RUSH: All right, got a little global warming news. There was a big hearing yesterday before a Henry Waxman committee. A number of scientists showed up, but the Drive-By Media reports on this are as they are on everything, totally one-sided.
(Playing of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.)
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and the wicked witch of wherever melting. One of our three global warming update themes. First the Los Angeles Times today. ‘Scientist accuses White House of ‘Nazi’ tactics. A government scientist, under sharp questioning by a federal panel for his outspoken views on global warming, stood by his view today that the Bush administration’s information policies smacked of Nazi Germany.
‘James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, took particular issue with the administration’s rule that a government information officer listen in on his interviews with reporters and its refusal to allow him to be interviewed by National Public Radio. ‘This is the United States,’ Hansen told the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee. ‘We do have freedom of speech here.’ But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) said it was reasonable for Hansen’s employer to ask him not to state views publicly that contradicted administration policy. … Hansen said the Bush administration was not the first in U.S. history to practice information management over government scientists, but it has been the most vigorous. He deplored a ‘politicization of science,” which is exactly what Hansen has done.
”When I testify to you as a government scientist,’ he said, ‘why does my testimony have to be reviewed, edited and changed by a bureaucrat in the White House?’ Sitting beside him was one of the bureaucrats Hansen was talking about: Philip Cooney, chief of staff to the White House Council on Environmental Quality from 2001 to 2005. Cooney, an official of the American Petroleum Institute before going to the White House, acknowledged having reviewed some of Hansen’s testimony as part of a long-standing practice designed to result in consistency.’
Now, I have here congressman Issa’s opening statement, which is barely, barely touched upon in this LA Times story. These are excerpts, and I want to read to you what Darrell Issa said to James Hansen. ‘You are known for embracing alarmist viewpoints, and you have embraced the idea that exaggeration is okay to get the public’s attention. But two climate researchers from the Royal Meteorological Society from the UK just this week said that this catastrophism and Hollywoodization of weather and climate create the real confusion in the public’s mind. You seem to forget that when you speak, regardless of your disclaimers, you are speaking for NASA, and you have also not shied away from the political realm.
‘You publicly endorsed Senator Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Three years earlier you received a quarter-million-dollar unrestricted cash prize from Teresa Heinz Kerry on behalf of the Heinz Foundation. You’ve spent the better part of this decade consistently and publicly criticizing the Bush administration’s climate change policies. But at the same time, you are an advocate for campaign finance reform. You make a point of condemning other scientist’s affiliation with special interests while you’re taking a quarter million dollars from Teresa Heinz Kerry. I guess I’m a little confused. Are you a scientist or are you a politician? Because when I put together your political advocacy, and I hate to say it, but the partisanship of that advocacy, I’m inclined to think that you, Mr. Hansen, are the one who’s politicizing science.’
Darrell Issa is right. It’s unfortunate the majority, the Democrats, have decided to place Dr. Roy Spencer at the tail end of this hearing and without any company, which they did. Four hours into the hearing, Roy Spencer testified. As you know, he called this program to discuss all this global warming stuff. He’s a skeptic. He is from University of Alabama at Birmingham. I have his opening statement here. Not one story that I’ve found mentions Roy Spencer’s testimony. Roy Spencer said that it was good, he enjoyed it. And it was effective. But it didn’t make the Drive-Bys because their deadline had come and gone, and the committee purposely waited ’til the very end, four hours after the whole hearing started, to get to Roy Spencer.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Opening statement now from Roy Spencer, testimony from yesterday before the House oversight and government affairs committee. James Hansen, from NASA, was first. Now, remember, Hansen started out by saying the Bush administration is a bunch of Nazis trying to control what he says, denying him free speech.
