Tim Lambert has coverage of the latest in the denialist attempt to discredit global warming science - the smearing of scientist James Hansen. Using the bogey-man of George Soros, they try to suggest that Hansen has been funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars.
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute, which gave him "legal and media advice"?
That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.
They do this by the dubious assumption that 100% of the Soros organization's outlay to cover "politicization of science" that year went to Hansen.
The facts? Hansen received zero money from Soros, and 10,000 dollars and legal representation from the Government Accountability Project . As Hansen explains (PDF), he temporarily accepted this help, then declined after he was concerned strings would be attached.
So, in other words, this is a lie, and a smear, and it is completely beyond the pale for the Investors Business Daily to attack a civil servant this way and fabricate some kind of bribery charge against him. Lambert has also covered other attempts to discredit Hansen by saying he used to raise alarms for global cooling, equally dishonest, that are sadly already making the rounds of the conservative blogosphere unchallenged.
It again goes to the fundamental dishonesty of the global warming denialist movement. They can't win with data, so they have to resort to lies, and smears to advance their agenda.
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Investors Business Daily came to my attention during the Clinton administration. It's possible useful info might have been inside about financial matters, but the front cover during the Clinton years was 'Anti-Clinton Smear of the Day,' day after day after day.
We have all heard that ad hominem (i.e., "Don't listen to Joe 'cause he's a no-good chicken thief") is a logical fallacy, but I have said elsewhere that there ought to be a 'blown credibility' exception. Under the blown cred exception, we can say 'Don't listen to Joe 'cause he's a no-good chicken thief who has been shown to lie repeatedly.' This has the virtue of defusing the Big Lie. The Big Lie works because Big Liars can spin new lies faster than we can disporve them, and bystanders assume 'The truth lies in the middle.' Big Liars always win under those rules. But under blown cred, we state that nothing on page one of Incredible Liars Daily can ever be believed again, by default.
At least the UVA folks can take some solace in the following article about good old Pat Michaels
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/28/AR20070…
I was trained to deliver Al Gore's presentation "The Inconvenient Truth," and I've given a bunch of them now. And lately I've been revising them to focus more openly on why we're in this mess - not the excess CO2, but the political reasons.
* I spend more time showing people how a few companies have spent a pile of money on confusing the issue, just as the tobacco companies once did so they could rake in the profits for a few more years while killing a few million more people.
* I show people the quotes from U.S. scientists requesting that the U.S. government stop suppressing their research and findings.
* I show quotes from our vainglorious 'leaders' denigrating Kyoto.
* And finally, I show how their latest attempts at a 'climate deal' (APEC) are really attempts to undermine any attempt to do anything.
For example, I show Stephen Harper's comment (I am Canadian and he is the current Prime Minister)that "Kyoto is a socialist plot" and that he will work to defeat it. I talk people through how this is so clearly ridiculous: do they honestly believe that thousands of scientists are lying about their results? Do they honestly believe that thousands of scientists have secret meetings to determine what to agree upon, and that they've concocted a plot to take over the world? And that they publish their results for anyone to see in the hopes that nobody will notice the falsehoods? It is so obviously ridiculous to believe this, I suggest, that it says something about a person who would believe it.
We have to call out the liars and frauds constantly and openly. Make no mistake, these people have declared war on us, and they mean to win by whatever means necessary. It is critical that we reframe the way people see these liars and denialists - as the underhanded, foolish, and corrupt people that they are. As another poster says, they will come up with lies faster than we can disprove them, so we must show them to be liars so that their credibility will end.
Hansen received zero money from Soros, and 10,000 dollars and legal representation from the Government Accountability Project.
From my reading of Hansen's response, he never accepted the money at all. He declined the award but temporarily accepted the pro-bono legal advice.
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