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Amid Cheers, NASA Chief Is Arrested at Oil Sands Pipeline Protests
WASHINGTON—A few minutes after 11 a.m. Monday, climate scientist James Hansen sits down on a patch of sidewalk in front of a green banner proclaiming "Witness for Climate and Creation." The White House looms in the background.
The head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City pulls his tan fedora snug around his ears to block the sun and hugs his knees to his chest. Then he opens his mouth to harmonize with a chorus of 160-plus voices blending on chants that included "Heal the Planet," "Stand Together," "Not in Our Name" and "Keep Your Promises."
Hansen is the center of attention on day 10 of a two-week peaceful sit-in to protest a Canadian company’s proposal to construct a $7 billion, 1,702-mile pipeline to pump diluted bitumen—a particularly dirty type of heavy crude—from the oil sands mines of Alberta to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
At 1:20 p.m., a U.S. Park Police officer beckons to the suit-clad Hansen with his index finger. The 70-year-old grandfather arises to cheers and applause from the fellow 30 or so demonstrators still left on the sidewalk and the hundred-plus still singing, hollering and strumming a guitar across the street in Lafayette Park.
Hansen—the 112th of the 140 arrested Monday, many from the faith community—extends his hands behind his back so the police officer can cinch the black plastic handcuffs around his wrists. Then, he stands with his brown dress shoes spread several feet apart while another officer frisks him. At least a dozen photographers document the scene.
Five minutes later, Hansen emerges from a white tarpaulin where his mug shot was snapped. Somebody yelled "Thank you, Jim." As Hansen holds his fedora aloft and cracks a smile, protesters in the park break into a verse of "We love Jim Hansen" and "Don't want no pipeline" to the tune of the traditional gospel song "Down by the Riverside." Then he ducks, climbs into the awaiting paddy wagon and disappears.
Hansen—who has been arrested a couple of times before for protesting the harvesting of fossil fuels—regularly criticizes the Keystone XL pipeline as the "fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet." The Obama administration is expected to issue a decision on the international project by the end of the year.
A magnitude-5.8-magnitude, Virginia-centered earthquake last Tuesday and the force of Hurricane Irene’s bluster Saturday and Sunday have not deterred the protesters, who are affiliated with a grass-roots movement called Tar Sands Action. To date, 521 participants have been arrested, according to police and organizer records.
Monday was an uncharacteristically humidity-free August day in the nation’s capital with temperatures hovering near 80.
At a pre-arrest rally in the park, Hansen reminded the boisterous crowd of then-Sen. Barack Obama's victory speech in November 2008. He and his wife listened to Obama's inspirational words from their Pennsylvania farmhouse. Hansen recounted being so moved that he had turned his face away so his wife wouldn’t see his tears.
The president-to-be's campaign promises had led him to believe that Obama had the tenacity and knowledge to make climate change a signature issue. Hansen was hopeful Obama would communicate directly with citizens instead of letting politicians hijack that agenda. It's difficult and rare, he added, to find leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill who are strong enough to tell the truth and courageously commit to a cause.
Now, Hansen fears President Obama will fumble his defining moment on global warming.
"If the tar sands pipeline is approved, we will be back and we will grow," he said. "For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we must find somebody who is working for our dream."
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Comments
Finally! Finally one of these
Submitted by Jim Blay (not verified) on August 30, 2011 - 3:15pm.
Finally! Finally one of these countless THOUSANDS and thousands and thousands and thousands of these saintly consensus climate change scientists is actually ACTING like its the END OF WORLD like they said it was. Now I believe them but it took 25 years.
Meanwhile, the UN had allowed carbon trading stock markets run by corporations and politicians to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 25 years of climate CONTROL instead of the obviously needed POPULATION control.
Jim this is not the first
Submitted by Nick B (not verified) on August 30, 2011 - 4:23pm.
