Climate "Scientist" Has No Credibility (Updated)

Attention whore James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is using tomorrow's 20th anniversary of his first BS session with Congress to call for the arrest of oil company CEOs. He wants to try them for "high crimes against humanity and nature."

In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated. Hansen's speech to Congress on June 23 1988 is seen as a seminal moment in bringing the threat of global warming to the public's attention. At a time when most scientists were still hesitant to speak out, he said the evidence of the greenhouse gas effect was 99% certain, adding "it is time to stop waffling".

Meanwhile, data from every source except GISS shows no warming trend for the past 11 years. Funny that.

ALSO: In what could be an unfortunate coincidence, tomorrow is an opinion day for the Supreme Court. A ruling on the Exxon Valdez punitive damages case is a distinct possibility. As I wrote in February, Justice Alito had to recuse himself because he owns ExxonMobil stock, making a 4-4 split possible. If that happens, Exxon will be required to pay the largest punitive damage award upheld in Supreme Court history. The $2.5 billion award (reduced from $5 billion in the appellate court) is greater than the combination of all punitives ever awarded in federal court.

Rulings on the Exxon case, and the D.C. gun ban case are expected sometime in the next week. Possibly as soon as tomorrow morning.

[I'm not back, but I've got a thing for the Valdez, oil companies, and the ideological battle over the correct way to measure punitive damages (fun!) so I thought I'd put all this on your radar.]

Morning Update: No Supreme Court opinion in either D.C. v. Heller or the Exxon case this morning. The Court will release more opinions on Wednesday. Seven opinions are left to be announced this term.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 02:10 AM

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