Oh dear, some of these folks aren’t the brightest CFL’s in the room.
Readers may remember this famous Penn and Teller video from 2006 where they get well meaning (but non thinking) people to sign up to ban “dihydrogen monoxide” (DHMO), which is an “evil” chemical found in our lakes, rivers, oceans, and even our food!
Yeah, they signed up to ban water. Now watch the video from the Cancun climate conference, you’d think some of these folks would have enough science background (from their work in complex climate issues) to realize what they are signing, but sadly, no.
Some people will sign anything that includes phrases like, ”global effort,” “international community,” and “planetary.” Such was the case at COP 16, this year’s United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico.
This year, CFACT students created two mock-petitions to test U.N. Delegates. The first asked participants to help destabilize the United States economy, the second to ban water.
The first project, entitled “Petition to Set a Global Standard” sought to isolate and punish the United States of America for defying the international community, by refusing to bite, hook, line and sinker on the bait that is the Kyoto Protocol. The petition went so far as to encourage the United Nations to impose tariffs and trade restrictions on the U.S. in a scheme to destabilize the nation’s economy. Specifically, the scheme seeks to lower the U.S. GDP by 6% over a ten year period, unless the U.S. signs a U.N. treaty on global warming.
This would be an extremely radical move by the United Nations. Even so, radical left-wing environmentalists from around the world scrambled eagerly to sign.
The second project was as successful as the first. It was euphemistically entitled “Petition to Ban the Use of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO)” (translation water). It was designed to show that if official U.N. delegates could be duped by college students into banning water, that they could essentially fall for anything, including pseudo-scientific studies which claim to show that global warming is man-caused.
Despite the apparently not-so-obvious reference to H2O, almost every delegate that collegian students approached signed their petition to ban that all too dangerous substance, which contributes to the greenhouse effect, is the major substance in acid rain, and is fatal if inhaled.
Perhaps together, the footage associated with these two projects will illustrate to mainstream America the radical lengths many current U.N. delegates are willing to go to carry out an agenda no more ethical, plausible or practical than the banning water.
Peter Miller says:
December 8, 2010 at 10:18 am
This is a very serious question indeed:
Which is more dangerous: di-hydrogen monoxide, or oxygen di-hydride?
Perhaps the good folks at Real Climate could help, they like to think they are scientists.
Isn’t oxygen di-hydride flammable? Hydrogen is flammable in the presence of Oxygen.
This oxygen di-hydride is probably both flammable and explosive…
Stay well away from the stuff… it’s much worse than di-hydrogen monoxide
Graeme
December 8, 2010 4:27 pm
R Taylor says:
December 8, 2010 at 10:41 am
Not that it would matter to the signers, but the claim that DHMO is fatal if inhaled is false. Anyone breathing the natural atmosphere inhales it with every breath, and most of us die of other causes.
R Taylor – are you, or are you not a shill for BIG DHMO?
Graeme
December 8, 2010 4:48 pm
RockyRoad says:
December 8, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Dave Andrews says:
December 8, 2010 at 1:10 pm
I would’nt get carried away with this. You have no idea how many people may have refused to sign, or asked awkward questions. (They would obviously not have made the final video)
This is just spin, adopting the same tactics as any pro AGW group. It shows and means nothing.
It shows how gullible they are; it shows none of them have had a chemistry class in their life; and it shows extreme herd mentality.
And the lesson obtained means we should also question the intelligence of all those who signed the petition. We don’t have to worry about those who didn’t sign; hopefully there were a few who were brave enough to ask probing questions, but I’ll ask them:
Hey, CFACT students, was there ANYBODY that knew what dihydrogen monoxide was, or that hesitated signing a petition to criple the U.S. economy?
You can’t automatically assume the counter argument–we’ll see what their response is.
Conformity and compliance are often survival traits, unless your a lemming or a mark.
banjo
December 8, 2010 4:52 pm
British a, b, c and z list celebs ….blinded by science!!!
Counsel Dew
December 8, 2010 5:33 pm
I have to disagree with this statement, “Well, there are some English words that should be banned from use because their meanings are very confusing in relation to similar words in common use. “Suffrage” is one and “restive” is another. I’m sure others can come up with man[y] more.”
