Re: [asa] Probability of Anthropic cause for Global Climate Warming

At 04:11 PM 3/24/2007, Rich Blinne wrote:

>Now, all of this doesn't prove that Hansen was
>right and his critics wrong. But, it does show
>the seduction of keeping your job was stronger
>by those who denied global warming. Note I have
>cited examples from four different
>administrations. For decades politicians have
>tried to seduce scientists like Jim Hansen. But,
>they resisted that seduction because the stakes
>were simply too high. There's a word for a
>person with this kind of character, hero.

@ You have your heros and I have mine. Between
the two long term employees of NASA, James Hansen
and Roy Spencer, I'll pick Spencer's character
over Hansens any day of the week. (Read all about it below)

Predicting the future, on June 23, 1988, Hansen
presented a graph of global annual temperatures
for the last 100 years and included the
January-May, 1988 readings on the same
chart.....He went on to say that 1988 would be
the warmest year on record unless there was a
"remarkable and improbable" cooling during the
rest of the year. Remarkably and improbably,
1988 did not set the record. Another prophet makes a fool of himself.

But fear not, just because their prophecies fail,
that never deters false prophets - they just goes
on to make ever more wild and ridiculous
predictions. Here are the latest antics of "the
three wise men": James Hansen, Deepak Chopra,
and Algore plan to "End the war on Terra"
http://www.championtrees.org/climate/WaketheFolkUp.htm

GAG.

James Hansen has given over 1,400 speeches and
interviews expounding his opinion on global
warming. In the month he made his complaint of
being "muzzled", he gave at least 15 separate interviews on the subject.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) to James
Hansen: "You are known for embracing alarmist
viewpoints, and you have embraced the idea that
exaggeration is okay to get the public's
attention. But two climate researchers from
the Royal Meteorological Society from the UK just
this week said that this catastrophism and
Hollywoodization of weather and climate create
the real confusion in the public's mind. You
seem to forget that when you speak, regardless of
your disclaimers, you are speaking for NASA, and
you have also not shied away from the political realm.

"You publicly endorsed Sen. K*rry in the 2004
p... elec..... Three years earlier you received
a quarter-million-dollar unrestricted cash prize
from Teresa Heinz K*rry on behalf of the Heinz
Foundation. You've spent the better part of this
decade consistently and publicly criticizing the
B... administration's climate change
policies. But at the same time, you are an
advocate for ca*paign finance reform. You make a
point of condemning other scientist's affiliation
with special interests while you're taking a
quarter million dollars from Teresa Heinz K*rry.

I guess I'm a little confused. Are you a
scientist or are you a politician? Because when
I put together your political advocacy, and I
hate to say it, but the partisanship of that
advocacy, I'm inclined to think that you, Mr.
Hansen, are the one who's politicizing science."

Darrell Issa is right. Four hours into the
hearing, Roy Spencer testified. But it didn't
make the media --- (with one exception - an
Alabama newspaper, AL.com. "Scientist cites
pressure during Cl*nton years," a local paper
covering a local guy.) -- because their deadline
had come and gone, and the committee purposely
waited 'til the very end, four hours after the
whole hearing started, to get to Roy Spencer.

Opening statement from Roy Spencer's testimony
before the House oversight and government affairs
committee. James Hansen, from NASA, was first.
(Now, remember, Hansen started out by saying the
B... administration is a bunch of Nazis trying to
control what he says, denying him free speech).

Roy Spencer: "I have been performing
NASA-sponsored research for the last twenty-two
years. Prior to my current position as a
principal research scientist at the University of
Alabama in Huntsville, I was Senior Scientist for
Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center, and was an employee of NASA from 1987 to 2001.

During the period of my government employment,
NASA had a rule that ANY interaction between its
scientists and the press was to be coordinated
through NASA management and public affairs.

Understandably, NASA managers do not appreciate
first learning of their scientists" findings and
opinions in the morning newspapers.

It was no secret within NASA that I was skeptical
of the size of the human influence on global climate.

My views were diametrically opposed to those of V
PGore, and I believe that they were considered to
be a possible hindrance to NASA getting full
c*ngressional funding for Mission to Planet Earth.

"So, while Dr. Hansen was freely sounding the
alarm over what HE believed to be dangerous
levels of human influence on the climate, I tried to follow the rules.

On many occasions I avoided answering questions
from the media on the subject, and instead
directed reporters to John Christy, my co-worker
and a university employee. Through the management
chain, I was politely told what I was allowed to
say in congressional testimony. In fact, my
dodging of committee questions regarding my
personal opinions on the subject of global
warming was considered to be quite humorous by
one committee, an exchange which is now part of the c*ngressional record.

"I want to make it very clear that I am not
complaining -- I am only relating these things
because I was asked to. I was, and still am,
totally supportive of NASA's Earth satellite
missions… but I understood that my position as a
NASA employee was a privilege, not a right, and
that there were rules I was expected to abide by.

Partly because of those limits on what I could
and couldn't say to the press and congress, I
voluntarily resigned from NASA in the fall of
2001. Even though my research responsibilities
to NASA have NOT changed since resigning, being a
university employee gives me much more freedom
than government employees have to express opinions.

"So, while you might think that the political
influence on our climate research program started
with the B... Administration, that simply isn't
true. It has ALWAYS existed. You just never
heard about it because NASA's climate science
program was aligned with V PGore's desire to get
rid of fossil fuels. The bias started when the
U.S. climate research program was first
initiated. The emphasis on studying the PROBLEM
of global warming, of course, presumes that a problem exists.

As a result, the funding has ALWAYS favored the
finding of evidence for climate CATASTROPHE
rather than for climate STABILITY.

This biased approach to the funding of science
serves several goals which favor a specific
political ideology: One, It grows government
science, environmental, and policy programs,
which depend upon global warming remaining as much a threat as possible.

Two, It favors climate researchers, who quite
naturally have vested interests in careers, pet
theories, and personal incomes.

Three, and it provides justification for
environmental lobbying groups, whose very
existence depends upon sustaining public fears of environmental disaster.

I'm NOT claiming that a global warming science
program isn't needed -- It IS. We DO need to
find out how much of our current warmth is
human-induced, and how much we might expect in
the future. I'm just pointing out that the
political interference flows both ways -- but not
everyone has felt compelled to complain about it."

That was Roy Spencer in his opening statement
testimony on global warming before the House
oversight and government affairs committee.

Roy Spencer's expertise, as he described, is
measuring precipitation, and the one thing that
he says is never factored is the role
precipitation plays in global warming, cooling
-you can't measure it. He said we don't know how
much it rains or snows any day of the year. We
don't have the ability to measure it all over the
globe, and it's a factor. Since we don't know
how to measure it, how much there is, it's
something that's relevant that's absent from all the models.

James Hansen has been a malcontent on global
warming while working at NASA. James Hansen is
still living off taxpayer dollars and whatever
money he can grub from Teresa Heinz K*rry and her
foundation and any others like it.

You would expect there to be some accountability
for his actions. If he wants to be a private
citizen, he can say and do whatever he wants, and
that's what Roy Spencer did.

Roy Spencer resigned from NASA, went to the
University of Alabama at Huntsville, and that's why he speaks out now.

He shut up when he was a member of the
administration and NASA during the Cl*nton
administration, had views diametrically opposed to AlGore.

~ Janice

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Received on Sat Mar 24 18:39:50 2007