The Capital Climate Action protest went on today in Washington DC with a march on the coal fired power plant. Amazingly, NASA’s Dr. James Hansen actually showed up and took the stage at the protest to complete his transformation from scientist to political activist. But, we”ll leave the issue of his appearance there for another discussion.
Here are some scenes from the live web feed today.
Dr. Jim Hansen gets ready to deliver his message at the protest
Here’s a chronological order of the protest in a series of screencaps from the video feed.
Arrival at the power plant.
So THAT’s what those stimulus checks are for.
The camera operator put the camera down on it’s side for about five minutes, giving us this picture. Must have needed to get a smoke.
Interesting things you can do with a scarf and coat hanger wire.
The Native Americans arrive to protest Black Mesa power plant.
The hemp hat trio sings for the crowd.
Bewildered or zoned? I can’t tell.
“Justicia Climatica”? I was confused as to the meaning of this, at first, but then I discovered it was Chilean
The camera operator has issues again…
Coal is dirty. Ok, but have you guys smelled yourselves lately?
Not only can we save the planet, we can show you how to make illegal copies of DVD’s!
Jimbo is warming up in the bullpen.
Closer.
Closer….
And Dr. Jim Hansen is on the air! He’s making a succinct point.
I’ll bet Jim had no idea he was being sponsored by Obama’s stimulus package….oh, wait.
After Dr. Hansen left the stage, a hip-hop group sang his praises. Time for the mute button.
A few observations:
- The snow didn’t seem to interfere with the determined masses walking through it.
- Rage boy wasn’t present, but maybe he missed his flight due to snow delays.
- Most of the speakers recycled everything we’ve already heard before, it was pretty boring.
- Lucia watched this simultaneously, she has some thoughts
- The one highlight was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. saying that Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship “should be in jail… for all of eternity“. Oddly, Kennedy’s message seemed even a bit too extreme for some left leaning news outlets, such as AlterNet which didn’t mention it in this story on the protest though there were other quotes from Kennedy.
- The advertisements that kept popping up on the video certainly didn’t help the credibility.
- One of the chants was “No coal, no gas, no nukes, no kidding”. There was also “Nuclear Hell No”, “Biofuels hell no”. Apparently wind power and solar are the only options they endorse. Iwonder if Jim Hansen has figured this out yet, since he has advocated nuclear power.
- At no time did the simultaneous viewers counter ever reach 1000, the highest I saw was 970. Likewise the number of total viewers that were counted never exceeded 10,000, and the final I saw just before they went off air for the first live feed (with Hansen et al) was 9978. It appears that many people clicked to check it out, but few stayed for the long haul.
- There was lots of singing, chanting, and dancing. Drumsbeats and other percussive instruments filled the air. The native indians used to have rain dances to control the weather, these dances and chants seemed to be aimed at controlling the climate. How far we’ve come.
- They claimed victory and went home, nobody was arrested. Unfortunately I don’t think they realize that simply blocking the gates for a couple of hours is not quite the same as shutting down the boiler.
When it was all over this line from a famous sci-fi series came to mind. I think I’ll send it to Jimbo to hang on his wall:
“Thinking about what you can’t control only wastes energy, and creates its own enemy.“
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This is Monty python type sillyness brought to life, I mean, says the psuedo revolutionary to his followers, what has ‘fossil fuels’ ever done for us? Hmmm!
mass transportation,science,education,hospitals,industry,jobs,medical advancement,roads,cities,tax revenues for social programmes, Yeah OK but apart from that, says the psuedo revolutionary, what has ‘fossil fuels’ ever done for us? The entire modern advanced society that we live in was built on fossil fuels from the laptop to the medical scanners that save our lives to the houses we live in to the fridges that keep our food fresh to the trucks that bring us that food to the electricity that powers our homes/schools/hospitals etc!
