More civil disobedience and vandalism along the thinking of Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS, who advocates such things.
From Ecorazzi and Treehugger
Greenpeace took a unique approach today and sent several climbers up Mt. Rushmore in the middle of the night to deploy a giant 75lb sixty-five feet high by thirty-five feet wide banner calling for Climate Action. Featuring an unfinished portrait of the President, it read “America honors leaders not politicians: Stop Global Warming.” The demonstration came as President Obama meets other G8 leaders in l’Aquila, Italy today to discuss the global warming crisis in the lead-up to UN climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen this December.
The banner managed to stay up on Mt. Rushmore for about an hour before being cut at around 1:17 PM est. Greenpeace was quick to point out that they respect American monuments and the banner was not installed in any way detrimental to the carvings on Mt. Rushmore. For more information, jump to the official Greenpeace posting on the event here.
via Treehugger
[UPDATE: Newsweek‘s The Gaggle blog says it has learned: “That a team of 12 experienced climbers prepped conspicuously for months planning for different scenarios to ensure the action could be completed safely. The group also promised there would be no damage to the actual monument, which is solid granite. And all involved planned to spend several weeks behind bars.”]
Bob Buchanan (12:12:12) :
“I disagree with everything Greenpeace believes. It’s too bad they don’t accept the scientific facts which disprove AGW. However I admire their moxie in completing such a stunt”.
Well Bob, it would be nice if they used their skills and talents to stop the Chinese from eating shark fin soup.
I hate to see those environmental movements beefing up evil political schemes.
Now they collaborate to steel the freedom and the jobs from the same people who made them big with their donations in the first place.
People should know that if they donate money to an environmental organization, it will be used against them.
It won’t help the sharks.
The G8 may be good news. If the temperatures decline, they can say that capping carbon is unnecessary. It gives them the perfect out.
Latest news from the G8 meeting, no agreement?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/world/europe/09prexy.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
I don’t know how anyone could spend months planning this. Anyone with basic rappelling skills could descend to the top of the monument and pull off this stunt. It certainly wouldn’t require months of preparation. Maybe an evening spent looking at photos to determine the size of sign and best placement, and then a quick trip to WalMart for some granola bars. Good grief.
LarryD ,
Exactly . Obnoxious , self absorbed , self rightous nitwits . I was exposed to these types during the anti-war protests in the early seventies , while in high school . I have taken a dim view of most causes ever since . Someone once said that all great causes end up as rackets , and we’re seeing that now – just look at who is lining up at the cap and trade trough .
Greenpeace gave up on their primary target when they couldn’t find it in the US!!
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Travel/Lake+Louise+face+website/1771567/story.html
Why are these lunatics still able to raise money, acting like this??
Obama goes nuclear to pass climate bill.
Greenpeace will love that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/08/nuclear-power-obama-us
Dan Gibson ,
The politicians are in it now , and making mainly misguided decisions . We can’t ignore them and time’s awastin’ .
Please support Greenpeace. They saved the whales and we will soon need all that whale oil we can get to find our way to bed if Algore gets his way!
Sorry, friends, this is not an example of “defacing”… there was no damage whatsoever. It was a little like sky-writing… which I actually take a little more umbrage at, unless the message is “I love you, Junie Moon”….
The REAL offense is trying to equate a true environmentalist like Roosevelt with… well, fill in your favorite name here. On the other hand, if I were visiting Mt. Rushmore and had to have my one and only snapshot in front of the monument with that [snip!] as a backdrop….. “Gee, Grand-pop-pop was a hero of the environmentalist movement! I never knew…”
What is the law? Defacing a national monument, even for a short time, must, should, be some kind of felony, no? I’d like to see them behind bars for at least a couple of years. Then see how Greenpeace’s experienced climbers like their atrophied muscles and Greenpeace’s leaders like the emphatic “no” to infantile temper tantrums on the part of adults. At least they might think twice next time.
evanmjones (14:21:27) : The G8 may be good news. If the temperatures decline, they can say that capping carbon is unnecessary. It gives them the perfect out.
“An optimist, better cut him out of the herd and kill him quick, before the rest get spooked.”
Greenpeace better get down to Texas quick and shore up their southern flank. T. Boone Pickens is calling it quits on his Pampa wind project because of technical, financial and economic issues. I love it when reality intervenes and exposes a fool.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/08/pickens.wind.farm/index.html
Warmer is Better. Wave the Sales.
