At American Thinker, Marc Sheppard on James Hansen:
In a wild rant in Sunday’s Guardian responding to British Prime Minster Gordon Brown’s green-lighting of the controversial Kingsnorth power plant, the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies managed to outdo even his own sophomoric guilt trips and fear-mongering. Repeating last year’s call for a moratorium on British coal-fired plants, which he has since extended to Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd and others, Hansen branded coal as “the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet.”
He insisted “that the coal source must be cut off” as “a cap only slows the use of a fuel – it does not leave it in the ground.” Calling for a “phase-out of coal,” Hansen even restated references to the plants as “factories of death,” and trains carrying the black rocks to them as “death trains,” the latter a toned-down adaptation of these outrageously offensive words he laid on the Iowa Utilities Board back in October of 2007:
“If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains – no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.”
I don’t know what Mr. Sheppard is on about. Obviously, it would be a very bad idea to build this atop a Native American burial ground.
Mr. Obama’s analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they’re also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren’t likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a “recovery” package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy’s woes might produce better policies. (h/t Gerry G.)
And the men who CAIR too much.
EnviroDramaQueens are the worst.
Sheppard is right, Hansen has finally gone off his nut…
And besides, who can believe anything this lying liar says. He’s been caught fudging data in order to satisfy his hypothesis. And, he’s refuses to submit his climate models or data conditioning algorithms to peer review; the antithesis of scientific rigor…
He’s a hack who’s staked his entire career on the holy crail of AGW. Unlike Al Gore though, he hasn’t made enough bank off of it to live the rest of his days on…
Coal is Hitler.
Ok.
Al should learn to share.
I don’t know, Sarah. Coal might be Jooooooooooos.
Coal is George Bush.
Just in case you missed it: James Hansen’s Former NASA Supervisor Declares Himself a Skeptic – Says Hansen ‘Embarrassed NASA’, ‘Was Never Muzzled’, & Models ‘Useless’
I wonder if Scary Jimmy still thinks he’s being silenced. Or is this change you can believe in? Besides, what’s so bad about a Death Train?
Not to worry. We’ll be replacing coal with wind power in a week or two. Don’t tell me we can’t do it! This is the united states of America!
We’ll take all the overweight people on welfare and put them on stationary bikes hooked up to generators. Just because the power output would be negligible is no reason not to try. Science!
And why not, Pablo, considering that they’re turning the whole country into Chicago?
YES WE CAN!!!!
(Terms and conditions subject to reality. Not to be taken internally.)
Can you still say, bringing coal to Newcastle, or is that no good anymore?
Soylent Green is coal!!!
That’s Oldcastle now, Joe. The failed castle of the past.
Shakespeare, anyone?
He played on our fears!!!!
Fearmonger!! Fearmonger!!!!
(squints at names, sees -D at the end)
Oh, valuable reasoned points all around. Carry on.
DOOM! Doomy doomy DOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!
Environmental DOOM!
Economic DOOM!
Doesn’t it get really tiresome to be a lib? I’m exhausted from just that…
Quasi-related news: Geithner’s got a terminal case of indecision. I may hear the bus warming up.
[Meanwhile, the sources said, Obama’s senior economic advisers were hobbled in crafting the plan by a shortage of personnel. To date, the president has not nominated any assistant secretaries or undersecretaries at the Treasury, and the handful of mid-level staffers who have started work were still finding their offices and getting their building passes and BlackBerrys.]
Best Transition EVAR!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/16/AR2009021601180.html
(hat tip to HotAir’s headlines for that one)
Hmm. About 50% of the US’ power generation comes from coal. I’m sure that Mr. Hansen will be glad to decide which people in this country get to freeze or bake to death each year. Indeed, based on his insane rhetoric, I’m convinced that he’d hop on board Death’s bandwagon, culling people for The Greater Good.
Where’s the fuckin’ sanity?
Don’t go to Drudge today if you’ve got a weak spirit.
What’s the over/under on the date we’ll all have to wear yellow elephants sewed to our clothes?
Those of us that won’t have an “Obama Party Membership Number”, that is?
Keep this under you hat, but Doc Jim is actually a plant from Big Coal under orders to embarrass the AGW zealots in particular and the green movement in general.
