Audrey Streb
DCNF Energy Reporter
A man charged on Wednesday with allegedly hijacking a plane in Canada also appeared to post on Facebook that he is the “messiah sent to save humanity from climate change,” according to local reports and police.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) charged 39-year-old Shaheer Cassim with one count of hijacking after he “acted with an ideological motive,” allegedly threatened a flight instructor and hijacked a plane before landing at Victoria International Airport (YVR), according to the RCMP website. The former commercial pilot allegedly posted on his social media and personal blog that the “angel Gabriel” gave him a “message from Allah” that the Arctic Sea ice is melting and will soon “turn Earth into Venus.”
“Investigators have determined the suspect acted with an ideological motive to disrupt airspace,” Sergeant Tammy Lobb, media relations officer with the Canadian Federal Policing Pacific Region said. “Thankfully, no one was injured during this incident.” (RELATED: ‘Palantir Powers ICE’: Climate Libs Arrested After Blocking Office Entrance)
The RCMP and YVR did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. Cassim could not be reached.
Cassim allegedly took control of the small Cessna 172 plane on July 15 from the Vancouver Island area and was apprehended by RCMP officers after landing at YVR, according to police. The incident reportedly led to F-15 fighter jets scrambling to secure the situation before the plane landed, The Canadian Press reported.
Cassim’s Facebook profile states that he was a commercially licensed pilot at the now-defunct charter airline KD Air from 2008 to 2010, and he posted some of his perceived climate revelations to Facebook on Monday.
“The Arctic sea ice is going to disappear within two years. When that happens, huge amounts of methane are going to erupt from the Arctic Ocean, triggering abrupt runaway global warming, turning Earth into Venus. Humans will go extinct within the first few years,” Cassim wrote. “We must begin geoengineering immediately to stabilize the Arctic ice sheet and prevent human extinction.”
Cassim wrote on his blog that “secret geoengineering” by the government has been preventing the “catastrophic release of Arctic methane” on June 2.
“President Donald Trump denies global geoengineering. President Donald Trump is not only a felon but also a liar. He deceived the whole nation when he said global warming is a hoax,” Cassim wrote.
“All religions in the world must become peaceful,” Cassim wrote on his blog in November 2024. “Muslims must not kill in Allah’s name. Shias and Sunnis must not kill each other. Osama bin Laden admitted it both in writing and on video: he orchestrated the September 11 terror attacks.”
KD Air’s former owners, Diana and Lars Banke, told The Canadian Press that Cassim was one of the best pilots they’d ever worked with.
“I’m really surprised that he would’ve done something like this,” Diana Banke told the outlet.
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How much more flaky is Cassim than James Hansen?
can James fly a plane?
Well at least he knew how to land it…
He was a commercial pilot at one time.
Scarier than Hansen
Or AOC, or Kamala, or Gore, or Kerry….
No, but they fly ON a plane very well, thanks. The more air miles the better.
Watch Uranus around Gore and Kerry.
Especially when it’s “private,” because *they* can’t possibly stoop so low as to wait on line with the Proletariat to fly “commercial,” when there’s a crowd of fellow idiots somewhere waiting to hear them spew their nonsense.
Sounds as sane as Greta. Give him a Nobel Peace prize, and let him lecture the UN!
How DARE you!
But he may know where MH370 is. Who knows?
Another nut has cracked.
But at least the flight attendants were released unharmed.
Mental breakdown, not climate breakdown.
His landing gear doesn’t reach the ground.
…..or, to put it another way, his elevator doesn’t quite go all the way to the top.
As I’ve flown the route in a small Cessna many times, I know there was ample time and room over the Straight of Georgia/Salish Sea (Americans think Trump was the first to rename a body of water for political reasons?–hah) between YYJ and YVR for an F-15 to ‘secure the situation’. What went wrong?–this was a golden opportunity to target-upgrade from a spy balloon.
I also think there is room to somewhat rescue this poor deluded schmuck by offering a reduced sentence if he honestly and publicly recognises and announces his ignorance and stupidity in two years plus a day. The demonstrated mental instability must have the former operators of KD Air realizing that they really dodged a bullet by shutting down operations before Cassim did it for them.
“I’m really surprised that he would’ve done something like this,” Diana Banke told the outlet.
Where’s that “smack my head” emoji when I need one?
She is describing what he was like when he worked for her 15 years ago.
IIRC she or partner in the airline at the time say he seemed to care about people. From their to ignorant beliefs and irresponsible behaviour was hard to predict, he obviously developed mental problems. (He claimed a vision from religion, mixing Christian and Muslim terms.)
Good question. How quickly can a fighter airplane scramble from Whidbey Island NAS, which is not far from YYJ?
