Investor's Business Daily has as much as 100 lies on every page
Posted on: September 27, 2007 1:13 PM, by Tim Lambert
Via RealClimate, James Hansen refutes the Investor's Business Daily's claim that he endorsed global cooling in 1971:
Mr. McCaslin reported that Rasool and Hansen were colleagues at NASA and "Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus."
What was that program? It was a 'Mie scattering' code I had written to calculate light scattering by spherical particles. Indeed, it was useful for Venus studies, as it helped determine the size and refractive index of the particles in the clouds that veil the surface of Venus. I was glad to let Rasool and Schneider use that program to calculate scattering by aerosols. But Mie scattering functions, although more complex, are like sine and cosine mathematical functions, simply a useful tool for many problems. Allowing this scattering function to be used by other people does not in any way make me responsible for a climate theory.
But hey, the hacks at IBD can churn these things out faster than Hansen can knock them down. Look:
The Soros Threat To Democracy
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute, which gave him "legal and media advice"?
That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.
And if you invest just $10,000 in my get-rich-quick pyramid scheme you can make as much as $720,000 profit! Once you realise that "as much as $720,000" includes the amount $0, you understand the scam.
So what did the IBD build this story out of? Well, the OSI annual report says:
Scientist Protests NASA's Censorship Attempts James E. Hansen, the director the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, protested attempts to silence him after officials at NASA ordered him to refer press inquiries to the public affairs office and required the presence of a public affairs representative at any interview. The Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organization and OSI grantee, came to Hansen's defense by providing legal and media advice. The campaign on Hansen's resulted in a decision by NASA revisit its media policy. ...
The Strategic Opportunities Fund includes grants related to Hurricane Katrina ($1,652,841); media policy ($1,060,000); and politicization of science ($720,000).
So the OSI didn't give Hansen any money at all. They did give money to the Government Accountability Project, "the nation's leading whistleblower protection organization", who provided legal advice for Hansen, and a detailed report. And the $720,000 is the total of grants to defend against the politicization of science, not the amount of money given to GAP.
The IBD has declared George Soros a "threat to democracy" because he helps defend whistleblowers. You can't make this stuff up.
Of course, the usual collection of anti-science warriors blogged about it, often embellishing the story with their own fabrications.
Michael Asher at DailyTech:
A report revealed just this week, shows the 'Open Society Institute' funded Hansen to the tune of $720,000, carefully orchestrating his entire media campaign. ... For Hansen to secretly receive a large check from Soros, then begin making unsubstantiated claims about administrative influence on climate science is more than suspicious -- it's a clear conflict of interest.
Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs:
Dr. James Hansen, who approves and issues NASA climate change statements and is one of the most alarmist global warming advocates in the US, is apparently deep in the pocket of George Soros
Jake Gontesky at NewsBusters:
So he got some big paychecks from Soros - but was there a quid pro quo? The evidence certainly indicates as much
Scott Kirwin at Dean's World:
Nearly a million dollars. That must be a lot of money to a humble civil servant like James Hansen. However since Hansen's climate models are riddled with errors, self-fulfilling assumptions, and bootstrapping biases, I'm not sure I would call what Hansen has done "speaking truth to power." It's more like "telling a rich geezer what he wants to hear for a few bucks."
Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom:
Writes Gary Schamburg (who emailed me the article) in a loose paraphrase of Lenin, "[Soros'] money is buying the noose that will hang our country.
Maybe so.
Though I remain stubbornly convinced that a paradigm shift in the way we come to think about how it is we interpret could provide the intellectual corrective to combat the consensus-driven meaning-making that has grown like kudzu in the wake of the linguistic turn.
As far as I can figure out, the last paragraph doesn't mean anything at all, but I like the imagery of kudzu growing in the wake of the linguistic tern.
Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters (again!):
As is typical, a global warming obsessed media don't find this newsworthy. Think they'd be so disinterested if this smoking gun involved an oil company giving money to a Republican official?
Russ Steele at NC Media Watch:
Mr Global Warming was on the take
And on and on and on.
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