UPDATE: Bill McKibben doesn’t seem to want to address the question. See below.
Earlier today, 350.org’s founder Bill McKibben tweeted this:
[Source: http://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/442052998324551680 ]
Tom Nelson asked about those boxes and the environmental impact to which I replied:
[Source: http://twitter.com/wattsupwiththat/status/442055366595977216 ]
And sure enough, here’s a picture of those boxes full of comments delivered today by Bill’s claimed “100 people” from NRDC, 350.org, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth. League of Conservation voters, and many other environmental organizations:
![Comment%20boxes%20from%20KXL%20NID%20Delivery%20Credit%20Rocky%20Kistner%20NRDC-thumb-500x375-14923[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/comment20boxes20from20kxl20nid20delivery20credit20rocky20kistner20nrdc-thumb-500x375-149231.jpg?resize=500%2C375)
Source, NRDC news website. Credit Rocky Kistner NRDC Note some boxes don’t have labels. more on that below.
I made up a humorous comparison photo that speaks to the photo op issue:
But having finished that, I decided to look around a bit more for news, to see if there was a complete list of organizations involved and maybe an actual number of petitions. I found this video shot today of the march to deliver these described by Bill McKibben.
With 18 minutes to go, over 2 million anti-kxl comments into State Dept. Took 100 people to carry the boxes over. Amazing work by all!
(BTW: Note the banner says 1.5 million, in the news article, they say that another half million comments were added at the last minute, and the banner had already been printed)
And watching that video, I noticed something very odd at the 27 second mark, note the arrows:
Either those gnarly looking protestors are endowed with near superhuman wrist strength, or those boxes are empty.
It makes me wonder how many petitions they really delivered, and how many boxes were empty, but brought along just for the photo op.
Who knows with these clowns? So much for Bill’s required 100 people.
==============================================================
UPDATE: 3/8 10AM PST
No response from Bill since this post went up last night.
@billmckibben Hey Bill any comment on those "2million" KXL comments delivered in empty boxes? http://t.co/wnz0PlgKjQ
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) March 8, 2014
Readers that have Twitter accounts might want to ask him as well.
Nothing like lying to save the planet! How many people to deliver the boxes?…..like, two million?!
As a Canajun we have some reg’s on petitions, being documenting names, addresses etc. and no doubles, triples etc. I’m sure the same in USA. Where is the documentation of the “two million” comments…half by Bill?
Kool-aid endows them with superhuman powers to lift boxes and ignore the reality within (or without).
Perhaps one of those boxes had a thumb drive in it
a small minority of people trying to determine the path for all of us.. time for a serious butt whoopin on these liars.. I do think however that the pictures are worth a thousand words.. Caught lieing about their claims… Priceless!
Roger Dueck says:
March 7, 2014 at 8:28 pm
As a Canajun we have some reg’s on petitions, being documenting names, addresses etc. and no doubles, triples etc. I’m sure the same in USA. Where is the documentation of the “two million” comments…half by Bill?
=====================================
More like 2 million from Bill’s spam bot…
I bet they used thin paper.
Sometimes you have to destroy the plant in order to save it…
Let’s say there were 1.5m people and not 100,000 activists using fake identities.
So what? What if 1/2% of the country oppose something? Here we get 6000 people to a protest march – big deal. Get 50%+1 to sign, and I’m interested.
Those boxes appear as empty as their heads…
Why bother with KXL? The US can always get its oil from OPEC and the Middle East. After all, folks in the middle east love the US. If there is a crisis, they will be sure to help. If not, call on Putin, he’ll be only too happy to help. Canada’s oil is dirty, washed in a sea of CO2. The oil from the middle east is clean, washed in a sea of blood and patriotism. The US leadership will always look out for the interests of the common man and woman, no matter what sacrifices are necessary. God bless America*.
*stock closing in political speech. Similar to beauty pageant stock answer, “world peace”.
Bill McKibben is charlatan. So good in fact that you could put his picture and bio next to the word in the online dictionary as a prototypical example of a charlatan. One day all those idiots who listened to him will wonder, “WTF was I thinking?” Those of course that are capable of thinking for themselves, which I admit is few in the 350.org crowd.
All right, let’s do some basic math here. 2,000,000 comments, assuming one page of paper per comment. 100 “handlers” for all of them. That means 20,000 pages per person. Those boxes are smaller than the standard case of printer paper one can buy at an office supply store. Those cases hold ten reams (500 pages) of paper, or 5,000 sheets. That means each person would need to be carrying four such boxes. Shall we talk physical impossibility here?
REPLY: I was waiting for somebody to notice this. Note the photo of the boxes stacked. The Sierra Club box has the number 204,500 written on it.
The whole photo-op is a sham, and either Bill McKibben is too dumb to understand paper density, or he outright lied with his claim about needing “100 people” to carry the boxes. – Anthony
McKibben is obviously a paid operative of Big Oil.
Policy dictates of the last 40 years have required sucking the Middle East oil barons dry. Big Oil wishes to retain continental North American oil for itself, once the import wells have run dry.
Clever, clever people…
Note the numbers hand written on the sides, some over 100,000, others less than a thousand. A box or two with tens of thousands would be heavy enough to crush boxes below, but some boxes look empty.
Silly “Flat Earthers”, Only deniers are subject to gravity!
It takes 100 environmentalists to carry 24 boxes of paper. That’s pretty weak.
On the bright side, I because the boxes were empty, they didn’t destroy any trees with their scam! ;-))
Inspector Watts never misses a clue!
