Megaphone muzzle

New Zealand's Hot Topic blog has an interesting post about alleged attempts to muzzle NASA's James Hansen, the man who started the whole global warming scare some twenty years ago.

You can see clearly just how effective this muzzling was. As soon as Bushchimphitler was elected back in 2000, Hansen's appearances in the news were cut back, and he was scarcely heard of again. He was probably kept incommunicado in some rat-infested hellhole.

Here's the evidence:

Hansen's media mentions

 Muzzles aint what they used to be.

Comments

[Frank O'Dwyer]

And here's the same search for Hitler:

http://news.google.co.uk/archivesearch?q=hitler&btnG=Search+Archives&scoring=t

Apparently being dead over 60 years wasn't enough to muzzle him, so maybe this search is not such a good indicator after all.

You may also notice that your search results for Hansen include blogs and 'mentions', not just interviews.

[Steve2]

The first commenter on the Hot Topic page, links to this piece by Roger Pielke Jr. The upshot of which, seems, is that he thinks the behaviour of the likes of Hansen at the fringes of the concensus are indicative of the hyperbole that will end up collapsing the concensus - from a political POV - not necessarily scientific mind you - very thought provoking I thought worth a look:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/the-collapse-of-climate-policy-and-the-sustainability-of-climate-science-4939

[Bishop Hill]

Frank

Not obviously evidence that he's been muzzled though is it? Evidence that he had been muzzled would be an absence of public speaking engagements and an absence of interviews, but you have to admit he's a pretty prominent public personality.

[Frank O'Dwyer]

Bishop,

Come on. Do the same search for Salman Rushdie and tell me with a straight face that it means nobody attempted to keep him quiet.

There's plenty of evidence that the Bush administration tried to suppress climate science findings and they did their best to keep Hansen quiet too. It's not some mass hallucination, and the fact that it ultimately didn't work very well and that lots of people talk about Hansen (one of those search results was the Heartland institute!) is neither here nor there.

Here's 75 nobel laureates who seem to have the same impression:
http://scienceblogs.com/voteforscience/2008/10/nobel_laureate_murray_gellmann.php

(Incidentally it is the latest in a string of ironies to see libertarians taking the side of a government that tried to suppress and distort information. The HDS is obviously a powerful thing.)

[Bishop Hill]

Frank

Are you saying that they tried to silence him but didn't succeed? It's a possibility, although Theon says it's nonsense. I've seen no evidence that they even tried, beyond Hansen's say-so (unlike Rushdie, where there were public threats made by Iran).

[Frank O'Dwyer]

Bishop,

"It's a possibility, although Theon says it's nonsense"

Theon who retired about a decade before it happened, and who claimed to be 'in effect' his supervisor ('in effect' roughly translates to 'not really').

" I've seen no evidence that they even tried"

Did you not read the page you linked to?

There is plenty of evidence that the Bush administration tried to suppress and misrepresent climate science. I've already linked to some of it. So have you.

[Bishop Hill]

Well I've spent a wee while looking at some the stuff behind the Hot Topic posting. I can see evidence that Hansen was told to get clearance with head office before speaking to the press. Does that amount to muzzling him? Possibly. Possibly not. I certainly didn't notice any great change in his pronouncements either in number or in quality.

[Bill Wagner]

And the news media and AGW proponents haven't muzzled any scientist that disagree with them, and there are many.

[Natural__Philosopher]

Herr Hansen had over 4500 media interviews in the years he worked at NASA. all paid for on company time. Some Muzzling!

The truth is that Astronomer Hansen,he is neither a Climatologist, a computer modeler, or a IT data base expert by training, is a paid stooge installed by a ingnorant un-scientist who barely avoided flunking God at his Divinity School. He safely quit first. Bu the did learn ho wto preach a Fire and Brimstone, End of the World sermon.

The Goracle has made a Saint of Dr, Ravelle the only man who ever passed him in a single Science course, with a D, and the modern proponent of the AGW thesis. .The Goracle conveniently covers up the Fact that Dr, Ravelle in his later yerars decried all the AGW warming as a totally disproven hypothesis of his.

[Jim Hansen]

Fact is I wasn't muzzled, so much as didn't really didn't know what I was talking about. Ask my boss.

Nobody is putting a muzzle on any of you. It's just that you, like me, don't have any theories worth talking or hearing about. I mean yeah we can both make statistical constructions that do what we want them to do, but that's not science. Sure I got a little carried away sometimes, and a lot of wackos did what wackos do and took me serious. It was fun being a mock-hero for a while though iit probably rubbed those with business interests the wrong way. But they really didn't have any reason to muzzle me because, let's face it, the AGW Theory is a joke. No self respecting scientist or intellectual is going to buy such a ridiculous argument based on such weak premise and science. People with real jobs who do real things don't have time to waste on propaganda and conspiracy theories.

Anyway hope that sets the record straight. You guys should all be nicer to each other, you know, make amends before Global Warming KILLS YOU ALL. Ha ha, just kidding. (That one is a hit at parties!)

See you at Copenhagen.

Jimbo

[Bishop Hill]

Frank:

A quote from Theon

“I worked with Hansen from about 1983 to 1994 during which time he was at GISS in NYC and I was at NASA HQ in Washington DC. I retired from NASA in 1995. I had completed 37 and 1/2 years of federal service (civilian Navy, USAF, and including 33 years with NASA.) The money came through me. We were in the Earth Observations Program which later became the Mission to Planet Earth Program. I visited GISS at least once a year to review and evaluate the GISS work. When I visited NYC, to review the research that GISS was funded to do out of the program for which I was responsible, Hansen was most cordial. When I asked him to give a lecture in Japan, he complied,” Theon wrote. “It was what it was, and no amount of denial will change that,” Theon explained. “I repeat what I wrote to you in January: “I was, in effect, Hansen's supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,” he added.

That's good enough for me.

[Frank O'Dwyer]

Bishop,

I see, so apparently one individual's say so is enough after all, except when it's James Hansen ("I've seen no evidence that they even tried, beyond Hansen's say-so"). In any case the quote clearly shows that Theon had no inside knowledge of the time period in question (Bush's administration), nor for that matter does it show any special competence to comment on anything else. But I suppose you have to take what you can get.

Anyway if you accept Theon's word, here's what he had to say in 1991 (you know, back when he claimed to be on top of climate science, and when he was actually working):

"Undoubtedly, humankind is affecting the environment. Inadvertent climate system changes brought about by mass loadings of carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), methane, etc., have thrust global change into the limelight. Radiative budget effects (i.e., greenhouse gases and global warming) and ozone depletion in the stratosphere certainly have heightened public awareness; however, climate change goes far beyond these fashionable concerns. The scientific community has to confront the myriad pieces that make up the climate puzzle. Scientists must discern the difference between natural and human-induced change, and decision makers must place the pieces in a manner that balances scientific recommendation against the demands of a higher population and an improved standard of living, which are heavily taxing the Earth's resources.This somewhat skewed picture drives environmental policy, though the aforementioned flagrant effects overshadow other parameters that need to be quantified and incorporated into climate models."

So he didn't seem too "embarrassed" about models then, nor too 'sceptical' of CO2 driven climate change. Perhaps his memory isn't what it used to be.

Incidentally, also gives the lie to the 'sceptic' meme that the term 'climate change' is a recent innovation or some kind of substitution for 'global warming' - if the acronym IPCC (founded in 1988) wasn't enough to show that (which it apparently wasn't for the 'sceptics').

[Bishop Hill]

Sorry, when I said good enough for me, I was referring to whether he was Hansen's supervisor or not.

I still see no evidence that Hansen was muzzled.