Climate Conversation Group

Tobacco/cancer comment mere malicious slur

Answers his critic as a true gentleman

See UPDATE below

I was disturbed about the comments I posted last night from a member of ‘Slick’ Hansen’s audience in Massey the previous evening. In an astonishing, unprovoked outburst, Hansen suddenly turned on the absent Dr Dick Lindzen, besmirching his character with outright lies. After trying to verify Hansen’s claim that Dr Lindzen doesn’t believe smoking causes cancer, I sent Lindzen the following email.

Dick’s reply is most thoughtfully written and I commend it for your consideration. As an outstanding example of fine thinking under personal pressure it’s a pleasure to publish it. Jim Hansen should be ashamed of himself for repeating misleading slurs and outright lies. I’m certainly ashamed of him. Read more… »

he has nothing else — his climate predictions have failed

he’s a disgrace

Dr James Hansen arrested at the White House, protesting against mountaintop removal and the use of coal.

I received a report about Hansen’s address at Massey last night. Don says:

I have just returned from James Hansen’s lecture at Massey. The Japan Lecture Theatre was packed; I didn’t count, but there were probably about 200 people in the audience.

At the end I got to ask a question. I was very polite, and said how grateful we all were that such a distinguished expert had come to talk to us about his beliefs, but I was concerned that his whole talk rested on the premise that the science is settled. He had said the only dissenters are those in the pay of the oil industry, and I expressed regret that they hadn’t offered any lucre to me.

Dr Richard Lindzen, renowned climate scientist.

His reply was polite, but condescending. He conceded there are a few scientists whose chronic skepticism blinds them to the truth. For example, he said, he knows Richard Lindzen, who is a nice guy, but doesn’t dare, when he’s with other scientists, talk the kind of nonsense he writes in his newspaper columns. Also, Lindzen has never accepted that tobacco causes cancer, so obviously his judgement can’t be trusted.

Afterwards a few members of the audience came up and thanked me for what I had said.

The belief is strong in that one

Thanks for that, Don. That’s an intriguing look into ‘Slick’ Hansen’s attitudes. Read more… »

Dr James Hansen, former respected space scientist, “father” of global warming, now an unrepentant activist warning of nothing less than the imminent destruction of the world — which at one time was the very definition of ‘crank’.

While on the subject of awkward, unanswered emails, let me pass on a message I recently sent to Dr James Hansen, the scientist widely famed as the “father” of global warming. I still hope he will offer some explanation.

4 March 2010

Dear Dr Hansen,

The Climate Conversation Group and I have become interested in the very meaning of “taking the temperature”, calculating the so-called “average” temperature for a place and a region and the meaning of doing so. I have just seen your web page [The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT)], discussing these and related matters. It is an interesting and informative page.

You say there is no agreed method of measuring surface air temperatures and, in fact, there are numerous practical and theoretical obstacles to ever achieving such a measurement.

There is a very obvious question raised by that discussion. We are interested to know why, if it cannot be done, do you do it?

Regards,

Richard Treadgold
Convenor
Climate Conversation Group

Earlier this month, Bryan Walker reviewed Gareth Morgan’s global warming book Poles Apart on Hot Topic, raising the subject of “alarmists”. Subsequent comment exposed Dr James Hansen (“father” of global warming) to the charge of exaggeration. So — does he or doesn’t he exaggerate?

Read more… »