Nothing to see here… When I was still young and handsome, I used to steer fully loaded shopping trolleys with my wrist for improving wrist strength; so that is how I would carry, say, pro-nuclear power petitions about town myself. Of course I would reinforce the top edge of those flimsy boxes with sheet metal, because the handle would rip the instant you’d try to lift a box like that from one side only. But then again, that is probably what that lady in the vid did, as well… 😛
No seriousy, kids. If any of you work in an office, go to the Xerox machine, where they store the A4 paper for copying – in boxes just like that. If you genuinely tried to lift one, let alone carry it for any amount of time at all, you’d sprain your wrist like 1-2-3 🙂
LOL: all good except little A4 in the USA; it’s all 8.5″ x 11″.
That leaves 312 million Americans who don’t mind having the poor pay less for energy, this is worse than 97%.
Dude. They were just pumped to deliver them. Everyone had been doing furious, Arnold-like strength training the weeks prior.
Ok, sarcasm aside, I do lifting as a hobby. I can move some serious weight. In the “arm” category, I can straight-bar curl 185 pounds. But I am not sure I could carry a box full of paper the way your picture shows. That’s a lot of weight on a little joint in the maximum flexed position. To anyone who thinks that an easy feat, I dare you to grab a box of paper from Staples and carry it, wrists straight as pictured, while walking. Post the video. Show the open box, full of paper, you putting the lid on, and then carrying it that way.
Deceptive is indeed a sad word. The boxes are presented for dramatic flair, as though all are full. There are 25 boxes and 1,500,000 signatures? That makes 60,000 signatures/box. If you can fit 50 (front and back) per page, that’s 2,400 pages of paper total. Or, around 100 pages per box. If you double it, that is 200 pages per box. A ream (500 pages) weighs 4.7 pounds. So there was 0.94-1.88 pounds of paper in each box. That was, really, just an awfully big show. Inflated to look even more important.
Can every skeptic FOIA request for these on paper?
Saw an interesting graphic on Ace of Spades HQ blog tonight.
The US currently has 2,600,000 miles of pipeline criss-crossing it.
The KXL extension would add only 852 more.
KXL in perspective
http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/corner%20post%20image_lz_1.jpg
It looks like there were far fewer than 100 people at the so called march/protest. Good photo op — can they all squeeze into a VW bug?
Maybe they all rode a short bus.
I decided to track one of the groups listed on the boxes. Wanting to keep it simple, i went with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, since there was a low number on the box. I figured that might represent a low number of signatories or comments.. I found their stock email protest form for KXL at http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=3657:tell-the-obama-administration-stop-keystone-xl&Itemid=56. Based upon that box, they are listed for 930. Their website claims over a million. Who’s doing the math here, Michael Mann?
Perhaps there are multiple comments per sheet of paper. I can imagine each page containing the comment, “All work and no warming makes Bill a dull boy” typed over and over.
Now they are gearing up to fight replacing an older existing oil pipeline in MN. After a couple failures they determined some years ago the pipe had minor damage in shipment and there was a small potential for future failures. So they’ve run the pipe at 50% of rated capacity for years – with no problems. Now the owners want to rebuild the pipeline – which can continue operating for many more years as is – with new high tech pipeline with all the latest safety systems – and the idiot protesters are attacking.
Idiots.
Thanks every one for the math. We just bought 1500 pages (3×500’s) and needed a cart to walk it to the car ( ok, OK we also bought a box of corn flakes).
It takes a village of idiots.
Hmmm – I’d buy that if it was on a coffee cup.
Looking at the boxes themselves, they appear to be a double order of standard banker file boxes from Staples, 12 for $39.99.
http://www.staples.com/Bankers-Box-Stor-File-Basic-Duty-Storage-Boxes-Letter-Legal-Size-12/product_478887
At least three of the boxes are definitely mostly, if not entirely, empty, as you can see into the boxes through the handle holes. Those size boxes hold about six to eight reams of paper at most, based upon my retail and record keeping experience.
don’t you think they delivered the actual paper with a truck to the side door??? but used empty boxes for the march itself?? a demonstrational march is nothing more than a parade… sure hope you realists don’t think all them floats are reality. why would anyone carry boxes of paper down the street after hauling them in crates half way across the country?? and as for using a thumb drive or other electronics… talk to your legislature… their game,,, their rules.. personally ,, I would have used an appliance dolly, and a few less people for the actual delivery.. but that’s just how I ROLL!!! lol..
Many people have already comment on the number of comments x number of papers, the likely resulting weight, and the way they were being carried. Fully agree.
But even before I got that far in the article, I just looked at the stacked boxes in the photo and new it was a scam. None of the boxes on the bottom looked the least bit ‘distressed’ from the weight above them. Yes, these types of boxes are pretty strong, but there would be some amount of ‘distress’ or ‘distortion that would be visible. .
Now even if the ‘well stacked boxes wouldn’t show the weight, THE 2ND BOX FROM THE BOTTOM, 2ND COLUMN FROM THE RIGHT CLEARLY WOULD. The lid isn’t on straight, meaning the boxes above it would crush it down and ‘buckle’ it in the center IF they were full, or probably even 1/2 full. . But NOPE, it looks just fine. Meaning no weight of any consequence above it.
Bill Mckibben, what a charlatan, lying, loser- piece- of- (self-snip) ! ! !
I say again: The Athabasca Tar Sands deposit is one if the biggest oil slicks on the planet. We are trying to clean it up. (The biggest is The Orinoco Tar Belt, recently renamed The Chavez oil belt in thanks to the great dictator. So it’s OK to clean ghat one up? Eh Sean?)
Yeah, but how many of them does it take to change a light bulb?
Anthony, you’re starting to remind me of Steve McIntyre. Nice catch.
“Martin C says:
March 7, 2014 at 9:56 pm”
I was thinking the same. But still took 100 people to shift them…lol…
Alternate device to store the comments:
I took this picture myself, hope the link works.
Keith W commented on the Chesapeake mob.
I would think that the meaning of “Our movement sent more than one million comments on the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline to the Obama administration in just 45 days this spring.” is that the entire Anti mob did this, not the dozen or so Chesapeake mob members. So they are probably correct, (if ill-advised!).
