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Activist Head of US Goddard Space Institute Quits So He Can Sue Government Over Global Warming

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Photo Credit: ALICE OLLSTEIN

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

NASA’s James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a controversial and highly vocal voice of alarm about the planet’s changing climate, will retire as the director of the space institute, NASA announced Tuesday — and plans to immediately sue his former employer.

Hansen will step down from his $180,000 a year position to join a number of lawsuits challenging the federal and state governments for their failure to police industry over man’s effect on the climate, the New York Times reported.
Hansen was clearly aware of the irony.

“As a government employee, you can’t testify against the government,” he told the Times. Hansen is a central figure in the battle against climate change; on Feb. 13, he was arrested alongside of actress Daryl Hannah, activist Bill McKibben and a small group of activists protesting the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

That was at least the fourth arrest for the climate scientist — and his high profile was raising eyebrows at NASA headquarters.
“It was becoming clear that there were people in NASA who would be much happier if the ‘sideshow’ would exit,” Hansen told the Times.

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Surprise: Obama’s Science Advisers Press For Carbon Standards

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Photo Credit: Allison Harger

President Obama’s outside team of scientific advisers is recommending the creation of carbon emissions standards for existing pollution sources and continued expansion of shale gas production in order to confront global warming.

Those are two of the wide-ranging climate policy suggestions that the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) unveiled Friday that address ways to curb emissions and adapt to inevitable climatic changes.

Others include creation of a “National Commission on Climate Preparedness,” infrastructure planning that integrates climate risks, and various steps to “decarbonize” the economy.

“Mitigation is needed to avoid a degree of climate change that would be unmanageable despite efforts to adapt. Adaptation is needed because the climate is already changing and some further change is inevitable regardless of what is done to reduce its pace and magnitude,” PCAST said in a letter to Obama released Friday.
The advisers note that broad policies to impose a cost on carbon emissions, such as a carbon tax or cap-and-trade, don’t have political traction. But other options to address emissions are available.

Their letter to Obama urges “new performance standards for CO2 emissions from existing stationary sources.” The endorsement arrives as environmentalists are pressing the administration to begin setting standards for the current fleet of coal-fired power plants.

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John Kerry’s First Foreign Policy Speech Spins Global Warming Hysteria

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Photo Credit: The New American

In his first major foreign policy speech on Wednesday, newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a rather unconventional introduction, arguing that Americans need to garner up the “courage” to tackle climate change. Emphasizing security measures that are necessary to maintain national security, Kerry added that new environmental policies and investments in “green” energy technologies should be a priority for his department.

“We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren,” he said, highlighting the “catastrophic” impact climate change will have on future generations: “An environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”

The secretary of state called for collective action to curb the “detrimental” effects of climate change, as he propagated a doomsday scenario where sea levels rise and rising temperatures wreak havoc on the Earth:

And let’s face it — we are all in this one together. No nation can stand alone. We share nothing so completely as our planet. When we work with others — large and small — to develop and deploy the clean technologies that will power a new world, we’re also helping create new markets and new opportunities for America’s second-to-none innovators and entrepreneurs to succeed in the next great revolution.

So let’s commit ourselves to doing the smart thing and the right thing and truly commit to tackling this challenge. Because if we don’t rise to meet it, rising temperatures and rising sea levels will surely lead to rising costs down the road. If we waste this opportunity, it may be the only thing our generations are remembered for. We need to find the courage to leave a far different legacy.

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Obama Will Use Nixon-Era Law to Fight Climate Change

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Photo Credit: Daniel Acker

President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways.

The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.

“It’s got us very freaked out,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based group that represents 11,000 companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Southern Co. (SO) The standards, which constitute guidance for agencies and not new regulations, are set to be issued in the coming weeks, according to lawyers briefed by administration officials.

In taking the step, Obama would be fulfilling a vow to act alone in the face of a Republican-run House of Representatives unwilling to pass measures limiting greenhouse gases. He’d expand the scope of a Nixon-era law that was first intended to force agencies to assess the effect of projects on air, water and soil pollution.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” Obama said last month during his State of the Union address. He pledged executive actions “to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

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Climate Change Science Poised To Enter Nation’s Classrooms

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Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks

New national science standards that make the teaching of global warming part of the public school curriculum are slated to be released this month, potentially ending an era in which climate skepticism has been allowed to seep into the nation’s classrooms.

The Next Generation Science Standards were developed by the National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nonprofit Achieve and more than two dozen states. The latest draft recommends that educators teach the evidence for man-made climate change starting as early as elementary school and incorporate it into all science classes, ranging from earth science to chemistry. By eighth grade, students should understand that “human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming),” the standards say.

They’re “revolutionary,” said Mark McCaffrey, programs and policy director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a nonprofit that defends evolution and climate education and opposes the teaching of religious views as science.

The 26 states that helped write the standards are expected to adopt them. Another 15 or so have indicated they may accept them—meaning climate change instruction could make its way into classrooms in 40-plus states.