You wait till you hear his next rant, (planned if O! doesn’t ban CO2 by the end of the month).
Not only has it got the usual Death Trains and Black Death, but Attila the Hun and Jengis Khaaaan as well as the Klingons, the Posleen and the Day of the Triffids.
Oil is (can’t resist the pun) currently tanking.
Price is currently flirting with $35 a barrel. I’d hate to think of the ramifications to the stability of the petro-dependent nations.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Oil-slips-below-35-as-global-apf-14380509.html
James Hansen is a propagandy dirty socialist dipshit, but really that’s just mental illness, what he said about the coal trains of death. Sounds like he’s living in the delusions what were meant for other people. He’ll need deprogramming if he’s to be of further use to the dirty socialist agenda, cause if you have a loon at the head of your propaganda campaign, people notice, and they start talking.
What was it about Drudge that was so awful? The Dow being down? CA going down the tubes? Satellites falling out of the sky?
Same old same old in the first year of Obamalot.
From the movie of the book I assume your title comes from.
Sounds like what we are getting on a day to day basis from our media now. Caught in a “strange loop” of history.
I prefer the world of “Death Hunt” from the same time period myself.
How is this Black River Falls any different from Washington DC? Other than DC being plagued by politicians, I mean.
When it comes to energy policy and AGW, the inmates will be running the asylum.
JD just called me. He needed to vent with all of the “dirty socialist %&@#$% going on!!” Then he went into a meeting. He said he felt better.
No, Dan, don’t call me.
Hansen branded coal as “the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet.”
Today, Hansen is saying that it’s the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels what’s heating the earth. Back in the seventies, when we were in a cooling trend, he ranted about particulate emissions sending us into an ice age.
Nobody seems to notice a trend here with this guy. He’s not even a climatologist!
And, he’s refuses to submit his climate models or data conditioning algorithms to peer review.
Actually, Bob, it was crowbarred out of him with an FOIA in Sept 2007. Steve McIntyre has done his best to plow through Hansen’s ancient Fortran code. (Search CA for “hansen code” for some of the posts.)
But Steve isn’t one of Hansen’s peers, so I guess that counts for little to nothing.
Another concerned family man.
The thing about coal-fired plants that gets me is that those electric plants have all of the filters to remove a lot of the bad stuff before it makes it to the air. Yet, for over a hundred years ships, plants, and houses burned a lot of coal without filters. My grandfather would buy a ton of coal to keep the furnace going, and that smoke went right out the chimney. As did the smoke from every powerplant and factory, and nearly every merchant ship. If my information is correct, an Olympic class liner burned about 3,500 tons of coal one way on the Atlantic crossing.
And that was just a liner. That doesn’t take into account every merchant ship sailing.
Dr. Hansen is a bit of an hysteric, in my opinion.
“Dr. Hansen is a bit of an hysteric”
HIs intellect missed its flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco.
I prefer the world of “Death Hunt†from the same time period myself.
Yea, three cheers for “Death Hunt”.
The usually unhinged Hansen rushes into the far North outpost’s bar, frothing uncontrollably while beseeching the District Mounte, Edgar Millen = Lee Marvin:
They’re carrying coal on the tracks! We’re all gonna die! It’s going to be the destruction of Creation! What are you going to do about it!
Marvin: Jimmy, I’m going to close my eyes and pray you disappear.
Marvin closes eyes, then opens: Well, I never was much good at praying.
Hansen: And then we’ll move right on to China and India!
Marvin: Wrong, Jimmy, not if Buffalo Woman catches you first. [rumbling and heavy breathing] oh-oh…run for it while you still can!
Marvin: Around here the Lord has to work with what He’s got. Bartender!….Damn, I loved that black bastard.
My family was in the coal business for 50 years. Before that, my grandfather worked as a lumberjack in New England, making charcoal.
I have little doubt that it was the passing of coal and charcoal as fuels that caused the skies to clear, the sunlight to reach the surface, and the earth to warm. So I’m pretty sure I know how to stop global warming, if that’s still an issue. It ain’t pretty, though.
Trashman,
Very nicely done. One of my all time favorite movies.