Legendary climate activist James Hansen has cut loose at everyone over their climate failings, and has not spared politicians whom he says are “fraudulently” claiming to be taking climate action. But James Hansen’s rant sheds light on an unlikely figure who took a final opportunity to do the right thing.
Ex-Nasa scientist: 30 years on, world is failing ‘miserably’ to address climate change
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While Donald Trump and many conservatives like to argue that climate change is a hoax, James Hansen, the 77-year-old former Nasa climate scientist, said in an interview at his home in New York that the relevant hoax today is perpetrated by those leaders claiming to be addressing the problem.
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Hansen’s long list of culprits for this inertia are both familiar – the nefarious lobbying of the fossil fuel industry – and surprising. Jerry Brown, the progressive governor of California, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are “both pretending to be solving the problem” while being unambitious and shunning low-carbon nuclear power, Hansen argues.
There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.
Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment.
“Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said.
“Our lawsuit demands a reduction of 6% a year so I thought, ‘That’s close enough, let’s settle the lawsuit.’ We got through to Obama’s office but he decided against it. It was a tremendous opportunity. This was after Trump’s election, so if we’d settled it quickly the US legally wouldn’t be able to do the absurd things Trump is doing now by opening up all sorts of fossil fuel sources.”
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For once I agree with James Hansen – if President Obama had done what James Hansen had asked, President Trump’s task of dismantling the green tangle ensnaring US enterprise would have been that much harder.
Why did President Obama hesitate? Was he secretly a climate skeptic all along, who at the final challenge couldn’t bring himself to commit the USA to economic ruin? Or was he rattled by all the accusations that he was attempting to sabotage President Trump’s term of office?
Whatever the truth, when President Trump finally manages to liberate the USA from the clutches of the green monster, amongst all the others we shall have one unlikely politician to thank – former President Obama, who in the final days of his Presidency chose not to thwart the will of the American people.
Update (EW) – h/t Dr. Willie Soon, Mann tweets in defence of Governor Jerry Brown
I admire James Hansen but his attacks on @JerryBrownGov are unfair. Brown is a hero on climate.
There are honest differences of opinion on the role of nuclear in the transition from fossil fuels (I myself am skeptical). I think Jim owes Gov an apology!https://t.co/WCXIkuEw0I— Dr. Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) June 19, 2018
James Hansen for FBI Director!
The problem is that most of the green NGOs are vehemently anti-nuke, so if Obama went along with Hansen he would have alienated those supporters. What Obama seemed to care about was votes and contributions from greens, not actually pursuing the cause of climate change.
The problem now for nuclear is not Green resistance, but cheap natural gas. That will end some day to be sure. In the meantime, we need to restart Yucca Mtn Repository for high level nuclear waste (spent fuel). We will need it again badly one day. It would be money well spent.
And we even more need to restart Yucca Mtn while Harry Reid is still alive.
What we need to do is restart reprocessing, then there will be no need for Yucca Mtn.
Molten Salt Reactors (Denatured Uranium version) could be deployed on existing N-plant sites, “burn” the spent fuel (95% energy left) without any transportation issues, or the ability of the anti-nukes to try and stall Yucca Mtn.
And we can take a page from France’s playbook and vitrify the residue and the concentrated low-level waste.
Reprocessing only removes the trans-uranics (e.g., plutonium) and not the fission products. Then there are radioactive materials from medicine, industry, science research, etc., that need to go somewhere.
The medical and other low level can be put through a plasma incinerator (high tech garbage burner) process and will be inert. The plasma incinerators work on garbage and generate more electrical energy than they use.
While plasma gasification can eliminate a lot of molecular hazards it can’t alter the nucleus of an atom. Radionuclides in Radionuclides out.
These residuals are extremely small, certainly compared to processing spend fission plant rods. Easily managed.
Drill a hole through the earth’s crust and develop technology to insert the radioactive waste into the earth’s molten core. The molten core is the largest nearby (terrestrial) homogenous source for diluting our radioactive waste. Half of the core’s heat already comes from radioactive decay of isotopes.
Do you realize the cost of drilling this hole and how long the drill pipe has to be? You cant drill a hole with string.
Depositing vitrified nuclear waste 100 meters down in stable, mid-ocean, deep-sea sediments is a viable option that is already technologically possible.
No need to drill holes anywhere. Just find an active volcano and dump it into the caldera.
Sara……..What are you thinking ?
You mean……like dump it into Kilauea Volcano on Hawaii
and then live with radioactive lava from then on ??
Oh ! Of course !! The NIMBY solution !!
You mean FIND ONE THAT’S……… NOT IN MY BACK YARD !
So what I said is worse than drill a hole to the Earth’s core and dump the radioactive stuff down that hole?
Okay, sure.
There are experimental designs as viable technology to radioactive fission reactors. There just needs some political will to get rid of the massive regulation that was designed for radioactive plants and some more investment funds to get these non radioactive plans into viable technology.
