Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Top Green Weenie loses NY Times

James Hansen's underwear showing has been noticed by the NY Times!

Hansen traveled the world selling Albert Gore, Jr's "global warming is your fault" hysteria. At the same time he was claiming that President Bush was shutting him up. MRC

Now his friends are saying he is tilting at wind mills in fighting the Keystone XL pipeline. And using or misusing his government position to do so.

Joe Nocera at NY Times

Yet what people hear from Hansen today is not so much his science but his broad, unscientific views on, say, the evils of oil companies. In 2008, he wrote a paper, the thesis of which was that runaway climate change would occur when carbon in the atmosphere reached 350 parts per million — a point it had already exceeded — unless it were quickly reduced. There are many climate change experts who disagree with this judgment — who believe that the 350 number is arbitrary and even meaningless. Yet an entire movement, 350.org, has been built around Hansen’s line in the sand.

Meanwhile, he has a department to run. For a midlevel scientist at the Goddard Institute, what signal is Hansen sending when he takes the day off to get arrested at the White House? Do his colleagues feel unfettered in their own work? There is, in fact, enormous resentment toward Hansen inside NASA, where many officials feel that their solid, analytical work on climate science is being lost in what many of them describe as “the Hansen sideshow.” His activism is not really doing any favors for the science his own subordinates are producing.

No comments: