By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That

I’ve been wrestling with this topic for hours now as to how to best present it in this forum.  I finally decided to simply just write it as I see it. It has been an ugly day for law and common sense in the world. Vandalism in the name of ecological causes is now “ok” thanks in part to Dr. James Hansen, of NASA GISS coming to the defense of eco-vandals.  See the second story here. Now, encouraged by this “victory” that gives a sanction to eco-vandalism in the UK, how many more shall we see? And if one of these people is injured and kills themselves or others in the process of the next stunt? What then? Who is responsible?

Certainly I want a cleaner world, and better energy resources with focus on the future. But, sanctioning vandalism for these causes is not the way to get there. What do I want from NASA as a taxpayer? Science, solutions, and inspiring ideas turned into reality. I don’t want political activism in the name of science. After thinking awhile about this, I’ve come to the following conclusions:

1- A NASA scientist siding with vandalism as a “lawful excuse” is an inappropriate abuse of the position. It was a question of law, not of science.

2- Dr. Hansen cannot separate himself from the agency as private citizen in this case, because he was brought in as an “expert witness”. Even if he paid his own way and took personal time, his presence was based on taxpayer funded research.

3- It appears Dr. Hansen has violated the code of ethics posted on the NASA Office of General Council webpage. From the Goddard Institute for Space Studies web page:  GISS is a component laboratory of Goddard Space Flight Center’s Earth Sciences Division, which is part of GSFC’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate. Thus Hansen falls under these ethics rules. Specifically, Dr. Hansen’s defense of vandalism in the name of a cause he believes in fails under the NASA Misuse of position rule. If he received compensation of any kind, such as airfare, rooms, board etc. to appear as a NASA expert, he would also be breaking other NASA conduct rules.

4- As keeper of data, specifically the GISTEMP dataset, he has now brought the impartiality of that data into question due to his activism in areas unrelated to scientific research. Certainly Dr. Hansen has a body of work that is impressive, there is no disputing that. But it is time for Dr. Jim Hansen to go. Thanks to him, GISS as a dataset is no longer impartial. We have potential bias from the gatekeeper of the data that can’t be separated from the data. If he can come to the defense of lawbreakers in the name of his global warming cause, then it is an even easier jump to allow that same bias to creep into scientific data he is responsible for and his conclusions drawn from that data.

If you feel the same way, your recourse is to write to

Michael D. Griffin
Administrator
c/o NASA Public Communications Office
NASA Headquarters
Suite 5K39
Washington, DC 20546-0001
(202) 358-0001 (Office)
(202) 358-3469 (Fax)

Or use the online submission form. See one such letter here.

Icecap Note: We support Anthony and encourage you to write to NASA. We have a situation where we have 3 people. Hansen, Karl and Jones with strong activist ties serving as gatekeepers to the world’s station data bases with free reign to select and adjust that data as they see fit. That alone is an unacceptale position. When they abuse the public trust by refusing to release data, procedures or algorithms (Jones). Allow 87% of the stations to fail government standards for siting and then remove the urban adjustment in the station data bases for change analysis and then lead a biased group of enironmental activists in producing the least scientific and most biased document I have ever seen (far worse than the IPCC) in the CCSP (Karl). And continually adjust the data with a clear bias to cool the prior early 20th century warm period and warm recent years and then travel the country and world testifying against new coal power plants, calling train coal cars the equivalent of holocoust death trains and now advocating vandalism to stop the building of coal and nuclear plants that even environment friendly governments realize will be necessary for years to come to provide for the energy and heating needs of the populations (Hansen), it is time to sweep house. Hansen by his actions deserves to go first. We need an independent data group not beholding to anyone to review and reanalyze the old data. We have fortunately the satellite groups UAH and RSS that we can rely on going forward but their data unfortunately starts in 1979 at the beginning of the only two decades in the last 7 where temperatures actually rose!!!