The goal should be to educate poeple rather than “idiot-down” a language. A person’s lack of understanding says something about them rather than something about anything else…
Glad everybody has enjoyed the video so much!
A few people have wondered whether anybody knew what dihydrogen monoxide actually was and caught on. Surprisingly, not a single person did! Our CFACT Collegians students wandered the halls for a couple of hours collecting signatures for the petitions, and while some people didn’t sign because they didn’t know enough about it, no one was intelligent enough to call us out on the trick!
You gotta laugh, but it really is saddening to realize how clueless these people are.
On a more serious note, we caught up with IPCC chair Pachauri last week and asked him about the absence of any warming for the past 15 years. You’ll love the shocked look on his face–“no warming?!!” =)
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @CFACT for more live updates. We have a big press release tomorrow with Dr. Roy Spencer, stay tuned!
The most alarming thing is that this DHMO gag is at least 20 years old.
People were running this gag on Green candidates in NZ in the early 90’s (and yes, predictably, many of them fell for it).
Ignorance and arrogance is such an unseemly combination, isn’t it?
I think that the number of people who signed does not surprise me (see the recent “is Obama a Keynesian?” experiment) but it does disappoint me that so much of our life is driven by people that respond literally to sound bytes (bites is to large a quantity) with little drive to actually understand the question.
Wanting to be part of this historic moment is what got us the government we have.
BACullen
December 8, 2010 6:55 pm
Peter Miller says:
December 8, 2010 at 10:18 am
Which is more dangerous: di-hydrogen monoxide, or oxygen di-hydride?
Peter,
I would be VERY careful with oxygen dihydride if you have any since many hydrides decompose to explosive hydrogen gas when they come in contact w/ water. Oxygen dihydride may be one of them.
BAC
It isn’t “dihydrogen monoxide” in any case. It is hydrogen hydroxide, (HOH), even a worse pollutant, with the log of hydrogen ion concentration of 7 times the minimum of 1! Anyone with a high school education should know the dangers of hydroxide.
This is a demonstration on how uninformed people are.
Jeremy
December 8, 2010 8:57 pm
You Cancon some people some of the time but you Can’tcon all the people all the time!!
Al Gored
December 8, 2010 9:57 pm
In parallel news, there is currently a campaign to stop the Pacific gateway pipeline in British Columbia because it goes “through the Great Bear Rainforest,” and will ruin “pristine wilderness,” that has the simple folk who read the Huffington Post in a frenzy.
“Athabasca Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Threatens Bears And Other Animals In Pristine Canadian Wilderness” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/athabasca-tar-sands-oil-pipeline_n_793389.html#comments
Except that the pipeline doesn’t got through the GBRF or “pristine wilderness” – unless you define “pristine wilderness” as a long existing railway and highway corridor with several cities and many towns along it.
By the way, in case you don’t already get it, don’t believe ANYTHING the greenies are saying about the oil sands. It is a very, very, very fat cash cow that they are trying very hard to milk/extort.
Al Gored
December 8, 2010 10:02 pm
I expect the BBC’s Richard Black to report on the dangers of di-hydrogen monoxide. He seems to report anything any ‘environmentalist’ tells him, and now many of them have been alerted to its dangers by the person doing this survey.
Bernd Felsche
December 8, 2010 10:17 pm
You may have seen that there’s been a massive spill of DHMO in Eastern Australia. A million square km of land has been rendered useless for agriculture for some time.
Pamela Gray
December 8, 2010 10:22 pm
SNL and/or Monty Python have got to produce some vignettes on this. While the Holy Grail and The Life of Brian were great stuff, banning H2O and CO2 could be just as fertile.
As to the toxicology of hydrogen oxide, this was studied long ago although I do not have the paper at hand. It described the LD50 in centimeters of depth (after a fall from a 12m high board) for various species.
For example,
cat 12cm
cat in bag with rock 4cm
fish none observed
johanna
December 8, 2010 10:36 pm
Dihydrogen monoxide gas isn’t only fatal if inhaled at high temperature and pressure – it can also kill at low temperature, as anyone who has ever been caught in a serious mountain fog can tell you. This vapour is deadly.