Jim this is not the first time that James Hansen has been arrested (previous times were for protesting mountaintop removal), nor is this the first climate scientist to be arrested protesting the Keystone pipeline (Jason Box, Ohio St.)
Additionally, no climate scientists believes the end of the world is just around the corner. James Hansen's book is titled "Storms of my grandchildren" which should give you a sense of the timeframes that these scientists are talking about. That being said, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time (~150 years) and human emissions are increasing every year so the time to act in our best economic and environmental interests is right now (slash was 30 years ago when James Hansen testified to congress.)
Finally, "controlling" the climate (i.e. not dumping 8,000 gulf oil spills worth of CO2 into the atmosphere every day) is a prerequesite to prevent long term water and food supply issues in the 3rd world.
350 Now.
Jim Hansen, 21st Century Terranaut
Submitted by Kathleen Connell (not verified) on August 30, 2011 - 5:07pm.
I support Jim Hansen's act of non-violent civil disobedience. As he has spent 30 years doing the leading edge climate research, and briefing policy makers endlessly, his personal act of heroism, for which he may be punished in the way the Government workers can be, will be remembered by the next generation as a turning point in the climate change policy history.
Bush's people tried to silence him, I would not want to be the sitting President who trys to ignore him.
New clean very cheap energy technology: LENR
Submitted by Brad Arnold (not verified) on August 30, 2011 - 5:28pm.
I don't know why they are bothering protesting: those Oil Sands investors are going to lose their shirts. There is a new clean energy technology that is 1/10th the cost of dirty coal.
Don’t believe me? Watch this video by a Nobel prize winner in physics: http://pesn.com/2011/06/23/9501856_Nobel_laureate_touts_E-Cat_cold_fusion/
Still don’t believe me? It convinced the Swedish Skeptics Society: http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3144827.ece
LENR using nickel. Incredibly: Ni+H+KCO3(heated under pressure)=Cu+lots of heat.
Still don’t believe me? A major US corporation has bought the rights to sell the 1 megawatt Rossi E-Cat, and it will be announced late October in the US, with the unit hitting the market in November. How can any fossil fuel compete with such cheap energy (and clean to boot!).
By the way, here is a current survey of all the companies that are bringing LENR to commercialization: http://www.cleantechblog.com/2011/08/the-new-breed-of-energy-catalyzers-...
Useful Idiots
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on August 31, 2011 - 11:58am.
Hansen has been discredited so many times it's pathetic. You people keep on believing the "revised estimates of forcasted disaster" which are always 20+ years away. They can't accurately forecast temperatures next week and you fools belive their forecasts 20 years from now. He is a fraud, been caught lying about data, and making millions in the process, and you idiots sit there, get arrested, and attack the corporations that pay millions of people to live productive lives. Shame on you. When he ends up in prison for fraud you will just find another person to worship. You and your type need a life.
Re: Stop the tar sands pipeline
Submitted by MemphisBill (not verified) on August 31, 2011 - 12:18pm.
Are you a troll or just an idiot?
helpless idiot
Submitted by Remy (not verified) on September 1, 2011 - 2:51pm.
Talking about worshiping... corporations!
Dear Mr. Useful Idiot: It is
Submitted by Oldschooler (not verified) on September 1, 2011 - 4:19pm.
Dear Mr. Useful Idiot:
It is quite pathetic to read yet another anynmous "it's all been discredited" screed, liberally laced with falsehoods and invective toward a respected scientist.
Please read the following report from the National Academies of Science, entitled "Expert credibility in climate change" and educate yourself beyond threadbare talking points that you simply regurgitate.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf
Pay particular attention to this section ...
We use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers."
So there are hundreds and hundred of people around the world all reaching the same conclusion as James Hansen. It is a fairy tale to believe _ as you apparently do _ that they are part of some kind of secret global conspiracy that makes the Davinci Code look like a Sunday School play...
