"planestupid" kills polar bears via CGI to make a point

h/t to Kate at SDA. Gotta hand it to her. Being a fan of WKRP in Cincinnati, her headline made me laugh out loud.

As God Is My Witness, I Thought Polar Bears Could Fly

This video however, isn’t so funny.

Don’t know what I’m talking about with WKRP in Cincinnati? Read on.

Being in radio and TV requires knowledge of the groundbreaking broadcast comedy:  WKRP in Cincinnati

There’s a famous scene in a 1978 episode where Mr. Carlson,  “the Big Guy” (the general Manager) sets up a helicopter promotion to give away live turkeys at a Cincinnati shopping mall parking lot. He launches them from the helicopter into the crowd below. The event is reported by newsman Les Nessman ala the Hindenburg disaster. It is one of the funniest moments in television ever. Here’s the ending.

You can watch the entire episode on Hulu.com, 24 minutes. Well worth your time to see broadcast comedy history.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/322/wkrp-in-cincinnati-turkeys-away

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Brian Johnson uk
November 21, 2009 10:34 pm

Plane Stupids are plainly Very Stupid! Sadly I think most are Brits?

Evan Jones
Editor
November 21, 2009 10:39 pm

Les: Monster lizzard ravages east coast! Mayors in five New England cities have issued emergency requests for federal disaster relief as a result of a giant lizzard that descended on the east coast last night! Officials say that this lizzard, the worst since ’78, has devastated transportation, disrupted communication, and left many hundreds homeless!
Johnny: Monster lizard?
Les: The wire service never lies!
Johnny: Les, the “B” is out on the printer.

Editor
November 21, 2009 10:45 pm

It seems that environmentalists are honing their stratagems for leveraging the public’s’ memories of 9/11 to spread climate fear and alarm. At least the planestupid video isn’t as offensive as the recent WWF 9/11commercial that WWF tried to squelch:
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/9/crazy-9-11-wwf-ddb-commercial-1180487.html

KBK
November 21, 2009 10:45 pm

The allusion to 9/11 is just disgusting.

crosspatch
November 21, 2009 10:47 pm

And this plays EXACTLY into the “Rules of the Game” document found in Jones’ documents file:

17. Use emotions and visuals
Another classic marketing rule: changing behaviour by
disseminating information doesn’t always work, but emotions
and visuals usually do.

People, your minds are being “worked on”.
Resist.

Doug in Seattle
November 21, 2009 10:50 pm

Well they DO call themselves Planet Stupid. What did you expect?

November 21, 2009 10:57 pm

The video is distasteful and the argument implicitly claimed in the video – identifying the weight of CO2 emissions with the weight of killed polar bears – would be wrong by a dozen of orders of magnitude even if the worst IPCC estimates were right.
These people must be finding consumers for such propaganda – otherwise they would probably not create it – and it’s sad.

November 21, 2009 11:11 pm

I was just thinking about the WKRP turkey drop the other day while listening to the djs on a Little Rock station talking about the turkey drop they would be at in a nearby town. Of course, they weren’t talking about live turkeys — or I don’t think they were.

Leon Brozyna
November 21, 2009 11:14 pm

The most attention I care to spend on this … this … piece is — plain stupid.

November 21, 2009 11:14 pm

Should we tell them that the average human exhales 900 kg of CO2 each year, that’s two adult polar bears and a cub.
Those greenies are proof that aliens exist, there is no way that these people come from earth, planet stupid indeed, somewhere in a parallel universe i guess.

the_Butcher
November 21, 2009 11:24 pm

I think Polar Bears had enough with this c….

Roger
November 21, 2009 11:39 pm

This has got to be the stupidest ********* thing I have seen, evah! It’s a Brave New World, isn’t it!?

Joe A
November 21, 2009 11:55 pm

Well Al Gore it’s all your fault! Stop flying around the world – YOU are killing the polar bears! See, there’s proof for you on TV.
Sickening. In some ways I hope they produce more of this nonsense. People are waking up to the AGW fraud and such antics will only accelerate the awakening.
What next? Aliens dropping leaflets telling us we should stop breathing out CO2?

crosspatch
November 21, 2009 11:58 pm

It gets even stupider (is that a word?):
Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution.
Message? If you are poor and live in a “coastal area of a poor country” (most of the population of the world) , vote for our policies or your daughter will end up as a prostitute.
It is just nuts.

asmilwho
November 22, 2009 12:49 am

So how many environmentalists will be flying to Copenhagen next month? What’s the equivalent of the exhaust from these activists in polar bear units?