Quick calculation on a napkin, 2 million comments, say 1 sheet of A4 paper for each comment, 2500 sheets in a single box (in 5x 500 sheet packs, standard packaging), looks like me that you need more than 100 boxes, more like 800 of them. That’s about 20 pallets completely stacked with 40 boxes each.
100 people to carry them? I could have had it done it with eight people. A two wheel hand cart with three 10 ream boxes on each, No problem. Or close enough for government work. It wouldn’t make a photo op though.
[snip]
“It’s worse than we thought! We’re all doomed – DOOMED, I say! We’re all gonna DIE!” – Bill McKibben
The most each one of those boxes can hold is 10,000 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper. 24 boxes = 240,000 votes. If the votes are 8.5 x 5.5 then, 480,000 max.
2 million ‘comments’ ….. or just 24 empty boxes?
Let’s ask Bill McFibbin……
Velcro says:
March 7, 2014 at 8:31 pm
Perhaps one of those boxes had a thumb drive in it
Naturally! 🙂
I am sure those 2M comments were also made by some computer program (not unlike the one that created all those fake “peer reviewd” studies…
Mike Croift says:
March 7, 2014 at 10:24 pm
Yeah, but how many of them does it take to change a light bulb?
Ten enviroMENTALists. One to hold the light bulb and nine to turn the yurt.
How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one…. but the light bulb really has to want to change.
H’mm
I note that they carefully use the word ‘comments’. Not letters or essays or objections.
A comment cou;ld just be ‘yeah!’ or ‘No KXL’ or ‘Fracking nein Danke’ Or ‘Down with BigOilFundedBabyEatingBloodSuckingClimateDeniers’. You can get maybe 50 such comments on a single sheet of A4. So maybe calculations based on the supposed number of sheets needed are using a false assumption. I’d not rush to judgement ithout sight inside those boxes.
Whether such comments are actually worth anything is another question.
Keith:
You only need one line pr petitioner so you can at least have 25 petitons pr page. Then you can write on the backside and use thin, recycled paper. That means you can divide Your number by 100 and each of a 100 boxes would way 3-4 pounds.
My problem is I can only count 24 boxes. That means each box weighs at least 12 pounds (easily hte double, not countingthe box itself) and then of cause you need 4 People taking turn carrying the boxes since they have a poster in 1 hand and only one free for the box. Imagine the strain on the wrist carrying those heavy boxes like depicted on picure 4 (follow the yellow arrows and you will get the point).
Joking aside, this is obviously taken from the “Manual of creating and sustaining a mass movement” and the chapter “How to get and direct media coverage”. They achieved their goal, getting their carefully framed image (and message) in the media. We can laugh at the dedicated few using every trick in the book to build momentum for a lost cause but their “dog and pony” show has delayed this project with years and managed to turn it into the litmus test of the governements comittment to the environment. Goebbels would be proud of them.
McKibben twits: “With 18 minutes to go, over 2 million anti-kxl comments into State Dept. Took 100 people to carry the boxes over. Amazing work by all!”
So we can clearly see that all the boxes are EMPTY. They are a “symbolic” representation of all the “anti-kxl comments” they got , presumably by some kind of on-line petition.
Now all I can see is in the photo op is TWENTYFOUR boxes. So “Took 100 people to carry the boxes” is an out and out lie. It took 24 people to carry 24 “symbolic” empty boxes. The rest of “100” were there for the shouting and the banner waving.
So now we know the boxes were empty, where are all the “comments” , what did they say ? Were the real contents of these comments provided to the state department in some electronic form, with the email and name of the contributors, properly vetted for dupes?
Who is auditing the comment count? NO ONE, it’s just a made up figure.
The boxes were empty, the “100” was a lie, the “2 million” is pulled from the air an unverifiable.
Yet watch out for this number being quoted as fact, like the 97% lie.
These guys are out to save the planet and any means will be justified to achieve that noble cause.
The true measure of this “movement” is that they could only muster 100 people for this pathetic demo.
Supermarket packaging is recycled in some jurisdictions. Will McKibben ensure these time served remnants of trees are given a decent burial?
Looks like superhuman wrist strength at first glance, impressive!
Mckibbn what a tosser he is.Two million sheets of paper heading stright to state departments sh#*houses where they belong.
Maybe someone in the States could ask the State Department how many were delivered?
Some math on the weigth:
assuming one email per page, I have 2000000 sheets. For A4 paper, this means 4000 packages of 500 sheets. One package weighs 2.3 kg. Total of 9200 kg. 24 boxes comes to 383 kg/box. That explains the 100 people for 24 boxes, you need 4 people to carry one box.
These cardboard boxes must be super (nano?) material to be able to hold so much weight, be stackable up 5 high and still do not collapse, even with a poorly seated lid? (row 2, second box from the right). If you ly, try to do it convincingly.
Amazing stuff.
/sarc off
Who helps fund Bill McKibben’s ‘efforts’? A big oil and coal investor.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/05/bob-wards-rat-snake-ploy/#comment-1584016
Bill McKibben has said in the past for environmentalists to try and use the web and teleconferencing more, but just can’t resist writing tree killing books and flying! It’s all in the name of getting our co2 back to the safe level of 350ppm.
Don’t you just love your eco-hypocrites.
The numbers don’t add up? Quickly, warn Obama. Whatever you do – leave the lids on. We cannot exclude it to be a premature April’s fool prank delivered on single-sheets of Cottonelle.
How many of those “100 people” got there by plane and petrol / diesel powered car for that matter?
forgive them for they no not what they are doing
Full bank boxes would rip if handled one handed like that. It’s an obvious fake. Even a single ream of paper held in that manner requires more than average strength to maintain a grip for longer than sixty seconds, yet they marched with them? Fail. Mega fail.
