The Washington Post also commemorates astronomer James Hansen's testimony of 20 years ago that started the global-warming panic. They fall for the spin, big time. Here's how the drama opens:
There have been hotter days on Capitol Hill, but few where the heat itself became a kind of congressional exhibit. It was 98 degrees on June 23, 1988, and the warmth leaked in through the three big windows in Dirksen 366, overpowered the air conditioner, and left the crowd sweating and in shirt sleeves.
James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist, was testifying before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He was planning to say something radical: Global warming was real, it was a threat, and it was already underway.
Hansen had hoped for a sweltering day to underscore his message.
"We were just lucky," Hansen said last week.
Hmmm. As noted below, Hansen's cohort then-Sen. Tim Wirth has made clear that this was as close to orchestrated as they could make it — even attempting to time the temperature market (perhaps that's what Hansen meant by getting "lucky") — and the aforementioned "overpowered" air conditioner actually had just been turned off and the windows left open before hearing time.
Clearly, someone is lying. Or revising history. And we know Hansen would never, ever revise history. Especially about temperatures. Oh, right, he actually has an extensive history of revising past temperatures, both on his own initiative (revisions in 2000 and 2007 resulted in recent temps ticking upward, both times with corresponding drops in earlier temps exaggerating a warming trend) and not so voluntarily (August 2007, when the false warming trend he'd inserted in U.S. data, beginning as luck would have it in 2000, was uncovered, and corrected…for once, without a NASA press release!).
Hopefully Congress can get to the bottom of it. The key question might just be whether publishing such disinformation is a prosecutable offense. Possibly you know an astronomer who can tell you.