Marc Morano has circulated an online exchange between Mr. Alarmist himself–Al Gore advisor James Hansen–and Dr. John S. Theon, Hansen’s former supervisor at NASA. It is a classic.
In short, according to Marc’s e-mail (which he has granted permission to reprint–and you can find the whole exchange here), the comments that retired NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. Theon made last week–declaring himself a global-warming skeptic, dismissing Hansen’s claims of victimhood, and observing that Hansen had “embarrassed NASA”–have drawn a reply.
Hansen reportedly responded to Theon on Thursday in an e-mail to M. J. Murphy of BigCityLib blog. Here is what we have, forwarded from Morano:
Hansen wrote: John Theon never had any supervisory authority over me. I remember that he was in the bureaucracy at NASA Headquarters, but I cannot recall having any interactions with him. His claim of association is misleading, to say the least. What he can legitimately say is that he had a reasonably high position in the Headquarters bureaucracy. A job in that bureaucracy is not considered to be a plum, so we should probably be grateful that somebody is willing to do it, and I don’t particularly want to kick the fellow around. You should investigate his scientific contributions to evaluate the degree to which his opinions might be listened to. Of course you are free to quote me. – Jim Hansen – End Hansen Email
That is to say, therefore, that distilled the exchange goes as follows:
Theon: as his supervisor I can tell you that he was never muzzled, has no scientific support for his claims and he embarassed NASA.
Hansen: why, that’s outrageous…you were never my superior!