James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

And the Left is always crying about the “stifling of dissent!” Isn’t spreading doubt just another way of saying “counter argument” or “dissenting point of view”?

Hansen is more politician than scientist, a man so cocksure of his righteousness, he regards any disagreement criminal. He’s also an admitted liar.

Robert Novak wrote about Hansen after “60 Minutes” did a puff piece on him in 2004:

In his “60 Minutes” interview, Hansen gave the impression of a faithful government scientist who, frustrated by politicians, at long last dared to speak out. Asserting the need to reduce CO2 emissions, Hansen warned: “If that doesn’t start within 10 years, I don’t think we can keep additional global warning under 1 degree Celsius. And that means there’s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets once begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it?”

Hansen sounded much the same alarm in 1988, when he energized the global warming movement by predicting a temperature rise of 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 10 years. When the actual rise in surface temperatures over the decade was only 0.2 degrees, Hansen stepped back from his earlier predictions.

“The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change,” Hansen wrote in 1998. He later admitted devising “extreme scenarios” about global warming to get the attention of “decision-makers.”