Patrick Davis
November 22, 2009 1:48 am

I don’t know or recall, it has been a very busy w/e for me, but I am sure I read somewhere that for every tonne of fuel, 5 tonnes of CO2 are released. Can anyone confirm/deny that?

Magnus A
November 22, 2009 2:05 am

I think this is an interview Anthony, and readers of WUWT will appreciate! (Btw I found the link in a comment here a few days ago) :
http://eenews.net/tv/video_guide/1073
“Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has been an outspoken critic of the science behind global warming and the push for climate legislation for decades. …”

thecomputerguy
November 22, 2009 2:10 am

We should probably thank these guys – after all, the “jumped the shark” meme probably doesn’t mean anything to those under 35 years old or so.
I guess this means AGW has officially “dropped the polar bear”.

J.Hansford
November 22, 2009 2:11 am

Nah mate, they aint’ Polar bears, they’re Aussie Drop bears…. 😉

November 22, 2009 2:23 am

Yes, each single UN FCCC meeting this year alone prior to Copenhagen attracts at least 1,000 foreign participants — government climate bureaucrats and environmental activists. The meeting in Bangkok 2 months ago attracted some 2,500 climate bureaucrats and activists. And some of those activists could be coming from planestupid or plainstupid.

Kate
November 22, 2009 2:27 am

Polar Bear Population
1950s 5,000
1965-1970 8,000-10,000
1984 25,000
2005 20,000-25,000

Jimbo
November 22, 2009 2:52 am

Why won’t they let go of the polar bear angle bearing in mind that polar bears are very capable indeed. They have survived warmer periods in the past for goodness sake.
Arctic Sea Ice Extent Up
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/21/2009-arctic-sea-ice-extent-exceeds-2005-for-this-date/
Polar Bear Numbers Up By 5 Times Since 1960s
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/population/
“Tina Cunnings, a biologist attached to the Alaskan government, questioned whether they needed sea ice to survive, saying they could adapt to hunt on land and find alternative food sources to seals.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1545036/Polar-bears-thriving-as-the-Arctic-warms-up.html
Polar Bear Swims 200 Miles!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/05/animalwelfare.animalbehaviour
Polar Bear Swims 100 Km & They Dive And Hold Breath For Up To 2 Minutes
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/polarbears/pbadaptations.html
With all the above how can polar bears possibly be in danger apart from through hunting? This question is aimed at current and past observations; while the alarmists base everything on “may”, “might”, “could”, “if” and so on.

Martin Brumby
November 22, 2009 3:21 am

Plane Stupid are indeed from the UK.
And apparently overwhelmingly ‘rich kids’, a fact on which even the MSM commented. Certainly all those interviewed seem to be from ‘Public Schools’ (i.e. private schools – to clarify for non-Brit readers here.)
Not that this matters too much. But it would be interesting to know where the money for this pathetic nonsense came from. It must have cost a pretty penny to make the movie and have it aired on TV.

Stephen Skinner
November 22, 2009 3:22 am
JimB
November 22, 2009 3:56 am

“Mike Goad (23:11:03) :
I was just thinking about the WKRP turkey drop the other day while listening to the djs on a Little Rock station talking about the turkey drop they would be at in a nearby town. Of course, they weren’t talking about live turkeys — or I don’t think they were.”
Just as an aside…for a few years, I raised heritage breeds of turkeys, both Blue Slates and Red Bourbons. My home is also in a very rural area that is home to several large flocks of wild turkeys, and the little-known fact for many people is that turkeys DO in fact fly. Wild turkeys sleep in trees every night.
JimB

Stacey
November 22, 2009 4:27 am

Plane Stupid is just another militant organisation which has morphed out of the Animal Liberation Front.
In the end these upper class twa tsea drinkers add no value to anything.

