WUWT reader Policycritic writes in WUWT Tips and Notes:
'The People's Climate March' – just another corporate multi-million-dollar fundraiser by 350.org and Avaaz
87 Comments
September 20, 2014 4:20 pm
I was wondering when this would make wattsupwiththat. I wonder no more.
Charlie the prospector reports, “Therezz gold in them there hills of climate change. Pack up the mule, load up the supplies, get a stake before other varmints get there first. Yippy ha yey! Let’s get going Bertha.”
I don’t know, it does seem well organized and a lot of groups are going. A friend of mine from the Sierra Club in Massachusetts is going, he said the buses are sold out. A lot of people live within a day trip to NYC.
One thing that’s interesting is how the parade will be grouped, see http://rht7i1f3vjk8j0cx49s7yavh.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/themes/pcm_v2/images/pcm-route-lineup-v6.png
“The Debate is Over” contingent only has a couple blocks, but includes the scientists. And also Beekeepers, Save the Arctic, Wildlife Preservation, Healthy Lifestyles & Spiritual Practices, and Faith Communities
They’re assembling at Central Park West – 81st St. to 83rd St but have to share 81st with “We Know Who is Resposible [sic]” and 83rd with “To Change Everything, It Takes Everyone” (everyone else). I wonder if GISS will be there.
Ric:
They’re too late. Here in Canada, we already saved the Polar Bear. I would like to tell you what we actually did — but I can’t find out very much. They’re doing well. Other than reducing hunting pressure somewhat — I don’t think we did anything much. Maybe that’s what we did that was most effective — almost nothing.
We may be on to something.
http://nhpr.org/post/granite-staters-travel-new-york-city-climate-change-demonstration says in toto:
More than two hundred New Hampshire residents are headed to New York City Sunday for a massive climate change demonstration.
Organizers of the People’s Climate March – which include environmental advocacy groups, labor unions, and religious organizations – think anywhere from one to four hundred thousand people could be in attendance.
From the Granite State there are 3 full charter buses leaving from Concord, another two are coming from Maine to pick up folks in Portsmouth.
Cathy Goldwater, chair of the environmental group 350 New Hampshire, says the planning for this event began in April.
“The buzz just built and built and I’m still getting calls for people who are looking for a bus seat from New Hampshire.”
Goldwater says one bus will be filled with high school students, organized by a Concord high school junior.
The march is timed to coincide with a United Nation climate summit, which will be attended by as many as 120 heads of state, and is taking place during the week.
I thought it was 30 million. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t need it anyway.
To think I used to like that guy and their music. It’s too bad that he tried to sway Canadian voters to stick with the idiot prime minister martin a little longer while we had Harper waiting. It was unlawful, but what do pop stars care about laws?
September 20, 2014 4:26 pm
Get involved … show your spirit … save the planet …
http://rockyriver4.wikispaces.com/file/view/yawn.jpg/161548609/yawn.jpg
September 20, 2014 4:39 pm
Reblogged this on Aussiedlerbetreuung und Behinderten – Fragen and commented:
Von Counterpunch, WOCHENENDE Ausgabe September 19-21, 2014 Wie der Volks Klima März wurde ein Unternehmens-PR-Kampagne-Business as Usual in Manhattan……………………
September 20, 2014 4:59 pm
A few years ago The Guardian had a slide show from a 350.org worldwide protest. Each photograph was carefully composed to make the most of the one to two dozen people present. The only exception was a wide shot of a square in a Scandinavian capital. In that shot it was impossible to tell which, if any of the people present were protesters and which were bewildered casual passers-by.
Editor
September 20, 2014 5:32 pm
Gupta says that Avaaz sent out an email last December headlined “24 Months to Save the World.” He writes, “Telling people there is 24 months to save the world is odious, ….
