That very scary Drudge headline links to an equally scary story with eye-opening claims about polar icecap melting from a scientist named Jim Hansen -- who claims the Bush administration is trying to muzzle him.

There are two issues here -- one involving the muzzling (something NASA disputes, pointing out Hansen's 20 year history of reckless outspokenness), and the other involving Hansen's reliability.

Jim Hansen flawed methodology is taken to task here by an Autralian scientist who points out that the NASA GISS data is flawed because it measures "growing urban warming, not global climate change."

World Climate Report notes Hansen's long history of distortion and outright lying, and asks why anyone should believe the guy:

Sorry. Once a distortionist, always a distortionist.

Why should we believe him now? What evidence does he have to offer that his opinions and statements about climate change are suddenly true, when he admits that exaggerations were necessary. Was the public being “honestly informed” then?

And it wasn’t just “the public.” He distorted in front of the U.S. Congress.

World Climate Report seems to have done their homework on this guy, and he appears very unreliable.

But I'll say this for him; he knows how to get a headline.

(If only I could figure out how to get Bush to gag me....)