November 22, 2009 4:37 am

Dumb and dumber – the thing the warmists need is credibility and what they produce is anything BUT credible

west2
November 22, 2009 4:42 am

Hulu seems to only stream in the US, is there an alternative?
thanks
—-

Roddy Baird
November 22, 2009 4:46 am

I’d actually prefer that to any sort of carbon tax. You could just drop polar bears on people in proportion to how much CO2 they produce. I mean, it’s quite a disincentive, isn’t it? You could probably dodge a few…

Bruce Cobb
November 22, 2009 4:47 am

The AGW movement is an assault on reason, and ultimately, on mankind. This video is an example of xxx-rated climate porn, and those who produce this sort of filth are the lowest type of scum on the planet.
Their desperation is becoming more and more obvious, particularly now that Copenhagen looks to be a bust, and any climate bill in the U.S. is a year away at least.

Glenn Haldane
November 22, 2009 5:00 am

Please will somebody explain where the figure of 400kg of GHG per passenger comes from? Even if you say the entire weight of fuel burned turns into GHG, 400kg seems to be overstated by an order of magnitude to me.

gregg
November 22, 2009 5:01 am

You nailed it, stupid video, but I laughed so hard when I read Kate’s headline. Thinks for the hulu link!

DJ Meredith
November 22, 2009 5:12 am

A polar bear exhales enough CO2 annually to kill a polar bear.
Looks like they’re self limiting.

ShrNfr
November 22, 2009 5:43 am

Given that polar bears are the only bears that will stalk and kill humans for food, perhaps they might want to take an extended vacation up where polar bears are in sufficient supply. Given that their population has increased of late, the supply is becoming less of a problem.

Not Amused
November 22, 2009 5:54 am

Okay it’s official….
The alarmists have sunk to a new low.
I’m afraid to ask but… what’s next ?

Stephen Goldstein
November 22, 2009 5:54 am

I know this is a bit off topic but, yesterday, we received a glossy brochure the “Arctic Season 2010” covering tours from Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic.
The cover is a photo of a polar bear looking at camera and the cover text reads, “It’s HIS world, we’re just in it [emphasis mine].”
Why is it HIS world? Was there a vote? Has anybody asked the seals? The peoples of Bangladesh or The Sudan? Just wondering . . . .

hunter
November 22, 2009 6:07 am

Are AGW promoters admitting that the only way that polar bears are going to soon go extinct is to drop them from airplanes?

Rod Smith
November 22, 2009 6:35 am

Maybe the real problem of losing so many polar bears is winding up being knee-deep in seals!

November 22, 2009 6:40 am

OT: I didn’t know Tiny Tim was a warmist…
Here he is, scaring children with
“The Ice Caps Are Melting” song

f3lix
November 22, 2009 7:20 am

Davis
That’s what’s normally called Over-unity …

fred
November 22, 2009 7:32 am

Oh, the humanity!

fred
November 22, 2009 7:40 am

Around Thanksgiving of 1989 or 1990 I was driving on I-75 somewhere north of Gainesville, FL when over the radio came the broadcast of a station’s annual memorial Thanksgiving turkey drop (toy stuffed turkeys with prize tickets), replete with references to the Great Turkey Drop. I was laughing so hard I had to pull off the road.

Back2Bat
November 22, 2009 7:43 am

A consistent feature of stupidity, IMO, is to downplay the intelligence of others. “Elitist” contempt is what I call it. I have seen it displayed, for instance, by Yankees against Southerners who they thought intellectually inferior just because of their accents! But here is one of the things the Torah says about conceit:
“Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” Proverbs 26:12
BTW, I though that simulation was inaccurate. A polar bear at terminal velocity would do quite a bit more damage, IMO. Because of their toughness, I would expect the carcasses to hang together, so that seems accurate.
Man is a religious animal. Let me point out that science prospered under the Judea-Christian environment but is now going astray in this post-Christian world. Perhaps the specialization in science blinded the hard scientists to the traitors in their midst in the softer sciences.

Vincent
November 22, 2009 7:54 am

As far as I can understand, the premise of this film is that a polar bear dies each time a human emits a quantity of carbon dioxide equal to the weight of a polar bear. Technically it was excellently made. The physics of the bears bouncing was completely realistic. I wonder what model they used?
Still on the subject of lovable polar bears, I remember seeing some film recently about bears hunting Beluga whales. Apparently they wait at the breathing holes then jump in and attack. Many Beluga’s bear terrible scars. It seems to me, that if there was less ice, the Beluga’s wouldn’t be constrained to a few breathing holes. Therefore, anyone in favour of more ice is guilty of being anti Beluga whale. Let’s adopt the Beluga whale as the simple of AGW skeptics.

