James Hansen: Indignant that "the Dutch government inviting me to participate in a blog-based public discussion about the range of views on climate change"

"Galileo and the Fireflies" is available here

[James Hansen] I recently went to the Netherlands to help launch legal action against the Dutch government for their failure to take meaningful action to protect the rights of young people to enjoy the benefits of a stable climate and avoid having dumped on their heads the enormous costs that will ensue from future climate change out of their control. I went in puzzlement. First, I had been surprised the previous year when my Dutch in-laws warned me that, for my own good, I should not talk about global warming in the Netherlands. Second, the legal demand, rather than asking the courts to require the government to do what was needed on the basis of science, instead seemed to concede that 2°C global warming was acceptable -- they asked only for what was deemed politically conceivable, even though more was possible if the people's well-being was given priority over that of the fossil fuel industry. Third, before arriving, I received a letter from the Dutch government inviting me to participate in a blog-based public discussion about the range of views on climate change and climate sensitivity, among a few scientists including contrarians, with no attempt to reach a consensus - the purpose being to expose the public to the "range of opinions" in what they described as "an exciting new way to move the climate debate forward." This approach - pretending that the science is like a talk-show debate, giving equal weight to all opinions and "beliefs", encouraging the public to misinterpret the skepticism that is inherent in good science, allowing even informed scientists to exhibit their proclivity to extensively cover their fannies with waffling and caveats -- is designed by well-oiled coal-fired people who wish to demean science and redefine the matter as a public debate.

I might not have been puzzled by the fact that Dutch politicians had begun to resemble Oklahoma oil-patch politicians (after all, I had found similar situations in a dozen countries, as I described in "Storms of My Grandchildren"), if I had not previously lived in the Netherlands.