Hansen On ‘Democracy’

Our last post was about Guardian journalist, David Adam, and his inability to reflect critically and impartially on the climate debate. That’s not to say he’s biased… That would miss the point. Which is precisely what Adam does. Adam believes that ‘the science’ is...

Cut and Paste Journalism

BBC bosses today tried to make excuses for the cut-and-paste job by BBC science journalist, Susan Watts, as discovered by Tony at Harmless Sky recently. Answering criticism on Watts' blog, Newsnight Editor Peter Rippon said: We did edit sections of the speech to...

Only Four Years Left to Save Environmentalism

Another sure sign that environmentalists are struggling to sustain a rational basis for their influence emerged last week. The pages of the Observer featured the opinion of NASA activist/scientist James Hansen in two articles [1 , 2] and an editorial. Barack Obama has...

Hansen’s Glacial Recession

A CNN article at the end of last week said that A team of international scientists led by Dr James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, say that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are already in the danger zone. The ‘danger zone’? Is that...

$IR NI¢HOLA$ $T£RN

Sir Nicholas Stern, author of the famous Stern Report, which underpins many an argument in favour of climate change mitigation, is behind a 'carbon credit reference agency' launched today. “If we are to attract the levels of finance necessary to make this a mainstream...

Slaves to Bad Analogies

Given the occasional inability of environmentalists to resist the temptation of equating those who challenge the political orthodoxy on climate change with those who opposed the end of slavery, it was only a matter of time before someone would liken the reduction of...

"NO TO DEBATE! NO TO DEMOCRACY!"

On Friday, we wrote about the US 'Friends of the Earth', who have enlisted James Hansen in their campaign to censor a book on American politics because it might give the impression that there's something to discuss. Somehow we managed to miss this gem of a page on the...

A Textbook Case of Politics

You can say whatever you like about climate change, just as long as it doesn't appear to undermine political action to 'save the planet'. You can, for example, be the billionaire founder of the world's first international, 24-hour TV news channel, and claim that in...

Scientific Consenseless

Writing in New Scientist this week, James Hansen tells us that the scientific community (you know, those 'thousands' of specialised scientists at the IPCC) are wrong, and have massively underestimated the extent of polar ice melting as a consequence of anthropogenic...