James Hansen: Abusing the Public Trust

American Thinker ^ | June 24, 2008 | Brian Sussman

[neverdem]

Monday, James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), addressed Congress and brought a new twist to his tired global warming song and dance routine.  Hansen now seems to be calling for the chief executives of Big Oil to be tried for high crimes against humanity.  Their crime?   Spreading doubt about global warming. 

Actually, it is Hansen who is guilty. Guilty of abusing the public trust.

James Hansen is the recognized international arbiter of the global temperature record-past, present and future.  Armed with a network of thermometers, state-of-the-art satellites, computers and a huge chunk of NASA's near $18 billion budget, Hansen is the man who is deemed the final authority on Al Gore's constant claim that "the earth has a fever." 

All this despite the fact that GISS' own data clearly illustrates that the Earth's temperature has been flat since 1998 and recently has been dipping downward.  Hansen's shenanigans on Capital Hill are not about climate-they are about money.

As is the case with all government agencies, maintaining a budget is critical.  The bureaucrats at NASA boast of their obvious needs for cash:  completion of the International Space Station, furthering the Space Shuttle Program, and, of course, preventing the world from spontaneously combusting in a ball of flames.  Hansen is a zealous promoter of the latter, and, since the 1980s, has been able to keep the funds flowing-both into NASA, as well as into his personal pocket-to study the world's climate.  A slick marketer, Hansen possesses an insatiable appetite for media attention -- as long as the person asking questions is favorable to his point of view.

In 2007, Hansen agreed to an interview conducted on a rooftop in downtown San Francisco with a counterculture, internet-based outfit called TUC Radio (TUC is an acronym for "Time of Useful Consciousness"-the time between the onset of oxygen deficiency and the loss of consciousness").  During the interview Hansen hardly sounded like an honorable director of a U.S. government agency, but rather more like an underground community agitator: 

"I tell young people that they had better start to act up.  Because they are the ones that will suffer the most.  Many of the changes will take time, but we're setting them in motion now.  We're leaving a situation for our children and grandchildren which is not of their making, but they're going to suffer because of it.  So I think they should start to act up and put some pressure on their elders, and on legislatures, and begin to get some action."

I assume that prior to the interview, Hansen made it clear that all his comments were his own and not representative of NASA.  That is a line he uses from time to time to appear as pure as the wind driven snow.  But the truth is, Hansen a proclivitiy for popping off at the mouth.

Early in 2006, a major story in the New York Times pointed a finger at the Bush Administration for supposedly trying to censor Hanson.  In part, it read:

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Can you blame the administration for wanting to review his content?  As a NASA Director, his role should be collecting data and truthfully sharing results, not trying to influence policy and legislation.
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Congressman Darryl Issa (R-San Diego) called Hansen on his continual talking out of turn.  During a hearing on Capitol Hill regarding his abuse of his government status, Issa said, "You're speaking on federal paid time.  Your employer happens to be the American taxpayer."  Issa went on to say that an internet search showed Hansen had had stated on more than 1,400 occasions in over a year's worth of interviews and appearances (15 interviews alone in the month that the congressional hearings were taking place) that the Bush Administration had censored him. 

According to the Associated Press: 

"Hansen said...as a matter of free speech, government scientists should not be restrained in their remarks or have public affairs officers listening in on interviews."

I agree with Congressman Issa.  Government bureaucrats should not be allowed to use their job as a soapbox; nor should they be allowed to receive huge sums of cash for work they have conducted on the taxpayer's dime, from private, liberal interests with a global warming agenda. 

Examine the largess culled by Hansen.

In 2001, the Heinz Foundation "awarded" James Hansen with a payment of $250,000 for his work on global warming.  According to the foundation: 

"It was Dr. Hansen who, in the sweltering, drought-scorched summer of 1988, went where few scientists were willing to go-before Congress, to explain just how serious the potential for global warming truly was."

The Heinz Foundation, directed by the wife of U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate, John Kerry, is widely known for its support of liberal causes. Is it any surprise that James Hansen also endorsed John Kerry for President in 2004?  The quarter of a million was just a tease of additional monies to come.  In 2007, Hansen split a $1 million prize from the Dan David prize category of "Future Quest for Energy" (layman's translation:  a world without oil).  In addition he also reported to have acted as a consultant to Gore's global whining slide show, which was the impetus to the Prince of Peace's film, "An Inconvenient Truth."  In fact, in 2006 Hansen had the gall to appear on a New York City stage with Mr. Gore to promote the then upcoming film-though he did reportedly inform the audience, "I'm not speaking as a government employee."
           
Topping it all, Hansen has allegedly received hundreds of thousands of additional dollars to further politicize the issue of global warming.  According to Investors Business Daily, "How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely ‘NASA whistleblower' standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by [George] Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI), which gave him ‘legal and media advice'?  That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship ‘philanthropy' by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's ‘politicization of science' program."

Hansen denied any relationship with OSI, but Investor's Business Daily refused to back off on their story, "claiming the funding first passed through the Government Accountability Project, which then used it to package Hansen for the media."

With that kind of cash allegedly lining his pockets, do you think that Hansen will ever allow the data that he is charged with maintaining to point to anything but disaster? 

In talk-radio such conflicting activities would be deemed "payola" with the guilty party booted out the door.  For the sake of truth, and the proper use of the taxpayer's dollar, James Hansen needs to be relieved of his NASA duties. 

Show Mr. Hansen the door -- for the sake of humanity.