Not only that – it dissolves human tissue! Spend a couple of months in your spa if you don’t believe me …
Seriously, you have to wonder what rock these people have been living under if not one of them has ever come across this ancient and oft repeated joke. What else have they never heard of? I would love to be there asking for help to get my inheritance out of Nigeria. I can’t see why being Caucasian would necessarily hurt my chances, either.
Ben
December 8, 2010 10:46 pm
Petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide:
Sign name below:
1. Albert Gore
jorgekafkazar
December 8, 2010 11:25 pm
AC says: “…footnote for MAX @ur momisugly 12/10 10:01 – wouldn’t ethenol/ CHOOH be better described as Carbonic Hydro DiOxy Hydrogen?”
No, CHOOH is not ethanol. A reasonable synonym for Ethanol would be ‘methyl carbinol.’ Ooooooo! Sounds nasty, doesn’t it? It is a toxic chemical, an industrial solvent and a gasoline contaminant, kills over 100,000 Americans every year, and does over $200 billion in damages in the US alone. Maybe we should ban the stuff. Oh, wait…
Larry in Texas
December 8, 2010 11:27 pm
I can’t stop laughing. It’s the best scam I’ve seen yet. Especially in Cancun!
Peter Miller says:
December 8, 2010 at 10:18 am
This is a very serious question indeed:
Which is more dangerous: di-hydrogen monoxide, or oxygen di-hydride?
Perhaps the good folks at Real Climate could help, they like to think they are scientists.
Isn’t oxygen di-hydride flammable? Hydrogen is flammable in the presence of Oxygen.
This oxygen di-hydride is probably both flammable and explosive…
Stay well away from the stuff… it’s much worse than di-hydrogen monoxide
R Taylor says:
December 8, 2010 at 10:41 am
Not that it would matter to the signers, but the claim that DHMO is fatal if inhaled is false. Anyone breathing the natural atmosphere inhales it with every breath, and most of us die of other causes.
R Taylor – are you, or are you not a shill for BIG DHMO?
RockyRoad says:
December 8, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Dave Andrews says:
December 8, 2010 at 1:10 pm
I would’nt get carried away with this. You have no idea how many people may have refused to sign, or asked awkward questions. (They would obviously not have made the final video)
This is just spin, adopting the same tactics as any pro AGW group. It shows and means nothing.
It shows how gullible they are; it shows none of them have had a chemistry class in their life; and it shows extreme herd mentality.
And the lesson obtained means we should also question the intelligence of all those who signed the petition. We don’t have to worry about those who didn’t sign; hopefully there were a few who were brave enough to ask probing questions, but I’ll ask them:
Hey, CFACT students, was there ANYBODY that knew what dihydrogen monoxide was, or that hesitated signing a petition to criple the U.S. economy?
You can’t automatically assume the counter argument–we’ll see what their response is.
Conformity and compliance are often survival traits, unless your a lemming or a mark.
British a, b, c and z list celebs ….blinded by science!!!
I have to disagree with this statement, “Well, there are some English words that should be banned from use because their meanings are very confusing in relation to similar words in common use. “Suffrage” is one and “restive” is another. I’m sure others can come up with man[y] more.”
The goal should be to educate poeple rather than “idiot-down” a language. A person’s lack of understanding says something about them rather than something about anything else…
“Stupid is as stupid does.”
Glad everybody has enjoyed the video so much!
A few people have wondered whether anybody knew what dihydrogen monoxide actually was and caught on. Surprisingly, not a single person did! Our CFACT Collegians students wandered the halls for a couple of hours collecting signatures for the petitions, and while some people didn’t sign because they didn’t know enough about it, no one was intelligent enough to call us out on the trick!
You gotta laugh, but it really is saddening to realize how clueless these people are.
On a more serious note, we caught up with IPCC chair Pachauri last week and asked him about the absence of any warming for the past 15 years. You’ll love the shocked look on his face–“no warming?!!” =)
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @CFACT for more live updates. We have a big press release tomorrow with Dr. Roy Spencer, stay tuned!
Clouds are made of DHMO.
The most alarming thing is that this DHMO gag is at least 20 years old.