Low information voters accept unreliable proof of anything, CAGW being the perfect example.
One picture says more then a 1,000 words. No LIV reads WUWT or any other skeptical site.
Bill Mc Kibben is a cunning marketeer, laughing all the way to the bank.
Is the US the ONLY market for the tar sands oil? No. This whole thing is a waste of time, China and the rest of the Eastern nations are praying for the protests to succeed.
A closeup of the boxes:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/IMG_2318.JPG
I don’t know if anyone has has felt the weight of those types of boxes when they are laden with paper. When we buy paper we buy boxes like this with 5x reams (500 sheets = 1 ream) .. so 2500 sheets per box and it is a struggle to lift one. If anyone doubts the weight, go to the shops and test it.
“Man Bearpig says:
March 8, 2014 at 1:24 am”
I know what 5 reams, at least, of 80gsm paper feels and looks like. I used to be an computer operator yonks ago, used to have to load up several IBM high capacity A4 page printers with at least 4 reams every day.
McKibben, you are a being economical with the truth, as usual!
The point about reams of paper is very relevant.
There are 24 boxes (5 reams of 500 sheets per box) – if you incorrectly assume they are all full, you get 24 x 5 x 2500 = 300,000.
So even if you take the worst possible case of 300,000 and then look at the claimed figure of 2,000,000, there is both a big disconnect with reality and a gross exaggeration of the facts.
So it is typical ‘climate science’ – nothing changes.
Maybe they used a thumbdrive after all, taped to the bottom of the only box that wasn’t empty?
Just Checked a few names..
Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davey, Dan’l Widden, Harry Hawk…..
Uncle Tom Cobbly?
How many environmentalists are needed to carry 24 empty boxes?
100, 24 to pose with the boxes, 24 to take the photograph and 52 to tweet about it.
You have got it wrong, it is not about photography.
Trees are actually evil, a pest thriving on CO2, disgusting mold on the face of Mother Gaia. They are outcompeting silken grasses, blinding cheetahs, use up precious freshwater resources while emitting huge amounts of dihydrogen monoxide, a potent greenhouse gas and decrease albedo, warming the planet further. Killing the bastards with mighty chainsaws, to turn them into raw material for petitions is the best way to sequester their filthy carbon.
The wide open space after them can be covered by brilliant white solar panels, with no electricity pollution going to wanton consumers whatsoever, while sequestering public money pollution safely in pockets of responsible individuals.
Any time you look into their activities deeply, you find dishonesty.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/a-climate-of-deception-deceit-lies-and-outright-dishonesty/
Pointman
Ah, don’t you fools know they are carrying all the missing heat in those “empty” boxes.
Once again the media is compliant in the scam.
Joel O’Bryan says: @ March 7, 2014 at 8:46 pm
Bill McKibben is charlatan. So good in fact that you could put his picture and bio next to the word in the online dictionary as a prototypical example of a charlatan….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But you would have to remove that photo and Bio from Astroturf organizer.
I Wonder how much they are paying for Astroturfing now? In Bosto in ~1985? Astroturfing the Seabrook Nuclear plant was paying ten buck an hour – (ad in Boston Globe)
This is an Astroturfer being interviewed
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/steven-crowder-on-calpirg-astroturfing.html
jaymam says:
A closeup of the boxes:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/IMG_2318.JPG
Looking at how the carton flaps in the carrying holes are sticking out horizontally, those boxes were never carried any distance with much weight in them. Otherwise, the effort the carrier brought to bear on those flaps should have creased and distorted them out of true. Note that one of the flaps isn’t even horizontal (just barely sticking out of its hole) and many of the carrying holes are blocked by the fresh paper identifying the organization responsible for “gathering” the signatures. Those pieces of paper were obviously stuck on at the last minute and the claimed numbers written on them afterwards—probably on site. Normally, you’d label a box then bring it over, not the other way around.
Martin C says: @ March 7, 2014 at 9:56 pm
….Yes, these types of boxes are pretty strong, but there would be some amount of ‘distress’ or ‘distortion that would be visible. .
Now even if the ‘well stacked boxes’ wouldn’t show the weight, THE 2ND BOX FROM THE BOTTOM, 2ND COLUMN FROM THE RIGHT CLEARLY WOULD. The lid isn’t on straight, meaning the boxes above it would crush it down and ‘buckle’ it in the center IF they were full, or probably even 1/2 full. . But NOPE, it looks just fine. Meaning no weight of any consequence above it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The boxes next to it are stacked crooked so would also show signs of the bottom box being crushed. Those boxes are five high. If they were three quarters full of paper the bottom box would be showing major signs of crushing. (We use these boxes for attic storage and they aren’t good for storing paper much over three boxes high without badly crumpling.)
The gray haired lady in front looks my age. I am strong for my age and can lift and carry 50 lb feed sacks but I could never carry a banker box full of paper that way. (OUCH)
Eighteen boxes have visible numbers written on them. By columns, they are
8052, 930, 204500, 52823
63482, 42252, 17189, 25852, 27638
44836, 185218, 84855
58641, 22835, 36445
4724, 19440, 323
Total 900,035. If those numbers represent number of comments in each box, I see that at least two boxes have fewer than a thousand.
For reasons others have stated, I don’t believe that you can fit 204500 sheets of paper (400 reams!) into one box. I am willing to believe you can fit a petition with 204500 signatures into one box; at 50 signatures per sheet that would be 8 reams. I wouldn’t be surprised if those “signatures” were collected via web page, with no attempt made to weed out phonies and duplicates. And if that’s how they collected signatures, it’s also possible that some of the signers belong to multiple groups and clicked multiple times.
Of course, if you can fit 204500 “comments” into one box, you don’t need 100 people to carry “2 million comments”. Ten people would suffice.
