NEW UPDATES POSTED BELOW:
I was link surfing today over at Dellers, and I found myself looking at the long list of bios for the 1010 team on their website. I noted something curious in the bio posted on Splattergate’s designer Franny Armstrong, because it was rather off the wall. She listed a “guilty pleasure”. Well no harm, we all have those, but at the same time she says her Actual job: “Asking powerful people for money and/or emissions cuts“.
The “emissions cuts” part I get. But wait a minute…not in season blueberries? Hmmm.
Now I don’t know much about growing blueberries, but I did find this on a BBC gardening site:
Blueberries produce fruit on branches that were produced the previous year. For the first two or three years of a blueberry’s life it’s not necessary to prune it much, apart from keeping the plant tidy. After this, blueberries need regular pruning to maintain plant vigour and high quality berry production. Prune them between November and March when the plant is dormant.
They need cold weather apparently:
“These bushes are hardy and require a minimum of 750 hours accumulated chilling time below 8 degrees centigrade in order to produce good yields of berries, so please do not put them into your greeenhouse over the winter.”
OK, so you can’t grow them “off season” in a local greenhouse. That means UK “off season” blueberries have to come someplace where the “off season” is opposite, like another hemisphere.
Looking more into blueberries, I find this from a Latin American Markets site on Chilean blueberry production:
While the US is the main importer of Chilean blueberries, Europe, and in particular the UK, are also strong markets.
“We’ve seen an explosion in UK blueberry consumption over the past two to three years,” says Hortifrut’s Francisco Ortuzar. “Unlike some other parts of Europe, the market is familiar with blueberries and category managers have done a good job of promoting the fruit.”
Huh, imagine that. Demand for blueberries in the UK is ummm ‘exploding’. Given what I know, I would imagine the demand would increase in the “off season” when no local blueberries can be harvested.
I wonder how they get there? Oh, here we go:
Tesco blueberries are harvested in Argentina and are flown to the UK for sale.
So I think it would be safe to assume that Franny is eating off season blueberries, flown in from Chile or Argentina using the speedy but horrible CO2 belching airplanes to preserve freshness.
Yet WE are the ones that have to reduce our consumption of things like “guilty pleasures”. Ya know, modern, guilty, dirty things like air travel, cars, and incandescent lights (though I do like the new LED replacements), to keep the planet from “burning up” due to CO2 emissions. And if we don’t, or give an indifferent shrug like those school kids in her movie…we get the red button.
She also mentions in her bio:
“Not flying to America or Australia to launch my climate movie”
…yet Franny can have her off season jet set blueberries. No pressure to eliminate that. I guess Franny never stopped to think how “not in season blueberries” get to her local shop.
Now that’s just plane stupid.
UPDATE: 8:05 PM PST 10/7/10 I was informed by email of some silliness. For the record, somebody who obviously didn’t like this story has signed up my name as a “supporter” at the 10:10 website, here: http://www.1010global.org/uk/people along with Christopher Monckton, and James Dellingpole. This is of course false, and the product of a simple minded prank. I don’t know what this stupidity will do for them, especially since it is obvious none of us would sign up to 10:10. Here’s the screen cap:
UPDATE2: 11:40PM PST 10/7/10
It appears the application of names is being handled by a static list superimposed at the website. The people counter continues to rise, but the list does not change. Here’s a screencap from 11:38PM of the “people” page at http://www.1010global.org/uk/people
If you visit the other pages on the website, you’ll find that static list with my name on it, along with Monckton and Delingpole, superimposed on it, even though the counter has advanced from 94,885 to 94,910 signups, a total of 25 names, more than enough to move the list down.
But it appears the “legal” page here: http://www.1010global.org/legal has what appears to be a correctly updated list:
How fun! Let’s watch the amusement unfold.
LarryD says:
October 8, 2010 at 7:58 am
“If we can make it uncool to be an eco-nazi foot soldier[…]”
It has been uncool for as long as i can remember, so how would that stop them? Enviro-pressure groups thrive on hysteria, not coolness. (So, if 10:10 tries to appeal to coolness they’ve totally missed the target demographic anyway.)
John Whitman says:
October 8, 2010 at 10:21 am
City of London website is a useful overview of the area, stated on their website as ‘the world’s leading financial centre.’ http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation
The City Council also operates its own police force, which according to the 2009-2010 Annual report
“of a ground-breaking, national drive to deter the fraudsters who cost the economy an estimated £30 billion last year.’ p2 http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/CityPolice/Media/publications/annualreport.htm
The City of London appears to operate student loans, deal with 1000 acres of parks, 320,000 workers daily commuting into the city + residents and businesses, has a broken link to its online databases (tab online services), e-services, historical buildings (probably not climate/star efficient rated) and numerous depts, authorities and corporations.
p29 point 29 of the Corporate Assessment (2007) Audit report states ‘instrumental in setting up the EU emissions trading scheme’ http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Council_and_democracy/Performance/best_value.htm#csamp
The City of London School for Girls features girls safely learning science http://www.clsg.org.uk/ and students presumably may go on to study science at the one of the many universities, eg University of London where HRH Princess Royal holds the position of Chancellor http://www.london.ac.uk/history.html
The City of London was recently discussed in The Australian (national newspaper) in regard to their congestion tax http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/industry-sectors/city-traffic-congestion-a-20bn-problem/story-e6frg97o-1225934584732
I am not clear how goods and services (especially blueberries) are freighted in (and taxed) for those with such pleasures, however Cambridge Journals has published one agricultural study ‘Effect of blueberry feeding on plasma lipids in pigs’ http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1893040
and there are a few studies on brain damage in rats being improved by a diet of blueberries. Not clear whether these studies are to be extrapolated to human health.