The gross ignorance of the AGW/MMCC is amost beyond parody, the new anti science mumbo jumbo mixed with a large measure of childish wishful thinking is actually going to destroy everything our ancestors worked so hard to bestow upon us, freedoms that we enjoy today are taken for granted and even despised by those who wish to return us to the dark ages.
note on previous comment : only “lame” was meant to be bold, not the whole half of the comment. Don’t know how to make those features work right yet.
““No coal, no gas, no nukes, no kidding”.”
No Kidding. Hmm.. freudian, or what?
Did anyone ask how they were powering the PA system or the camera? Was Ed Begley there with his stationary bicycle to power all of that?
It might be very inconvenient and might even results to deaths especially when the weather is very cold. At last the hospitals and those catering for the sick and the weak could be informed in advance. BUT COULD ALL THE POWER STATIONS JUST COME UP WITH A DAY OR EVEN A FEW HOURS OF SHUT DOWN TO SHOW TO THE PUBLIC AND THE REST OF THE WORLD WHAT IT IS LIKE IF HANSEN AND HIS CROWD’S DEMAND IS COMPLIED.
REPLY: I see a movie. “The day the Earth stood chilled” – Anthony
Lets face it. When it comes to public relations and hype Hansen’s and his crowd has the upper hand. They have all the energy and carbon dioixde generate to produce the hype and publicity for one hour “earth hour” when everybody switch off anything that consume power. Whatever carbon dioxide reduction is minimal and might even be negative when the power zoom back after the earth hour. Why dont the power plants just organize earth day, switch off all the coal fuelled power plants for a day-not an hour to save the earth. Might even be for a week. Why just one hour– a hype. Show to the world what it is like if all the coal power plants are off rather than an hour when people switched off the light.
He’s that guy from GISS whose rally, and clothes, must not be mentioned!
I think bringing back history lessons to schools, and the teaching of objective thinking, might help some students to look at things in perspective and context.
Tonyb
Todays headline:
“Carbon based life forms ban carbon”
“switch off all the coal fuelled power plants for a day”
We had this back in the UK in the 1970’s during the industrial disputes. The power would go off for a few hours and the country stood still. They even used to turn off the power half way through the evening film for good measure. Luckily, most people used gas cookers so could still eat and central heating was still just for the lucky few. Good old fossil coal files kept us nice and warm.
Things would be a bit different for this needy generation.
I notice no distance shots. All close in shots of tightly packed groups. That is how the media make small crowds appear to give the impression of being much larger crowds. They also used this technique when the Jordanians were bussed into Baghdad to pull down the Saddam statue. The major media showed what appeared to be a large crowd of Jubilant Iraqi’s pulling Saddam down. The truth was it was a few Jordanians filmed close up in a tightly secured area, where locals where excluded, to get the “PR shot of the century”
So common techniques for misleading the public used then. Oh and not many shots of the ground. Only one showing a road that has been cleared of snow, but none of the surrounding snow covered earth, just a few of the snow in the trees in the back-ground. Even then these people do look mighty cold for people protesting against global warming.
As for some of the chants….”One of the chants was “No coal, no gas, no nukes, no kidding”.” … They really DO want us to return to the stone age. Do any of these protesters live in caves? If not, then they are hypocrites.
All in all this was a small failure of a protest that backfired and showed the protesters up for the well-meaning idiots that they are.
That was both funny and sad: funny to see Global Warming activists freeze their arses off while achieving nothing; and sad because on the same day all this was going on, an example of a more real and immediate threat to life on Earth passes by giving us only 3 days warning (see http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,503164,00.html, http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2009%20DD45;orb=1, or http://www.universetoday.com/2009/03/02/asteroid-2009-dd45-just-buzzed-by-earth/ for example). If only a portion of the wasted energy and effort that goes into AGW activism was spent on preparing for threats that have happened before, will happen again and are perfectly well understood, those trying to “save the Planet” would have something real to be proud of.
By the way, it seems that the Washington weather may not have been caused by “The Gore Effect” after all; never underestimate “The Jonah Effect” of the current British Prime Minister: http://www.order-order.com/2009/03/ill-wind-blows-from-east-jonah-goes-to.html.
