Nice work if you can get it

James Hansen, one of the more famous of NASA's global warming/cooling/changing alarmists, has been milking the AGW cow in double shifts.  In addition to his government salary of $180,000.00, he's pulled in the following:

-- A shared $1 million prize from the Dan David Foundation for his "profound contribution to humanity." Hansen's cut ranged from $333,000 to $500,000, Horner said, adding that the precise amount is not known because Hansen's publicly available financial disclosure form only shows the prize was "an amount in excess of $5,000."

-- The 2010 Blue Planet prize worth $550,000 from the Asahi Glass Foundation, which recognizes efforts to solve environmental issues.

-- The Sophie Prize for his "political activism," worth $100,000. The Sophie Prize is meant to "inspire people working towards a sustainable future."

-- Speaking fees totaling $48,164 from a range of mostly environmental organizations.

-- A $15,000 participation fee, waived by the W.J. Clinton Foundation for its 2009 Waterkeeper Conference.

-- $720,000 in legal advice and media consulting services provided by The George Soros Open Society Institute. Hansen said he did not take "direct" support from Soros but accepted "pro bono legal advice."

As long as the weather continues to get either warmer, cooler, or changier, Hansen will be able to claim that 1) he predicted it, and that 2) it is your fault, and that 3) taxpayers should continue to give him more money. 
Nice work if you can get it. 

The pic of Hansen traveling to a protest to speak out against traveling came from here. 

Watts up with the "Don't Panic" stories about the weather?

Anthony Watts, of the Watts Up With That site, has a fine collection of Global Cooling, Global Warming, Global Climate Disruption, and whatever else they're calling it this week stories, from all over the world. 
It's been a very bad week for the Panic Community. 
What it amounts to?  The world's governments are running out of money to run cover for this mess, and the facades are starting to crack.  Just think, if we had a good economy, we'd be buying carbon credits/Papal Indulgences from Al Gore by now. 
I usually don't scrape someone else's site, but I hope Mr. Watts will understand my swiping all of what you see below. 

This is a collection of news story excerpts this past week. AGW proponents and environmentalists is general are taking hit after hit in the media this week. – Anthony (Watts)


From the GWPF via email: The Crisis of Climate Catastrophism



The threat to tropical rainforests from climate change may have been exaggerated by environmentalists, according to a new study. Researchers have shown that the world’s tropical forests thrived in the far distant past when temperatures were 3 to 5C warmer than today. They believe that a wetter, warmer future may actually boost plants and animals living the tropics. – David Derbyshire, Daily Mail, 12 November 2010


There are many climactic models today suggesting that … if the temperature increases in the tropics by a couple of degrees, most of the forest is going to be extinct. What we found was the opposite to what we were expecting: we didn’t find any extinction event [in plants] associated with the increase in temperature, we didn’t find that the precipitation decreased. — Carlos Jaramillo, The Guardian, 12 November 2010




The spectre of imminent thirst and/or starvation for billions by 2035 from melting glaciers would appear to have been confirmed as the worst kind of alarmist scaremongering. — Lewis Page, The Register, 11 November 2010




Bjorn Lomborg should be careful about what he wishes for. The unintended consequences pursuant to a renewable trough worth $250 billion has the potential to spawn a lot more nonsense, given its potential for increasing the size and direction of government and making energy policy even more political, much less meritorious. The skeptical environmentalist has become far too credulous. –Jon Boone, MasterResource, 11 November 2010



MORE than $1 billion of taxpayers’ money was wasted on subsidies for household solar roof panels that favoured the rich and did little to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, a scathing review has found. –Tom Arup, The Age, 11 November 2010


Despite a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government, Solyndra, a maker of solar panels in the southeast San Francisco Bay Area city of Fremont, will close one of its manufacturing plants, lay off 40 permanent and 150 contract workers, delay expansion plans of a new plant largely financed with the government-guaranteed loan and scale back production capacity more than 50 percent. Despite the hype and tax money, Solyndra seems unable to compete with Chinese manufacturers, whose prices are lower. This is the latest bad news for the company touted by Mr. Schwarzenegger and President Barack Obama as one of the green industry’s supposed shining lights. – Editorial, The Orange County Register, 11 November 2010

Harper's Magazine, February 2008, An Annotation Free Environment

About a month ago, I posted something about the advertisements in Harper's magazine. I called it "Saving The Earth By Selling Cars". I had noticed that the majority of the full page ads had a Green theme, and stated that "If Harper's readers want to support the environment and Toyota at the same time, there's only one way they can do so: Buy a Toyota, park it someplace, and throw away the keys." Lower emissions be damned.

My point was that the ads were centered around the theme of Liberal Guilt. Guilt over emissions. Guilt over consumption. Guilt for even existing in a space that could otherwise be occupied by The Mississippi Delta Doodoo Dingo, or other unlikely critters.

I thought it was freakin' brilliant.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of praising a few things in that issue of Harper's. I've always enjoyed the "Annotations" section of the magazine, in which they take a press release, a campaign brochure, a map, or anything other printed media, and explain every aspect of it. This is usually done with a critial eye. When I visit Border's or B&N, I always read the Annotation section of Harpers even when I'm not going to buy the magazine.
Well, I screwed up when I linked to the Meredith Broussard annotation of a peanut allergies pamphlet, where Broussard takes aim at what can only be called an allergy hysteria, and declares that most of it is baloney.

Every word that I wrote about Saving The Earth By Selling Cars was ignored. People were Googling "Peanut Allergy", "Food Allergy", "Harper's", "Meredith Broussard", and "Peanut Allergy Denial" (as in Holocaust Denial, fer heaven's sake....) and arriving here. At least a couple of hundred of them, which by humble Whited Sepulchre standards is like filling a Mexico City Soccer Stadium.
Only two visitors left comments. They were not happy that I was praising Ms. Broussard or anything else about Harpers. (For those with a morbid curiosity, you can read "Reason" magazine's explanation of why we didn't have this panic 30 years ago. Follow the money.)

If someone merely linking to Meredith Broussard gets hit with a Blogalanche, what must the Harper's mailbox look like? I made a mental note to check the letters section, and to see what they would Annotate in the next issue. Would the Annotators prevail, and continue throwing stink bombs into another Temple of Panic? Or would they wimp out and attack George Bush or some other "safe" Republican target?

It was with joyful anticipation that I picked up the February 2008 issue of Harper's.

There is no Annotations section in the February 2008 issue of Harper's.

Coincidence? I think not.

Oh well. I'll annotate this month's ads in a later post.

P.S. - In the words of comedian Chris Rock, "We got so much food in America, we're allergic to food. Allergic to food! Hungry people ain't allergic to s**t. You think anyone in Rwanda's got a f***in' lactose intolerance?!"

Another P.S. - Mama, I apologize for including the Chris Rock profanity. But he's very funny, and Daddy would've loved him.