Brian Sussman is a radio talk show host on KSFO-AM in San Francisco and formerly an award-winning television meteorologist.  He is currently writing, "Global Whining, a Denier's Handbook", a book represented by WordServe Literary Group, Ltd. 

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I am in complete agreement having a trial of oil executives for their role in global warming. In court, the evidence and testimony will be under oath and this man-made global warming will be PROVEN A LIE FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD TO SEE.

Hansen should be immediately fired from NASA for politicizing a mountain of unproven, junk science.

This alarmist propaganda is a left-wing attempt to completely control the behavior of free people for a tyrannical "greater good."

[justa-hairyape]

My guess is that Hansen and the Control Freaks really want a show trial. Similar to when they lined up the Tobacco CEO's and asked each one of them to state if they thought nicotine was addictive.

BTW - Noticed the author mentioned snow. Here is some for you.

[Gaffer]

Abuse of the public trust is when a government employee inserts his or her opinion and government status into an argument or position. It is wrong when Dr. Joolie Gerberdung of the CDC brings guns, familial strife and other inherently non-medical conditions into a health care debate. And, it is wrong with this Hansen confusing suspect data with fact.

[Lancey Howard]

Hansen again, lol.
Is that guy really so oblivious he doesn’t realize he’s become a laughing stock?

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

Why is this nutcase still employed by NASA?

[Hardastarboard]

James Hansen should be fired and any advanced degrees he has earned should be revoked. Neither he nor anyone on this Earth today can even predict the weather exactly for a single given day in the county in which I live, a relatively small geography compared to the entire planet. For him, or anyone, to pretend that they even begin to understand how climate works well enough to make these kinds of histrionic demands is proof enough that he didn't learn ANYTHING from his studies.

I actually had one moron tell me once that even though we can't predict the weather with certainty, global warming is real because it's done with statistics, unlike the weather forecasts. Such is the state of science education we endure in America today, where even our scientifically educated leadership are complete, blithering idiots who think politically and not scientifically. We need to start calling the global warming scare mongers "Climate Lysenkoists". As if they would get the reference (Google / search engine of your choice Lysenkoism if you don't recognize the reference).

[Misschuck]

Bought and paid for by George Soros.

[sergeantdave]

The federal government is infested with leftist criminal bureaucrats. They’re everywhere - BATF, Interior, EPA, BLM.

The EPA bureaucrats committed criminal acts, as outlined in Rapanos V US. Congress did nothing to the EPA criminals. No hearings, no jail time, no firings.

It will be up to us to clean out this nest of criminal fascists and communists in the federal bureaucracy. We are on our own.

[jpl]

Hansen will go down in history as the 21st century version of Thomas Malthus. The man is now having to resort to outright lying and distorting of the data. The article is spot on.

[MrB]

I have it on good authority what should happen to this man.

Deuteronomy 19:16-21
16”If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing,

17then both the men who have the dispute shall stand before the LORD, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days.

18”The judges shall investigate thoroughly, and if the witness is a false witness and he has accused his brother falsely,

19then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother. Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.

20”The rest will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such an evil thing among you.

21”Thus you shall not show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

Now, since he intended to IMPRISON the oil execs for daring to refute his socialist goaled propaganda, the same shall be done to him.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

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[neverdem]

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[neverdem]

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[hdstmf]

Memo to President Bush:

Mr Hansen is appointed public official. He is blantly using that position for personal recognition and financial gain. He is using government time and resources to further his own agenda of junk science which is not part of his position description. His claim to speak as a private citizen is false. That puts him in violation of the Hatch Act. It also makes him a corrupt federal official. Fire him and have the Attorney General charge him under all appropriate statues. Do not allow him to resign and collect a fat pension. GET-R-DONE NOW MR PRESIDENT

[RightWhale]

He’s appointed, right? Appoint somebody else. Appoint Richard C Hoagland, although he wouldn’t want the pay cut.

[xcamel]

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[buffyt]

It just might work! My daughter is a Geologist/GeoScientist. She majored in HydroGeology at UT. She said NONE of her geology professors believes in human caused global warming. They laugh at it. I told her that they should speak out against it. She said they think it is just a big joke and not worth mentioning!

For example, a short history of our state....

About 1 billion years ago, shallow seas covered much of Texas. After the seas receded, the land dropped gradually over millions of years, leaving a thick sediment that was then compressed into a long mountain range called the Ouachita Fold Belt. The sea was eventually restricted to a zone in West Texas called the Permian Basin, a giant evaporation pan holding gypsum and salt deposits hundreds of feet deep. As the mountain chain across central Texas eroded and the land continued to subside, the Rocky Mountains were uplifted, leaving deep cuts in Big Bend country and creating the Llano Estacado. The Gulf of Mexico subsided rapidly, depositing sediment accumulations several thousand feet deep, while salt domes formed over vast petroleum and sulfur deposits. All this geologic activity also deposited quicksilver in the Terlingua section of the Big Bend, built up the Horseshoe Atoll (a buried reef in west-central Texas that is the largest limestone reservoir in the nation), created uranium deposits in southern Texas, and preserved the oil-bearing Jurassic rocks of the northeast.

DID HUMANS CAUSE THIS CHANGE?????????????????

[hinckley buzzard]

Why is this nutcase still employed by NASA?

Because George Bush is president and he doesn't give a damn what any federal employee says, no matter how treasonous, damaging to the nation, or how manifestly unethical it may be.

He's still trying to jumpstart that New Tone thang, poor sap.