Or as my friend down under, Andrew Bolt, calls it: “Day of apathy”
Sydney yesterday demonstrated the depth of international passion about global warming through several highly pictorial stunts:
It was part of a series of events across Sydney yesterday by the environment movement 350.org. Australia was the first of 179 countries to take part in 4500 events worldwide as part of the International Day of Climate Action.
Counting the people in the picture, though, I’d say that this is not a global day of action, but global day of apathy. Or, let’s hope, a global day of mounting scepticism.
Left: People outside the Opera House take a stand on climate change yesterday. Top: Protesters at Manly and bottom, Marton Hidas at the Opera House. Photo: Adam Hollingworth, Janie Barrett
And that’s even without discounting for the tourists and the unfortunate children who were simply dragged there by parents warning them they may not have a future:
Among those on the Opera House steps showing their support was Rae Lawrence from Croydon, who brought her sons, Cameron, 6, and Nicholas, 8. ‘’We care about the future and I want them to have one to live in,’’ she said.
UPDATE
Apologies. From Greenpeace, this proof that the crowds in Sydney may have been even bigger than I sneeringly suggest:
UPDATE 2
The global day of apathy rolls on in Rome:
And in Kiev:
And Dunedin, just the one:
In Copenhagen, where the world’s leaders will meet in December to discuss slashing emissions – or not:
And Shanghai, city of 17 million, in a country that is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases:
But you know it’s a snoozer, media-wise, when “balloon boy”, his mom, and the death of Soupy Sales gets above the fold on Google News and “350” doesn’t:
UPDATE: Maybe I jinxed it, maybe it just took awhile for enough “critical mass” of stories to accumulate. Google has now elevated 350 day to top story status, even though it has far less the number of linked stories as the other top entries. An editorial decision, most likely.
Had I not seen Bolt’s column on it, I wouldn’t even have remembered to mention it myself. What did you do for “350 day”?
UPDATE 10/25: Bill McKIbben can’t do simple math.From 350.org website…seems to me the other two stories have a lot more new coverage. Lets see:
350 event: 322 news stories,
Church janitor: 854 news stories
Obama-Iran: 5255 news stories
So how does he get “for a little while, we’re the most talked about news story on the planet”?
As of this writing, they’ve only managed 661 news stories and have fallen off the Google above the fold section.
This is what James hansen said in “Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?” (http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126):
…..Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 450 +/- 100 ppm, …….
My understanding of glaciation is “the process of glacier growth”, thus the consequence of CO2 dropping below 450ppm would be a further increase in glaciation.
Is there a problem with Hansen’s logic here in proposing a limit of 350ppm?
What is is? 350 what? All weee weed up for what this time.
If it’s supposed to be about global warming, the hoax is showing.
Here in Vancouver, the spiritual home for all Canadian Greenies, Moonbats & Gaia worshipers, the event was a bust.
Blocked off part of a major bridge with maybe 500 protesters and then had a protest march that further screwed up traffic and pissed off many, many people.
Very amusing to see the coverage on the 6pm news. It played late, about the fifth story in and the anchor was all but laughing as she read the copy.
All in all, a very amusing day.
You do realise that the photo that you’re showing of Sydney Opera house from Greenpeace was taken on 16th October.
http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2759/4016248336_795d18de71.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/42758375%40N06/4016248336/&usg=__d3BkiSASMD4D5xWEYw5EOMKyl4M=&h=259&w=500&sz=124&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=RxFvQoZFlWk6fM:&tbnh=67&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3D350%2Bday%2Baction%2Bopera%2Bhouse%2Bsydney%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26rlz%3D1G1GGLQ_ENAU317%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
REPLY: Well if Greenpeace is stupid enough to stage (early) and post that photo that finds its way into current news (Herald Sun posted the photo in the Bolt article that I reposted here) there’s not much I can do about that stupidity. Greenpeace is unimpressive at most levels these days. They are a substanceless PR machine with an agenda. -A
Pre-industrial levels of CO2 were about 280 ppm, current levels are 380 ppm.