(Whidbey has F-18 variant as well but I doubt they are rapid response as their job is training to detect and attack radars on the wests coast of the Olympic Peninsula, CF-18s are at CFB Comox which is far away.)
That absurd “turning Earth into Venus” line is hilarious precisely because it has been used by the climate activist camp among scientists to get attention.
I asked Google, “Has climate scientist James Hansen ever mentioned Venus as an analog for what might happen on Earth?”
Google Gemini says,
“Yes, climate scientist James Hansen has mentioned Venus as an analog for what might happen on Earth, particularly in the context of the runaway greenhouse effect.
Specifically, Hansen has suggested that burning all fossil fuels could potentially trigger a “runaway greenhouse” effect on Earth, leading to Venus-like conditions. He has even used the term “Venus syndrome” to describe this potential outcome.”
Me? I just think what happens on Venus stays on Venus. No biggie.
Where do you think Cassim got the idea? He didn’t think it up by himself. He listened to the ‘experts’ quoted by a compliant and complicit media. He probably thinks the whole world will drown if the temperature goes up a degree or two more.
“Where do you think Cassim got the idea?” Of course! Cassim is not a nut job at all, he’s just trusting the experts to know what they’re talking about. 🙂
To trust “climate experts” who have made not a single accurate prediction, you are at a minimum a fool if not a nut job.
Whenever the reference gets made to “climate experts,” the instant image that pops up for me is the transmission shop commercial where the counter guy assures the customer that “Our mechanics are EXPERTS” while a bunch of chimpanzees in lab coats beat on transmissions with sticks behind him.
Well ! the atmosphere on Venus IS 95% CO2 and it’s hideously hot enough there to melt Lead !
But the atmosphere on Mars is ALSO 95% CO2 and it’s cold enough there that it snows dry ice.
Our planet’s atmosphere is 0.04% CO2 it’s the only planet within 100 light years that supports life.
And you know what? It’s the CO2 that is responsible for that support. We could use more. (-:
“We could use more.” Agreed! If we were not already mining coal and extracting oil and gas, we would have to start! Imagine the food production crisis if CO2 had fallen from that 280 ppmv pre-industrial condition.
Fun factoids.
Plants experimentally stop photosynthesizing about 150ppm.
Were it not for plate tectonics recycling calcium carbonate formed by calcareous photosynthesizing ocean microorganisms (limestone, coccolyths) via andesic volcanism (Pacific Ring of Fire), the best estimates are that life would simply cease to exist in about 2.5 million years.
The ~280ppm pre industrial was maintained by plate tectonics, a mechanism itself not understood until the 1970’s.
Quite an amazing planet God gave us. Life evolved only once here. Proof is in dna (4) rna (4), and protein amino acid (20) ‘chemical alphabets’. Only one for each, for everything alive or almost (virus) so. The most interesting speculation as to how, solving all seven of life’s prerequisites, is Cairns-Smith’s Seven Clues to the Origin of Life, published by Cambridge University Press.
Perhaps I should have added, “And if we weren’t already turning limestone into Portland cement, we should start” to give some credit to the non-hydrocarbon side of things.
Another fun fact: RuBisCO, or ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, the most abundant enzyme on Earth, catalyzes carbon fixation from CO2 in photosynthesis — and is thus necessary for Life to exist. RuBisCo (atomic mass = 540,000 Da) has ~5,000 amino acids in a very specific order. The probability of RuBisCo forming by accident or chance in the primordial goo is thus 1/(20^5,000).
“the only planet within 100 light years that supports life”
You forgot about Iskandar.
Boldly stated, but with essentially no scientific evidence to support that conclusion.
It is now scientifically acknowledged that most stars have one or more orbiting planets. About 30 stars have been cataloged to be be within 100 light years of Earth (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_star_systems_within_95-100_light-years ). So the odds favor there to be some planets within 100 light years of Earth.
We don’t currently have any scientifically-supported means of estimating the probability of “life” developing on planetary bodies . . . we don’t even know if “life” (which is actually hard to define; consider viruses!) exists on other planets or their moons separate from Earth but within our own solar system!
OK 50 light years, we’ve been broadcasting radio signals for 100 years or so and it would follow that any answers we would receive couldn’t come from more than 50 lightyears out.
Erm… round trip time for answers … 25+25.
But they might be leaking terrible serial dramas too.
Right now their scientists would be studying F-Troop and Black Sheep Squadron reruns. Lucky alien nerds.
Ummmm . . . as far as we know, there is a huge difference between the development life on a planet and the subsequent development of intelligent life (in context, defined here as life capable of communicating using the radio frequency part of the EM spectrum).