I wonder if someone will subpoena the outtakes?
you have to remember these are magic boxes for alarmists, the more they look into them the higher the temps, sorry higher number of signatures they will find, they like to put any number that comes into their head on the outside of the box irrespective of what is actually inside.
Just the fact that they have a box in one hand is proof enough to them that it is full.
If questioned that the box looks empty of any meaningful information they will become very vocal and scream denier.
Following up, I see that 350.org, for one, was collecting online comments. http://act.350.org/letter/kxl-sprint-day-4/ It was possible to send a personalized comment, but I wonder how many people just clicked for the default boilerplate comment.
Well spotted.
From Bill McKibben’s admitted lying about his (lack of) Indian heritage, to his work as a big green lobbyist, it seems difficult to find something about this man that is authentic or honest or rational. His work to hurt America and our environment by stopping a pipeline that will safely and efficiently deliver desperately needed oil is cynical, but very lucrative for him. In other words, he is a typical big green lobbyist/parasite, manipulating those with money to give some of their money to him at the expense of our future.
I just checked some of the names on the list.
Ivanna Complain, I.P. Freely, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Abraham Lincoln, Mike Rotch, Al Coholic, Jack Bauer, Jason Borne, Cheech Marion.
One page per petition, box completely filled =5000 pages per box. Each box weighs between 50 and 60 lbs. It takes 400 boxes. They had 24 boxes and from the look at the carrying slots they weren’t full. Multiple signatures per page could be any number of boxes. You notice they didn’t pull one out to show the petition.
Save a tree by using electronic records? Maybe they don’t know that most paper is made from trees specifically grown for paper pulp. Pulpwood is a crop.
Thumbdrive? My WWUT web page has an ad for a 32Gb micro ultra SD card. About the size of your thumbnail. Nothing so big as a thumbdrive needed.
Bill McKibben disappoints.
Comments were limited to no more than 50 per person per organization? Stunt all the way.
Keith W. says:
March 7, 2014 at 9:01 pm
All right, let’s do some basic math here. 2,000,000 comments, assuming one page of paper per comment. 100 “handlers” for all of them. That means 20,000 pages per person. Those boxes are smaller than the standard case of printer paper one can buy at an office supply store. Those cases hold ten reams (500 pages) of paper, or 5,000 sheets. That means each person would need to be carrying four such boxes. Shall we talk physical impossibility here?
You are assuming that each piece of paper only has one comment, but they could have ten. Notice the conditional “could”. Not that I think it is actually like that, but just considering it as a reasonable doubt.
I once saw a history of the start of Home Depot narrated by one of the original founders. He confessed that on the day of the grand opening of the first store they had stacked hundreds of empty boxes and paint cans around the store to give the impression of a large and well endowed company. When I was in junior high school I knew a girl or two who did a similar thing.
Environmentalism.
It’s about stopping the import of Canadian oil via a pipeline.
Environmentalists prefer Warren Buffet’s freight traings. Because that form of transport is twice as expensive and uses more energy.
It’s not about stopping the import of oil. After all, Uncle Warren is a friend of the environmentalists, and he needs to eat too.
Berényi Péter says:
March 8, 2014 at 2:41 am
“You have got it wrong, it is not about photography.
Trees are actually evil, a pest thriving on CO2, disgusting mold on the face of Mother Gaia.”
Trees have also conspired to create vast coal seams, in a kind of suicide attack, giving rise to the evil coal industry which poisons the planet.
“… but they could have ten. ”
The boxes were EMPTY. The whole thing was a charade.
The only thing they can do to save face is to say that they never printed out 2 million “comments” and that he boxer were a symbolic representation.
In which case they lied about the need to “100” people to carry them. They didn’t the needed about a dozen (two boxes each without any effort).
Either way McKibben LIES.
So senate committee needs to be asking some very pointed questions about auditing and counting of the claimed “2 million” and exactly what a “comment” represents.
Is climatedepot down just checking here
Please , someone with US voting rights , find out the senators that will be on that committee and prime them about this fake claim.
Get them to ask some probing questions about auditing and counting of this list.
Eliza says:
March 8, 2014 at 5:15 am
“Is climatedepot down just checking here”
Works fine for me.
http://www.climatedepot.com/
Looks like Jo Anne Nova is also down. Crossed checked with other skeptic sites they are OK. Beware of a cyber attack
Well this is what I am getting
could be a local problem
Unable to connect http://www.climatedepot.com:80.
Non authoritative – host not found.
Check
The boxes in the photo of the stack don’t look like heavy boxes full of paper.
Tom in Florida
it’s like Joey in friends, he used boxes with a tarpaulin over them to make it look like he had a Porche.
A carton of paper weighs about 50 pounds. Those boxes are obviously empty, and Bill McKibben is a liar. Further proof that the enviro-fascists have no moral scruples whatsoever. Not that we needed any.
note the headline has changed from the url. wouldn’t bother excerpting a single line, but cannot believe this is what passes for the “progressive left” today:
6 Mar: Salon.com: Lindsay Abrams: Climate buffoons’ real motives: 5 reasons they still spout debunked garbage
From greed to idiocy, here’s the true agenda of deniers who still claim climate change isn’t happening
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/06/the_twisted_minds_of_climate_deniers_5_theories_for_why_they_still_refuse_to_see_reason/
I surmise that we’ll never really know what’s in (or, isn’t in) those boxes because the minute they get to the State Dept. Eric Holder from DOJ will seize them and state that Obama is claiming Executive Privilege to prevent a Congressional committee from issuing a subpoena to see their contents. Kerry, Holder, and Obama, in perfect rhythm will say, “Trust us, those boxes are full.”
And that’s when that old line about; ‘move along, there’s nothing to see here;’ will, for the very first time in our lives, be genuinely true.