So Man is responsible for about a 35 % increase in CO2 levels.
350 day here in (not) sunny Sydney? Well, bugger me (and no snipping – that is a fair word downunder – even the pollies (politicians for those who can use more than two syllables) use it!).
Never heard of it, don’t bloody care about it. Seems I’m not Robinson Crusoe either.
I’ve been working all day – making sure there’s enough CO2 to keep those beautiful palm trees in the garden happy!. Can’t wait for summer – maybe it’ll warm up a bit and we can turn the old water-bed down. The last few years have been too bloody cold for me – give me the old days when we had REAL summers!
By the way, there were 42 events in the Sydney: not surprisng that the one at the Opera House was not massively attended
There were also 18 events in Dunedin, 4 events in Rome and Copenhagen, 7 in Shanghai…
See for yourself here:
http://www.350.org/map#/map/50.440951/30.5271814/2
REPLY: Just another example of just how poorly thought out Greenpeace is. They don’t understand the news media. They won’t attend all 42 events. They’ll attend the one that has the best likelihood of being well attended. Opera House would have my vote. So Greenpeace got what their strategy gave them. One photo, sparsely attended.
As I said “fails to impress”. The whole concept is idiotic anyway, to get to 350ppm, it would mean shutting down everything and that won’t happen. Go live in a mud hut and eat grass if you wish, but the rest of the world isn’t likely to join in. – A
The demosntrators here in Ottawa froze in the rain; I couldn’t even be bothered to launch a counter-demonstration
Talking of which, are there any counter-Copenhagen plans afoot?
Turboblocke, I assume you think there should be zero ppm of CO2.
Beyond being an urban legend, we see evidence of something worse. In 1995 I gave a talk to our local Phi Theta Kappa chapter, and compared global warming to Irving Langmuir’s description of pathological science. There was a remarkable fit at that time, which has become only more remarkable as the creation of various “hockey sticks” shows. Moreover, people are all the more convinced about the certainty of the global warming tale even as one points out the impressive list of very current instances of pathological science (see for example a number of examples I put together at this place) that should give them reason for caution.
Years ago I couldn’t find the text of Langmuir’s colloquium on the subject, but thanks to the miracle of the unfettered internet, someone at Princeton has put it online! See http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ken/Langmuir/langmuir.htm.
From the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8324020.stm
I predict 400 by 2020
I now see that my link to the list of more current examples will not work because my URL, became a subdirectory beneath WordPress, so try this place instead.
Tom in Texas (19:43:14) : That spot is too close to the equator. Is solar cycle 24 ending?
” Robert Wood (07:52:15) :
Turboblocke, I assume you think there should be zero ppm of CO2.”
Why do you say that? On what basis do you make your assumption?
Turboblocke (07:17:16) :
By the way, there were 42 events in the Sydney: not surprisng that the one at the Opera House was not massively attended
There were also 18 events in Dunedin, 4 events in Rome and Copenhagen, 7 in Shanghai…
See for yourself here:
http://www.350.org/map#/map/50.440951/30.5271814/2
REPLY: Just another example of just how poorly thought out Greenpeace is. They don’t understand the news media. They won’t attend all 42 events. They’ll attend the one that has the best likelihood of being well attended. Opera House would have my vote. So Greenpeace got what their strategy gave them. One photo, sparsely attended.
As I said “fails to impress”. The whole concept is idiotic anyway, to get to 350ppm, it would mean shutting down everything and that won’t happen. Go live in a mud hut and eat grass if you wish, but the rest of the world isn’t likely to join in. – A
My Reply to your reply:a) Greenpeace didn’t organise the 350 Action
day. http://www.350.org/about
b) The whole point of having numerous local events, was to avoid people travelling to big events. Geddit?
c) No, as far as I know cutting carbon emissions does not require us to live in mud huts nor to eat grass. Have you got a link to a paper that shows we would have to?
The UK is generally considered a bastion of climate hysteria, yet strangely I can find only a few snippets of news about 350.org-related events here. The BBC report “about 100” protesters outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. (Compare that number, if you will, with the estimated 5,000 to 10,000 taking part in an anti-war demonstration in London yesterday.)
