James Hansen

CNN’s special “worldwide investigation” “Planet in Peril,” in two segments looking at the debate amongst politicians and scientists on whether climate change is a man-made phenomenon, failed to mention that NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen [pictured at right], one the scientists featured in the second segment, has received funding from George Soros, while mentioning that “second biggest contributors to [global warming skeptic Senator James] Inhofe's Senate office are energy and natural resource companies.”

The first segment, which began 8 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour of Wednesday night’s program, examined the political debate over climate change, focusing on “the loudest voice” of Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta introduced the segment by referring back to the previous segments of “Planet in Peril,” which looked at the impact of climate change in different parts of the world. “From what we’ve seen in Greenland, Alaska, and Africa, the Earth's climate is clearly changing. It's not a theory. It's a fact. But what's causing those changes? The majority of the scientific community says it's mankind. But there are powerful voices who say otherwise.”

A fascinating new liberal defense mechanism has arisen in the past couple of years: Whenever you want to dodge criticism, just claim you are being swift-boated.

In fact, this has become such a part of political parlance that Microsoft Word now recognizes the term "swift-boated" without highlighting it as errant. Isn't that special?

With that in mind, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, is claiming that recent accusations made about him - that he was involved in a GISS report in 1971 predicting an ice age, and that he received money from multi-billionaire George Soros - are nothing more than swift-boating by his critics.

Of course, folks who offhandedly use this defense seem to forget that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) actually never proved that any of the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were false.

Similarly, in Hansen's case, though he admirably tried to deflect scrutiny, he also failed to thoroughly refute the claims made against him (emphasis added, h/t NB reader M. Hoff):

As NewsBuster Jake Gontesky reported, an editorial in Investor's Business Daily Monday claimed one of billionaire leftist George Soros's foundations gave $720,000 in 2006 to the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen.

Since this editorial was published, according to LexisNexis and Google News searches, not one major media outlet has reported these allegations.

Maybe even more shocking is that had press outlets looked into this matter - you know, acted like journalists instead of advocates! - they would have found Hansen's name prominently mentioned in the 2006 Soros Foundations Network Report (relevant section on page 123):

This seems destined to be ignored by today's climate change obsessed media: Scientists from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies - the very organization now presaging gloom and doom at the hands of global warming - predicted a new ice age back in 1971.

Think this will be a focus of tonight's evening news broadcasts?

Regardless of the answer, the Washington Times wonderfully reported Wednesday (emphasis added throughout, h/t Marc Morano):

Since NASA's James Hansen finally released computer codes related to how climate data are collected and adjusted, anthropogenic global warming skeptics around the world have been waiting to see what a scientific examination of this information would produce.

On Monday, Canada's Steve McIntyre, who himself debunked Michael Mann's ridiculous "Hockey Stick" theory as well as identified Hansen's Y2K bug, released information identifying that Hansen recently made additional changes to climate data akin to how companies like Enron used creative accounting to exaggerate earnings and defraud investors.

As published at Climate Audit moments ago (emphasis added, h/t Anthony Watts):

It certainly shouldn't come as a great surprise that there are people who think human beings are the worst species on the planet, and that Earth would be a much better place without us.

However, though Slate's Daniel Engber did add some skepticism to his "Global Swarming: Is it time for Americans to start cutting our baby emissions?" article, his conclusion made it quite clear his answer to this question was "Yes":

We know that babies add more to global warming than anything else in our home. Isn't it time to cut back?

For those with a strong stomach, here are some of the lowlights (emphasis added throughout, h/t Ken Shepherd):

Much as when the organization he leads quietly made changes to the United States historical climate record at the prodding of Climate Audit's Stephen McIntyre, James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies finally released critical computer codes scientists have wanted for years, but did so with absolutely no official press release.

As a result, not one media outlet covered this occurrence that years from now could be seen as a huge turning point in the climate change debate.

Despite the secrecy, there was great celebration amongst anthropogenic global warming skeptics that have wanted these closely held codes to be able to identify how NASA and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration make adjustments to raw climate data collected by weather stations.

One such skeptic is Anthony Watts, who happily reported Saturday (emphasis added):

NASA's James Hansen, whose work is continually exposed as shoddy while he refuses to share data gathering techniques and computer codes used for such things with others, has been criticized by a contributing scientist to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as moving "dangerously away from scientific discourse to advocacy."

What has drawn the ire of Andrew Weaver, a physicist at the University of Victoria who works on the dynamics of the polar ice caps, are recent statements by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies chief that oceans could rise as much as 82 feet in the next hundred years due to global warming.

Bear in mind that the IPCC's most recent report downgraded its expectations for such sea level increases to less than two feet.

However, according to Canada's Globe and Mail, Hansen believes the IPCC is dramatically underestimating the imminent doom (emphasis added throughout, h/t to Marc Morano and James Lewis):

Well, it only took a week for NASA's James Hansen to formally address the changes made to the United States historical climate record by the agency he oversees.

When he finally got around to it, Hansen actually quoted from a letter Thomas Jefferson sent to James Madison in 1789 to suggest that the Founding Father would have been a global warming alarmist, while castigating today's skeptics as court jesters employed by oil companies.

Oddly, Hansen's statement didn't appear at the Goddard Instititute For Space Studies website, but instead cropped up unceremoniously at Slashdot Friday morning (h/t Glenn Reynolds).

Regardless of the delay, Hansen's piece entitled "The Real Deal: Usufruct & the Gorilla," represents a marvelous example of how unscientific the alarmists are in their approach to this issue, and how even the head of a major NASA division feels the need to insult and attack those who disagree with him and pay his salary through their tax dollars (emphasis added throughout):

Last week's revelation by Climate Audit's Steve McIntyre of a serious mistake and subsequent changes made by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the temperature history of America has created quite a debate in the new media.

While conservative bloggers were quick to point out the hypocrisy regarding the lack of an official announcement from GISS chief James Hansen as well as the possible significance to the entire global warming debate, alarmists such as RealClimate and TNR's The Plank viewed McIntyre's discovery and GISS's alterations less than earth shattering.

With that in mind, McIntyre published a response at Anthony Watts' "Watts Up With That?" Saturday (Climate Audit is undergoing a server change) with his take on the issue (emphasis added throughout):

A change in climate history data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently occurred which dramatically alters the debate over global warming. Yet, this transpired with no official announcement from GISS head James Hansen, and went unreported until Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit discovered it Wednesday.

For some background, one of the key tenets of the global warming myth being advanced by Hansen and soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore is that nine of the ten warmest years in history have occurred since 1995.

McIntyre has been crunching the numbers used to determine such things as published by GISS, and has identified that the data have recently changed such that four of the top ten warmest years in American history occurred in the 1930s, with the warmest now in 1934 instead of the much-publicized 1998.

As McIntyre wrote Wednesday (emphasis added, h/t NBer dscott):