By Tom Blumer | November 16, 2008 | 11:20 AM EST

Earlier today, Christopher Booker at the UK Telegraph noted a "surreal scientific blunder," followed by an attempted cover-up, that should cause everyone to question the source's past and future credibility.

The source of the shoddy work is NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the outfit run by world champion globalarmist James Hansen. Hansen has in the past stated that "heads of major fossil-fuel companies who spread disinformation about global warming should be 'tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.'"

What Booker reports causes one to wonder what the appropriate punishment should be for committing drop-dead obvious errors and integrity-lacking follow-up.

Part of the punishment is surely the Telegraph's delicious headline, followed by Booker's criticism (bolds are mine):

The world has never seen such freezing heat

By Noel Sheppard | July 25, 2008 | 3:38 PM EDT
The next time some media member says something stupid like "the global warming debate is over," or "the science is settled," consider the firestorm that was set off by a tiny NewsBusters article playfully titled "Clean Air Causes Global Warming, Global Warming Causes Smog."

Although it is now two weeks since this was first published, f

By Noel Sheppard | June 23, 2008 | 8:47 PM EDT

If you needed any more evidence as to just how far to the left NASA's James Hansen is, consider that on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of his highly-controversial testimony to Congress -- wherein he presaged gloom and doom at the hands of the naturally occurring gas carbon dioxide -- he decided to make his global warming case at the ultra-leftwing website the Huffington Post (h/t NBer NL207).This puts him in the company of such luminaries as Alec Baldwin, John Cusack, Bill Maher, and other Hollywoodans feigning intellectual superiority.

By Noel Sheppard | June 23, 2008 | 10:46 AM EDT

Although it seems like just yesterday, Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the day James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told members of Congress the world was doomed if the burning of fossil fuels didn't immediately cease.

To commemorate this inauspicious occasion, Hansen is going back to Capitol Hill to call for oil company executives to be put on trial for crimes against humanity and nature.

Can you imagine the media firestorm this is going to create?

Critical update: Audio of Hansen discussing this with NPR's Diane Rehm available here (h/t Anthony Watts).

While you ponder, the following was reported by England's Guardian Monday (emphasis added):

By Amy Ridenour | June 3, 2008 | 10:53 PM EDT

If you plug the search terms "James Hansen" and "censored" into Google, you get 37,900 results. Do the same search substituting "Roy Spencer" for "James Hansen," and you get 610 results (the third of which is from Newsbusters [here and here]). The media is highly selective about the censorship it covers.

By Mark Finkelstein | May 11, 2008 | 1:14 PM EDT
If there were a Society of Global Warming Alarmists, Bill McKibben might get kicked out for being too much of a worry wart . . .

You've probably seen those phone-message forms with check boxes in ascending order of urgency from "FYI—no need to return call" all the way up to "the future of civilization hangs in the balance." We might see that last category as light-hearted exaggeration, but it's no laughing matter to McKibben. In his jeremiad in today's LA Times literally entitled "Civilization's last chance," McKibben solemnly declares that "the world looks a little terminal right now" and "it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth." OK. Just so long as it's nothing serious.

McKibben's lament is based in important part on a paper that James Hansen and several co-authors have submitted to Science magazine which concludes that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."
By Noel Sheppard | March 4, 2008 | 10:22 AM EST

By now most people are aware that the founder of The Weather Channel, John Coleman, said global warming is "the greatest scam in history" last November.

On Monday, while speaking at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change being held in New York City, Coleman took his criticisms further by advocating that all those involved in the sale and marketing of carbon credits, including Al Gore, should be sued "to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.”

As reported over at the Business & Media Institute by my colleague Jeff Poor (emphasis added throughout, h/t to many):

By Jeff Poor | February 22, 2008 | 2:20 PM EST

Global warming alarmist Anne Thompson has shown a propensity for having little regard for economic reality.

Thompson offered viewers on the February 21 broadcast of the "NBC Nightly News" a variety of reasons why building a badly-needed coal-fired power plant in an isolated part of Nevada is a bad idea.

"Critics say emissions are exactly the issue, because coal-fired power is the nation's biggest producer of CO2 emissions," Thompson said in a February 21 report from Ely, Nev. "That's why Nevada is in the center of this fight. The Ely energy center, which would sit in this valley, along with the other two proposed coal-fired plants, could more than double those greenhouse gas emissions, sending another 31 million tons into the sky."

By Noel Sheppard | January 19, 2008 | 11:34 AM EST

Fortunately, most people will likely be watching the Giants-Packers game Sunday evening, and will therefore miss the one-sided hysteria.

However, for those that mysteriously don't switch channels after the Chargers-Patriots game, CBS will offer a special about global warming this Sunday instead of "60 Minutes."

How marvelous.

The CBS News website hysterically described this installment of "The Age of Warming":

By Matthew Balan | October 25, 2007 | 3:27 PM EDT

CNN’s special “worldwide investigation” “Planet in Peril,” in two segments looking at the debate amongst politicians and scientists on whether climate change is a man-made phenomenon, failed to mention that NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen [pictured at right], one the scientists featured in the second segment, has received funding from George Soros, while mentioning that “second biggest contributors to [global warming skeptic Senator James] Inhofe's Senate office are energy and natural resource companies.”

The first segment, which began 8 minutes into the 10 pm Eastern hour of Wednesday night’s program, examined the political debate over climate change, focusing on “the loudest voice” of Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. CNN correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta introduced the segment by referring back to the previous segments of “Planet in Peril,” which looked at the impact of climate change in different parts of the world. “From what we’ve seen in Greenland, Alaska, and Africa, the Earth's climate is clearly changing. It's not a theory. It's a fact. But what's causing those changes? The majority of the scientific community says it's mankind. But there are powerful voices who say otherwise.”

By Noel Sheppard | September 28, 2007 | 12:55 PM EDT

A fascinating new liberal defense mechanism has arisen in the past couple of years: Whenever you want to dodge criticism, just claim you are being swift-boated.

In fact, this has become such a part of political parlance that Microsoft Word now recognizes the term "swift-boated" without highlighting it as errant. Isn't that special?

With that in mind, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, is claiming that recent accusations made about him - that he was involved in a GISS report in 1971 predicting an ice age, and that he received money from multi-billionaire George Soros - are nothing more than swift-boating by his critics.

Of course, folks who offhandedly use this defense seem to forget that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) actually never proved that any of the claims made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were false.

Similarly, in Hansen's case, though he admirably tried to deflect scrutiny, he also failed to thoroughly refute the claims made against him (emphasis added, h/t NB reader M. Hoff):