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Dr. James Hansen continues to draw fire for global warming claims
Change is coming to Washington, D.C. tomorrow -- or, at least, more warnings of climate change. On March 2, D.C. will be the site of a snowstorm and the largest public protest of global warming in history. Irony aside, the protest might also help usher in the public unraveling of NASA’s chief climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen.
Hansen, best known for his alarming testimonies on climate change, has drawn fresh criticism from colleagues and lawmakers alike after endorsing tomorrow’s Capitol Climate Action protest. Calling for “mass civil disobedience,” the protest aims to draw attention to global warming and remove all coal-burning power plants from America.
In an article with FOXNews, one of Hansen’s former supervisors, Dr. John Theon, remarked of Hansen’s involvement: "Oh my goodness. I'm not surprised. The fact that Jim Hansen has gone off the deep end here is sad because he's a good fellow." Theon is well-known in the scientific community for questioning Hansen’s integrity, claiming that the man abused his position and violated NASA’s position on climate forecasting.
Hansen has also been the target of several notable global warming skeptics, including “Red Hot Lies” author Chris Horner: “He's providing ample cause to question his employment on the taxpayer dime,” Horner told FOXNews.com.
“He's clearly abused his platform provided to him by the taxpayer, principally by the way he’s been exposed of manipulating and revising data with the strange coincidence of him always found on the side of exaggerating the warming.”
Horner charges Hansen with falsifying critical temperature data in 2001 and 2007 to stoke public fears that dramatic climate change was coming. "He's creating an upward slope that really wasn't there,” Horner said. “At some point you have to say these aren't mistakes.”
Hansen, however, continues to win awards and accolades. Most recently, he was awarded the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the American Meteorological Society’s highest honor. Hansen also toured with Al Gore when promoting Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. Hansen’s involvement with tomorrow’s Capitol Climate Action protest entails giving a keynote speech.
Hansen maintains that “we need to send a message to Congress and the president that we want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet." Hansen equates coal-fired power plants to “factories of death” and argues that he was silenced by the Bush administration when he began to discuss global warming.
According to the Capitol Climate Action website, the protest will take place at the Capitol Power Plant: "The Capitol Power Plant, sitting just blocks from Capitol Hill, symbolizes the stranglehold coal has over our government and future. It’s not the largest or the dirtiest power plant in the country, but as the plant that is actually run by and for Congress it serves as an incredibly iconic symbol of what is wrong with our country’s energy and climate policy. From being outdated and inefficient, to burning dirty fossil fuels including coal, to having its clean-up blocked by politicians pandering to coal industry interests, we see this plant as the strategic target to address our concerns.”
The protest is being organized by over 90 groups, ranging from “international environmental organizations, grassroots climate justice groups, frontline communities most impacted by climate change and fossil fuels, [and] faith-based organizations.” Hansen’s involvement, however, continues to irk lawmakers and colleagues alike. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., has repeatedly called for Hansen to reconsider his involvement with the protest: "If he wants to have a demonstration concerning global warming, coming to the Capitol is not a right choice. The bottom line is if Hansen wants to protest global warming, he should go to the National Cathedral and take it up with God rather than going to Capitol Hill.”
Rohrabacher, a member of the House's Committee on Science and Technology, has also called for Hansen to “step out” of his role.
Will tomorrow’s protest prove to be Hansen’s undoing? With so many lawmakers calling motives and misrepresented data into question, Hansen's departure seems like a long time coming. The Capitol Climate Action protest makes clear Hansen’s inability to separate his position as a scientist and his role as a political activist. If nothing else, the protest might be a forced reflection of Hansen’s larger problem: his inability to distinguish fact from fiction, genuine alarm from lobbyist-driven agenda.
Comments
It is a shame to see the Examiner become a global warming denialist site, promoting long-discredited canards.
(1) NASA's "climate chief" is a scientist. And the worth of a scientist is the output of his science, and the measure of that is peer-reviewed papers presenting new data. Based on those results Dr. Hansen is indeed a very worthy scientist. ... That is the reason he ... "ontinues to win awards and accolades. Most recently, he was awarded the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the American Meteorological Society’s highest honor".
You seem to want him squelched because of political considerations. How petty of you.
(2) John Theon was NEVER Dr. Hansen's supervisor. He was a little known bureaucrat at NASA who wrote technical assessments many years ago. He retired from NASA in 1994 for crissakes.
(3)As for claims that Hansen falsified data, you do not specify exactly what those instance were so I looked up and found what I think you were referring to. ... let's look at them one at a time.
(3a) 2007
... Actually I think you meant 2008. Global warming denialists claim that Hansen made a claim that October 2008 was the warmest October on record. It turned out that Russian temperatures from September were copied to October skewing the data upward. Once the correction was made NASA had to withdraw the statement.