Roy Spencer: ‘I have been performing NASA-sponsored research for the last twenty-two years. Prior to my current position as a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, I was Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and was an employee of NASA from 1987 to 2001.’ Now, keep in mind it will run through the Clinton years. ‘During the period of my government employment, NASA had a rule that ANY interaction between its scientists and the press was to be coordinated through NASA management and public affairs. Understandably, NASA managers do not appreciate first learning of their scientists’ findings and opinions in the morning newspapers. It was no secret within NASA that I was skeptical of the size of the human influence on global climate. My views were diametrically opposed to those of Vice President Gore, and I believe that they were considered to be a possible hindrance to NASA getting full congressional funding for Mission to Planet Earth.
‘So, while Dr. Hansen was freely sounding the alarm over what HE believed to be dangerous levels of human influence on the climate, I tried to follow the rules. On many occasions I avoided answering questions from the media on the subject, and instead directed reporters to John Christy, my co-worker and a university employee. Through the management chain, I was politely told what I was allowed to say in congressional testimony. In fact, my dodging of committee questions regarding my personal opinions on the subject of global warming was considered to be quite humorous by one committee, an exchange which is now part of the congressional record. I want to make it very clear that I am not complaining — I am only relating these things because I was asked to. I was, and still am, totally supportive of NASA’s Earth satellite missions… but I understood that my position as a NASA employee was a privilege, not a right, and that there were rules I was expected to abide by. Partly because of those limits on what I could and couldn’t say to the press and congress, I voluntarily resigned from NASA in the fall of 2001. Even though my research responsibilities to NASA have NOT changed since resigning, being a university employee gives me much more freedom than government employees have to express opinions.’
So he’s saying, look, I disagreed with everything the Gore people were saying, or pretty much, on global warming, but I shut up. I followed the chain of command. I’m not a James Hansen who is out there taking all this money from Teresa Heinz Kerry’s foundation, getting involved in presidential candidacies and campaigns, and violating the rules and the chain of command over what can be said. ‘So, while you might think that the political influence on our climate research program started with the Bush Administration, that simply isn’t true. It has ALWAYS existed. You just never heard about it because NASA’s climate science program was aligned with Vice President Gore’s desire to get rid of fossil fuels. The bias started when the U.S. climate research program was first initiated. The emphasis on studying the PROBLEM of global warming, of course, presumes that a problem exists.
As a result, the funding has ALWAYS favored the finding of evidence for climate CATASTROPHE rather than for climate STABILITY. This biased approach to the funding of science serves several goals which favor a specific political ideology: One, It grows government science, environmental, and policy programs, which depend upon global warming remaining as much a threat as possible. Two, It favors climate researchers, who quite naturally have vested interests in careers, pet theories, and personal incomes. Three, and it provides justification for environmental lobbying groups, whose very existence depends upon sustaining public fears of environmental disaster. I’m NOT claiming that a global warming science program isn’t needed — It IS. We DO need to find out how much of our current warmth is human-induced, and how much we might expect in the future. I’m just pointing out that the political interference flows both ways — but not everyone has felt compelled to complain about it.’
Roy Spencer in his opening statement yesterday, testimony on global warming before the House oversight and government affairs committee. I only mention this to you because you will not read a word about what Roy Spencer said because the Democrats kept him all the way ’til the end of the hearings after four hours, long after Drive-By Media members had left, having gotten what they wanted from James Hansen, who was up earlier in the hearing. Another LA Times story: ‘Congressional hearing heats up over changes to climate reports.’ I’m not going to go through the whole story here, but it doesn’t mention Roy Spencer at all. He’s simply not mentioned in any of the Drive-By Media accounts that I have. Now, there is one exception to that. It’s an Alabama newspaper. AL.com. ‘Scientist cites pressure during Clinton years,’ and this story does mention what I just told you about Roy Spencer, but it’s a local paper covering a local guy.
None of the Drive-By Media dared mention Roy Spencer, who, full disclosure, has appeared on this program. He called to buttress a point that I was making about all this global warming panic and so forth. His expertise, as he described to us, was measuring precipitation, and the one thing that he says is never factored is the role precipitation plays in global warming, cooling, and all these things, not much of the models because you can’t predict it, and you can’t measure it. He said we don’t know how much it rains or snows any day of the year. We don’t have the ability to measure it all over the globe, and it’s a factor. Since we don’t know how to measure it, how much there is, it’s something that’s relevant that’s absent from all the models. That’s what he called to tell us. All right, back to the phones.