All of those isotopes are very short lived. They don’t need long term storage.
We need to build Molten Salt Reactors: the Case for the Good Reactor https://spark.adobe.com/page/1nzbgqE9xtUZF/
Indeed, nuclear research was never finished. We left it unfinished as soon as the Navy research had what they wanted, a reactor they could use on ships. This project should be restarted, and restarted immediately in the western world, it might literally destroy the Arab stranglehold on energy in a year or two.
A world without the Islam-dominated OPEC is a safer world indeed. Then those nations turn back into the backwards nations their cultures reveal them to be, and no one gives a s**t about their internal nastiness enough to send troops anywhere near there.
Thanks WJ Horsting for inserting this point in the discussion.
The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment ran for nearly 5 years at Oak Ridge in the 1960s, and generated electricity continuously for more than a year and a half before the project was de-funded. Thorium (which is available in megaton quantities and very low-grade radioactive) is the dominant fuel and it produces few long-lived waste products. Molten Salt Reactors can consume and thus neutralize high-level rad waste from existing power/defense applications and reduce the need for geological storage/disposal
MSR’s are walk-away safe and can be manufactured in scalable units that can be combined for a wide range of power-output applications.
The US developed and proved all this technology, which is now being used by China and India for new reactor construction. MSRs are Paul Ehrlich’s worst nightmare – providing unlimited energy to humanity.
Let’s do it
Thanks Walter. Well worth the read. It should be mandatory for all politicians to read.
OK query the details if they wish; but at least read it for the overview; so they can deal with the lobbyists in a sensible manner.
Also makes fission products that need storage.
Right now radioactive waste materials are being stored in all kinds of places, some to be forgotten, much like toxic chemical storage used to be. You know what occurred there.
The amount of time for storage goes from a geological time frame for the nukes we have today to 300 years for the LFTR designs. Much more realistic to manage and deal with.
Fission products don’t need storage. The long term stuff can be recycled as fuel and the short term stuff is gone in months to decades.
And rename it the “Harry Reid Hole”!
With the Fusion Torch, All the World’s a Mine. It is a matter of energy flux-density.
Don’t open Yucca Mountain. Canada and China have finished the design for CANDU 2, which takes in spent uranium from light water reactors and uses it as fuel for Heavy water power generation. If you pay us, we will take it off your hands.
Why not call it the Harry Reid Nuclear Repository?
The last gasp rantings of an irrational tantrum, lash out at everyone. The final stage of meltdown.
The man is truly deranged. Completely unstuck mentally. A nut case, devoid of any common sense or rational thought. To think he was the director of GISS for 32 years and was the initiator of global warming in the US where he preached before Congress twice. It boggles the mind. He was arrested 5 times for protesting illegally for green causes. Some of his predictions and statements were
1) In 1988 he predicted that the Hudson River would overflow because of rising sea level caused by CO2 and New York would be underwater by 2008.
2) In 1986 he predicted that the earth would be 1.1C higher within 20 years and then by
3) 1999 he said that the earth had cooled and that the US hadn’t warmed in 50 years
4 He had also said that the Arctic would lose all of its ice by 2000.
5) In december 2005, Hansen argued that the earth will become “a different planet” without U.S. leadership in cutting global greenhouse gas emissions.
6) He then reversed course again and said in march 2016 that the seas could rise several metres in 50 to 150 years and swamp coastal cities .
7) He also said that global warming of 2C above preindustrial times (~ 1850) would be dangerous and that mankind would be unable to adapt.
8) in 2009 Hansen called coal companies criminal enterprises and said that Obama had 4 years left to save the planet.
9) In 2012 Hansen accused skeptics of crimes against humanity and nature.
10) Hansen is involved with a 2015 lawsuit involving 21 kids that argues that their constitutional rights were interfered with by CO2
11) in 2017 he has admitted that CAGW does not happen with burning fossil fuels.
“One flaw in my book Storms of My Grandchildren is my inference you can get runaway climate change on a relatively short timescale. ”
“Do you think that’s possible on a many-millions-of-years timescale?
It can’t be done with fossil-fuel burning.”
12) Then he said “But if you’re really talking about four or five degrees, that means the tropics and the subtropics are going to be practically uninhabitable.”
He doesnt seem to know that their average temperature is 28C.
13) But then he said that climate change was running a $535 trillion debt
14) He has been quoted many times that equates climate change to all sorts of extreme weather events. No database in the world shows any more than there ever were.
15) Hansen has published way over 100 fraudulent climate studies with almost all of them using results from computer climate models that are woefully inadequate and that have never been validated except by the human modeler.
Obviously the man just doesnt know when to shut up.
“3) 1999 he [Hansen] said that the earth had cooled and that the US hadn’t warmed in 50 years”
Hansen got that one right. In 1999 it had cooled after the 1998 El Nino, and 1934 still held the record temperature being 0.5C hotter than 1998. So the US had cooled from 1934 to 1999, and since 1934 was 0.4C hotter than 2016, the US is still cooling.