Vincent
November 22, 2009 7:55 am

Oops, I meant “adopt the Beluga as symbol of AGW skeptics.”

Tenuc
November 22, 2009 7:59 am

More rubbish from the ever more desperate CAGW cabal. The truth will out in the end – the clock is ticking very fast now on this political scam – 9, 8, 7…..

Rex Burr
November 22, 2009 8:09 am

This nonsense does not justify the destruction of a perfectly good classic Cadillac.

Steve in SC
November 22, 2009 8:25 am

I want a polar bear rug!!!!!!!!!!

Sunfighter
November 22, 2009 9:02 am

Why use evidence to prove your point when you can use an emotional responce to get your way with things? Heck the Democratic party has been using that tactic for the past 60 years. It works well.

the_Butcher
November 22, 2009 9:22 am

Not Amused (05:54:17) :
Okay it’s official….
The alarmists have sunk to a new low.
I’m afraid to ask but… what’s next ?

Next…well…AlGores dropping from the sky to your house, now that’s scary~!

John
November 22, 2009 9:24 am

I don’t think they were even thinking about 9/11 because the impression I get is that the media has been hard at work pretending that at least 200 people didn’t die that way on 9/11 by avoiding the images of it and mention of the scale of it. Why? If images of computer generated polar bears dying like this were carefully chosen to enrage the public, think about what images reminding people that at least 200 very real people died that way might do.

MartinGAtkins
November 22, 2009 10:05 am

More horrific footage of what can happen when bears take to the sky.

dcardno
November 22, 2009 10:17 am

Technically it was excellently made. The physics of the bears bouncing was completely realistic. I wonder what model they used?
Yes, the CGI was terrific. If they are a bunch of Brits, I wonder why they set the drop zone in my home town of Vancouver, BC?

Mike Core
November 22, 2009 11:07 am

Regrettably, Plane Stupid mostly comprises of rich kids from the UK. Generally, they are known as ‘Trustafarians’ after Daddy’s trust fund. According to my kids at University, they are also known as ‘Yaas’. – Easy degrees in liberal arts, dont have to wait tables to get by, that sort of thing.
The job of planestupid is to stop oiks (me and you) from flying.
You see, if the oiks were stopped from flying, there would be more airspace to get to Daddy’s Chalet in Gstaad in quick time.
The graphics were quite good, so they must have access to some loot.
But there wasnt enough ‘pink mist’ on impact.
I say show it. It will p*ss off even more people than the bed time story advert.
They are on a loosing streak.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake – Bonaparte

AnonyMoose
November 22, 2009 11:28 am

Patrick Davis (01:48:37) :
I don’t know or recall, it has been a very busy w/e for me, but I am sure I read somewhere that for every tonne of fuel, 5 tonnes of CO2 are released. Can anyone confirm/deny that?

I don’t know the exact ratio, but consider what happens. Each carbon atom in the fuel when it burns acquires two atoms of oxygen from the air, so of course the exhaust has more mass than the fuel.
Of course the exhaust has more mass than the fuel, because mass is added from the air. Burning hydrogen in air produces an exhaust of H2O, which of course has greater mass than H or H2 alone. But in what way is the mass relevant?

November 22, 2009 11:37 am

As a north american I only respond to unit/volume analogies in terms of “football fields” or “libraries of congress”, or in a pinch, “stacks of phonebooks”. Or, maybe, “tonnes of CO2 equal to the weight of how many polar bears, laid end to end, that would reach from here to the moon, given X number of airplane flights”.
Man I wish this insanity would be over soon.

John F. Hultquist
November 22, 2009 11:51 am

JimB (03:56:04) :
Mike Goad (23:11:03) :
I raised ‘Broad-breasted Bronze’ turkeys. They even had trouble walking. If they managed to get into my strawberries I’d shoo them out and they would “hurry” back toward their enclosure. After about 40 feet of moving as fast as they could the biggest ones would collapse and have to have about a 5 minute time-out before they could make it the rest of the way.

