Wednesday
Apr112012
by 
Josh
Josh Medallion man - Josh 161
Apr 11, 2012 James Hansen Josh NASA ;)
Click the image for a larger version
49 former NASA scientists and astronauts have written to NASA saying “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.” Something I am sure most of us thoroughly agree with.
You can read the whole letter here at WUWT
Great timing too considering that James Hansen, famous NASA employee, was awarded the Edinburgh Medal this week...
H/t to Anthony Watts for suggesting adding the NASA logo - why didnt I think of that?
Reader Comments (29)
unless any of the 49 are active in the climate science division of NASA, then this is just pointless grandstanding. The inner cabal will point out that none of these 49 people know anything about climate science....blah, blah, blah,...and they are salso too old to have opinions worth listening to.
Love it!
Respected scientists at MIT/NASA Vs Gore/Hansen/UEA - OOPS.
http://thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/5435-moon-landing-deniers-express-global-warming-skepticism.html
PS. Has Hansen still got an office key?
One small step becomes 49 giant leaps.
Josh it's very very good - rarefied gravitas!
As someone who was forced to stay up and watch the moon landing (I think we may have been woken up after going to sleep). By a father who had been to NASA as part of his work, I never imagined that NASA could fall so low as to become nothing more than a backstreet pedlar of comic-book science hysteria.
To be blunt, it is going to take an awful lot more than a few ex-NASA employees writing a letter to restore their credibility.
How did Hansen get into his post? How has he managed to retain it despite his appalling behaviour?
Magic Josh!!
“AH GUT A MAYDEL!”
MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!
Problem, we've had a Hansen.
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Hansen never fails to provide amusement and Josh has continued the tradition!
For me I'm reminded of that classic "Smith and Jones" sketch about the man who walks into a Swedish chemist shop and asks for deodorant.
"Aerosol or Balls" enquires the assistant.
"Neither" replies the customer
"It's for under my arms"
Boom, boom
It was never made clear to me either, why the judgement of 9029 PhD's is apparently of no relevance:
http://www.petitionproject.org/
One explanation I was offered was that these PhD's don't have the qualified expertise. OK, there is some logic to that. On the other hand my scientific training was in psychology and everyone I knew in that research field thought psychoanalysis was nonsense. Yet, apparently, following this argument, we would not have the 'expertise' to reach such a conclusion, because the rest of us did not publish in that field.
Einsten was famously reported as saying, after hearing, 100 or so Nazi scientists had pronounced him wrong, that it only took one to prove him incorrect.
He hasn't said it yet, AFAIK, but maybe Hansen is thinking along similar, albeit diametrically opposed, lines.
What is the opinion of 9029 PhD's worth when I know I'm right?
"Hansen never fails to provide amusement and Josh has continued the tradition!"
Indeed he has, and right up to standard, too.
Hansen is certainly a gift that keeps on giving.
Another such is Australia's very own Cassandra, Tim Flannery, who is long overdue for the Josh treatment.
I hate commas. They just don't work with my Monte-Carlo algorithm!
Mique - The Juliar administration is in enough difficulty as it is without Josh turning his gaze upon Tim (very well paid AND incredibly dim) Flannery.
Could you just start to imagine the outrage and accusations of the left that the good bishop and our special illustrator had engineered a 'coup d'etat' in a major western democracy?
@RoyFOMR
Einsten was famously reported as saying, after hearing, 100 or so Nazi scientists had pronounced him wrong, that it only took one to prove him incorrect.
He hasn't said it yet, AFAIK, but maybe Hansen is thinking along similar, albeit diametrically opposed, lines.
What is the opinion of 9029 PhD's worth when I know I'm right?
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The point Einstein made was that he put forward a particular theory and offered ways in which it could be tested. It is not so clear cut on how one would disprove Hansen's claims.
Apr 11, 2012 at 11:18 PM | diogenes : "[ ... ] The inner cabal will point out that none of these 49 people know anything about climate science....blah, blah, blah,...and they are salso too old to have opinions worth listening to."
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The "49" much like the revered "79" and of an age much like Hansen. :)
They're all rocket fuel funded contrarians.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9198272/Nick-Clegg-wants-to-let-MPs-keep-family-fortunes-under-wraps.html
So we are talking politicians paying their Taxes
Which al started with Handbags in the lift at LBC radio station between Bitchy Ken and Boris swearing at each other
Cleggy made a speech 2 days saying *we cant afford not to go green"
So Nick just think of all the University places you could have payed for instead of wasting all those Billions on a Spanish Windfarm Company that your Spanish Wife works for
Whose being Bitchy now
Ever seen a brilliant but very long film called The Right Stuff
Famous quote " No Bucks So No Buck Rogers"
Should now read "No Climate Change So No Climate Change Funding"
Why they got this Jim Hansen on the payroll
Excellent Josh. I mentioned the NASA letter in an email to my brother (who lives in the USA) yesterday. He doesn't follow the climate blogs but already knew about it as the letter has got some coverage outwith the climate sphere:
Business Insider
Financial Post.
Will Nitschke: Hansen's latest claim is that we are presently seeing no air warming because the cooling by aerosols exactly offsets the heating by CO2-AGW, thus no null hypothesis.
However, look at the 2009 Trenberth/IPCC Energy Budget and it has 0.9 W/m^2 absorbed by an unknown process in the oceans. he and Hansen appear to be setting up a new scam for the future.
@mydogsgotnonose
Hansen's latest claim is that we are presently seeing no air warming because the cooling by aerosols exactly offsets the heating by CO2-AGW, thus no null hypothesis.
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"In science and philosophy, an ad hoc hypothesis is a hypothesis added to a theory in order to save it from being falsified. Ad hoc hypothesizing is compensating for anomalies not anticipated by the theory in its unmodified form.
Scientists are often skeptical of theories that rely on frequent, unsupported adjustments to sustain them. This is because, if a theorist so chooses, there is no limit to the number of ad hoc hypotheses that they could add. Thus the theory becomes more and more complex, but is never falsified. This is often at a cost to the theory's predictive power, however. Ad hoc hypotheses are often characteristic of pseudoscientific subjects."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis
Mique, Tim is here ;-)
I read the letter. I 'd rather believe a highly trained astronaut, with all the mental discipline they have had instilled in them through their rigorous & exhaustive training, Apollo 13 (I lived through it as a kid) springs to mind! Well done Josh absolutely brilliant. Though I always thought that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival started rather later in the year! ;-)
"absorbed by an unknown process in the oceans"
Sound like dark matter to me.. :-)
Has he got his 'maydel' yet? I think the Bish said he was going and it would be interesting to know if Hansen managed to spout even more nonsense than usual.
Apr 11, 2012 at 11:18 PM | diogenes
Yes - and the inner cabal has already done so: see this
A quotation (from NASA Chief Scientist, Waleed Abdalati):
"But" (he might have added) "I don't suppose these silly old fools are able to do so - so why don't they just shut up?"
Absolutely brilliant Josh. My LOL response made my fellow coffee shop patrons look at me askance.
Hansen wishes he were English, so he could get Knighted.