And since the Hansen 1999 US temperature chart closely resembles most other unaltered charts from around the world, i.e., the 1930’s/40’s are hotter than subsequent years, imo, the Hansen 1999 US chart (+the UAH satellite chart) is a proxy for the global temperature chart.
The 1930’s/40’s was hotter than any subsequent year.
The weather in the 1930’s/40’s was far more extreme than it is today.
Someone calls these dopes an “expert”, then thy are quoted as long as they are alive.
The only expert in climate is one who admits we have a lot to learn yet.
Back when Hansen was GISS Director, he actually had a play script he wrote entitled “The Trial of Big Carbon” posted on the official GISS website (“nasa.gov”). When it became publicly known the script was first made restricted to GISS personnel only, and later deleted. What hubris to act as if an official Government website was his personal social media site! What insanity to think he could get away with it forever.
Rosanne Kardashian Climate Personality
who is that Rosanne Kardashian you are talking about?
As for Merkel: Rupert Darwall makes the point that German renewables rollout ( 50 GW solar and 65 GW of wind power ) was nothing to do with climate, nor CO2. It was purely about installing renewables. Darwall says she promoted renewables to split the left opposition against her (German Greens + Social Democrats). It worked: Merkel has been German Chancellor for 13 years. The Social Democrats are strong in the old industrial heartlands of West Germany where coal is big. Greens and middle-class SDPs hate coal. Merkel’s renewables advocacy was, essentially, a political stitch-up against her left opponents.
Like I said, follow the money or the greed streak. Merkel has it in spades.
The Left loves to be lied to.
Joel, nope, the rank and file Left is blind to the truth, always has been. That is how and why WWII started. Of course there are some useful idiots out there that believe anything they are told by Leftist leaders even if what they are told today is different than what they are told tomorrow. They believe and are told the only liars are conservative capitalists.
Everybody in the news media is scared that China holds a big amount of US debt and will hold the US for ransom. But just as in global warming and green policies, MSM never went to Economics schools or statistical schools, probably not math schools or even investigative schools or (dont let me stop) even Thinking schools.
The real facts are as of March 2018, China held $1.19 trillion of the total of $14.9 trillion ( as of end of May 2018) of marketable debt of the US treasury. The stupid main stream media keeps quoting that the total US debt is $21 trillion but $ 6 trillion of that is money that the US government owes to itself. Included in that; is Social security and medicare debt which at any moment could be simply voted out of existence. the rest is the accumulated money that was printed(these days it is electronically printed) to cover expenses when the government didnt want to borrow on the weekly Federal bond, notes and T-bills market auction because the rates happened to be too high. Interestingly the only difference between gov bonds, notes and t bills is the time limit term with 30 years being the longest. The optimum strategy is that you only print money as a last resort. You borrow all you can on the government auction market until the interest rate goes too high and if at that point you still need money, you print it, by borrowing from the Federal Reserve, which you own. Here I am always talking from the US government perspective.
So back to China. China only recently became the US biggest (bond /note / T-bill) customer. Japan used to be No. 1 and now is in 2nd place at $1.04 trillion. It is interesting that $6.29 trillion is held by foreign countries, so that means ~ $ 8.6 trillion is held by the US public (either private individuals or private or public companies. So considering that of all the foreign countries that own US marketable debt, almost all of them are friendly (at least won’t go to war against the US) then the only debt that the US government has to really worry about is that of China. So China owns ~ only $1.2 trillion/ $14.9 trillion
or just 8% of the total marketable securities. That is a very manageable % of the total and I am sure that the Federal Reserve is constantly tracking that 8 % and making sure that it doesn’t get too high by various means; legal, nefarious, or otherwise.
So the scare stories of China about to stop buying US securities or even scarier stories of asking for immediate repayment are just that ; junk reporting; the same as on the climate media front. I am beginning to think that the main stream media is responsible for the public’s tendency to jump off scientific and financial cliffs.
Buying Treasuries is how foreign companies manipulate their currencies.
I doubt Mutti is much longer for the political arena. The good burghers of Bavaria are rising against her and I believe it’s an unstoppable tide. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Baden-Württemberg, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony following Bavaria’s lead and forming alliances with Austria’s Kurz, Italy’s Salvini, Hungary’s Orban and others. None of these states wish to become provinces of Africa but Mutti is absolutely adamant that they do. It’s ordure or bust time for Angela. If she closes the borders it’s an admission that she made the greatest blunder in all of political history and if she sticks to her current lunatic policies it’s an admission that she is effectively waging a white genocide in Germany and wider Europe. Either way she is finished for good I believe.
Well, Merkel brought all this on herself. It’s amazing just how blind some people can be. What good can come from inviting people into your country who refuse to assimilate into your culture?
I hope you are close to the mark, Cephus0. If anything can take the wind out of the sails of the SJW crowd, it could be Mutti’s failure to keep her job.