November 22, 2009 12:34 pm

The hockey team at work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nah3nMStXV4&feature=related . Polar bears are too busy jumping out of planes to play hockey, it seems.

Sioned L
November 22, 2009 1:10 pm

Where’s the usually required disclaimer that no animals were hurt or killed during the filming of this fantasy?

Andrew
November 22, 2009 1:14 pm

Kate (02:27:13) :
Polar Bear Population
1950s 5,000
1965-1970 8,000-10,000
1984 25,000
2005 20,000-25,000
That is due to an increase in intercontinental flights using the polar route and the melting arctic ice cap. Clearly more of the Polar bears are landing in open water and surviving the fall. Duh.
Take that Planet Stupid, you didn’t think about that now did ya!

crosspatch
November 22, 2009 1:36 pm

“But in what way is the mass relevant?”
Wasn’t oxygen depletion going to be their next angle of attack? If they can’t use the planet burning up from a runaway greenhouse they were going to use the fact that the oxygen in the CO2 comes out of the air and is depleting the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.
Wait until some politician discovers that automotive vacuum leaks are sucking up atmosphere at an alarming rate! They will issue regulations that all vacuum leaks must be plugged so as not to suck up all of the earth’s atmosphere.

Evan Jones
Editor
November 22, 2009 2:53 pm

It’s not bad. Really, I mean that most sincerely.
But I must confess that my very, very favorite is the one where the animals commit suicide.

November 22, 2009 2:59 pm

Martin Brumby (03:21:28) : “But it would be interesting to know where the money for this pathetic nonsense came from.”
Plane Stupid’s funding comes from both individuals and foundations (see this article and also this link to APE, one of their sponsors). However, as of last year, much of their funding has come from one man – millionaire owner of Lush cosmetic shops Mark Constantine.
According to this article from December 2008: “”I’m no hypocrite,” he says. “I’ve never said I’m against airports, just airport expansion. I personally fly to the US, Japan and Europe six times a year and people from my company fly all the time. Sadly, there is no environmentally safe way to fly but I do worry about the impact, which is why we charge the company a double carbon tax for every flight we make and then donate that money – £72,000 so far – to half-a-dozen environmental organisations, one of which is Plane Stupid.”
He adds that in the case of Plane Stupid, he has already given the organisation £5,140 and has agreed to another £10,000 to underwrite the legal expenses of the 49 protesters who were charged with aggravated trespass after breaching Stansted security last week.”
Lush has 600 stores throughout the world (as of December 2008, anyway), including store at three airports -Tokyo (Narita), Toronto and Orlando.

November 22, 2009 3:45 pm

An adult blue whale emits 87 tons of CO2 annually, should we kill the whales?

Lark
November 22, 2009 5:00 pm

If only we eat more beans, we can have free meat falling from the sky?

R Shearer
November 22, 2009 5:01 pm

The city of Boulder Colorado is sending a delegation (of 2) to Copehagen for the climate conference. How many polar bears are they killing to get there?

November 22, 2009 5:03 pm

>
>>Plane Stupid is just another militant organisation which
>>has morphed out of the Animal Liberation Front.
Or morphed out of the anarchistic socio-communists, who had nowhere to go to after communism collapsed in the European East.
.

greg
November 22, 2009 5:40 pm

Hey, I recognize that street. That video is set just a few blocks from my place in Vancouver.

Patrick Davis
November 22, 2009 6:58 pm

“AnonyMoose (11:28:53) :
Patrick Davis (01:48:37) :
I don’t know or recall, it has been a very busy w/e for me, but I am sure I read somewhere that for every tonne of fuel, 5 tonnes of CO2 are released. Can anyone confirm/deny that?
I don’t know the exact ratio, but consider what happens. Each carbon atom in the fuel when it burns acquires two atoms of oxygen from the air, so of course the exhaust has more mass than the fuel.
Of course the exhaust has more mass than the fuel, because mass is added from the air. Burning hydrogen in air produces an exhaust of H2O, which of course has greater mass than H or H2 alone. But in what way is the mass relevant?”
Thanks for the definition, seems obvious now, D’oh! The 5:1 ratio of CO2 emissions:fuel was something, I think, I read in a pro-AGW article some time ago.
If we round up, as the alarmists do, say we kill a big fat healthy 500kg bear (CO2), that equates to 100kg of fuel per person on a flight as described. to me that seems pretty efficient.

