I always get a kick out of climate protest marchers, because these rent-a-rants generally make complete fools of themselves, and the process is very entertaining to watch. For example, this person doesn’t seem to understand what the canister on a gas mask does.
That frame is from a video posted by the 350.org McKibbenites who hope to have a big “climate march” on Sept 21st. So where do they shoot their publicity stunt for maximum effect? Times Square, New York City, surrounded by giant energy consuming screens, marquees, and billboards all powered by…you guessed it…fossil fuels. Watch the video:
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How much energy is used in Times Square?
So just how much electricity is required to keep Times Square running? Well, it is a difficult question to answer because Times Square, which stretches for about five blocks along Broadway, is actually part of a larger power grid which also encompass the entire Theater District that runs several blocks in every direction from Times Square.
At peak usage, the New York power company, Con Edison, estimates that power consumption in the Theater District is 161 megawatts of electricity being used at once, with Times Square accounting for a decent chunk of that power consumption.
Source: http://theworldbyroad.com/2013/07/the-power-to-light-up-times-square/
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Here is what these oblivious 350.org clowns say about their video:
On Wednesday July 30, we publicly announced the People’s Climate March – the largest march demanding action on climate change in the history of the planet.
The march will be on September 21st, 2014, when world leaders are coming to New York City for a UN summit on the climate crisis. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging governments to support an ambitious global agreement to dramatically reduce global warming pollution.
With our future on the line and the whole world watching, we’ll take a stand to bend the course of history. We’ll take to the streets to demand the world we know is within our reach: a world with an economy that works for people and the planet; a world safe from the ravages of climate change; a world with good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communities.
Join us on September 21st.
http://peoplesclimate.org/march
David Hoffer
Great idea. Could cover a lot of ground over a few hours.
“We’ll take to the streets to demand the world we know is within our reach: a world with an economy that works for people and the planet; a world safe from the ravages of climate change; a world with good jobs, clean air and water, and healthy communities.”
Asking for products that work, are inexpensive, and are plentiful to be banned, and asking for forced purchases of green products, is really really daft. It is not healthy and the jobs will not be good. For example, how many of these high school students like to spend their summer bent over weeding for hundreds of hours, doing what one or two tractor applications of herbicides can do in several hours, so that lovely green activists can have organic food? I do not want food which uses hand weeding, and weeding is not a good job, and yields ruined by weeds does not make a healthy community.
Given their predeliction for rewriting history before its happened, Bending the course of history probably indicates that Wikipedia has already an entry (pending Thermageddonist approval) ready to deploy.
It may indicate that in the future, all History will be bent, or perhaps all Historians are Bent, no, not that trash talk kind of bent,….hockey stick kinda bent.
Then again, it may indicate that History courses are bent, as in, bent out of shape.
Then again, it could be a reference to Michael Jacksons ninth studio album ‘History’, perhaps its an unreleashed track called ‘Bending the Course’, could be a reference to ‘Staying the Course’, only not.
Not staying the Course, maybe what many of these protestors are doing, by not attending that History Course they signed up for.
I geuss bending the course of history means bending history back into the stone age.
As for Climate racism, Climate taxing formerly Caucasian Western nations for an imaginary climate problem, in order to disasemble Western civilisation, seems like a very racist thing to do.
actually they are the environmental racists as they dont want the (mainly) coloured people of the third world to have a decent standard of living and cheap electricity
There really isn’t any irony here, or obliviousness, or hypocrisy. Just naivety: they want our way of live, all the electrical benefits, all the instant power options, but with a “green” energy.
The committed eco-green doesn’t understand or accept – belief in unlimited technological progress is, perhaps, ironical – that wind, solar, tide, wave energy and conservation can’t replace more than a small portion of our national and international energy use. At a stretch only large scale nuclear power – fission, not fusion – can replace fossil fuels and only where large demands are concentrated geographically, but this is a notion to which they have blinders.
At a maximum the committed eco-green will accept that SOME limitations on our lifestyle is needed – but also philosophically warranted within the narrative of reduced consumption, reduced competition for resources and reduced self-image through acquisition. The reduction, however, is not in Patagonia gear or tricked out Jeep that gets you into the wilderness but in the SUV that carts around the suburban family they grew up in. Organic honey but honey, nevertheless.