James Hansen’s hubris over the position he was in to “settle” a lawsuit against the US Government over reduced “emissions” is superseded only by the hubris of his claim to be a climate scientist. He is positively a climate activist; but a climate scientist, NO.
Please keep up with the terminology: he is a “climate science communicator”.
Activist Hansen is promoting the very undemocratic Sue and Settle policy when he says:
That also assumes the “settlement” is constitutional, legal, and enforceable. Such a settlement would surely have been challenged in additional Law suits. The ridiculous 9th Circuit Court out in San Francisco would probably have supported such an unconstitutional usurpation of Congressional legislative authority from a district court. But I doubt the Supreme Court, even without a Gorsuch 9th vote, would have given such a broad sign-off to an out-of-court settlement to upset standing laws and separation of powers.
The Left loves the idea of Activist Courts and an Imperial President (when that Imperial President is a Democrat of course). Laws they can never hope to get passed through Congress, they can get in effect if they can get judicial activism to work for them.
And it is not about Democracy where the People’s voice matters to the Left. For example, when California voters approved a ballot Ban on same sex marriage initiative called Prop 8 in 2008, the activists, including the Democrats in power used an activist courts to stomp on democrat outcome they didn’t approve of. And we see the same kind of authoritarian mindset in their calls in the aftermath of the Trump election to negate the Constitutional Electoral College process.
One of my political thesis today is that the Left is actively trying to neuter/negate the constitutional roles of Congress in our Republic. That is because Congress is the voice of the People, by design. If you are a Socialist loving Liberal elitist like Jimmy Hansen, then allowing the unwashed masses (the People) to have a real voice in how they are governed, well… that just doesn’t work.
Just look at the fits the left has been throwing when Trump uses executive orders to over turn executive orders.
They actually seem to believe that only their presidents are permitted to use that tactic.
Settling lawsuits was how Obama’s EPA got lots of things done.
I still think of the phrase, “climate change”, as a neutral, descriptive phrase referring to long-term patterns of the weather. Am I supposed to now automatically assume, when the phrase is used, that it means “climate changed attributed to humans”?
Well, I REFUSE to adopt this new “standard”. Unless its says “human caused climate change”, then I will assume that the phrase is talking about the neutral long-term change in weather patterns. I think everybody at this blog should be equally resistant to this subtle tactic to change language.
When your story is about climate change attributed to humans, then SAY THIS, whether it is in an article title or in a sentence. Otherwise, you are just aiding the lie.
Thus, when I see a title where the “human” part should be in it, but it is not, then I will consider the article even more stupid than it might have otherwise been with the more qualified descriptor.
EXAMPLE: NASA James Hansen: Climate Change is Obama and Jerry Brown’s Fault
JUDGEMENT: Really stupid, because climate change has always existed, and so it is NOT anybody’s fault.
BETTER: NASA James Hansen: Human-Caused Climate Change is Obama and Jerry Brown’s Fault
JUDGEMENT: The title describes somebody else’s stupidity and so is less stupid in its own right, thus, serves as a more appropriate descriptor of the subject, rather than as an acceptance of a premise label forced by faulty redefinition of language.
Of course, you could stick with the first example, if you want to show how really stupid alarmists have become. That is, they have dug their grave of stupidity even deeper by thinking of climate change as a human thing that requires no qualification. So, maybe I take it all back — the first example might be better, as long as you realize what you are doing. (^_^)
Robert: I commented many times on this subject. Many here are science nerds (compliment) but they are shortchanged in the wordsmith department (dig).
Instead of using ‘Climate Change’, I requested everyone use Global Warming (as I agree with Joe Bastardi). I also suggested all state either Natural Climate Change or Global Warming Climate Change.
It is frustrating – most don’t know how ingenious and devious the Alarmists were to create the use of Climate Change vs the prior use of Global Warming. It was done to con the public (the not very bright public).
CAGW. That says it all.
I would suggest the same conclusion when the terms “carbon” and “carbon dioxide” are used interchangeably.
I agree but you’re pissing into the wind. CC is de facto AGW. It’s a Progressive ploy to label everything to their advantage and repeat it ad nauseam until they change and own the narrative. It’s not illegal aliens, it’s immigrants. It’s not rape or wife beating, it’s religious prerogative. It’s not wealth redistribution, it’s justifiable penance.
markl
Easy start to a discussion on AGW at a party.
Alarmist: AGW is the problem with the world right now.
Sceptic: But they changed it to CC, why did they do that?
Alarmist: Same thing.
Sceptic: so AGW means man is warming the planet, right?
Alarmist: Yep, sure does.
Sceptic: So what does CC mean, it doesn’t say warming, it could be cooling, right?
Alarmist: That’s not what they mean.
Sceptic: But that’s what they say. The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not IPAGW, the Intergovernmental Panel on Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Thereafter usually follows a trade of “You don’t know what you’re effing talking about”.
At that point one walks away for another beer, chuckling.
