Getting it Really, Really Wrong

NASA Climatologist James Hansen was attacked last week in an editorial by Investor’s Business Daily for taking money from George Soros – specifically from his Open Society Institute. A claim was made that Hansen received over $700,000 from OSI, some of which was supposedly laundered through GAP, as Hansen was a client of ours in early 2006.

Blogs everywhere seem to have picked up on the story, which happens to be dead wrong. The Seattle PI discovered this when it started investigating the situation, and its lead paragraph was right on point:

The blogosphere was in a churn this week over NASA scientist James Hansen's receipt of $720,000 from the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute. There's just one problem: The story's completely wrong.

 The piece continues:

GAP's president Louis Clark and Rick Piltz, director of GAP’s climate science watch program, say they helped Hansen in about February to April of 2006. Their 15-page grant proposal to the Open Society Institute in late July of that year had 15 lines that referred to Hansen, with seven lines recounting what they'd already done for him and two more that said they “remain available to defend Dr. Jim Hansen's job and to offer legal advice upon request.”

The story is simply wrong. GAP never paid a dime to Hansen, and to insinuate such is a complete falsehood.