Hansen's Legacy

James Hansen will go down in history as the man who started the global warming scare in 1988 with a trick.

He will be remembered as the scientist whose certainty of conclusion led him into star political activism with data manipulation  in a supporting role. The GISS kiss.

Let James set us straight on CO2 and Natural Variability. CO2 is stronger except when Nature doesn’t follow the script.

He will be known as the person who started the world down a futile path of wasted resources. We could have spent those resources on other more necessary things like hospitals and medical care that would have been of more benefit to humans than chasing a phantom of the atmosphere.

He will be remembered as the climate priest who demonized CO2, a trace gas essential to life on earth.

His apocalyptic forecasts will find a prominent place in the annals of the Hall of Failed Predictions.

His criminal charges will testify to his misunderstanding of the world in which he lived.

History will freeze him as an example of Richard Feynman’s astute observation that “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.”

His admission of temperature stagnation will expose the weakness of the models upon which his predictions were based. If they couldn’t foresee the stagnation what else are they missing? What else will they miss? How can we attribute any credence to them?

His retirement from NASA will be seen as NASA’s gain and Hansen’s marginalisation as an activist for an idea misconstrued as a crisis.

We can look back at James Hansen’s path as a useful guide to where not to go. Even incorrect conclusions are a useful addition to human knowledge. Like the Neanderthal’s he despises James Hansen’s legacy will repeat their dead end path.

‘This is a man (Hansen) who sold out any scientific credibility decades ago for wacky activism. This is a man who endorsed a book calling for deindustrialization of the world, for blowing up dams, razing cities. Hansen said the author had it exactly right. This is a man (Hansen) who said ‘game over’ for the climate if we approve the Keystone pipeline. No one takes him seriously. People are laughing. This is a hardcore ideologue.” Morano

Bertrand Russell didn’t know James Hansen but he seems to have captured his essence in this quote:

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

He will be missed.