Overall the 350.org follower is a shallow thinker and an optimist found in Darwinian non-success stories. He loves humanity in the abstract but is disgusted with it in the personal.
slowly but surely, the hypocrisy of the faux “green” groups will be exposed!
4 Aug: Salon.com: Lindsay Abrams: The country’s largest environmental group is profiting from oil drilling
The Nature Conservancy could have done more to keep an oil company off its land, Naomi Klein argues
Why did the Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest environmental NGO, permit an oil and gas company to drill a well on land it pledged to protect?
The disturbing allegation — verified to the New York Times by the green organization — is revealed in Naomi Klein’s forthcoming book on climate change. In 2007, Klein reveals, the Nature Conservancy allowed the company to drill a well on land that had been set aside to protect the critically endangered Attwater’s prairie chicken, and has since been profiting from the operations. It’s a decision that the group’s framing as the regrettable outcome of a tricky dilemma, but which raises questions about its commitment to conservation…
Klein’s book isn’t out until September, but according to the Times, she uses the Nature Conservancy revelation to raise larger questions about the ways in which corporate influence might be affecting environmental groups’ ability to fight climate change; and the Nature Conservancy is tighter with corporations than most. That can lead to scandal — in the wake of the Gulf Oil Spill, the Washington Post revealed that the organization had accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions over the years from BP — and it can lead to a crisis of faith. The Times ends with a quote from Klein that cuts right to the heart of that: “If the largest environmental organization in the world can’t figure out how to stop pumping oil and gas,” she asks, “how are they going to help the rest of us figure it out?”
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/04/the_countrys_largest_environmental_group_is_profiting_from_oil_drilling/
in the meantime, though, they will do their best to increase fuel poverty until there’s a backlash from those who suffer power outages or cannot afford to pay their energy bills:
4 July: Reuters: British government to amend subsidy rules to exclude old coal plants
The British government will amend the rules of its proposed energy capacity market to exclude long-term subsidies for ageing coal plants, it said on Monday, relenting to pressure from environmental campaign groups…
The government plans to introduce a capacity market by the end of this year to ensure there is enough electricity-generating capacity available at all times to meet demand.
The capacity market will offer all capacity providers – new and existing power stations and electricity storage operators – predictable revenue from capacity payments. In return, they have to deliver energy when needed or face penalties.
But the scheme has drawn criticism from green groups for allowing pollutant-heavy coal plants to apply for long-term payments…
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/british-government-amend-subsidy-rules-112751867.html
I once saw a protest against oil that used a giant black plastic sheet to “simulate” a spill and they had hazmat stuff on. Guess where that comes from?
They must think that plastic grows on trees…
I think the suggestion for a barbeque on their action day is the best idea yet. September 21 is near enough the Equinox. So program it as an Equinox Party, and when it is well under way, you can let the cat out of the bag. The food is being cooked by charcoal, or if you have an electric or gas barbeque, the heat comes from burning fossil fuels. The steaks were transported in trains or trucks burning fossil fuel. The sausages were from meat minced by machines using fossil fuel, and both were kept fresh by refrigerators powered by fossil fuel. And many if not most of your guests came by car powered by follisl fuel. And if people are drinking beer or sparking wine, the bubbles are the dreaded Carbon Dioxide. The salads were planted by machines, and harvested by machines, and brought to you by machines, and you washed them in water pumped to your house by machines, all powered by burning fossil fuel (except if you are lucky enough to line in NY when the power came from ConEd).
You can think up a few more items. Celebrate mankind’s use of coal, oil and gas and the production of carbon dioxide to get the earth a bit greener, and hopefully, a bit warmer.
” Matthew says:
August 4, 2014 at 10:48 pm
I once saw a protest against oil that used a giant black plastic sheet to “simulate” a spill and they had hazmat stuff on. Guess where that comes from?
They must think that plastic grows on trees…”
You can make plastic from corn…but then again, most of that is going into the gas tank.
Fornication Under Consent of the King
I’m not a fan of 350.0rg, but Times Square doesn’t seem such a bad place to hold a march. I’m sure the world could survive pretty happily without all those fancy screens.