They’re still saying essentially that, https://secure.avaaz.org/en/24_months_loc_donate/?fp says 58,674 people have donated (minimum is currently $5/week, about $250/year). The rest of the text is:
58,674 have donated! Let’s get to 60,000
Scientist Julienne Stroeve has studied Arctic ice for decades. Every summer she travels to north to measure how much ice has melted. She knows that climate change is melting the ice fast, but a recent trip surprised even her. Vast areas of Arctic ice have disappeared, beyond our worst expectations.
This is what the experts warned us about. As the earth warms, it creates many “tipping points” that accelerate the warming out of control. Warming thaws the Arctic sea ice, destroying the giant white ‘mirror’ that reflects heat back into space, which massively heats up the ocean, and melts more ice, and so on. We spin out of control. In 2013 everything — storms, temperatures — was off the charts.
We CAN stop this, if we act very fast, and all together. And out of this extinction nightmare, we can pull one of the most inspiring futures for our children and grandchildren. A clean, green future in balance with the earth that gave birth to us.
We have 24 months until the Paris Summit, the meeting that world leaders have decided will determine the fate of our efforts to fight climate change. It might seem like a long time – it’s not. We have 24 months to get the right leaders in power, get them to that meeting, give them a plan, and hold them accountable. And it’s us vs. the oil companies, and fatalism. We can win, we must, but we need to blast out of the starting gate with donations of just a few dollars/euros/pounds per week until the summit. For the world we dream of, let’s make it happen.
I won’t list all the errors, exaggerations, etc.
Oh, of course:
Avaaz is entirely member-funded. Nearly 80% of all funds raised go directly to Avaaz campaigns. The rest goes to essential management, fundraising, accounting, legal advice and technology.
Awesome. So, melted ice exposed to months of no sunlight can’t possibly result in a large amount of heat being radiated away, right? And anyone who believes that a committed thermophobe who travels north every year to find confirmation of warming would actually be SURPRISED to find some probably isn’t capable of hanging on to their own money anyway.
“Avaaz is entirely member-funded…” Sounds a bit faked. I got curious and tried to check. The avaaz.org website is registered to a young man from India, at an apartment address in Henderson, NV (perhaps just coincidentally Harry Reid’s hometown) who claims to have bought it from Mark Zuckerberg.
It was previously the site of Facebook precursor Facemash. He claims to have bought it and resold it for about $20000 and donated the money to the Dakshana Foundation, an charity in India which sponsors education for very poor IT industry hopefuls, ala “Slumdog Millionaire.” [Despite the purported sale, the site is still registered to him through 2015, although the NV corporation (registered in DE) is declared to be dissolved.]
A defunct corporation, based in NV, aided in part by Warren Buffet (and possibly Soros, but the evidence is vague) dedicated to global community organizing to create and extend global warming hysteria – as Alice said in Wonderland, “….curiouser and curiouser….”
September 20, 2014 5:39 pm
watching the Occupy Wall Street crowd march with and for the Bankers/financiers who seem to be central to Ban Ki-Moon’s Climate Summit should be fun, don’t you think? speaking of trillions!
keep a close watch on your retirement funds:
15 Sept: Inside Climate News: Only $1 Trillion: Annual Investment Goal Puts Climate Solutions Within Reach
That is roughly the amount of additional investment needed worldwide each year for the next 36 years to stave off the worst effects of global warming and keep the Earth habitable, according to the International Energy Agency…
While $1 trillion sounds like a lot, knowing the figure is good news, according to climate activists, investment experts and United Nations organizers of the next round of global climate talks…
Leading up to the UN Climate Summit next week in New York, business groups and investors who manage trillions of dollars published reports and held meetings to call for action. Last week, investment groups publicized the creation of We Mean Business, an umbrella organization of investors urging world leaders to agree on a plan for fighting climate change…
Moreover, even if investment rises by more than $1 trillion a year, there’s no certainty it will be enough…
Just to accommodate today’s trends and projections for growth in energy demand, the world would have to fund $140 trillion in new and upgraded electric grids, power plants and energy efficiency, according to the IEA. The estimated $44 trillion of additional investments in clean energy increase that total by 35 percent…
“A trillion is actually not a big number anymore in global economies,” said Mark Fulton, a co-author of the Ceres Clean Trillion report. “It’s a challenge, but it’s easily doable.” …
Pension funds, insurance companies, corporations and others have large amounts of cash on their balance sheets, and they’re looking for investments that would boost returns in an era of record-low interest rates.