According to the 350.org website, “hundreds upon hundreds” of protesters were to join together to form a giant number 5, near the London Eye, in Jubilee Gardens. However, I can find nothing about this on BBC, Sky, Reuters, etc. Did this actually go ahead?
350 obviously refers to the number of people who turned up.
Presumably in some places they needed a decimal point between the five and the zero.
tokyoboy (22:07:39) :
“jamel (22:00:38) : ……….this scientist chooses his targets based on politics not science.”
IIRC, in another thread yesterday someone described him as “mad”. Isn’t the “politics” a typo for “madness”? 😉
tokyoboy
It depends.
This about power and money.
Not the whimpy kind of power you find in a well organized democracy where the decision making process subjected to majority voting, but absolute touch brute power that puts you in control of the entire economy, markets, financial systems and every facet of the private lives of the people. It is the kind of power with the potential to decide over death or life of entire populations and exploit them to the bone = tyranny
The “madness” of it is that those who are trying to achieve this kind of power did not learn from history. Through history, people have stood up to tyranny and no matter how hard the battle and how high the losses, have overcome tyranny, simply because people want to be free.
The people behind the Climate Scam must be vicious opportunists who believe they can take humanity hostage by a doctrine based on lies.
It will never stand.
The irony of it is that they will keep making money no matter which scenario is played. They make money if we are at war, they make money if humanity is enslaved and they make money in a free world.
Obviously they have decided they make the most money if they control everything.
Turboblocke (08:34:24) :
b) The whole point of having numerous local events, was to avoid people travelling to big events. Geddit?
c) No, as far as I know cutting carbon emissions does not require us to live in mud huts nor to eat grass. Have you got a link to a paper that shows we would have to?”
Turboblocke,
b. I am against any initiative that restricts our freedom.
Freedom of travel, to go anywhere in the world at an affordable price is one of our basic freedoms to defend.
Only creating the illusion that traveling in any form is a bad, based on a doctrine promoted by a bunch of people that are to stupid to check the true facts is a threat of our freedom.
c. Try it. Try to live your life in a zero carbon environment.
You can’t afford it.
We don’t have the technology available to make it happen and the alternative energy like wind, solar and bio fuels are a disaster. They don’t deliver what they promise and they are very expensive. The technology to replace oil still has to be invented.
I want to be free to make my own decisions in life and I will not accept a situation where other people are going to tell me how to live it
Geddit!
Here in our small city (80,000) of Lethbridge, Alberta there was an event at a church…yes, with 350 bell peals. However, the leftwing, liberal daily rag gave it a half-page spread including a picture of cute chick yarding on a bell rope … no pictures of the throngs of (what?) maybe a dozen or so. The item reported the opinions of someone (surely a world class climatologist), “heightened levels of carbon .. degrade the earth’s climate….increase poverty and starvation …”
Blah blah blah yada yada yada … but the local rag felt it needed big ½-page spread. I dunno whether to write another “letter to the editor” .. a waste of ink perhaps.
M White (08:02:13) :
From the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8324020.stm
“I predict 400 by 2020”
It does not matter how much CO2 we have in our atmosphere.
Th more the better I say.
From the London eye
The “warmies” were off by 101 and missed a golden opportunity. Imagine if they had used 451 instead of 350. Then they could have combined CO2 level and temperature into one blockbuster event: Fahrenheit/CO2 451–the sequel to the movie Fahrenheit 451.
The number of people in Sidney who care to protest – 350
I wonder where all the bubble headed idiots will get their food when we stop making —-everything!
I can’t say much about smelling the deep solar minimum, as solar minimum seems to be over.
There’s at least 3 recognizable magnetic areas on the magnetogram, seems quite far from the deep quiet earlier this year, I do wonder if the oceans will go back into heat retaining mode taking this from Tallbloke’s theory if the cycle ramps up and we’ll see some much colder SST’s as a result of the heat being retained in the depths.