Coach Springer says: @ March 8, 2014 at 4:55 am
Comments were limited to no more than 50 per person per organization? Stunt all the way.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
19 plus organizations Times 50 comments per person = 950 comments per person. That reduces to 2105 people WITHOUT breaking “the rules”
Hubby says he has been getting “Comment on Keystone” e-mails ALL the time from a group he belongs to in MA.
(Don’t forget they share e-mail lists too.)
I REALLY H@TE ASTROTURF!
Just goes to prove they were lightweight comments.
Eliza says: @ March 8, 2014 at 5:23 am
Looks like Jo Anne Nova is also down. Crossed checked with other skeptic sites they are OK. Beware of a cyber attack
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
WUWT went down several times on me yesterday. So did a couple other sites. (Was using Firefox switched back to Opera.)
How many mickey mouses does it take to fill a box?
Gail; Pierre’s Notrickszone went under repeatedly the last days, Pierre says technical problems at provider.
NSA re-wiring the internet maybe.
Finally, a topic that I am an expert in. Paperwork!
Take a typical piece of paper and a typical bankers box. A package of 500 sheets of paper weighs 5 lbs and is 2″ thick. If you place them in a banker’s box vertically and on their side (to maximize the amount of paper in the box) you can fit 14.5″ worth of paper into a banker’s box.
500 x 14.5 / 2 = 3,625 pieces of paper in each banker’s box.
5.0 x 14.5 / 2.0 = 36.25 lbs + 2 lbs for the bankers box.
I count 24 banker’s boxes into the photo. That means there is a maximum of 87,000 pieces of paper in all the bankers boxes.
How many banker’s boxes would it take to hold 2 million petitions? 552.
BUSTED!
Any article that mentions “Canada” and “tar sand” should be ignored. Canada does not have any tar sand development, it has oil sand development. Tar sands are devoid of the lighter aspects of crude oil. Tar is used is road construction, oil is used to fuel and lubricate machinery, anyone who can’t tell the difference should not write about either.
Either the protests were registered on BLACK paper – or a lot of those boxes are half empty…
Just look at the hand-hold slots…
100 people to carry 24 boxes..? Four people to a box..?
Methinks Mr McKibben is exaggerating just a tad…
Then after the march they all got in their SUVs and drove home and turned up the heat and used electricity and produced CO2
What printer did they use, I need one. Please ask for printer model and cartridge number, I am sure it will take a few of those. If they farmed out the printing, who and what was the cost?
Never mind ‘killing the tree’ to print out all those e-mails, what abut the toner cartridges (and/or ink carts) used up and that will now go into land fills?
And the printers they (would purportedly) wear out too?
(This is, as others are pointing out, if there are actually ‘printed’ e-mails etc in those boxes. It may be that only one or two boxes contain any valid ‘material’.)
.
An aside: IMO this is NOT how a representative-based, ‘republic’ is supposed to operate either.
How many No to KXL “comments” can you fit on a one page- I’d say at least 20- if you completely destroy formatting with no margins- probably a few hundred. Fonts of size 1- thousands of “comments”.
If all these “people” and boxes got into the building, the State Dept must have deployed the same securityarrangements as the Benghazi facility that got trashed and 4 persons were killed.
I support “bot” rights … bots should have the same right to send comments as anyone else …
McKibben’s juvenile street show has been virtually ignored by major media. R.I.P. McKibben et al…hello Keystone.
Just another example of how Sovietized the United States has become:
Professional protesters paid for by organizations with ulterior motives pretend to protest, while professional politicians paid for by organizations with ulterior motives pretend to listen to them.
Reality is whatever we feel. And we feeeeeel like 2 million. It takes big boxes to hold all the feelings.
It’s Oil Sands folks. “Tar Sands” is used the same way as “Denier” is.
Hmmm… I can only see some boxes, and obviously without content when looking through the handles. 😀
Either those gnarly looking protestors are endowed with near superhuman wrist strength, or those boxes are empty.
Neat observation. My first thought on seeing the stack of boxes in the first photo was: “Are those boxes empty?”
Yesterday the news banner on ABC’s Good Morning America said support for the KXL pipeline had surged to a new high.
McKibben and his oil-hating friends must really be incredibly self-loathing, due to the fact they, by and large are some of the most priveleged people on the planet, benefiting from and using so much oil, coal, and gas in their daily lives. Oh wait, that’s where cognitive dissonance comes in handy. Never mind.
Which just goes to show that integrity in climate change politics is no more highly regarded by its activists than by its eminentoes in climate change science.
ask for a copy of the emails as part of FOIA request.
The empty boxes are a similar scam to the now infamously called out Bill Nye CO2 “experiment” that Anthony caught last year.
The point is the truth and facts don’t matter to these people. It is the message and the cause that matters.
Remind me not to call those people the next time I need to move. I’d need about 10,000 of them for my books.
Where did they get the extra million? If you add up the numbers on the boxes shown above, and the numbers you can see here (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/IMG_2318.JPG) you get under 1 million.
They were able to print half a million comments in 18 minutes AND get them into boxes in time for the farce …er… march?
How many printers would that take and where did they get them at the “last minute”?
Maybe they brought them with them?
Travel back in time to 1973 and the Arab Oil Embargo. Look at the lineups at the gas pumps. Rationing. Where people waited all day for a hope of filling the tank. Where people were shot for trying to jump the queue. Where stealing gas was a worse crime than treason.
The entire discussion about climate change in Europe will come to a halt the day Putin turns off the gas. Long before that happens the EU will surrender Crimea with little more than a whimper and Putin will set his sights on a larger prize. 1938, for those who forget the lessons of history.
But of course this will never happen, the cold war has been over for 20 years.
Assuming that they are telling the truth, how did the activist develop such good wrist strength? Do they have a special exercise regime?