At this point, “green” is becoming a “dirty word” to me because of the damage the “green movement” indirectly does to our planet by wasting limited resources on non-problems like AGW.
evanmjones (14:21:27) :
The G8 may be good news. If the temperatures decline, they can say that capping carbon is unnecessary. It gives them the perfect out.
I suspect a more likely scenario is that when warming fails to materialize, we will be faced with a barrage of public pronouncements declaring the success of all the governmental efforts in averting the climate crisis, even if the enacted programs haven’t had time or even the possibility to affect what is occurring in the climate. We had a preview of what we can expect in Obama’s recent assertion that the Stimupalooza Bill was responsible for recent improvements in the economy, even though almost none of it has actually been spent yet and the St Louis Fed was projecting an end to the recession for late this year at about the same time the Congress was voting to enact it, without taking time to actually read it, be cause the need for it was so dire. If this reminds you of the conduct they’ve displayed in ramrodding the Waxman Markey Act through you’re beginning to get the picture.
Alan F
Apparently you get the equivalent of 92 barrels of oil from a bowhead whale and they can deliver themselves to the oil refinery 🙂
Tonyb
[snip]
Self centered little snots, they think they can save the earth.
The earth can shake us off like a bad cold, ask Mt T-Rex, Oh wait you cant because hes DEAD!
Ted
One of the climbers is quoted as saying “We can not afford for him (Obama) to get it wrong!” I would like to ask this climber which has been more ‘unaffordable’ over the last 100 years: the undetectable problems resulting from the ‘unprecidented’ climate change of the 20th Century, or the tens of millions of corpses and trillions in damage resulting from politicians, noble causes and draconian laws?
Leaving out the world wars and all the misery imposed by communism, we still have the ‘outlawing’ of DDT for no good reason and the resulting tens of millions of innocent deaths. Just this one example of altruistic, eco-decision making has caused more damage than 100 years of ‘unprecedented’ climate change! Add in all the other ‘wonderful’ decisions and…
The real threat to us all is politics run amock.
We had lots of run-ins with these zealots in the Pacific when I was in the Navy. They’d spread around pamphlets in the ports we visited detailing our ship’s nuclear power and nuclear weapons even though it was apparent that we had neither (although we could neither confirm nor deny…).
When we pulled into Sydney (beautiful harbor) there were fights breaking out on the pier between pro-US Aussies (God bless ’em) and the anti-US forces of Greenpeace. A lifetime of dandelions and granola doesn’t prepare one for that kind of activity and those kids certainly paid a higher price for their zealotry than the ones at Rushmore will.
Actually, the banner is more comic relief than defacement. This is the kind of thing that once photographed, becomes the embarrassment of a high school annual photo in later years. I say to Greenpeace, take more pictures of it and put it in a scrap book. It will amuse your grandchildren to no end. Much ado about nothing and makes for a good laugh over a beer. By the way, Save the Ales.
Pretentious and sophomoric
You know I went to have a look at George Monbiot’s recent blog article and then there’s all these stunts and it’s starting to get depressing that people feel the need to hype and court controversy when they could put more effort into keeping calm and being more composed. I think Al Gore’s film took the wheels off the AGW train so much so that ‘new physics’ is being invented. I went to the BBC website and looked at the Environment section. It has a nice flash animation showing how CO2 heats up the atmosphere by absorbing and re-emitting IR radiation. Uh? A free molecule neither gains or loses energy by absorption or emission of quanta. Someone needs to tell them this and that the atmosphere is predominantly heated and controlled by convection and water vapour processes e.g. clouds, lapse rate. An effect CO2 may have is heating the surface by radiative means; but the strength (forcing) of this is still in debate. And then there’s coupling with convective processes to take account of what effect this has.
It just boggles the mind with this idiocracy..actually no now I think of it this is just another example of Newtonian thinking. Linear trends = More CO2 = More warming. The models say so. The universe is an elegant but knowable machine. No worries then in the fact that the models cannot describe one of the most dominant energy distribution processes on the planet (ENSO). Linear trends are the truth. Linear trends are the future. Society has just not got the gumption to get over the direct cause and effect, I see it therefore it must be caused by that, philosophy. And hence Lincoln gets a ranting face cloth which doesn’t even have a picture of him on it. It looks like George Washington.
Why can’t they just pay for TV advertising like everyone else?
Tightwads.
Greenpeas have always been a bit slow on the uptake. Though I admire their anti whaling efforts.