“The whole world will be watching” I think not. These people are so self centred. I think they really believe the Earth revolves around them.
I think they believe what they’ve read in newsletters and postings by Big Green organizations and greenie bloggers to the effect that green energy is a big success in the EU and is ramping up rapidly world-wide. A lot of this false impression is due to the misuse of nameplate capacity numbers as a proxy for actual production numbers, and the failure to account for the indirect and other hidden costs of renewables. Also, by burdening non-renewables with speculative indirect health and environmental costs.
Terrific! How about one of those electronic billboards cycling thru these:
1. A flip-flopped hockey stick, looking like this /””, to reflect the current Plateau in the temperature trendline. The caption would be, “Who’s in Denial Now?”
The stick would be transparently overlaid on a graph of the running mean of GASTA (Global Average Surface Temperature Anomaly), averaged from five sources. Flipping over the hockey stick turns the tables on our opponents in a clever and memorable way.
2. Left-side text: “97%”
Right-side text: “WRONG”
Center graphic: the IPCC’s early-draft graphic of its four predictions vs. the observed Global Average Surface Temperature Anomaly (GASTA), showing its line near the bottom of the 95% confidence envelope of its projections. (There should be bold text: “95% confidence envelope.”)
3. Caption: “Chicken Little’s Inconvenient Goofs”
Four or six images with line graphs showing items Gore’s movie mis-predicted, such as:
Hurricanes / tornados
Polar Bear population
Sea ice
Drought / Flood
Climate refugees from threatened islands
Malaria
4. A chart of emissions of the developed vs. the developing world under two scenarios.
Caption: If it’s affordable, it’s ineffective; if it’s effective, it’s unaffordable.
5. A chart of the percentage of renewable power worldwide (under 5% and growing slowly.) A chart of the growth rates of coal vs. renewable worldwide.
Still wish you had a “like” button for the comment section 🙂
What makes you write that? I believe the majority of greenies want us all go back to living in caves. No electricity, no industrial production and not even farming (except for weed – of course). Just clean living and certain death before turning 30.
Thus I see no hypocrisy mounting a protest in Times Square. But I do believe those protesters are pushing a dangerous agenda.
Iwould like all the power plants to shut down for a few days all of them.Then watch this bunch of plonkers scream and whinge my ph wont work i can’t cook my dinner it is dark and i can’t watch the tv i can’t pump gas to fill my car ect ect.I would bet this mob would be the first to complane and they would be the first to beg the power plants to start up again.Morons all of them and a waste of space.
Anthony
It would be very interesting to invite this group to write an article for this blog in which they could explain HOW we can provide sufficient energy from non fossil fuel sources to power a sophisticated economy at a price that doesn’t break the bank and allows us to continue a life that is the healthiest and most long lived in history and has enabled so many millions to climb out of the poverty trap to which mankind had previously been accustomed.
tonyb
davidmhoffer says: August 4, 2014 at 9:24 pm
“How much does it cost to rent one of those billboards for a few hours? Wouldn’t it be a hoot to have global temps from RSS for the last 18 years in the background during their march? Oooh, I’d donate generously to make that happen. Perhaps some scrolling quotes from Climategate to go along with it?”
This. Totally this.
What a brilliant idea.
“If ignorance was blessed, these people would be saints.”
Hummmmmmm…..not really. Ignorance can be taught…..stupid can’t be fixed.
How would they recharge their ipads?
How about using one of the billboards to post…
“CO2: Towards 700ppm !” 🙂
I also would donate to David’s idea. 🙂
“we publicly announced the People’s Climate March – the largest march demanding action on climate change in the history of the planet.”
– I love how the outcome is announced in advance. It reminds me of all of those youtube videos that refer to themselves as “viral” before there is even any evidence that they have been shared at all, never mind gone “viral”.
How about the power company turn off the juice for the duration so they can get to know what it would be like if they got their way.
No Lights
No Phones
No Trains
No Other Transport
No Lifts
No Air Con
No Food Or Drink
I’m sure there are many more as well.
James Bull
Brainwashed clueless lemmings. Very sad. What is there more to say?