RUSH: John in Columbus, Ohio, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello. Hey, I just had heard awhile back when you were talking about these four billion people that have this $5 trillion to spend, I don’t really understand what the big hullabaloo is because the average is about three dollars a day per person.
RUSH: Well, that’s one time. The point of the story was, what he’s calling about there was a story early on in the program that the four and a half million people in poverty in the world today represent a $5 trillion untapped spending market. And I said, ‘Yeah? Well, if they don’t have the five trillion, who’s going to give it to them? Where are they going to get it? They’re clearly not able to produce it themselves, because they live in tyrannies, they live in dictatorships, and they live in socialism, or they live where there is no government, just out there in the wild.’ And you’re calling to say, ‘Well, it wouldn’t be much to give them five trillion, just three bucks a day from every human being on the planet.’
CALLER: No, no, no, that’s not what I’m saying.
RUSH: What are you saying?
CALLER: I’m just saying that big numbers sound impressive but what’s the relevance of it? Because $5 trillion sounds like a lot of money til’ you divide that by the number of people involved, and it’s not going to be a heck of a market for anybody. Because I’m assuming that’s based on annual —
RUSH: Oh, I see, I see. You’re saying that to give $5 trillion to four billion people would only result in them having three bucks a day?
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Or $1200 a year?
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: And of course what are they going to spend that on, and how’s that going to — oh, I see what you’re saying. Okay.
CALLER: It’s not going to buy a lot of cars or even blue jeans, you know.
RUSH: Right, right, right, right, right. Okay, I got it, I got it, you’re right. Well, that’s an interesting way to look at it. The more fascinating new is what I followed up with. That will be on the website, by the way, as will the entire transcript of Dr. Spencer’s testimony before the committee yesterday. I wanted to mention that to you, the whole thing in toto. But the notion of giving four and a half billion people $5 trillion, we’ve probably done it. You know, the dirty little secret is over the years, I bet we’ve done the equivalent of it, and where has it led? Hasn’t relieved anything, has it? Never will, will it? I wonder why giving people money will not solve their problems? Anybody got any ideas about that?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, before we get back to the phones, one more thing about James Hansen. If you are a regular listener, we have been chronicling this guy. This guy has been a malcontent on global warming while working at NASA. He has been out under protected status granted by the Drive-By Media as the world’s foremost authority in government attacking the Bush administration, while still in the government. I will tell you this. As a citizen and as a taxpayer, a big taxpayer, I am tired of James Hansen acting as if he speaks on my behalf. I am tired of James Hansen using his position to advance phony science. Who died and named him the boss? I’ll tell you who died and named him the boss, the Drive-By Media named him boss. He is the largest administration official, most prominent, outspoken critic, and he’s no different than these scabs in the justice department or the scabs at the Pentagon or the scabs at the state department, the scabs at the CIA trying to destroy this administration.
Remember the name James Hansen, because he’s no different than any of these other people who are trying to sabotage the work of this administration, while being a member of this administration. He pretends to be a victim, when we all know that because he is loved by the liberals and the Democrats, he is untouchable, just as Fitzgerald is untouchable, just as Armitage is untouchable because Armitage is opposed to the Bush foreign policy. But the fact of the matter is that James Hansen is still living off taxpayer dollars and whatever money he can grub from Teresa Heinz Kerry and her foundation and any others like it. You would expect there to be some accountability for his actions. If he wants to be a private citizen, he can say and do whatever he wants, and that’s what Roy Spencer did. Roy Spencer resigned from NASA, went to the University of Alabama at Huntsville, and that’s why he speaks out now. He shut up when he was a member of the administration and NASA during the Clinton administration, had views diametrically opposed to the vice perpetrator, Algore.