Especially effective if there’s an audience.
And, of course, easier if they start with “Climate Change is the problem with the world right now”. Because, of course, they are green liberals who must know the proper terms for everything, despite not knowing anything about the proper terms.
It is pure Orwellian double speak to redefine the term “climate change” as something that is not supposed to be happening and is caused by us humans. Let’s rewrite the English language so that the new definitions of words serve our political activist purposes. I am waiting patiently for the first edition of the New Speak dictionary to come out.
As time passes, it becomes increasingly apparent that “Nineteen-Eighty Four” has become more of an instruction manual rather than the work of fiction Orwell intended.
CD,
“Atlas Shrugged” as well.
And all of Bertrand Russell’s manuals – ‘Impact of Science on Society’, ‘The Scientific Outlook’ – looks like the AGW crowd follow these rote.
Birds of a feather flock together!
Jim Hansen ‘fraudulently’ asserted Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change….
and Barry Obama and Jerry Brown ‘fraudulently’ asserted doing something about it….
Is this simple correlation? Or true Cause and Effect?
More “Crisis Opportunism”
The Left love The Lie. The bigger The Lie, the better.
The corrollary to that is, “the end justifies the means.”
And for the Left that “end” is Power.
They claim that they need power in order to save the world.
The reality is that they want the power so that they can transfer money from those who work to themselves in larger volumes.
Jerry Brown is one of the biggest liars/hypocrites. His wealth derived from Big (California) Oil. His power derives from empty parroting leftie blather.
Hansen confirms that the “sue-to-settle” approach was SOP, so much so that it was an “opportunity lost”. At least he’s not as mendacious as the green activists who try to deny it was ever a “thing”. To be clear, what Hansen considers as an opportunity lost is a fraud on the courts routinely used by the EPA to obtain court orders to do an end run around elected officials who do not want to lose the next election by voting for, as just one example, a carbon tax. A dem congress under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in 2009-10 could not get a carbon tax through, even as lame ducks. But Hansen thinks it’s ok (saving the world and all) to impose a carbon tax if it came as a settlement of a frivolous lawsuit. I don’t know if that (carbon tax) is what he proposed, but how else do you get 6% per year? I blame federal judges who let this nonsense go on for decades. So, Hansen is whining because big green had it’s scam shut down. His tears are always welcome.
Good point Paul. Such a settlement would be unconstitutional on its face. Maybe Hansen is confused as to how laws are made.
The President simply doesn’t have that kind of power. He can’t make a binding commitment to do something that isn’t within his power – no more than for example I can make a court settlement promising that my neighbor down the street won’t have loud parties at night. The executive branch can interpret law and pass administrative regulations to implement a law. (Following the procedures in the Administrative Procedures Act.) But this kind of national commitment has to be passed as law by Congress.
Except maybe in the Ninth Judicial District where (as you noted) they make up the law, I doubt any Federal District Court would hesitate to void such a settlement. And any Federal appeals court would too.
I wonder if it is possible that the Obama Administration simply considered Hansen a useful idiot?
He can’t make a binding commitment even on those things that are within his power.
Marty: The problem with “such a settlement would be unconstitutional” is, nobody is properly challenging it, and nobody will. In the pre-Trump era, NRDC or Sierra Club sat down with former co-workers and eco-activist attorneys who had moved on to work for EPA. They would plan to have suit filed in friendly court, NRDC v. EPA; then settle suit with an agreed judgment to do something that even CA politicians would not pass (say, release 50% of CA retained water to save fish). No appeal, it’s on the books. May be unconstitutional, but it remains on the books. State water dep’t dumps water and tells drought-stricken farmers, “sorry it’s the law.”
At this point, many such deals remain on the books, and it would be a herculean task to undo them. They can be undone only if someone digs up evidence of the collusion between the supposed-opposing parties. My gut tells me that evidence is in EPA email archives, and S. Pruitt would have rolled them out long ago. Maybe it’s not there, but my gut tells me nobody is looking (Pruitt is pretty busy, for which I’m grateful).
Obama — African American — pro-climate action
Trump — White American — anti-pro-climate action
Trump elected president after Obama.
Trump racist, elected to office by racists.
CONCLUSION: anti-pro-climate action (i.e., AGW skepticism) is racist.
QED
/src, of course
Robert Kernodle
Didn’t Obama play the race card when he first ran?
And doesn’t that make him a racist?
And in the spirit of disclosure, I was seduced by his charm and public presence. But then I’m in the UK and didn’t really understand what a Democrat was then. And to be perfectly frank, I didn’t even think the left were left at all in the US.
I learned PDQ though.
“Didn’t Obama play the race card when he first ran?”
When didn’t Obama or his fellow socialists not play the race card?
The divisions in the United States have gotten bigger because of Obama and his playing of the race card. He put our police in danger with his constant theme that the police are out hunting for innocent black men to shoot. Obama is a race-baiter.