“There is no problem with money,” said Kidney of the Climate Bond Initiative, which has been following the emergence of green and climate-action bonds. “The world is awash in capital that’s looking for a good home.” …
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140915/only-1-trillion-annual-investment-goal-puts-climate-solutions-within-reach
September 20, 2014 5:46 pm
at least one Occupy alumni appears to detect a dichotomy!
20 Sept: Aljazeera: Nathan Schneider: Climate change is war – and Wall Street is winning
(Nathan Schneider is the author of “Thank You, Anarchy: Notes From the Occupy Apocalypse”)
This weekend New York will host the largest climate-related march in history, with 100,000 people expected to take the streets on Sunday to call for meaningful action to come from the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday. The march boasts more than a thousand sponsoring organizations and has been aggressively publicized with subway advertisements and a documentary film. It could be a decisive moment to rally support for policies that will keep our planet habitable. But we need more than a festive march. That’s why the next day in the financial district, not far from where Goldman Sachs lit up the post-Sandy night, I’m helping organize a smaller action: Flood Wall Street.
I will be among the crowds of people on Monday morning dressed in blue (to mirror the rising tides) and interrupting the workday by bringing the crisis to its cause…
Corporate America wants to claim that it’s coming around, that at long last it is going green. Lockheed Martin, whose hardware helps make the U.S. military one of the world’s top polluters, is a sponsor of Climate Week events surrounding the United Nations summit. So is Bloomberg, the former mayor’s company. Michael Bloomberg recently garnered headlines for co-organizing a report, “Risky Business,” on climate change as a threat to corporate bottom lines…
What we need now, though, are neither spectacle-seeking hipsters nor bankers in search of safe investments but for all human beings to band together to defend our right to subsist. We shouldn’t have to wait for the investor class to agree; the purpose of business is to meet our economic needs not to dictate them…
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/climate-change-marchwallstreetoccupysandy0.html
September 20, 2014 5:50 pm
Yet another opportunity to find out exactly what the protesters think they are protesting. It is especially fun to tell them their breath is loaded with CO2. They will say that their CO2 is natural so it don’t count. What really stops them in their tracks is this:
The population is increasing by 256170.349 people per day. The average human breathes out 300 Liters of CO2 per day. My calculator does not have enough digit spaces to record the increase in CO2 per day caused by human breath.
Therefore the growth in human exhaled CO2 is by far a greater increasing source than most anything else. So, if these watermelons really wanted to do something that works, they should all be sterilized instead of marching. In fact everyone who believes in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming should get themselves fixed. It would be ever so beneficial.
September 20, 2014 6:12 pm
Physicians For Social Responsibility
Website: Home Page
People’s Climate March, meet us in New York to roll back climate change Sept. 20-21.
Organziation claims to have ~ 50,000 members?
http://www.psr.org
Forecast for NYC:
Overnight
Scattered showers, mainly after 2am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 68. South wind around 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Sunday
A chance of drizzle before noon, then a slight chance of showers between noon and 2pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 83. Southeast wind 5 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
September 20, 2014 6:24 pm
If it’s a fundraiser as you suggest, I think it will be a bust. The first that I heard about this was just 2 days ago. Not much lead time for me to get there……. and no, I’m not going to contribute.
I’d say it hasn’t been promoted much, or at least not much outside of New York. Since I’m not in New York, I can’t really say if that’s accurate. In any case, I predict most people won’t pay much attention to it regardless of how many turn out in New York. I’ll be watching some NFL football and having a beer or two. So will most of the sane people.
It’s my observation that many, many people are “burned out” with these “event marches”. They have had their day and it’s passed.
Oh, and one more thing, any political party or country or event prefaced by the word “Peoples” is an absolute red flag for me (pun intended).
We shall see later if I’m right.