mr.artday
November 22, 2009 10:05 pm

When the Brits were developing their high speed train they came to the point where they needed to test the windshield’s ability to handle a bird strike. They borrowed NASA’s chicken cannon. When they fired the cannon at the windshield the chicken went through the windshield, through the engineer’s seat and badly damaged the partition behind the seat. They e-mailed NASA for advice and help, NASA e-mailed back: “Try thawing the chicken”.

dcardno
November 23, 2009 1:06 am

That video is set just a few blocks from my place in Vancouver.
Yeah, it’s kind of cool – I’ve worked in most of the buildings shown, due to a very chequered work history 😉

Mark Young
November 23, 2009 4:24 am

In other news, Climate Change Forces Women Into Prostitution
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/177346/climate-change-pushes-poor-women-to-prostitution-dangerous-work
Mark in Cincinnati

DennisA
November 23, 2009 8:31 am

Dr Rajendra Pachauri has been in the news quite frequently lately, with pronouncements on the dire state of the Planet and exhortations to reduce our carbon footprint, by not eating meat, or by flying less. On the latter subject Dr Pachauri is something of an expert:
UN Wants Us To Fly Less http://www.wired.com/autopia/2008/07/un-wants-us-to/
At a meeting in the UK .., Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, a climate scientist(?) with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), strongly urged businesses to cut employee travel, and to fill the void with video conferencing.
Dr Pachauri wants to fly more:
I recently examined a UN document entitled “Details of Outreach Activities carried out by the Chairman of the IPCC, Dr. R. K. Pachauri Jan ‘07 July ‘08” http://tiny.cc/mpjNp
I discovered that Dr Pachauri flew at least 443,243 miles on “IPCC business” in this 19 month period. He generated 101 tonnes of CO2 which he could have mitigated by giving J.P. Morgan around $1450 to make his travels carbon-neutral, in line with the claims of the UN. “UN leads by example, purchasing carbon credit offsets for September convention.” http://tiny.cc/Z9Hhr. In my calculation of his travel, I made full use of the carbon calculator on the JP Morgan Climate Care website, http://tiny.cc/SoQv0
I have taken their airport distances on trust but I may not have used the right airport in some cases. I have no information on stop-overs and there is no allowance for internal travel, so the actual result is likely quite a lot higher.
Dr Pachauri is based in New Delhi at the The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), http://tiny.cc/h73nH and operates his IPCC role from that base, which is reflected in the journeys that he makes. The UN document shows the contacts and organisations that he reaches out to, mostly it seems, fellow travellers, (quite literally!)
He met with many Heads of State, AGW luminaries such as Sir Crispin Tickell, Professor Stephen Schneider, Lord Stern, Professor John Schellnhuber, Ban Ki Moon, Kofi Annan and Prince Charles amongst others. He has attended presentations and honorary degree ceremonies and his book launch. He likes to attend Clinton Global Initiative meetings, Rockefeller Foundation and Brookings Institute events.
On 19 February 2008 he flew from Helsinki to Mumbai for a Brookings Institution Dinner, just 3656 miles away. On the 11th/12th March 2008, he did a Mumbai – Copenhagen return trip of 7965 miles, after which
he was working from home again for a few days, receiving former Vice President Al Gore on 14 March 2008. More “celebrities” arrived later in the month and on 20 March he entertained Tony Blair and Nancy Pelosi. He met Kevin Rudd in China and Arnold Schwarzenegger at Yale and in May he was back in New York again for another Clinton Global Initiative meeting.
In June 2008 his itinerary was Auckland, Bangkok, Paris, Brasilia, Tokyo, Geneva, New York, Sacramento and New York again, a mere 53,884 miles in the month.
In spite of the problem of less than two weeks left to save the planet in Copenhagen, IPCC AR5 is on the stocks for 2014 and Dr Pachauri is seeking more funding: This is from his speech at the Opening Ceremony of the 30th Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Antalya, Turkey, 21st April 2009. http://tiny.cc/YoLLr
“..let me also highlight the growing demand for outreach activities by the IPCC. These have no doubt had an important effect in the past two years, because awareness on the scientific facts related to climate change have reached a level which could not have been anticipated even at the beginning of 2007. But, all this has only added to the demand for more information, which the IPCC will have to provide and disseminate on a much larger scale in the future. Indeed, this demand will not end whatever the outcome in Copenhagen, but is likely to escalate.
All the office-bearers and authors involved in the work of the IPCC will have to play an important role in outreach activities.” In other words, keep collecting the frequent flyer points boys and girls and tell everyone else to stop flying. Now just imagine all the different UN organisations and all the international conferences, http://www.un.org/en/events/archives.shtml. Most of them have several thousand delegates including all the NGO’s and journalists.
That’s some emissions bill.
If there were any doubts that the IPCC is anything but a political advocacy arm of the UN, this travelling salesman should surely have dispelled them. “Outreach” of course, is the latest buzz word for propaganda. Just Plain Stupid.

