In a recent post at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, climate scientist (and mentor to Al Gore) James Hansen was characteristically frank about the uselessness of existing government policies, and also the disdain with which he holds the “consensus” contained in the IPCC reports. Although I disagree strongly with Hansen’s own views as to what should be done, it’s worth quoting him to show that our position here at IER has been quite defensible—even a hero of the climate alarmists agrees with us on these two key points.