The stupid, it burns. #iceclimb is probably the dumbest and most transparent ploy for donations ever by Greenpeace. They say:
This building – modelled on a shard of ice – sits slap bang in the middle of Shell’s three London headquarters. They don’t want us talking about their plan to drill in the Arctic.
Gosh, drilling in the Arctic? Who would have thought that had never been tried before? Yet somehow they’d convinced 25,000+ weak minded individuals to sign up for mind numbing spam and to be solicited for donations. Get a load of the screencap from the web page:
Greenpeace thinks it was designed to look like ice, but they can’t even get that right. Wikipedia says
The Shard, also referred to as the Shard of Glass, Shard London Bridge and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 72-storey skyscraper in London
…
The Shard was designed in 2000 by Renzo Piano, an Italian architect previously best known for creating Paris’s Pompidou Centre in collaboration with Britain’s Richard Rogers. That year, the London-based entrepreneur Irvine Sellar decided to redevelop Southwark Towers, a 1970s office block next to London Bridge station, and flew to Berlin in March 2000 to meet Piano for lunch. According to Sellar, the architect spoke of his contempt for conventional tall buildings during the meal, before flipping over the restaurant’s menu and sketching an iceberg-like sculpture emerging from the River Thames.[18] He was inspired by the railway lines next to the site, the London spires depicted by the 18th-century Venetian painter Canaletto, and the masts of sailing ships. Piano worked with Broadway Malyan to develop the Shard’s design.
The Shard in 2013 (image: Wikipedia)
Note the first part. It isn’t referred to as “the Berg” by Londoners, but “the Shard” and also “He was inspired by the railway lines next to the site, the London spires depicted by the 18th-century Venetian painter Canaletto, and the masts of sailing ships.”
Apparently the general public doesn’t see an iceberg there. But hey, whatever works for marketing to idiots.
If you want a laugh, watch here: http://iceclimb.savethearctic.org/
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
michael hart says:
July 11, 2013 at 12:41 pm
Have they been charged yet?
The Canadian protester living in Hackney should be reminded that an Australian was recently refused permission to remain in the country after he succeeded in disrupting the annual Oxford/Cambridge boat race. His continuing presence was described as not being “conducive to the public good”. Unfortunately that also applies to more than a few members of Greenpeace, whatever their motives.
But, cripes, man! Disrupting THE BOAT RACE is sedition, treason, and heresy (note the Oxford comma). Ripping off the gullible public is just normal behaviour.
an Australian was recently refused permission to remain in the country after he succeeded in disrupting the annual Oxford/Cambridge boat race. His continuing presence was described as not being “conducive to the public good”
Amazing it’s taken 8 years to kick out someone described by the same Government as a “truly dangerous individual” and a “key player” in al Qaeda-related terrorism. I can now see where my governments priorities lie, and look forward to these 6 being given knighthoods for services to Climate Change…
The London building looks similar to a Frank Lloyd Wright 1956 design of a ‘mile high’ office building for Chicago. Never built of course.
=================================================================
Careful, Anthony.
If you keep burning stupid you may find Greenpeace trying to scale your garage!
I guess the “s” that Greenpeace burns must be carbon free.
Green peas ‘wimmin’ climbers with catastrophic penis envy ? Can I say that ? 😉
Was done because the Shard is a visible object + in the midst of Shell Headquarters. Its not to tell Shell that their drilling is unsafe, its to tell shell that DRILLING is unsafe: the continuation of a failed energy scheme. Fossil Fuels=Climate Disruption. Greenpeace solely exists for the purpose of awareness building and to shame large organizations and governments. That has been their remit for decades. Nothing new about that. They are a global good…I don’t understand why people are whinging.
Oh sorry, I didn’t realize this was a climate change doesn’t exist. You merely popped up first while I was searching for the Shell Statement on the iceclimb. Yahsus. I don’t get how you can fall in line with ‘conspiracy’ and not engage in legitimate science and statistics! But whatever. It gets you views and ad revenue right?
I can see “The Shard” most days, weather permitting, when I take my dogs for a run and can confirm it is seen as and likened to a shard of glass.
It would be the strangest looking iceberg ever seen and so far I haven’t seen any stranded polar bears on the observation deck : )
Shards of ice from wind turbines brings a Google search response of 25,400.
Maybe the Greenpiece girls were having “Dreams of Wind Power” moments.
