Greens go for the gold, leave us in the red

In the sweltering summer of 1988, a NASA scientist named James Hansen appeared before Congress to warn about the dangers of global warming, thus single-handedly kicking off the modern global-warming hysteria. If the past didn’t back up Mr. Hansen’s 1988 testimony, sadly neither would the future. Never mind such realities; Mr. Hansen has made quite a name for himself - and a pretty penny besides - pushing global warming orthodoxy. Paul Chesser of the Heartland Institute summarizes the busy life of Mr. Hansen: “[Mr.] Hansen engages in high-profile public advocacy with regard to global warming and energy policy, directly trading on his platform as a NASA astronomer to gain interest and attention. This outside employment and other activities related to his work have included: consulting; highly compensated speeches; policy advocacy; a commercial book; advising Al Gore on his movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’; and most recently, advising litigants on suing states and the federal government.” Now the American Tradition Institute (ATI) wants to know if those activities conform to federal ethics and financial disclosure laws. ATI’s Environmental Law Center has filed a lawsuit in federal district court to force NASA to release records pertaining to Mr. Hansen’s outside advocacy...more