Lies and liars lying about lies

Forked tongues, tools of the alarmists’ trade.

Andrew Bolt deals sternly with Fairfax Media’s Peter Hannam, who managed to omit telling details from his weekend piece marking the 30th anniversary of ex-NASA warmist James Hansen’s landmark testimony before a US congressional committee. That appearance helped transform what had been a small coterie of scientists into the alarmist behemoth that has been gobbling economic opportunity ever since. Look at your latest electricity bill and know that Hansen played a key role making it the obscenity that it is.

There is something, though, which escaped Andrew’s attention — a good story that may or may not be true but certainly illustrates the chicanery of climate careerists and their elected enablers, plus the confirmation bias afflicting so many reporters. According to Hannam, “it was Hansen’s testimony — made on a sweltering summer’s day during then the hottest year on record — that put climate change on the front page of newspapers.” Unmentioned is the subsequent boast by the chairman of that committee, Colorado senator Tim Wirth, an ardent catastropharian, who nine years later crowed of scheduling the hearing on what was likely to be the hottest day of the year. More than that, he claimed to have opened the windows and turned off the air-conditioning so that the room and all in it would swelter. What better way for sceptics to get a taste of climatic Armageddon that Hansen swore was looming? Here is what Wirth told an interviewer:

We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it

What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the—when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.

Three years ago, the Washington Post fact-checked Wirth’s claim of having gingered-up the hearing room and concluded the by-then former senator was a big fat liar.

So why, one might wonder, would Wirth besmirch his own credibility and reputation by making up the story that he had used sly means to adavance the warmist cause? We can only speculate but two motivations spring to mind.

The first is that his fellow warmists will applaud any ruse that rings the alarm ever louder, true or not.

The second is that lies work, especially with terminally gullible reporters. Just ask Peter Hannam.

For the Washington Post‘s dissection of Wirth’s tale follow this link or the one below.

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