And yet…it was claimed to be a “success”. Note to organizers: the media is laughing at you.
Snowstorm squelches climate change protest
By Judy Fahys, The Salt Lake Tribune Updated: 12/30/2009 06:36:58 PM MST
A downtown [Salt Lake City] protest of the climate change talks in Copenhagen became a victim of Wednesday’s snowstorm.
“Not many people showed up because of the blizzard conditions,” said organizer Clea Major, an international studies student at the University of Utah.
It didn’t take long for the six friends to pack up a bullhorn and posters they’d planned to use for their “scream-in,” an outlet for their frustration about the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks earlier this month to curb the pollution blamed for climate change.
Still, they chatted with a few passers-by during the commuter-hour protest near the Gateway, and explained that, blizzard aside, climate change is expected to bring chaos to the global climate, said Major.
She called Wednesday evening’s effort a success and possibly the first in a series. As for the snow, it’s not entirely new; a protest she attended last year in Washington, D.C., suffered a similar fate.
“There is always the irony element,” Major said.
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Here’s the original announcement from KCPW in Salt Lake:
Protesters Scream for Climate Change
12.30.2009 by Elizabeth Ziegler
(KCPW News) Climate change activists will stage a “scream-in” today at the Gateway Mall in downtown Salt Lake City to vent their frustrations about the Copenhagen Accord adopted by global leaders two weeks ago. University of Utah student Cléa Major says the demonstration is intended to call attention to the fact that the accord doesn’t require countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Basically we want your average shopper to go home tonight after work and say, ‘Man, you know, I was returning my Christmas gift and there were these people screaming on the sidewalk, you know, what’s that all about?’” Major says. “We wanted to make an impression on people and we wanted to maybe put it in a location where it wasn’t necessarily expected to get people out of the post-Christmas haze to just sort of listen.”
Major sees the Copenhagen Accord as a failure, akin to the cap and trade legislation, The American Clean Energy and Security Act, that activists had hoped would set the tone in Copenhagen. The bill has stalled in the Senate after garnering a narrow margin of support in the House of Representatives this summer. All three of Utah’s Congressmen voted against it.
Major says the scream-in will be cathartic for those participating, who see the Copenhagen Accord as a missed opportunity to reverse climate change.
“We just all felt so helpless, we felt betrayed by this,” Major says. “We felt helpless and we felt furious because it was like we had just been looking to this to be the big thing that could turn it around or at least be a major jumping off point. And it just kind of stalled and failed and now there’s kind of this feeling of we don’t really know where to go next.”
The scream-in takes place at 5:30 p.m. on the northwest corner of 400 West and 200 South at the Gateway Mall.
A great laugh, and a great way to ring in the New Year.
Thanks Anthony…for everything. Happy New Year.
Perhaps they could have gotten a bigger crowd if they had appeared naked.
A good bout of frostbite would probably be therapeutic.
“Could it be we were hot wired,
Late one night while very tired,
They stole our minds and thought we’d never know it.
With a bottle in each hand,
Too late to try to understand,
We don’t care where it lands we just throw it.”
Yeah, their minds have been stolen. They just don’t understand whodunnit.
Clea Major quote ““There is always the
ironydelusional element,” Major said.Now fixed.
With apologies to Ayn Rand: “Ma Nautre Shrugged!”
I could respect enviromentalists a lot more if they practiced what they preached: No cars, no air travel, no cellphones, no TVs, no iPods; in other words, live as if they were living in the 19th century. Will this happen? I doubt it.
While the enviro-mentalists are doing their iScream (is there an App for that?), the Russians want to have a go at the asteroid Apophis. According to “El Reg” : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/31/russia_apophis_mission/
“Apophis is set to pass close by the Earth in 2029 – so close that it will be nearer than television satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Collision at that stage has been ruled out, but according the latest NASA analysis there is a remote chance – 1 in 250,000 – that the 27-million-tonne rock might pass through a so-called “keyhole” during the 2029 pass which would alter its course so as to hit us on the next pass, in 2036. ”
So if there are unexpected perturbations in Apophis’ orbit, it could perform a landfall in 2036. Surely an extinction event. I expect lots of screaming to take place should that happen. No amount of Cap and Trade will stop that one…
Allan M (12:17:20) :
Galen Haugh (11:08:49) :
Many years ago, there was a graffito in the Cambridge University (UK) lavatory/toilet/john. Above the useful roll was neatly written:
Sociology degrees; please take one.