If you want to save the planet, stop funding Greenpeace. Their policies and goals are now destroying our lovely, co2 life dependent planet. Fund local environmental efforts instead. That is the way to go. Greenpeace are now a large ‘watermelonic corporation’ who are at the very heart of the IPCC.
steveta_uk says:
July 11, 2013 at 7:04 am
“One climber, Victoria Henry, 32, a Canadian living in Hackney”
Oh dear – a recent stunt by an Australian got him deported. Does this numpty read the news?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Seems a lot of these young generation leftist “Canadians” have forgotten that their beloved ex-communist party member Liberal Leader, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, financed drilling in the Beaufort Sea in the early 70’s and took over Panarctic which had drilled in the Arctic in the late 60’s/
http://www.geohelp.net/history.html
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/petro-canada-limited-history/
I still will risk running out of fuel before buying from “Petro-Canada” even though it has long since been privatized. I can’t stand the socialist stink around Petro Canada.
@Ken Hall. Your insistence on such a minute point (presumably to score a symbolic victory) distracts no one from the issue. It does, however, reveal how insignificantly little you have to hang on. Please accept a virtual hug.
I went to the Twitter page in the link, and right at the top was a tweet from Annie Lennox. A great artist, and that’s what she should concentrate on. All well and good fighting for something you believe in, sadly however, there is no cure for stupidity! Annie, stick to writing music please.
So these activists can’t tell the difference between glass and ice? That’s a bit like alarmists who can’t tell the difference between carbon (C) and carbon dioxide (CO2).
Where”s a London Fog when you need one?
” Yet somehow they’d convinced 25,000+ weak minded individuals to sign up for mind numbing spam and to be solicited for donations”
like these weak minded individuals, signing a petition against that dangerous compound dihydrogen monoxide? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw
this is the level of intellect we are dealing with…
Isn’t the Shard occupied by an accountancy firm?
Pity the women didn’t climb naked – it might have been a thrill for the beancounters inside.
Women who like to do that kind of stuff usually look better with their clothes on.
What irked me most was the Greenpeace spokesman being interviewed on TV news – clearly this was an unlawful act planned and carried out by a registered charity. They caused disruption and inconvenience to many people and damage to the tower, but they seem to casually believe that they are above mortal law as agents of a higher purpose. I believe the climbers were charged with aggravated trespass, but what about the organisation and its senior members? Conspiracy to commit an offence is usually more serious.
johnmarshall says:
July 11, 2013 at 7:39 am
Arrest them, throw them in clink and throw away the key.
NO! Absolutely not! Do not arrest them. Why do you think that the climbers were are all women? They are begging for Pussy-Riot-style martydom. Leave them alone. Most people knew it was just another GP stunt and ignored them (except the BBC, of course).
@ur momisugly Ken Hall,
1) Kudos for your courtesy.
2) Kudos for standing your ground. It’s the essence of scepticism to not take an assertion on the basis of authority, but to require to be shown or else to refuse to be convinced.
3) In my judgement you are absolutely right. Without wanting to be a wishy-washy accommodationist, I believe Anthony is also right. You are each emphasising different nuances of the issue, and you are each right in terms of what you are saying. My point being that it is neither a shard of glass nor an iceberg, nor a penis, it’s a building. Any metaphor can be considered valid.
I believe I’m correctly paraphrasing your point to say that they can consider it a metaphor for ice, because:
1) others have made the point before,
2) it’s a valid metaphor in English,
3) they are not wrong in making that comparison.
No-one can argue with you on that. However, Anthony’s slightly different point, that this is widely, officially known as the shard of glass, and that they seem to be foolishly oblivious of this is also valid.
An additional reason for us to respect your judgment is because of your contempt for Greenpeace. Their intellectual ignorance, their economic ignorance, their political advocacy, the damage they’ve done to the environment, the harm they’ve done to the poor, their irrationality, the harm they’ve done to economies and their dishonesty are all good reasons to despise them.
Despite that, you stood up for them when you believed they were unfairly assailed.
Kudos on your intellectual honesty.
Leo Morgan says:
July 14, 2013 at 6:09 am
@ur momisugly Ken Hall
Actually, you are both wrong. One of the climbers has said the Shard was climbed because the Shell building is in the shadow of the Shard building…
” Greenpeace Save the Arctic activist: ‘Shell is in the shadow of the Shard’
Victoria Henry discusses the lead up to the stunt, and the psychologically and physically gruelling climb itself ”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jul/16/greenpeace-save-arctic-shell-shard