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.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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.