I wonder if any of them realize you can’t get rid of coal without replacing it with something that provides an equivalent amount of power- and it doesn’t make sense to replace a power plant before it’s end of lifed. Should we suffer blackouts and vastly increased energy prices because of a fear of CO2? It’s ultimately the consumer who will pay for it.
Conversion losses. People need to understand them.
Dear US contributors. Is Dr James Hansen actually in breach of his contract with NASA as a government employee by helping to promote and presenting himself at such a rally? If so I guess he waited with taking this latest move until the Bush administration was out of the way. He probably calculates that with the Obama administration in place and and his friend Al Gore’s increasing influence he is now one of the truly “untouchables”.
Was that it? The biggest ever global warming demonstration? 500 people?
Fairly pathetic performance by the Twittering Class. Maybe people are finally seeing the light.
R John, you may have spoken in jest, but…….
“Copenhagen, which will host the crucial UN Climate Change Conference in less than 300 days, has become the 100th member of the Climate Change Network (CN Net).
The city will play host to a music and arts festival in September to be run entirely on renewable energy, including a dance party in which stationary bike teams will generate power for the sound system and ‘piezoelectricity’ created by dancing crowds will light up the dance floor.”
Now that’s what they mean by hundreds of thousands of green jobs will be created!
Coal.
100% Natural.
100% Organic.
He’s available. he’s just been acquitted by the Iraqi court system.
See Here
It’s good to see Panama Jim, out of the lab, and doing field
research on the devastating affects of Global Warming on
his associates!
Looks very much like some of Al’s $300,000,000 was spent, the view of the ‘rent a crowd’ is what you would expect, unwashed, piercings, “got a $1 for a coffee?”
PLATO (427BC)
” those that are to smart to go into politics are punished by being governed by idiots!”
Progress?
AKD:
“One interesting thing I noticed was that there were several young people playing the role of leaders and leading chants,”
I was once helping a friend to record a “flaky pastry” conference; he sells the CD’s. While they were all doing the zombie chant to:
We are one in the spirit,
We are one in the Lord.
I was chanting:
We are one with the Triffids,
We are one with the Borg.
It didn’t go down too well!
The chanting stops the thinking.
Alfred North Whitehead, philosopher of Oxford, used to start his lectures with the statement: “Human beings will go to almost any lengths to avoid having to think.” Would he have had fun with these guys!
AM
@Les Francis (01:29:55) :
That’s Tariq Aziz, the man that AGW needs is named “Muhammad Saeed Al Sahaf” also known as “Comical Ali” or “Baghdad Bob”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf
So much for civil disobedience. Nobody seemed to have thought to bring chains and locks to chain themselves to the powerplant fence.
If there were any quick thinkers in the group they could have had everyone stick their tongues on the frigid chain link fence poles. It would have brought scores of police and emeds to the scene. That would have been spectacular publicity. (hmm… Maybe even good for a Guinness record.)
On the down (plus?) side, all those tongues stuck to the fence would have put a crimp in the chanting and speeches.
“hut ‘oo ‘e ‘ant? ‘OO coa’ ‘OOOW!!!” (Tongues stuck to fence)
From a pretty good movie:
“We have serious problems, and we need serious solutions. You’re 15 minutes are up…”
JimB
My vote for best post of the day – thank you HR. 🙂
H.R. (03:03:30) :
So much for civil disobedience. Nobody seemed to have thought to bring chains and locks to chain themselves to the powerplant fence.
If there were any quick thinkers in the group they could have had everyone stick their tongues on the frigid chain link fence poles. It would have brought scores of police and emeds to the scene. That would have been spectacular publicity. (hmm… Maybe even good for a Guinness record.)
On the down (plus?) side, all those tongues stuck to the fence would have put a crimp in the chanting and speeches.
“hut ‘oo ‘e ‘ant? ‘OO coa’ ‘OOOW!!!” (Tongues stuck to fence)