@Gunga Din. 500,000 pages of comments in 18 minutes using printers that print 10 pages per minute gives 180 comments per printer for a total of 2,780 printers required. That is quite the home office.
135 comments so far, most speculating on what’s in the boxes.
My question: Nobody looked in the boxes?
Kind of surprising that someone in that group was smart enough to place the lids on top of the boxes.
JRM
March 8, 2014 at 6:12 am
‘What printer did they use, I need one. Please ask for printer model and …’
It’s a special printer developed for the Federal Reserve. It’s called ‘Quantitative Easing Model Number QEXZ1369478955536788669650000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000a’
“how did the activist develop such good wrist strength? Do they have a special exercise regime?”
It’s more a lifestyle choice they’ve made…
Presumably they used multiple printers and may well have boxed the comments at the printers, leaving some far from full while others were completely packed.
Single-spaced, double-sided, you can get over 100 lines per paper, so even giving each comment its own line, you could get about 100 comments each. That would mean they would have to have used 20,000 pieces of paper. Over 25 boxes, that would only have required an average of 800 papers each, well below the capacity of those boxes. I understand the concern, but if some were heavily loaded, then others could easily have been nearly empty.
They could have made a less impressive photo, but that doesn’t mean the comments were fake. However, they likely did not read through the comments to ensure that they were all unique and actually opposing KXL, probably had duplicated comments from the same people signing multiple petitions through each organization, The rush at the end may also have been due to bots.
How many of these organizations are 501-C-3 ?
Fraud would be a really bad thing.
On that note, what does Bill teach at his Sunday School classes?
our fearless heoes
imbued with the powers of Superman
and enhanced by more green cr@p tonight
Each box contained a thumb drive. [They] brought multiple for backup purposes, in case the person carrying one would get distracted into a green store, or a Starbucks on the way. LOL
Science’s consensus is nothing beyond “could be” and never WILL be so what’s to “believe” in? Only science can be certain not you
obviously empty. Note the blackness visible in the handle openings. There should be paper there if they were really full of signed petitions. Also, the lid on the second box from the bottom, 4th row from left, is ajar. If the boxes above had stuff in them, the weight would have crushed this lid flatter onto its box and the rest of the stack above wouldn’t be askew.
More BS from professional BSers. Boring.
AAA
The last survey I saw said 70% of adults in the US favor building the KXL pipeline. According to my calculations that’s approximately 316 million (US pop) X 76% (adults) X 70% (favor KXL) = 168 million. Quite a few more than the purported 2 million that oppose it. That might even be called a consensus.
amazing reporting – thanks
I would have laughed incredibly hard has some kid knocked over their stack of play time blocks….
You might notice also in the stack that some of the empty boxes appear to be on the middle and at the bottom. Given the structural integrity of an empty box, what does that tell you about the weight of the boxes on top of them?
Why does it take 100 people to deliver 20 boxes? Sure you would have supporters, fair enough, but when you say “it TOOK X people” to do something, you are clearly implying that the amount of effort or work that was involved is somewhat on the order of that requiring X people. Unless you aim to mislead, that is. And if there are 2 million paper messages, that would be 100,000 per box. Since 500 sheets of bond paper weighs about 5 pounds, each box would weigh about 50 pounds if tightly packed, so say 25 pounds. Man, those protesters must have arms that would make Popeye jealous!
I wonder if these folks could produce a receipt for all that printing, too? Actually I don’t wonder at all!
At the 18 second mark, the lady in blue, does nor look like a heavy box.
It is telling that the same people who credulously accept the legitimacy of these supposed 2,000,000 e-signatures, with no documentation whatsoever, nevertheless pooh-pooh the 31,487 actual American scientists (including engineers in relevant engineering disciplines) who signed the “Oregon Petition,” with actual signatures, on actual paper, and mailed them in, with actual purchased postage stamps. What such people believe is determined entirely by their prejudices. It has nothing to do with actual evidence. The signatories of the Oregon Petition attested their agreement with the following statement:
We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.
Per the administrations Dept of energy the US current 4 week avg import of crude is 7.375 million barrels per day and US avg production is 8.104 million barrels per day plus about 2.6 million barrels of Natural gas plant liquids (mostly propane, butane, and ethane) per day.
http://www.eia.gov/oog/info/twip/twip_crude.html
So why would refineries export what the pipeline delivers and then purchase imports from elsewhere? Also the line would free up other lines to deliver products in various emergencies.
BTW pipelines are much safer than Rail delivery ask Canada. Pipelines also have pressure sensors that monitor the flow and shut down the line in emergencies.
Another thing. The boxes had hand holes. Of the ones where the hand hole isn’t covered, only one looks like there might be something inside. I suspect it is the “punch-out” flap to make the hand hole sticking up.
I did miss something. I thought they said they got the last 500,000 in the last 18 minutes. They didn’t claim that. (My bad.) But they also didn’t explain what they meant by “at the last minute”.
[snip -policy -language -mod]
As usual with a McKibbon claim or stunt, more holes than a square yard of cheesecloth. Wotta loser.
Wow, it’s a good thing they got those 25 empty boxes over to the State Dept. And, with just 18 minutes to spare, too. Whew! Close one! And yes, truly amazing work by those stalwart 100. Lying is tough work, but someone has to do it.
Wonder what the State Dept. thought of them?
How many 350.org-ers does it take to carry a box?
How many does it take to change a light bulb?
Protest of mass dysfunction
It took 100 people to carry 24 boxes?
Spam bots can easily send hundreds of e-mails per second.
McKibben is in the pay of big paper.
I watched a new episode of House of Cards on Netflix last night and a politician had her staff gather every file box they could find in the building and fill them with newspapers, telephone books, unrelated files from cabinets etc. The politician had these placed on three dollys and wheeled them in front of the cameras and represented them as signed petitions…. You can bet that whomever cooked up stole the idea from a TV show.
