Top Warmie Hansen Wants Nuremberg For Oil Execs

For 20 years, your tax dollars have been supporting NASA scientist and Warmie Grand Inquisitor extraordinaire James Hansen as he demands that no voice be raised against his global warming theories. He went too far long ago, and now he's gone way, way too far. From the Guardian:

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer. ...

Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading.

In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

Note: Speaking of crap in school curricula, a British judge recently ruled that teachers there cannot show Gore's An Inconvenient Truth unless additional materials are also handed out to counter nine significant errors presented as truth in the film.

Be that as it may, here's Hansen's solution to the fact that the world is not yet kowtowing to him and has not yet issued groovy priest robes to him:

1. Witch hunts for any who stray from Warmie orthodoxy, perhaps followed by public floggings.
   
   
2. Political campaigns to rid Congress of pesky skeptics, who might stand in the way of Warmie totalitarianism.
   
   
3. Restrictions on lobbyists -- but only skeptical lobbyists. Lobbyists for the environmental and green industries will be free to wander the halls of Congress, and to take Congressmen on junkets (with carbon credit offsets, of course).
   
   
4. Banning, limiting and otherwise discouraging fossil-fueled power in order to give alternative energy "a chance to compete" -- i.e., facilitating skyrocketing energy costs and the attendant increases in poverty and hardship.
   

You're reading this today because Hansen's PR/lobbying machine is all fired up. He's got a new organization, 350.org, dedicated to getting CO2 levels below the hallowed 350 ppm. Here's an undecipherable film clip of the ad 350 is running in today's NYT, Financial Times and other major pubs:



Note the ominous interjection of the word "peaceably" in the ad -- they want the 350 target hit through peaceable means. The theme is repeated in a celeb blurb from Bianca Jagger, whose only claims to fame I can see are (1) sleeping with a rock star and (2) getting a big divorce settlement:

"Climate change is not an isolated environmental issue. It touches every part of our lives: peace, security, human rights, poverty ... blah, blah, blah"

What word did they chose to put first? Peace. Now that may be because they're a bunch of lamebrains who think the war in Iraq is all about oil and not at all about Islamofascism, or more likely, it may be that they see the distinct possibility of Warmie War, with military ops, bloodshed and civilian casualties, all in the name of Hansen's religion.

After all, they're already calling for a Nuremberg trial, as if they'd already won the war.

Someone Should Shut Him Up About Being Censored

I took the WSJ's advice and typed "James Hansen NASA" into Ask this morning (they said to Google it, but I use Google as little as possible because of its corporate politics) and promptly got 83,400 hits.

Not bad for NASA's resident Warmie hawk, who claims he's been "silenced" by the Bush administration.

Here's one of the more popular hits:

Censorship Is Alleged at NOAA
Scientists Afraid to Speak Out, NASA Climate Expert Reports

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 11, 2006; A07

NEW YORK, Feb. 10 -- James E. Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who sparked an uproar last month by accusing the Bush administration of keeping scientific information from reaching the public, said Friday that officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are also muzzling researchers who study global warming.

Hansen, speaking in a panel discussion about science and the environment before a packed audience at the New School university, said that while he hopes his own agency will soon adopt a more open policy, NOAA insists on having "a minder" monitor its scientists when they discuss their findings with journalists.

"It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States," said Hansen, prompting a round of applause from the audience. He added that while NOAA officials said they maintain the policy for their scientists' protection, "if you buy that one please see me at the break, because there's a bridge down the street I'd like to sell you."

He didn't exactly call George Bush a Nazi (or a Commie), but you get the point. Poor, poor persecuted Warmie. Evil Big-Oil dominated GOP White House. It's a sure laugh-line with any college audience now days.

But wait ... I thought he said he was censored, yet here he is, a government employee, likening his government to nasty old enemies. What kind of censorship is that? Could Dr. James Hansen just be a government crybaby? A guy who's sucking on government's teat while kicking it in the stomach?

That's what the WSJ editorial writers think:

The story came to a head last week at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in which Mr. Hansen testified that "for the sake of the taxpayers" he "shouldn't be required to parrot some company line." He complains that in December 2005 he was told by NASA bureaucrats that he would have to obtain official clearance before granting press interviews, giving public lectures or posting articles on the Web. More heinous still, a 23-year-old NASA spokesman rejected a request by National Public Radio to interview Mr. Hansen.

That would seem to make the climate scientist something of a martyr for truth, which in his case means the imminence of global warming doom. But as Republican Congressman Darrell Issa observed, the climate scientist managed to give 15 interviews that same month, and that's just a fraction of the 1,400 interviews he's granted in recent years. There's also the fact that all NASA scientists are required to obtain official permission before speaking to the press, a detail Mr. Hansen shrugs off as beneath his dignity.

Another little fact that gets in the way of Hansen's martyrdom is this: The NASA guy who rejected his NPR interview request got fired, while Hansen's still drawing a federal paycheck.

Hansen is an alarmist, one of the elite group of climatological Tartot card readers who claim we have a 10-year window to "take decisive action" with this millenias-old cycle of warming, or the planet will face sure catastrophe.

While that's surely false (as the media certainly won't remind us ten years from last September, when he said it), it's not something I'd censor him over. But if that's the way he thinks, you'd be justified thinking that he's a bit tightly wound up on this whole global warming thing and just might have some sort of persecution complex.

But that's just me. It's not most of the 83,400 others who turned up on Ask, mostly to hang on his words and sit at his feet. Such is the sorry state of the global warming debate.

Oh, I forgot. The debate is over.

Gee. If it's over, you'd think they'd stop censoring him.