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?quality=83)
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.
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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!