Having said that, some pundits having noted that any advanced, intelligent aliens intercepting our RF emissions from 50 or so years ago would probably conclude those “leaked” signals from powerful radio and TV transmitters to be a clear sign of absence of “intelligence” at the point of origin of said signals.
Cixin Liu’s “Dark Forest” scenario made the most sense to me.
Even Venus didn’t get its climate from a “runaway greenhouse effect.” Much less could it happen on Earth where 7,000 parts per million couldn’t make it happen.
That’s an important point; it is worth noting that this fellow and James Hanson have much in common in their stated beliefs and it is probable, given the parallels, that Hanson has had a great deal of influence on Cassim. With Hanson being such an influence he should be held accountable for incidents like this.
Remember this man was a commercial pilot trusted by passengers, and he could have attained an ATP rating someday if he didn’t already have one…and then turned into the equivalent of the FO on Germanwings flight 9525 when he felt he wasn’t being taken seriously enough as the messiah he thinks he is.
A quote attributed to the former owners of KD Air–“They said in an interview that Cassim was one of the smartest and best pilots they ever had, but that he believed the world was ending. “
Be darned it I don’t see a contradiction in that statement that would make me uncomfortable to have someone like this advance to an ATP flying a full A320 over the Alps.
All activists are the same. Just give them a reason, any woke reason, to protest and they’re off to the races.
Actually it may be the other way around. Give them a cause and they find a reason. As in: destroy capitalism for the fictitious reason that it harms the climate..
This guy really needs to be put in a straitjacket and sectioned ASAP before he does something irreparable.
And the irony is that he uses FF every day!
Including that flight!
Sectioned? Is that anything like being drawn and quartered?
British slang for the detention in a secure iocation of a person deemed mentally unstable under Section xxxx of the Mental Health Act.
I was thinking that, or some sort of brain surgery.
His fear that CO2 will turn the Earth into Venus isn’t his own delusion. It came from climate “experts” like James Hansen. The difference between Cassim and Hansen is that Cassim stole a plane to protest. Hansen didn’t. He just spread his delusion to the gullible who don’t know anything about CO2, planets, or climate, and didn’t bother to validate Hansen’s ludicrous statements. It’s easy to identify Cassim as delusional. It’s not so easy to do it with so-called “experts” who have clad themselves and their ideas in a veneer of scientificness (as opposed to actual science).
There is no nut like a religious nut, and CAGW is a religion.
Just wondering if Shaheer Cassim, self-declared messenger of Allah and climate change “messiah” . . . wow, what creds! . . . is aware of how much evil CO2 was added to Earth’s atmosphere directly from his hijacking and flying around the Cessna 172 and directly as the result of the numerous flights (passenger and cargo) that had to be diverted away from landing at Vancouver’s airport, as well as the ground-holds for aircraft awaiting takeoff, plus the accompanying scrambling of F-15 fighter jets. Talk about a huge, one-day carbon footprint!
No word on what he has published, or may yet publish, on “geoengineering immediately to stabilize the Arctic ice sheet and prevent human extinction” while awaiting trial . . . you know, speaking for Allah, that is. But perhaps he will call Al Gore for an amicus brief on his behalf.
/sarc
What part was sarc? It all looked quite reasonable to me.
I just went to the “Sam Carana, Arctic news blog”
See the first line of the ‘facebook’ screen shot.
Is Sam Carana also Shaheer Cassim?
The first contributor mention on the “about” page of the Arctic news blog is Peter Wadhams. Others are folks I’ve not heard of. Most seem a bit kooky, is that the right word?
I’ve not heard of Carana’s blog before. Anyone?
There are two distinct narratives here. Did quick research on both before commenting.
Deluded Muslim—yes. Crazy—no.
A quote is: “The Arctic sea ice is going to disappear within two years. When that happens, huge amounts of methane are going to erupt from the Arctic Ocean, …”
But Arctic Ocean “sea ice” and “permafrost” are not the same, except conflated in this man’s brain.
His brain is clearly Abby normal…
Rud, what the heck are you doing? . . . you want a fatwa issued against you for daring to criticize a messenger of Allah, or what?
As to your specific, researched points:
1. WWF-US has never been strong on science . . . especially climate science. I haven’t seen any science-based article that substantiates the WWF claim that Arctic permafrost is “melting 4x faster than ‘previously thought’ “, whatever “thought” means in context . . . hah! As for Arctic sea ice, the latest research (ref: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/04/29/now-scientists-claim-near-20-year-stable-arctic-sea-ice-is-unsurprising-and-predicted-by-models/ ) says that it’s been stable for at least the last 20 years. And as the attached graph shows, since about 2021 Arctic permafrost temperatures as measured throughout Alaska have actually been in a general decline. I submit that Cassim was more likely influenced by climate revival tent preacher Al Gore.
