut off the fingers of their sons, so they could not join the army (cannot carry a sword). And then they were suprised when the immigrants from the East came in, ran amok in the Balkan States, sacked Rome on a couple of occasions, and then took over France, Spain and North Africa. And the pathetic response from the enfeebled Roman army pretty-much sealed the fate of the Western Roman Empire. Cities then imploded and millions died, as the intricate and interconnected complexities of a great civilisation unravelled in less than a generation.
However, I wouldn’t mind saving Marianne Thieme with the kiss of life, should the need arise….
.
There is no other field of science where technical people can state fantasy lies for propaganda value on a public television station for 15 minutes. In other fields of science specialists in the field and scientifically astute people who care about the integrity of science, will activity defend the truth. Hansen’s statements are so far from reality and truth he would in other fields of science have been labelled a liar or a crack pot.
James Hansen does not participate in a modulated debate as his fantasy scenarios would be torn apart.
I would assume that Hansen is fully aware that his statements are lies and he is creating fantasy scenarios for their propaganda value.
Enough is enough. The crisis in ‘climate change’ policy is a direct result of people like Hansen that have been allowed to state lies and to avoid a discussion of big picture truths.
It is absurd that there is not even a list of the issues, a summary of the problem situation.
What the heck is the problem situation!!! What are the dang viable options!!! The advantage of actually discussing facts and identifying the issues is the resulting policy decisions make sense from the standpoint Western citizens rather than wasting money leading Western countries to economic ruin.
Hansen should have discussed the one fact that he states over and over in his book. If there is global warming crisis which there is not the only viable engineering solution is a rapid conversion to 100% nuclear energy. He suggests breeder reactors as a breeder reactor can achieve close to 100% efficiency for the ultimate fusion reaction as opposed to the current 2% efficiency. That seems reasonable if carbon dioxide emissions could cause very dangerous warming which is ludicrous.
There is no other viable solution.
So we are caught in a “catch 22”. Governments in response to Hansen like unchallenged apocalyptic lies to push an agenda is logically flawed (very important see below for details) have in acted policies that damage the environment, increase unemployment, make Western countries less competitive, and increase or have almost no effect on carbon dioxide emissions.
For example most Western governments have in acted policy that forces money to be spent on green scams such as the conversion of food to biofuel, which result in an increase in CO2 emission and increased species extinction as there is limited land for agriculture so virgin forest must be cut down to grow food to convert to biofuel. There is therefore a loss in a carbon sink, higher food costs to the third world, increased species extinction, higher energy costs to consumers, and a net increase in CO2 emissions.
The ‘green’ fanatics are fanatically anti nuclear so France, Germany, and Japan (there are legitimate safety issues that need to address and have not been addressed in current nuclear reactor design) are planning in the long term to shutdown all of their nuclear reactors.
As Europe is fanatically anti fracking the only engineering viable alternative (A solution that considers reality and practical constraints such as: Western governments are dangerously deeply in debt, Western countries are currently not competitive with Asia and hence cannot accept a doubling of power costs for no significant CO2 reduction which is not a problem anyway, have very high structural unemployment problems, and there is a real possibility of currency collapse.) is coal plants.
Regardless of what Western Countries do, there are 1000 coal plants currently planned, 75% of them in India and China.
Hansen statement “It is game over if the Keystone pipeline is constructed” is based on the above surreal, in the twilight zone, so far from reality that it would be comical if cheap reliable energy from the US’s largest trading party, was not an advantage for the US.
Pamela Gray says: April 28, 2013 at 7:33 am
Ralfellis, you stepped in dodo. And I have a fan. Either walk back on the “widow” comment or I plug it in!
_____________________________
Eh? Not sure what you mean.
Facts are:
Europe has an aging population, many of whom are quite wealthy.
Women have a longer life expectancy than men.
This gives a predominance of wealthy pensioner widows.
Pensioner widows invariably end up with cats or lap-dogs as companions.
Such people are preconditioned to giving money to a ‘Save the Puppies Party’.
Daytime TV is wall-to-wall sob stories about frightened kittens and lost puppies.
But you can save them all, for just $15 a week.
Sub-text:
Give us your money, or the kitten gets it……
Just sign here.
.
@ur momisugly ralfellis says:
April 28, 2013 at 7:57 am
My God it is at times hard to see a way back. The % vote seems to have (hopefully) stabilized, and just possibly this is an end of era convulsion. There is a fine line between optimism and foolishness, I know.
I take your point about Marianne Thieme but for that act of human identification and concern (?), she may prefer a different species.
@ur momisugly ralfellis says:
April 28, 2013 at 8:08 am
“Give us your money, or the kitten gets it……
Just sign here.”
——————————————————————————————————————-
You’re actually their campaign manager aren’t you?
Widows are a hearty bunch and don’t cotton to men thinking they are weak minded or easily swayed by puppies and kittens. Take it back.
@ur momisugly Pamela Gray says:
April 28, 2013 at 8:24 am
At huge risk of being embroiled, maybe not all widows are the same. That’s my total possible contribution!
Glad to see you back Pamela Gray.
I enjoy your comments.
Cough up data on your position about widows or take it back!
I’ll miss having him around.
http://i43.tinypic.com/somq83.jpg