We only need to substitute ‘international studies.’
Saw the same point made at Latrobe Uni, Melbourne, Australia. Except it had “Arts Degrees”. I was a Philosophy Major at the time…
I would never have imagined you could get frostbite from global warming. I have seen lots of patients in ER and they fabricate some of the wildest claims when i read history notes. This would top it all. Stay inside during extreeme global warming events. Frostbite is nasty.
Q: What is the thinnest book on earth?
A: The Physical Foundations Of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
What ever could have led these poor souls to the idea that Copenhagen was about reducing CO2 emissions? It was about wealth transfers, and that was for the most part a bust.
Someone in authority, maybe the Goracle, needs to let these folks in on the scam before they do something to harm themselves; such as freezing to death in a blizzard.
Desdemona Despair quotes the Jordan Times on a scientific forum on Arab water security, that, so far, climate change has caused a 30 per cent reduction in the Kingdom’s surface water resources, as well as a decrease in the volume of rainfall and agricultural production, both of which the country and the Arab world heavily rely on.
‘Empty vessels make most noise’
A saying refering originally, I believe, to unladen sailing vessels. Meaning now of course that those who have the least to say make the most noise.
I’m glad it is the warmest decade ever. Those poor souls who grew up in the coldest decade ever must have had it pretty bad given how cold it is now.
But then, it was only 0.7C or 0.4C colder in the coldest decade so it probably wasn’t that much different.
And then, there has got to be more to this Gore Effect than just having Gore present. Any fall, winter or spring global warming fest seems to be accompanied by a snowstorm.
As an alternate climate protest, everyone who thinks global warming is NOT a man-made crisis, scream your lungs out at midnight tonight. Shoot fireworks too, if you have them.
Okay…
Everybody all together now…
“Awwwwww shucks”
In 5 years time, seeking to escape thermageddon, Clea and her merry band of sociology post grads flee to a mountain top to await the end…
G
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice scream.
In other notes Hansen is working furiously on a vaccine to ward off the spread of the Gore virus, It appears that the Gore effect is reaching global proportions.
Perhaps these screamers should go and join the (mostly I think) Swedish hunger strikers who made a very quiet pitch at the Copenhagen conference for ‘someone to do something about climate change’.
Is there any news of them, by the way?
Chas
I know that it’s OT but I can’t resist!
Allan M (12:17:20) :
Galen Haugh (11:08:49) :
Many years ago, there was a graffito in the Cambridge University (UK) lavatory/toilet/john. Above the useful roll was neatly written:
Sociology degrees; please take one.
We only need to substitute ‘international studies.’
I was taken by a girl friend to see the graffiti written UNDERNEATH the toilet seat in the Residence in which she lived. Upon lifting the seat one was confronted by a comment which read, “Thank God! A man at last!”
A year or two ago participation would have been (much?) higher.
The forecast for New York City tonight is Rain turning to Snow after midnight with 1-2 inches accumulation possible. So we may see the ball drop obscured by snowflakes.
Happy New Year!!
I found this today and it fits this post:
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” – Albert Einstein
But my own thought for today is this:
————- Great Year in Climate Reporting ———-
Thanks Anthony and moderators & friends!
I would like people of the Green Environmental persuasion to tune in to an Australian radio station via the web.
http://www.2sm.com.au/listen.html
This is about the plight of Australian farmers, who have had their property rights stolen from them by both levels of Government.
Peter is on a hunger strike.
Farmer after farmer is rining in to the station to tell their story.
This is huge.
Whilst we all want to protect the environment, shouldn’t we also ensure our farmers don’t suffer?
Re: Ken Roberts (10:10:55) & R Shearer (12:54:26),
Part of the problem is the imprecision in the meaning of “global warming”, not to mention “climate change”.
The alarmists exploit the vagueness to suit the occasion.
According to the IPCC, the period of ‘global warming’ started mid-twentieth century — and it would be absurd to exclude the war years — so about 1940.
Since 1940, according to GISSTEMP, the temperature has risen about 0.5 °C, over 50% of which is over 90% likely due to human GHGs.
The IPCC are over 90% confident that at least 0.25 °C of the temperature rise since 1940 (0.35 °C / century) is due to human GHGs..
Since the IPCC is tasked with evaluating the risk of climate change caused by human activity and the 0.3 °C rise 1900-1940 cannot be attributed to human GHGs [http://photos.mongabay.com/09/0323co2emissions_global.jpg], they have wisely attributed it to “natural variation”.