Playing the race card is standard operating procedure for those on the Left. Al Sharpton, the notorious race-baiter, has his own show on MSNBC. They actually seek out his opinion.
The Democrat Left: The home of the KKK. And they call conservatives racists. Conservatives freed the slaves. The Democrat Left seeks to keep blacks down on their plantation.
Obama has African American heritage?
His dad was African and his mom was an American, but he is not African-American in the way that the vast majority of black Americans are.
Go back far enough, and we’re all from Africa.
Yep, that’s what I was thinking too. Skin color is just a superficial distinction then, since, at the core, we are all African, or Earthling, or Cosmosian (to take the broadest view).
The problem is that people can use the superficiality of skin color in an attempt to leverage standards in their favor, to justify lowering standards, ignoring standards or in denying any differences in humans at all. Skin color is so NOT the issue here — human behavior is the issue in how the focus on skin color is excessively invoked.
“Obama has African American heritage?”
So does one of my favorite comedians, Josh Blue:
No, he does not. Obama’s father was not an American citizen. His mother was white.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_Sr.
“Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (/ˈbærək huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/;[7][8] 18 June 1936[2] – 24 November 1982) was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. He is a central figure of his son’s memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995). Obama married in 1954 and had two children with his first wife, Kezia. He was selected for a special program to attend college in the United States and studied at the University of Hawaii. There, Obama met Stanley Ann Dunham, whom he married in 1961, and with whom he had a son, Barack II. She divorced him three years later.[9] The elder Obama later went to Harvard University for graduate school, where he earned an M.A. in economics, and returned to Kenya in 1964. He saw his son Barack once more, when he was about ten.”
Hansen said that battery park in New York would be under water a few years ago. It appears that the soothsayer does not have a working crystal ball.
We are also at his tipping point from 2008, Arctic Ocean will be ice free within ten years. Perhaps if you rent four icebreakers to pass thru the ice.
Obviously, we are all doomed … EMBRACE THE HORROR
Just make sure you wear warm clothing and have hot drinks handy.
He is also right that if one was serious about reducing fossil fuel usage, nuclear power is the only practical way to do so in the medium term.
Long term as well.
Okay, okay, okay. I read a good deal of the other stuff about Hansen (30th anniversary Gorebull warming), including the linked 2009 article about his idiotic prediction for the demise of New York City, and a reference to his appearance at a Senate committee hearing while sweating like a frightened piglet (because the A/C was turned off) with Gore sitting in the background somewhere, and the first thing that comes up is the same old meme: follow the money/greed streak. If no one besides me sees a pattern of behavior there, you aren’t paying attention. Whether or not it applies, but Gore was the one who profited from Miami real estate stuff, remember? Did Gore offer something involving that to Hansen? We’ll never know.
I don’t know what, IF anything, Hansen was offered by Gore to be such a stubborn fool. I can’t even tell if he believes his own ridiculous statements. But to insist now, after 30 years of New York NOT being swamped and abandoned, the seacoasts NOT being further inland on any coast at all, and the summer heat dialing back and precipitation up in many places despite his insistence otherwise, that warming is THE only direction the planet is taking – despite all evidence to the contrary – I am inclined to believe that he talked himself into this corner and will hold that position to the bitter end.
It’s unlikely that he will ever recant, or refuse to admit that he was wrong for several reasons, partly loss of professional status, partly loss of the attention he has gotten from this nonsense, partly loss of cash, and partly because he’s a butthead. If Gore was there at that Senate hearing, I would suspect some kind of collusion. Furthermore, if Hansen is responsible for corrupting original data collected, he should be publicly shamed for it.
There are people who make stupid mistakes, who say things that are completely off kilter and refuse to admit that they are wrong – EVER. There is no flexibility there, no willingness to compromise or to consider other options, and simmering underneath it all, anger that it didn’t happen the way he said it will. I’m sure he is the kind of person who, when confronted with his incorrect predictions/projections, will refuse to acknowledge them and say “It IS warming if I SAY IT IS.”
I’ve known a few people like that. They refuse to admit they might be even a tiny bit off, and they will take that “It is IF I SAY IT IS” to their graves. It is THEIR way or NOTHING. In a few words, Hansen has become the False Prophet of Doom and has become a Purveyor of nonsense. That he blames Obama now for anything at all simply compounds it.
That is a sad way to be remembered.
Ya’ do have to give Hansen credit for seeing and saying that Obama and Moonbeam are the embodiment of the Emperor who had no clothes. Fakers.
He acknowledges that Trump is doing what he said he was gonna do. He hates it, but he knows who the liars are. They are on the Left. The Left loves to be lied to, and Obama and Jerry Brown understand that and rode that to power at the ballot box.
Trump doesn’t mess around !!
“Trump administration withdrawing from UN Human Rights Council”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/19/trump-administration-withdrawing-from-un-human-rights-council.html
A good start, but we need to withdraw from the entire UN.