Clearly the boxes were just a show for the cameras. Unsurprising if you think about it. Just imagine how much time it would take to print all those comments out. Of course they didn’t bother. So they decided to stage a photo op with empty boxes and got caught out. Oops. But not really a big deal. What matters is whether they actually got their claimed 1.5 million signatures.
This is clearly 501c(3) organizations (305.org for one) attempting to “influence legislation”, according to the third paragraph here: http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Profits/Lobbying
As 501c(3) organizations they will lose their status if a “substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation”.
Be interesting to know how 501c(3) organizations that are so much into AGW and see things like a carbon tax as a necessity, spend on influencing legislation (aka lobbying).
I want the Keystone pipe line. Who has the paper to sign for the pipe line?
So….McKibben be McFibben ?
Re Climatebeagle @3:56pm
The IRS is not interested in harassing those who support the administration. It is not politically expedient. The law has no bearing if those who enforce the law have no interest in enforcing it.
Of course things were different for another administration
Article 2: Abuse of Power.
…
(1) He has, acting personally and through his subordinated and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigation to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.
…
But we would need a congress that actually cared about doing their constitutional duty to have that happen now. In Nixon’s case his own party could not stomach the actions of an “out of control” administration. In this case the president’s party is a co-conspirator. (Several of the lawyers working for the Watergate select committee became elected Republican office-holders later in their careers – Ms. Clinton was fired from the committee for trying to falsify evidence to “get the bastard”, which tells all that is needed about her morals and integrity, because the evidence was bad enough as was, no need to make stuff up when a plain statement of the facts is so condemning. Of course a lawyer’s duty is supposed to be to the facts of the case, thus she was dismissed.)
Well, after being busted with his shopping cart and plastic bags, what’s a guy to do …. ?
http://i62.tinypic.com/29mqaf4.png
Bengt Abelsson says:
March 8, 2014 at 11:36 am
At the 18 second mark, the lady in blue, does nor look like a heavy box.
———————————–
Yep. Next time lady, please wave and say “Hi, I’m a f-kin lying dupe, just like Bill” to the camera:
http://i57.tinypic.com/2ykkkfr.png
A little math. The photo of the stack of boxes shows 24 boxes. A thumb drive is pretty light and would be a negligible addition to the weight of the box. 2M comments / 24 boxes = one thumb drive with ~83,000 comments per box.
At 18 seconds, the lady on the left is holding a box with one hand, not through a hand hold, or even her hand under the box. That box has no mass whatsoever.
And as henk points out; the stack of boxes 5 high show no signs of them exerting any mass on the bottom boxes.
Do you think they are making up data again?
I found it interesting that each box contained votes, purportedly, from a separate institution as labeled, yet they each have one box. Why doesn’t the Sierra Club and a couple of other larger orgs. have several boxes compared to the little orgs. that would have to share a box? Why did they each have the same amount of votes, one box each, not a different percentage commensurate with the organization size?
http://www.regulations.gov/#!faqs;qid=6-2
This is a link that explains how to make comments on proposed federal rulemaking…..wait for it……ONLINE!
As a truck owner, we deal with DOT and FMCSA rulemaking quite frequently. Every comment I’ve ever made for a rule has been online.
Nice photo op stunt by Weepy Bill and his dutifully obedient horde, but as with most every number put out by a Progressive, his fails the simple common sense and math test.
“Friday Funny – Great moments in Environmentalism: the ’2 million’ KXL comments – real or fake?”
I suppose it’s the fake that is real…
So everyone is giggling about the empty boxes. But KXL is serious. While the oil comes by train, people are dying. Trains carrying oil just doesn’t make sense. Dozen died in Canada, needless horrible deaths. Who benefits? Only one – Obama donor and oligarch Buffett, who runs the trains and Big Wind.
If this was happening in Russia it would be front page news.
Why don’t all those people just stop using oil and anything made from oil?
Eve, where do you think on your MacBook or iPhone comes from?
Oil and its byproducts are vital on a scale most enviro-loonies don’t even remotely understand.
Jesus, I spell like butt today.
“Where do you think the plastic on your”…. PLASTIC. Damn it.
I don’t use oil, my computer is made from 100% naturally harvested hippie tears, & the electricity is generated from the soundwaves created by crappy protest songs.
MattS says:
March 8, 2014 at 8:58 pm
A little math. The photo of the stack of boxes shows 24 boxes. A thumb drive is pretty light and would be a negligible addition to the weight of the box. 2M comments / 24 boxes = one thumb drive with ~83,000 comments per box.
==============================================================
Soooo …………… those who would force us to live “sustainably” just wasted 24 boxes to do what a large pocket would do?
I should follow their lead?
Yea, right!
“Andrew says:
March 9, 2014 at 5:55 am
So everyone is giggling about the empty boxes. But KXL is serious. While the oil comes by train, people are dying. Trains carrying oil just doesn’t make sense. Dozen died in Canada, needless horrible deaths. Who benefits? Only one – Obama donor and oligarch Buffett, who runs the trains and Big Wind.”
Buffett has publicly expressed support for keystone.
“Rail has emerged as an alternative to pipelines, offering a faster means of shipping crude–though perhaps more risky, as a recent spate of oil car accidents has shown.
Despite his stake in the railroad business, Buffett still expressed support for the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline.
“I think probably the Keystone Pipeline is a good idea from the country,” he posited. As to if and when it would be completed, his answer was less definitive: “I have no idea.””
http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2014/03/03/warren-buffett-is-still-bullish-on-rail-and-keystone/
You’d think by now they’d be able to do a simple public protest without looking like fools.
I was going to say the boxes were props even before I scrolled down and saw people carrying
them with one hand! I was thinking that’s a whole lot of boxes for 2 million tweets.