Here is the REAL story. There was an error in the data. However, no premature announcement was ever made. The error was caught within 24 hours, ... not by your global warming denialists but by NASA scientists. Using correct data it showed that while October was not the hottest on record, it was still very hot ... the 5th warmest on record (in 128 years of monitoring).
See: ... unfortunately your comments section does not allow me to leave links to my sources.
(3b) 2001
The global warming denialist story is that Stephen McIntyre, a global warming denialist, discovered a major mistake in the data for that year prompting a disclaimer.
McIntyre did discover an error in the data. In 2001 NASA incorporated data correction algorithms into the GISS surface temperature analysis of US recording stations. Unfortunately the correction algorithms were not applied to all the data. It was a mistake. The result was noticeable in the temperature of the United States. But we are talking about GLOBAL warming. The error in the GLOBAL temperatures amounted to 1/1000 of a degree.
See: Unfortunately your comments section does not allow me to include links to my sources.
Science is a human process and will therefore contain errors. But the process is such that errors tend to be caught, and corrected. The errors you mention in one case was handled before being presented and in the other case was negligible.
Dr. Hansen has over 140 peer-reviewed publications. If those are the only errors you can cite, then Hansen IS deserving of all the scientific accolades he has earned.
Stephen B. Shope, Ph.D.
Neuroscience
mmm... can't wait to get me some of that doctor money!
I hope the protest proves to be Hansen’s undoing. We must take a stand and demand that Obama stop using the global warming hoax to destroy our children and grandchildren’s future while imposing communism on us. The more than 650 international scientists that expressed their dissent last year over the man-made global warming claims are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
Additionally, more than 31,000 American scientists have signed onto a petition that states, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate…"
Obama, however, is determined to force us to swallow the man-made global warming scam to impose communism on us. Billions have already been wasted because of this hoax and now Obama plans to steal from our children and grandchildren and waste many more billions to carry out moronic plans to “control CO2.”
Based on this hoax, Obama will limit development, increase the cost of energy and thus force factories and companies to close, and multiply poverty and unemployment. Based on this hoax, Obama will prevent the U.S. from becoming energy independent, and leave Americans at the mercy of scum like Hugo Chavez.
If not stopped, the global warming scam will enrich the scammers (Gore and Obama’s fraudulent friends), increase the power of the U.N. and communists like Obama, and multiply poverty and servitude for the rest of us.
Global warming is a sham and Obama is truly shoving this garbage down our throats. We will be spending billions on this hoax over the next 10yrs. I sure hope we can wake up and before this destroys us all.
"Stephen B. Shope, Ph.D.
Neuroscience "
Obviously you are a product of our wonderful education system. Shame that a Ph.D. would buy into this GW nonsense. Just goes to show you that there's one born every minute.
Quite simply, Mr. Hansen is full of s**t.
Baaa-Baaa - Al Gore's ever-dwindling flock of sheeple has gathered in the snow to make fools of themselves.
Let's all pretend we can control the climate, and maybe let's just go ahead and stop continental drift while we are at it.
Baaa - Baaa
Hey Pal,
Can you spare a carbon credit?
Thanks Dude!
Hansen is Gorefied.
My words exactly Bob. Your right, its amazing (maybe not) that someone with a PHD would buy in this nonesense.
Now, I am not a scientist, I have only my common sense to guide me (The good doctor of course would probably say my common sense is 5 cans short of six pack), but I have never seen a model man made global warming that has made any sense to me. Yet I have seen lots of models that attribute climate flucuations to natural forces that do.
I think the good doctor is letting his ideology guide him, not his reason, which is so often the case in so many academics.
Oh well burn me heresy!
Hansen is a fool and everyone who believes in his bull is an idiot too! That includes you Mr. Shopes. I don't need a PhD to know what crap smells like. Hansen and Gore smell like like it! You and your ilk will never fool me!
Global warming to Al Gore is like Jesse Jackson's claims of racism: no basis in fact, just stir up emotions and extort money from businesses and taxpayers.
Al Gore is a political hack and Hansen is his stooge. Hansen is not a scientist with all this false data. Sloppy at best, lies at worst.
Stephen, way to twist the facts. The temp error of oct 2008 was indeed caught by Steve M and Anthony Watts. It had to be blatently waved in front of the faces of the folks who made the error. A press release was made that Oct was too warm then retracted. Perhaps YOU should get your facts right. Please see the site Watts UP with that. Look at the calendar for OCT 2008, the story is still up. Being one of the folks that watched that carefully I know you are wrong, but nice try at spinning it.
As far as Hansen is concerned, you sort of have to wonder about someones work when they cite themselves as a reference in every paper they do. Hansens has made it no secret he hates coal plants. Check out his web site at columbia edu /~jeh1... He is.. to put it nicely, waaaaay out there.
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