Nevertheless turning the city parks to communal [berry] gardens may encourage the squirrels and diseases perhaps (David A. Evans says:
October 8, 2010 at 6:09 am ) .
I guess self important bourgeois that has aspirations of being a big shot “documentary” producer, jet setting around, and hob knobbing with rich celebrities the CAGW scam is the perfect vehicle to hitch your Spanner Films/10:00 wagon. What’s worse actually believing 300K people each year die due to CAGW, or cynically promoting the lie to line your own pockets?
Trying to rationalize the amount of CO2 for a given delivery of berries in order to excuse it is pretty ridiculous considering that the reason that berries could be imported with sufficient efficiency to make the economical is the fact that we have a worldwide economy and logistical infrastructure fueled by carbon based fuels
I guess self important bourgeois that has aspirations of being a big shot “documentary” producer, jet setting around, and hob knobbing with rich celebrities the CAGW scam is the perfect vehicle to hitch your Spanner Films/10:00 wagon. What’s worse actually believing 300K people each year die due to CAGW, or cynically promoting the lie to line your own pockets?
They still have all their pages up with Guilty Pleasures
Here’s one:-
Lizzie Gillett: Global
Job title: Campaign Director, 10:10 Global, London
Actual job: Enthuse people around the world to run 10:10 in their country.
10:10er since: Feb 2010 but was around when the idea was conceived back in March 2009.
10:10 plan: 10% more sleep (when you’re asleep you don’t consume anything or travel anywhere). Plus not turning on the heating in our flat.
Favourite 10:10er: Nina in Norway who started 10:10 Norge and has already signed up the City of Oslo, some of the biggest trade unions, the powerful Lions Club and 4,000 individuals.
Guilty pleasure: Out of season strawberries or blueberries.
Best/worst 10:10 moment: Best moment was seeing the 10:10 France and Holland teams plotting their country campaigns and realising they now have ownership of the campaign so it will happen with or without us.
Background: Lizzie Gillett is the producer of The Age of Stupid. On the five-year production she managed a crew of 105 people in six countries and raised one million pounds through the pioneering crowd-funding model. She organised the Guinness World Record beating Global Premiere, which over one million people in 63 countries participated in.
Try out the international crowd if you can bear it:-
http://www.1010global.org/global/about/inside-1010-global
Yuck!
“Re:-UPDATE: 8:05 PM PST 10/7/10 I was informed by email of some silliness. For the record, somebody who obviously didn’t like this story has signed up my name as a “supporter” at the 10:10 website, ………along with Christopher Monckton, and James Dellingpole. This is of course false, and the product of a simple minded prank.”
Hey, lighten up. It just shows how vacuous the whole exercise is, that anyone or anything can sign -up or be signed up , but hey , it’s all just good fun. It’s not about the stuffy science, nor persuading reluctant politicians, nor even about having a real impact on the climate, but about raising awareness. It’s just hoping to be a fashionable initiative to reignite interest in concern for the planet after all the damage down by the false premise, which it’s still mistakenly peddling about CO2.
REPLY: Oh I thought it was plenty lightened, tagged in the satire category, and look at the last two sentences below the screencaps. – Anthony
Now exploding blueberries, particularly the guilty imported CO2 producing variety, that would have been a much more subtley brilliant device for getting their message across. They make such a mess … But hey , No Pressure .
Still, it’s nice to see a kid who couldn’t get a real job , finding something to get entusiastic about.
Ms. Armstrong is [snip]. She obviously has come to the delusional belief that she knows best and that her means justify her ends, irrespective of the inconsistency of her actions with her words.
I’m sick of these idiots who despite all the science to the contrary continue to attempt to brainwash and threaten us. I’ll fly wherever I bloody well want to as many times as I bloody well want to. If Tim Flim-Flannery, Al Gore and all these other hypocrites can do it so can I. All the kids at my sons high school have all said they are sick to death of thos AGW crap. They like the idea of fast cars and bikes and all want V8, V12’s or Ducatis, and more girls are lighting up the fags these days than ever so Franny you’d be better aiming your movies at the girls killing themselves by smoking than telling lies about the environment.
I thought she flew into Australia too. I heard her shrill voice on an interview on Sydney radio. She was calling for air travel to be cancelled immediately, we were all going to die in the next week, etc etc. and I wondered how she got here if not by air. The woman is a nutcase.
Has anyone noticed that Franny has surrounded herself with video equipment, TV, a computer and other yuppie detritus? Couldn’t she at least have had the decency to put a tree or field in the background for her ‘I am saviour’ photo?
Has anyone noticed that the 10:10 ‘People on board’ counter has gone down to 73,523? Maybe this article has pulled their heads in a bit
The production of British lamb produces 2,850kg of CO2 per ton. New Zealand lamb shipped to Britain produces 690.
Apples & oranges – “Production of british lamb” vs “shipping NZ lamb” – what about the (carbon) cost of producing the lamb in NZ?
What’s the carbon footprint on a can of blueberries?
Retrieve the iron ore
Diggers
explosives
rubber (for the tyres on the trucks)
gold (used in the computers)
oil (used in the exploration to find the iron ore in the first place)
aluminium (aluminum for our US friends) (for the plane that flew the prospector over the area to determine where to put the mine in the first place)
etc etc etc
(and I haven’t even thought about the sugar production, transporting it from Queensland / Fiji to whereever the cannery is, transporting the blueberries from the farm to the cannery etc etc etc – I’m sure you get the picture.)
LOL…10:57 MST and it looks as though about 20K people have decided to vacate the 10:10 sphere since Anthony posted those screen shots in his article. People count now at 73,595….
Better start bailing Franny, you may be on a sinking ship. Eat lots of blueberries to keep your energy up.