Editor
September 20, 2014 6:25 pm
Hey, William Briggs, Statistician to the Stars, is going to be there, even marching for a while.
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=13633
I always thought he was an Aussie, but he’s in New York.
You’re invited, he says:
First, if you can go, you should. After all, you’ve been asked to by climatological eminences: “Nine leading climate scientists urge you to attend the People’s Climate March.”
Michael “I make a nice living with this stuff” Oppenheimer will be there, MIT’s Kerry Emanuel can’t make it but is “delighted it is happening.” Michael Mann, who did to climate science with his hockey stick what Bob Probert did to his opposition, isn’t coming, and admitted-willing-to-lie-for-the-cause liar Peter Gleick won’t be there because he “made an explicit decision not to fly to New York because of the carbon cost.”
I’m sure Gleick really wanted to be there, probably too late to offer to buy carbon credits for him. Pity.
September 20, 2014 6:32 pm
Typical how the Green/Left tries to portray themselves as “The People”, when in fact they are made up of a largely elitist and favored cabal.
They think they are the voice of the people, whereas in fact, the voice of the people is actually saying “Did you ever see such a display of idiot moral self-righteousness in your life?”
September 20, 2014 6:58 pm
The “Intelligencia” is making MEM as the ‘la Child Climate Célébrer,’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/19/climate-change-extinction_n_5846370.html
September 20, 2014 7:23 pm
This Climate March is a rent-a-mob/Astro-Turf movement for the most part.
Political hacks, enviro-wackos and CAGW grant swindlers have seen the falling poll numbers and mounting empirical evidence against CAGW, and realize the gig is up.
As Gallop poll numbers stand now, about 40% of Americans are still convinced CAGW is definitely not BS, 35% think it’s most likely BS, and 25% know it’s BS. In political calculus, this means strong CAGW advocacy is already a political liability and the momentum is certainly in favor of the skeptics.
Cognitive dissonance and common sense are definitely moving public perception in the right direction, and once strong CAGW advocacy falls much further below 40%, it done, because the MSM and Hollywood will start losing viewers and ticket sales, and politicians will start losing NET votes. Once that happens, CAGW funding dies and then CAGW becomes a joke to be ridiculed into obscurity.
Stick a fork in it… CAGW is done.
Get on twitter and let them know how you see it… they’re monitoring the climate tweets
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/u-n-monitoring-twitter-our-mood-climate-change-n207721
September 20, 2014 7:28 pm
Here’s CBS new saying they expect 100,000 people in NYC.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/peoples-climate-march-in-new-york-city-aims-to-make-a-difference/
September 20, 2014 8:08 pm
“Gupta says that Avaaz sent out an email last December headlined “24 Months to Save the World.” He writes, “Telling people there is 24 months to save the world is odious, as is implying an online donation to Avaaz can save the planet”
Sooooooo, what happens in December 2015?
24 months after the email,,,,,, this guy is just a successful Paris puppet.
Just sayin,,,,,,,,, money, money, money, money,,,,,,,,,,, money! Lyric comes to mind……
Sorry, I just could’t redact it 😉
http://youtu.be/Ll3uipTO-4A
September 20, 2014 8:39 pm
An old friend who I heard from recently by email, a died-in-the-wool liberal, has this signature:
My activism at this point is centered on divestment of institutions from fossil fuels, and on stopping the pipelines (Keystone XL and the Northeast Pipeline), because solving the climate crisis is literally the sine qua non. I’m working with 350.org.
— And notice: so far, over 95,000 people have signed Credo’s pledge of civil disobedience alone (there are other pledges) in connection with the pipeline.. Finally, finally, this movement is taking off. Better late than never!
I urge all to attend the NYC climate march on Sept. 21. . . [list of organizations like the Sierra Club, providing buses, follows]
Note the phrase, “My activism at this point. . .” This is someone who defines herself by the putative causes she attached herself to. I doubt if she has the slightest clue that the science behind organizations like 350.org is completely fraudulent. Doesn’t matter: “The movement is taking off.” It’s where the action is. She’s basically a camp follower.