People were running this gag on Green candidates in NZ in the early 90’s (and yes, predictably, many of them fell for it).
Ignorance and arrogance is such an unseemly combination, isn’t it?
I think that the number of people who signed does not surprise me (see the recent “is Obama a Keynesian?” experiment) but it does disappoint me that so much of our life is driven by people that respond literally to sound bytes (bites is to large a quantity) with little drive to actually understand the question.
Wanting to be part of this historic moment is what got us the government we have.
Peter Miller says:
December 8, 2010 at 10:18 am
Which is more dangerous: di-hydrogen monoxide, or oxygen di-hydride?
Peter,
I would be VERY careful with oxygen dihydride if you have any since many hydrides decompose to explosive hydrogen gas when they come in contact w/ water. Oxygen dihydride may be one of them.
BAC
If you get your hands on a bottle of “ethynol”, you might want to publish about it rather than drink it.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/j100212a006
It isn’t “dihydrogen monoxide” in any case. It is hydrogen hydroxide, (HOH), even a worse pollutant, with the log of hydrogen ion concentration of 7 times the minimum of 1! Anyone with a high school education should know the dangers of hydroxide.
Oh dear, some of these folks aren’t the brightest CFL’s in the room.
LOL!!
This is a demonstration on how uninformed people are.
You Cancon some people some of the time but you Can’tcon all the people all the time!!
In parallel news, there is currently a campaign to stop the Pacific gateway pipeline in British Columbia because it goes “through the Great Bear Rainforest,” and will ruin “pristine wilderness,” that has the simple folk who read the Huffington Post in a frenzy.
“Athabasca Tar Sands Oil Pipeline Threatens Bears And Other Animals In Pristine Canadian Wilderness”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/athabasca-tar-sands-oil-pipeline_n_793389.html#comments
Except that the pipeline doesn’t got through the GBRF or “pristine wilderness” – unless you define “pristine wilderness” as a long existing railway and highway corridor with several cities and many towns along it.
By the way, in case you don’t already get it, don’t believe ANYTHING the greenies are saying about the oil sands. It is a very, very, very fat cash cow that they are trying very hard to milk/extort.
I expect the BBC’s Richard Black to report on the dangers of di-hydrogen monoxide. He seems to report anything any ‘environmentalist’ tells him, and now many of them have been alerted to its dangers by the person doing this survey.
You may have seen that there’s been a massive spill of DHMO in Eastern Australia. A million square km of land has been rendered useless for agriculture for some time.
SNL and/or Monty Python have got to produce some vignettes on this. While the Holy Grail and The Life of Brian were great stuff, banning H2O and CO2 could be just as fertile.
As to the toxicology of hydrogen oxide, this was studied long ago although I do not have the paper at hand. It described the LD50 in centimeters of depth (after a fall from a 12m high board) for various species.
For example,
cat 12cm
cat in bag with rock 4cm
fish none observed
Dihydrogen monoxide gas isn’t only fatal if inhaled at high temperature and pressure – it can also kill at low temperature, as anyone who has ever been caught in a serious mountain fog can tell you. This vapour is deadly.
Not only that – it dissolves human tissue! Spend a couple of months in your spa if you don’t believe me …
Seriously, you have to wonder what rock these people have been living under if not one of them has ever come across this ancient and oft repeated joke. What else have they never heard of? I would love to be there asking for help to get my inheritance out of Nigeria. I can’t see why being Caucasian would necessarily hurt my chances, either.
Petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide:
Sign name below:
1. Albert Gore
AC says: “…footnote for MAX @ur momisugly 12/10 10:01 – wouldn’t ethenol/ CHOOH be better described as Carbonic Hydro DiOxy Hydrogen?”
No, CHOOH is not ethanol. A reasonable synonym for Ethanol would be ‘methyl carbinol.’ Ooooooo! Sounds nasty, doesn’t it? It is a toxic chemical, an industrial solvent and a gasoline contaminant, kills over 100,000 Americans every year, and does over $200 billion in damages in the US alone. Maybe we should ban the stuff. Oh, wait…
I can’t stop laughing. It’s the best scam I’ve seen yet. Especially in Cancun!