Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Politics and Science Don't Mix

Story

This is the story of the man that cried wolf, and was then made to look stupid. James Hansen is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He proclaimed earlier this year that the White House was muzzling him because of his views on global warming.

On the surface this seems plausible, as the White House is not a huge believer that the climate is changing because of our activities. Unfortunately for Hansen, he has been allowed to give 1,400 interviews. That kind of makes his complaint look a bit stupid. It also turns out he has repeatedly violated NASA procedure with regard to interviews.

Mr.. Hansen was a consultant on Al Gore's documentary which has been highly criticized as inaccurate and even been called 'a work of fiction' by other scientists. Throw in the fact that Hansen has contributed thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns and things start to look a bit fishy. He just happened to receive a huge grant from the Heinz foundation after donating to Kerry's campaign.

Add in some comments about how this country is turning Nazi or Soviet, and you have your typical left wing moonbat nonsense coming out. This screams of political and scientific hackery, and this brings me to the real point of this post.

Global warming, or climate change, or whatever you want to call it is being politicized in a horrible way. It has turned into a religion for many people. There is no way for the average citizen of the planet to get honest reporting of scientific fact. There is to much of a vested interest in proving we are destroying the planet. The non-biased scientific community is being shouted down by the zealots on both sides of the argument.

I am not saying Mr. Hansen is proclaiming the evil's of global warming solely based on his political views, but it sure seems that may play a large role in his decision making.