Earlier we discussed the political jabs lacking scientific merit at the blogs that have sprung up to harry and heckle climate scientists, especially a relatively new one called, inaptly, “haunting the library.”
The author and commenters have taken to calling Dr. James Hansen “Beijing Jim,” thinking it a cleverly insulting nickname.
What?
Portrait of James Hansen for James Hansen, at Americans Who Tell the Truth.org
I almost regret asking. Why “Beijing Jim?”
They started it when Hansen wrote an opposite-editorial page piece for the South China Post, urging China to act against global warming anyway, despite the U.S.’s failure to take aggressive-enough action yet.
haunting the library tries to spin the piece as Hansen moving over to China’s side in all issues, a position they seem to think is somehow unpatriotic (and therefore, insulting to Hansen).
Actually, in the article, Hansen doesn’t let China off the hook at all. It’s a patient, well-aimed call to China to do the right things. Only by misreporting and misrepresenting what Hansen said can climate science cranks spin it.
James Hansen takes the honorable high road, calling on the world’s most-polluting nations to take action now to save our children’s and grandchildren’s future. haunting the library issues schoolyard, childish and churlish taunts.
Oh, but Dear Reader, you’re already guessing at the particular intellectual clumsiness I’m getting to, aren’t you? It’s about that taunting name, “Beijing Jim.” It’s unfair and undeserved because Hansen represented America well, and honorably. “Free Enterprise Jim” would be closer to the facts.
It’s also geographically wrong. South China Morning Post is a Hong Kong newspaper, not Beijing. Hong Kong is the Chinese outpost of rampant free enterprise, as you know and the rest of the world knows. Hong Kong is not Beijing.
The climate science cranks at haunting the library don’t know climate science, don’t know newspaper publishing, and flail at geography, too. They’re cranky, too. Cranky cranks. Poetic, almost.
More:
- Hansen’s follow-up at his website, part 1 (part 2 not available yet); Hansen’s website
- Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online plays nasty, and wrong
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January 24, 2011: Others are watching, too. Tim Lambert at Deltoid makes gentle correction of an Andrew Bolt column relying on misinformation from hauntingthelibrary. Good discussion there.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Hattip has a reality problem.
I had dinner with Hansen a few years ago (we was speaking at our our little town center).
Calling him a far left loon is hysterical. He’s a somewhat-shy midwesterner who leans conservative and and at least used to be Republican (but since the Republican party seems to require rejection of science these days, I’m not sure he is any more).
He mostly worries about his grandchildren, whose pictures he pulled out at dinner and who show up in his talks.
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Part of the Horizon program:
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If it;s available in the USA, the BBC had an excellent Horizon on Monday night (24 January) fronted by Sir Paul Nurse primarily on climate change deniers. If you want to see the most elegant example of leading a denier gently up the garden path and then letting him hang himself on his own words this is it.
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Hello there, Hattip!
Would you be so kind as to explain how the Marxists intend to use the issue of climate change to serve their political ends? Inquiring minds are just dying to know.
The mind boggles, of course, to realize Birchers, CCC’ers, Eagle Forumites and other relics of our “red scare” past still exist. I have expect Fr. Coughlin to stir from his grave and offer you a hearty, “attaboy”.
Do keep the hits coming, HT. We love the “oldies” here.
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Hattip, please list the point of science upon which Hansen is known to err, and list the published papers which show his error.
Science is not religion, not what one chooses to believe, but is instead a system of of study and discourse which leads to knowledge. No matter how much we do not like the conclusions, the conclusions of science remain. You can complain in nasty and ill-informed fashion all you want, but the Earth continues to warm, as Hansen warned and warns.
You may complain about the physics as you understand it, but Al Gore is not God, and consequently, the migration of plants and animals due to warming is not because they read the newspapers and decided to “believe” Al Gore. (Or, maybe you can make the case that Gore is God, or at least has supernatural powers — was that your intent?)
Critics of Hansen, on the other hand, slip away from knowledge, now claiming that science is “Marxist.” If so, Marx was right. Are you sure that’s what you wish to imply?
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One can only imagine the insanity that leads cranks to think that a well-established body of science is the result of a “left-wing world view”.
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Hanson has been proved to be a far left loon; it is he that is could be called “crank”, but in reality he is a liar.
“Climate Science” has been proved to not be science at all but merely statistical manipulation massaging bogus “data” for Marxist political ends. If you new anything about real science, e.g., Physics, you would know the difference. In fact, so-called “climate science” when subjected to that sort of rigor quickly falls apart.
You have been had. You are pursuing this nonsense because you cannot face the fundamental vanity and immorality of your left-wing world view. You imagine that you have some sort of superior knowledge and intellectual vantage, but in fact your “position” is empty of real content and puerile in aspect, and your “vantage” is a vainglorious self-delusion.
Grow up. Get over it. There is no such thing as AGW and there is no “Climate Crisis”.
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