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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