James Taylor, a senior fellow at the conservative Heartland Institute, which is developing a school curriculum that promotes climate skepticism, said the standards’ stance on climate change is based on “unscientific speculation and hype.” But he also said the group has no plans to fight their adoption by the states.

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Hill Hearing On Global Warming Cancelled By D.C. Snowstorm

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Photo Credit: APAn unusually chilly March day and the snowstorm it spawned have shut down much of official Washington on Wednesday — including a hearing House Republicans had called to examine global warming.

“Postponed due to weather,” read the notice from the House Science, Space and Technology Committee sent in the morning.

The hearing was scheduled to give House lawmakers a comprehensive briefing on how well scientists understand the climate and humans’ effects on it as a means “to inform decision-making on potential mitigation options.”

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Green Fatigue Sets In: The World Cools On Global Warming

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Photo Credit: Jonathan Kos-ReadPublic concern about environmental issues including climate change has slumped to a 20-year low since the financial crisis, a global study reveals.

Fewer people now consider issues such as CO2 emissions, air and water pollution, animal species loss, and water shortages to be “very serious” than at any time in the last two decades, according to the poll of 22,812 people in 22 countries including Britain and the US.

Despite years of studies showing the impact of global warming on the planet, only 49 per cent of people now consider climate change a very serious issue – far fewer than at the beginning of the worldwide financial crisis in 2009.

Worries about climate change first dropped in industrialised nations but they have now also fallen in developing economies including Brazil and China, according to the survey by GlobeScan Radar.

The declining interest in climate change comes amid a backlash against costly green energy investments in an age of austerity. David Nussbaum, head of WWF UK, said “sustained pressure” was required from political leaders to combat climate change. He said it was only when “real indicators” of climate change came, such as floods and droughts, that public perceptions changed.

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Will Climate Scamsters Be Jailed for Fraud?

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Photo Credit: WNDIt’s official. What I was howled down and banned for telling the recent U.N. climate conference in Doha is true. There has been no global warming for 17 years.

Rajendra Pachauri, the railroad engineer who heads the U.N.’s accident-prone climate panel, the IPCC, recently admitted this fact here in Australia.

The Hadley/CRU temperature record shows no warming for 18 or 19 years. RSS satellites show none for 23 years. Not one computer model predicted that.

Pachauri said the zero trend would have to persist for 30-40 years before it mattered. Scientists disagree. In 2008 the modelers wrote that more than 14 years without global warming would indicate a “discrepancy” between their predictions and reality. By their own criterion, they have grossly, persistently, profitably exaggerated manmade warming.

The 17-year flatline gives Australia’s $180,000-a-year, part-time climate kommissar, Tim Flannery, a problem. In January he crowed that extreme weather like Sydney’s recent heatwave had been predicted for decades.

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Video: CNN Anchor Questions Whether Global Warming To Blame For Asteroid

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Photo credit: NASAThe threat of global warming may stretch so far beyond Earth that it affects meteorites millions of miles away in space — at least according to one CNN anchor.

“Talk about something else that’s falling from the sky and that is an asteroid. What’s coming our way? Is this an effect of, perhaps, of global warming, or is this just some meteoric occasion?” CNN’s Deborah Feyerick asked Bill “The Science Guy” Nye, head of the Planetary Society, in a Saturday segment.

Feyerick, who had earlier quizzed Nye about the possible link between global warming and the weekend snowstorm, was referring to Asteroid 2012 DA14, which will whiz within 17,000 miles or so of Earth on Feb 15. The asteroid’s relatively close trajectory on its latest pass of Earth has been extensively covered in recent weeks.

“No, no, no, no,” Nye replied to the spaced-out question, before gracefully extending Feyerick a lifeline by saying “except it’s all science. The word meteorology and the word meteor come from the same root, so, uhh…”
Several of Nye’s fellow scientists were less diplomatic.

“Nye was good enough to respond with what sounded like a non-sequitur … instead of saying, ‘No, dummy,’” noted Popular Science’s website.

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Study: Opinions on Climate Change Rise and Fall With the Temperature

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Photo Credit: US NewsAmericans’ opinions on climate change blow with the wind—with more concern shown in years that are much warmer or much colder than normal—according to a new study released Tuesday.

Five of the nation’s top newspapers were also more likely to publish opinion pieces that showed “belief” in climate change during years that were colder or warmer than normal. Previous studies have suggested that people are more likely to believe in or “show worry” about global warming when the weather is particularly bad, but the study, published in the journal Climatic Change, is the largest to date and uses data from 1990 to 2010, a much longer time period than previous studies.

“I’m not surprised by the results judging by how pervasive these opinions were in the polls,” says study author Simon Donner, of the University of British Columbia’s department of geography. “I think certainly on a public understanding of science issue it’s a problem. Even if the planet is warming, we’re going to have cold years.”

Donner says that newspapers were more likely to publish opinion pieces about climate change during heat waves in an attempt to make the connection between day-to-day weather and climate. Climate change is not a “breaking story,” according to Donner.

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