Your seeming worship of "millions of dollars" in corporate profit and payroll ignores the fact that people like Hansen and the others, who are trying to avoid planetary changes that will do unimaginagle harm, are doing it because of life ... life itself. Not money.
You mockingly speak of 20 years into the future? Take off your ideological blinders. Things are happeing in front of your face. Greenland, one of the planet's largest sources of land-bound ice, is melting. It has lost nearly 600 square miles of glacial ice during ghe last decade, according to a study published it the Annals of Glaciology.
http://www.igsoc.org/annals/v52/59/a59a030.pdf
Mr. Useful Idiot, I hope you do not have property too close to sea level. You might lose your investment, which, based on the tenor of your post, would be the worst possible outcome in the world.
Hansen Should Be Doing Research and Writing Reports
Submitted by Bob Carver (not verified) on August 31, 2011 - 1:30pm.
Jim is a great guy, but he's wasting his time protesting. He should be doing more research and writing reports. The idiots investing in this pipeline are throwing their money away. There are dozens of new energy technologies in the labs today which will obsolete fossil fuels in the near future. Let them waste their money and go broke!
Don't worry, be happy! And stay out of jail, Jim!
Here's your sign
Submitted by Truth (not verified) on August 31, 2011 - 7:00pm.
"There would be no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed pipeline corridor," Kerri-Ann Jones, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, said in a statement.
Note to Hansen: Don't let the facts and the in-depth research slow your rant. How about joining the "Poodle" and the other spin masters of scientific data on global warming on your own dime? Not NASA's. US citizens expect this from the Hollywad crowd and the Poodle. You know, the ones jetting to rallies while their limos idle and their 18,000 sq ft home(s) cause energy brownouts on the left coast. (BTW: Nice smile Daryl - you got some face time and street cred with the crowd)
If / when the US thumbs its nose at this vital energy conduit, it WILL be built west to deliver the goods to China and others seeking what flows through the pipe. Our energy loss - their gain. Canada won't sit on it.
Right, because a
Submitted by shaktinah (not verified) on August 31, 2011 - 8:59pm.
Right, because a world-renowned climate scientist should defer to the opinion of a bureaurcrat.
The govt is in the pocket of the Koch brothers - it protects the interests of corporations, not citizens.
Right, because a
Submitted by shaktinah (not verified) on August 31, 2011 - 9:02pm.
Right, because a world-renowned climate scientist should defer to the opinion of a bureaurcrat.
The govt is in the pocket of the Koch brothers - it protects the interests of corporations, not citizens.
saying a lot of wrong thing
Submitted by SurvivalWriter (not verified) on September 1, 2011 - 10:04am.
First of all, Daryl Hannah lives off the grid in a solar powered ranch house and drives a biodiesel car. Hansen's actions are in line with the facts unfortunately. And as for your Kerri-Ann Jones quote, what the people are protesting in D.C. is not "impacts along the corridor" of the pipeline...it's the increased contribution to carbon emissions the pipeline will enable, thus exacerbating climate change. Even extracting and developing tar sands requires huge amounts of fossil fuels just to make it viable for use. The extraction process rivals mountain-top removal in the ecological and public health devastation it causes (the indigenous community that lives around the tar sands site are wrought with rare and aggressive cancers). And I seem to remember some pretty confident-sounding quotes from the Mineral Mgt. Service and a bunch of other gov't authorities on the environmental soundness and safety of drilling activities on the Gulf Coast, including the one that spilled. How wrong those quotes turned out to be, huh? I especially love how AFTER the spill, when Congress started actually paying attention to other gov't reports on oil drilling safety, they found reports contending that oil operations in Texas were done in a manner that protected the local wildlife of "walruses and polar bears" (which of course, don't live anywhere near TX--the gov't agencies just copy and pasted text from Alaska environmental assessments). And so, other than some cherry-picked, generic quote about "no significant impact" what are the FACTS of this Hansen is ignoring? Do you even know what is in tar sands? How they get it?
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