Obama's NASA at work

Facts oiled up

NASA boss ignores world’s big polluters to pick on little ol’ Canada

James Hansen, the head of one of President Barack Obama’s NASA labs, came to Canada last week to tell us not to allow a French company called Total to proceed with its Canadian oilsands project.

Even for Obama, that’s quite a foreign policy accomplishment: Interfering with two allies at once.

NASA used to be about exploring space — that’s what the S stands for. But NASA’s new boss, Charles Bolden, recently told Al Jazeera TV that Obama has given him new marching orders: Inspire children to learn math, expand international relationships. “Perhaps foremost. he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.”

I guess that’s what happens when a “community organizer” becomes president.

But when you think about it, Hansen is following Obama’s instructions perfectly: The Saudis probably do “feel good” that NASA is trying to shut down their Canadian oil competitors.

Total is proposing to invest between $15 billion and

$20 billion in Canada over the next 10 years, creating 1,300 jobs. Total’s not just producing the oil, they’re going to upgrade it in Canada, too, adding value for export.

Hansen is upset that the Total mine will emit 1.5 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon dioxide a year. Anything with the word “mega” in it sounds big. But that works out to just 0.0038% of the world’s fossil fuel emissions.

If carbon dioxide is your worry — and Hansen says it’s his — then coal should be your focus. It emits twice the carbon dioxide than petroleum products to create the same energy.

Hansen can start in his own backyard. Take the Miller coal-fired power station in Quinton, Ala. That one power plant emits more than 20 Mt of carbon dioxide a year. One plant. The Scherer coal-fired power plant in Juliette, Georgia is even bigger. It emits more than 25 Mt a year.

But those plants are just babies compared to what China is doing. China has plenty of power plants bigger than Scherer. There’s one in Tuen Mun at a whopping 35.8 Mt. And Taiwan has one that tops 41 Mt.

The oilsands — all of them combined? Barely 30 Mt.

Individual Chinese power plants have higher carbon emissions than Canada’s 100 different oilsands companies put together.

But Hansen hasn’t flown to China with his protest.

In 2008, Hansen said CEOs of fossil energy companies should be put on trial for “crimes against humanity.” Try saying that in China and you’ll get the Tiananmen Square treatment.

Hansen doesn’t even criticize China from the safety of the United States. In a laughable essay he wrote this spring for the liberal Huffington Post, Hansen says he believes China wants to “avoid the fossil fuel addiction of the United States. They want to clean up their atmosphere and water.”

Avoid fossil fuels? Last year Chinese auto sales hit 13.64 million, more than the U.S. for the first time. The number of cars on the road in China is expected to double to 200 million in less than 10 years. Clean up their atmosphere? The World Bank says that 20 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities are in China.

But Hansen and NASA and Obama don’t criticize China. China is the largest owner of U.S. treasury bills.

When you owe someone a trillion dollars, you don’t call them “polluter.”

You call them “boss.”