Craig W
November 23, 2009 10:23 am

I saw this earlier today and laughed my butt off!
My first thought was … they should have dropped Prius batteries.
Later, I thought … the polar bear population is out of control!!! (CGI I know) Melodrama is the foundation of the church of Gore.

R Dunn
November 23, 2009 10:57 am

I’ll bet those were stunt polar bears and none were actually hurt.

Alvin
November 23, 2009 12:40 pm

I would agree that planestupid lived up to it’s name.
Kate (02:27:13) :
Polar Bear Population
1950s 5,000
1965-1970 8,000-10,000
1984 25,000
2005 20,000-25,000

I fear that we will soon be up to our armpits in polar bears. I offer that Hansen and the rest should head north to pet these cute and cuddly animals.

Nylo
November 23, 2009 3:51 pm

300 kg of fuel allow a typical plane to fly for about 10 minutes. Supposing the flight lasts 3h, that’s 5400kg plus some extra for the take off, let’s say 6 tons.
6 tons for, say, 60 passengers (let’s suppose that the plane is not full) mean 100kg of fuel per passenger. But the fuel are hydrocarbons, i.e. molecules formed by carbon and hydrogen, most of their weight comming from the carbon atoms. After combustion they will mix with O2 from the exterior so that each carbon atom will go with two oxygens, which are even heavier. The CO2 molecule is a heavy one, and most of its weight was already in the atmosphere, in the form of O2, not carried by the plane. What I mean is that, after combustion, the total CO2 weight you have out there is quite greater than the weight of the fuel that produced it.
I don’t know the exact relation, but it doesn’t sound extrange to me that 100kg of fuel can produce 400kg of CO2. And that being the case, the assumption that each passenger is responsible for the addition of 400kg of CO2 to the atmosphere may well be correct (for a 3h flight with 60 passengers).

Tanner Waterbury
November 23, 2009 9:43 pm

It might be just me, but I was actually LAUGHING at the polar bears falling from the sky. Oh I have a sick twisted sense of humor. So Airplanes emit co2… AND POLAR BEARS?! Uh boy, I have to catch my breath, I am just laughing too hard.

November 23, 2009 10:59 pm

[sorry – not posting ginned up versions of this video here]

dcardno
November 24, 2009 10:13 pm

I don’t know the exact relation, but it doesn’t sound extrange to me that 100kg of fuel can produce 400kg of CO2
That’s a little high. C has an atomic weight of ~12 (in g/mole), O has an atomic weight of ~16. The atomic weight of CO2 is 12+16+16 = 44, compared to the aw of 12 for a Carbon atom. The increase in weight is 44/12, which is a little less than 4:1. There is some Hydrogen mass in the fuel, which reduces the CO2 / fuel ratio. Assuming jet fuel is kerosene (not a bad approximation) the molecular composition is C12H26, with an aw of ~170, of which ~144 is Carbon, or ~75%. On complete combustion, 170 kg of kerosene would develop 12 * 44 kg or 528 kg of CO2 and 26/2 * 18 = 234 kg of water – that’s equivalent to 310 kg of CO2 per 100 kg of fuel.

Jason
November 25, 2009 6:03 am

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/pf/pf_facts.html
A 747-400 that flies 3,500 statute miles (5,630 km) and carries 126,000 pounds (56,700 kg) of fuel will consume an average of five gallons (19 L) per mile.

November 26, 2009 5:04 am

I so remember that WKRP episode. Good times. TV just isn’t the same, especially what passes for ‘comedy’ these days.