Marcus
A similar discussion is going on in the UK with Brexit. The question of the European Court of Human Rights has raised its ugly head and of course remainers are screaming blue murder if we withdraw from it.
What I’ll never understand is, why it’s necessary for a country to be a member of a bureaucratic body of international countries before it can be trusted with human rights.
Germany and Italy didn’t have much respect for human rights in the 30’s and 40’s, nor Japan, indeed, the Americans and British (amongst others) fought a war to uphold those rights.
And the international community has the temerity to condemn us for withdrawing from an institution we defended in the first place.
Damn cheek!
AFAIK Saudia, that paragon of human rights holds the UNHRC chair because of a letter by then Brit. Prime Minister Cameron. To think that Haley says Iran is the main terrorist backer, not Saudia’s ISIS is a howler, and now the rug is pulled right from under! Trump has repeatedly urged Saudia not to attack that port in Yemen, to no avail. Is something bigger afoot?
Maybe Trump found out about Al Yamamah – the BAE-Saudi Thatcher deal that funds terrorism, including 9/11. Around $180 billion was “disappeared”.
No surprise, either. He toed the line with Obama and Gore. Nothing happened.
At best, he was gullible enough to go along to get along.
At worst, he fell for whatever twaddle he was told and it has backfired on him because he is no longer part of the picture, and nothing happened as he forecast would happen. Now, he looks like a nincompoop for playing the game. The real politicians like Obama, Brown, and Gore, and even Merkel are leaving him in the dust, because they got what they wanted out of him – one of The Faithful.
Someone likened the whole global warming thing to a cult, which is exactly what it is. Useful idiots abound everywhere. I see him as a casualty of his own stubborn hubris.
I haven’t ever seen a four legged pig sweat … 8>)) … but I have seen a lot of two legged ones soaked with it ….
Mark your calendar! I can’t believe I agree with Jim Hansen.
If anyone had ever told me (before today) that I would ever agree with Hansen, I would have called them a liar.
The other comment I have to your thoughts is a good Leo Tolstoy quote:
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy
I think Jim Hansen may be a true believer. Which makes him more dangerous than those who are in it for personal gain.
Paul
I think someone once said, there is nothing more honest than money.
Knowing my luck it was probably Al Capone.
🙂
Except that he is also in it for personal gain.
“That is a sad way to be remembered.”
Ex-NASA apparatchik James E. Hansen will never be remembered.
He has never said anything worthy of being remembered.
If you polled ordinary people randomly who James Hansen was or has done, I would be astonished if one person in 1000 could tell you they had ever heard of him or what he stands for.
And yet he’s responsible for tens of millions of deaths and trillions in squandered treasure.
Well, you have to admit, that’s a pretty good reason for trying to deflect it onto Obama and Looneytune.
Sara, welcome to the dark side (sarc).
Glad to see your eyes are opening.
Louis, I have been too many places and seen too many real-world things to believe for even one second that we puny humans can do anything more damaging than take a dump right where we live. The Earth is quite capable of taking care of itself and can make changes – irrevocable changes – on a whim, which it does.
My eyes have been “open” since I was 6 years old.
WE humans have NO POWER over this planet and what it does.
We can’t make it rain, but we can make umbrellas for when it does.
“I am inclined to believe that he talked himself into this corner and will hold that position to the bitter end.”
I think that’s right. And Hansen has a lot of company. There are a lot of people who have staked their reputations on CAGW being real, and they are going to look pretty silly if it doesn’t pan out and it doesn’t look like it is going to do so.
Nice weather. Getting lots of good rain in the middle of the nation going into late June. No drought this summer. What’s Hansen talking about? 🙂
Plenty of good rain falling at the right times for the corn, soybeans and wheat. Corn should be considerably higher than knee-high by the 4th of July.
And gee whiz! Even Mann is chiding Hansen!!!
Perhaps it’s time Mr. Hansen engaged in a retreat to a place where he has to do his own gardening and help his neighbors bring in the corn, clean the draft horse stalls because horse manure can be recycled (great fertilizer), make soap by hand in a kettle over an open fire in the yard, chop wood for the wood-fired cookstove, grind wheat for baking on a tabletop grist mill, pump water into a bucket for the kitchen, and learn how to read the sky for weather signs.
Being at such a basic level does bring you down to earth.
Lawfare has worked so well for the Democrats.
We need someone to sue the Trump administration demanding that they reverse the endangerment finding as well as reverse most of the green energy subsidies.
Then we convince Trump to settle.
Apparently court settlements have the force of law, they can’t be reversed, unlike Executive Orders and they only require two parties to enact.
Heck, we can save a couple of billion a year on congressional salaries and run the entire government via court settlements.
Jim Hansen will go down in the climate change annals as one of the ultimate failures. Predictions blown. GISS falsified. Hatch Act violations ignored. It is nice to think that in his retirement he stews in impotent feeble distress as us climate skeptics slowly win.
Although he is obviously utterly unacquainted with reality, I have to give this much to Hansen. He gives the impression of being sincere.