2. I’m curious as to why the “angel Gabriel” didn’t communicate directly to “mankind” but had to work through a third party, Shaheer Cassim, who then should have properly described himself as “messenger of Gabriel”, not “messenger of Allah”. Seems to me that’s a fairly involved chain-of-command, but then again what do I know about the Quran and the workings of Allah? (Thus maybe inviting a fatwa on my own head?)
It’s all crazy!
Ooops . . . here’s the graph of Alaska permafrost temperatures versus time that I forget to attach to my above comment.
Appreciate the humor. I have unfortunately had to deal with true crazy people (schizophrenia, BPD). Cassim is not truly crazy, just deluded.
‘Research’ meant into attribution, not into facts.
WWF-US is deliberately not current on factual observations, cause those would destroy its present Arctic alarm narrative. They are also big on falsely imagined polar bear extinctions. But I digress.
Fatwas are just one of many examples of why the Quran is NOT a good book, and why co-existence with Muslim fundamentalists is NOT ever possible.
But the bumper sticker!!!
At first glance, I read the beginning of your post as “quack research.” In retrospect, seems quite apropos!
Those jets undoubtedly burned way more fuel getting to and from the scene than that commuter plane did. Especially if they used after burners in order to get on scene faster.
As usual, the climate jihadists made the situation worse.
The climate jihadists make everything worse.
But not because of “emissions” of CO2, which don’t make anything worse.
Well, we were running low on crazy combinations in the climate crusades, even with the MannMania AI system.
ResGuy,
I was thinking along the path to the cliché of scraping the bottom of the barrel, but got to your comment and thought – brilliant!
I nominate you for a gold star for the alliteration award.
crazy combinations in the climate crusades {C4 }
Is he avaliable to run for mayor of NYC or LA?
I guess there were no famous paintings around BC.
Venus?
First, Venus is 108*10^6 Km from the Sun. Earth is 149*10^6 Km. The solar constant at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere is 1365 W/m^2. The intensity of the the solar energy flux at the top of Venus’s atmosphere would be proportional to the ratio between the squares of the orbital radii which is 1.9, so the solar flux at Venus ToA is ~2,600 W/m^2
Second Earth’s atmosphere is fairly thin compared to Venus, and their composition is different. Earths atmosphere is 78% N2, 20.95% O2, 0.93% Ar, 0.04% CO2 and the surface pressure is about 1000 hPa a/k/a 1 bar. Venus atmosphere is 96.5% CO2 3.5% N2 and the suface pressure is 93 bar 9.3 MPa.
The result of these differences is that the surface temperature of Venus is 737 Kelvin (464°C, 867°F) compared to Earth”s 288 K. 2.56 times,
Conclusion: the only way to get Earth up to Venus Temperatures is to move it 40 million Km closer to the sun and add 92 atmospheres worth of CO2 to Earth’s. In opther words: fuggedaboudit.
So then you think Venus should develop a solar net zero strategy?
Canada regularly proves it has no shortage of climate crisis crack pots among its population. Whether it’s willing to prosecute them properly for stunts like this is another story. The country regularly elects governments that get on the environmental bandwagon until the citizens realize that doing so just leads to higher taxes, more restrictions, more mandates and overall higher living costs. Then only when they see there’s no no climate crisis in the first place, they wake up and try to force the retraction of the money grabs except the damage to their finances has already occurred.
The perp is reported to have shoved an instructor aside to take the airplane, at the Victoria Flying Club. So technically a ground-jacking. 😉
Worst case of catastrophism I recall – two years for Arctic ice to melt.
And he’s a chemtrails nutcase.
Can’t even get bin Laden’s beliefs right.
He’s a loose cannon.
Scary.
I’m surprised that no one as yet has pointed out that the Daily Caller item says he landed at YVR – Victoria, however YVR is Vancouver a very busy airport which was shut down for 40 minutes and some flights were diverted to other destinations. Had he tried to land at Victoria YYJ it would not have made much impact.
He thinks he’s the “messiah sent to save humanity from climate change,”
he’s not the messiah, just a very naughty boy
Cassim also goes by Sam Crana, publishes The ‘Arctic News’ blog about warming of the Arctic, not news of people there. (Up Here and many local efforts provide that.)
Tries to sound scientific.
Arctic News
YVR is Vancouver International Airport, not Victoria’s.
Just so.
But confusion arises because Victoria International Airport (YYJ) is situated on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, and is actually a fairly busy airport (the 11th busiest in Canada).
In comparison, Vancouver International Airport (YVR) is located on Sea Island in Richmond, British Columbia, and is the main airport serving the city of Vancouver, about 12 km away from the city center. YVR ranks as Canada’s second busiest airport.