His targets (Moonbeam, Ohbummer, et al.) are exactly what he accuses them of being. They ride to power on what they perceive to be an effective propaganda campaign that they do not really believe. The watermelon objective has always been to advance socialism by whatever means are most expedient. Their pious professions of the Green faith are akin to conquistadors claiming that their motivation is to bring Christ to the natives through rape and pillage. It’s a coincidence that they happen to end up with all the gold, power, and fame. They’re only doing it for The Children, don’t you know?
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s had this to say about Gov. Brown during his run for the democratic nomination for President:
“Jerry Brown, a whirling dervish unbounded in his demagoguery; voters turned off by both.”
Reference page 722 March 27, 1992 “From Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s Journals 1952-2000”.
Its kinda hard for politicians to push policies which would be totally railroaded by people asking simple questions like;
Why are all the forecasts on temperature driven by CO2 wrong?
Why is the climate not doing what the models say it should?
Why are nearly all the catastrophic predictions about the results of additional CO2 not occurring?”
Its much easier to push pretend policies which don’t invoke too much ire and appear to take a bit of a stand.
Mann is “skeptical” about nuclear? DENIER.
Sorry, can’t stop the mouse!
Jerry Brown is a hero to Michael Mann.
Say no more.
I wonder if he really gets that they’re not addressing the hoax because it’s a hoax, one which he was a party to. Cognitive dissonance does some strange things to people’s brains.
It is most unfortunate, everybody talks on global warming — so and so initiated in so and so year, etc, etc but nobody interested, it appears, on natural variability studies in precipitation which is the main component in water resources and agriculture production assessment. Why???? In 1970 I started this and applied to several developing countries. The predicted pattern matches with the present drought conditions in Brazil, Africa [south V& north]. My paper on the impact of solar flares on lower tropospheric temperature and pressure presented at the Symposium on Earth’s Near Space Environment, 18-21 February 1975, held at National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi was identified by SCOSTEP of US Academy of sciences as one of the 15 papers of unusual interest — abstracts upto that time were published in 1976/77. Also another paper in the same symposium presented sunspot cycles in global solar and net radiation intensities.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
But, but … it all depends on whether the is a climate ‘problem’. There isn’t. Hence Jamie’s rant is like a medieval polemic about the number of angels on a pin head, or, as Umberto Eco would have it, whether Jesus owned the cloth he was wearing, or not.
hilarious really
there was that 500mil bummer threw to the eurocrats just as he left..
i reckon he figured hildabeast would win and continue his destruction of the economy and start a new war or three to keep everyone occupied..look squirrels!
why do i suspect the book will be remaindered pdq?
just like hildabeasts trashy excuse for blame everyone else did;-)
Looking back at 1988 (?) I wonder if James Hansen would have done anything differently – It signalled the start of 30 years of angst for society for very little gain.
Hansen is shocked that Democrats only care to apply their universal formula that solves all the problems the world has ever had:
1) Raise taxes.
2) Increase government power and influence over individuals and industry.
3) Enact wealth transfers.
Hansen is a “True Believer.” He’d probably be disappointed to learn that most of us see little difference between moonbats like him, and moonbats in the anti-nuke crowd.
Don’t forget his lawsuit against US claiming we have already ruined his grandchildren’s lives.
Almost certainly another of his failed predictions.
I can’t look at Jimmy “Hat Boy” Hansen without the opening bass riff of Seinfeld going off in my head…
I’m surprised Hansen is so down on Obama. One of his parting acts was to donate half a billion dollars to the Paris climate fund.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38661259 says in part:
No act of congress required…. I wish I had a petty cash box that big!
When the enemies are fighting themselves, stand back.
Hansen tipped his hand:
He is trying to overturn democracy itself with his lawsuit, and was hoping for the ultimate private extra judicial insider deal to do it.
I hope he and the other “climate change” warriors beat each other to death.
Thank God Trump saw through the climate scam, and thank God Obama did not sign off on Hansen’s grand theft.
ha ha. BBC report today, UK brewers give warning of a shortage of …..CO2 !!
“New York penthouse apartment”. They left that part out.
Sorry, no, it’s the Space Aliens who are to blame.
Which ones? The Tamarians? Kardashians? Those overgrown drooling ants from LV246? 🙂
The Hyperboleans!
Typical of a religion , who always treat ‘heretics’ worse than those that do not believe at all.
Only unquestioning and fully correct , belief is enough for people such as Henson .
The reason Obama, Merkel, Brown et al did nothing more than virtue signalling, is either because they don’t actually believe the global warming BS but know they have to pretend to believe in order to get votes, or because they do believe but are aware that the populace would rise up in a rage and overthrow any government that actually took measures to reduce emissions enough to produce the temperature reduction they claim we need.
In other words, they’re cognizant of political reality.
Funny how the entire system of elections, laws, and enforcement dictating our lives is stood on its head by an out of court settlement. I hope the EPA doesn’t find out about this.