/Mr Lynn
September 20, 2014 11:40 pm
“If you want to con serious amounts of money out of other people, you’ve got to sell them a story and the story you sell, comes in one of two basic flavours.
The second variety of story appeals to the exact opposite of greed and is the one most often used by climate scammers. You take advantage of the better angels of their nature, their altruism, and inveigle them into contributing generously into some scheme, which will be to the eternal relief of some segment of humanity which is suffering almost intolerable woes. ”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/the-great-global-warming-con/
Conmen, plain and simple.
Pointman
September 21, 2014 3:00 am
This is very gratifying. Im many discussions with alarmists recently, their claim is that nobody has talked about “saving the world”. It seems they count on a short public memory, after all it is already five years since Mr. Brown’s pre-Copenhagen “50 days to save the world” message.
So now we have 24 months, very nice to hear that from an organizer of the great Climate March.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/24_months_loc_donate/
They are a BIT over the top, though.Here’s from the same link:
“This is what the experts warned us about. As the earth warms, it creates many “tipping points” that accelerate the warming out of control. Warming thaws the Arctic sea ice, destroying the giant white ‘mirror’ that reflects heat back into space, which massively heats up the ocean, and melts more ice, and so on. We spin out of control. In 2013 everything — storms, temperatures — was off the charts.”
A tipping point for Arctic sea ice in 2013? Not in their directoin, I’m afraid. Spinning is indeed the key word for describing them.
“Roll me over, spin me round and do it again.”
The emphsis there is not on saving the world, but getting read for the Paris climat summit.
We have 24 months until the Paris Summit, the meeting that world leaders have decided will determine the fate of our efforts to fight climate change. It might seem like a long time – it’s not. We have 24 months to get the right leaders in power, get them to that meeting, give them a plan, and hold them accountable. And it’s us vs. the oil companies, and fatalism. We can win, we must, but we need to blast out of the starting gate with donations of just a few dollars/euros/pounds per week until the summit. For the world we dream of, let’s make it happen.
Oops, I didn’t save my edit buffer before posting, one more time:
The emphasis there is not on saving the world, but getting ready for the Paris climate summit.
We have 24 months until the Paris Summit, the meeting that world leaders have decided will determine the fate of our efforts to fight climate change. It might seem like a long time – it’s not. We have 24 months to get the right leaders in power, get them to that meeting, give them a plan, and hold them accountable. And it’s us vs. the oil companies, and fatalism. We can win, we must, but we need to blast out of the starting gate with donations of just a few dollars/euros/pounds per week until the summit. For the world we dream of, let’s make it happen.
September 21, 2014 5:05 am
“Here’s what seems to be going on. Avaaz found a lucrative revenue stream by warning about climate catastrophe that can be solved with the click of a donate button.”
I wish I had thought of that. Perhaps I can start “Save us from Extra-Terrestrial attack.org”. I am sure there would be thousands of uneducated worriers who would fall for this and donate.
Let’s see, first I need to log onto Godaddy.com …………………
September 21, 2014 5:21 am
The destructive nature of climate policies developed in response to the panic over CO2 deserves to be highlighted since these marches will be asking for more of it. More on this destructiveness here: http://climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/climate-cult-marches-in-new-york-and.html
September 22, 2014 8:56 am
Yes, this effort is a by-product of a money-making scheme.
Some of the followers of Karl Marx developed the Frankfurt School, in the 1920s. This group was devoted to exploring various social philosophy/political ideas of Karl Marx.
Once it became OK to declare and explore that things are not what they seem, many lines of intellectual inquiry developed. All ultimately are critical of the prevailing society, and in one way or another are part of the Marxist goal to usher in the Revolution, which will bring in Communism. Then, everyone will be equally happy.
Included in these lines of inquiry are the various “social studies” and “sociology” concepts that are being employed here to make people wealthy. As the Frankfurt-School sociologists, and others following suit, dissected social attitudes, they figured out how to manipulate them. They figured out what drives the formation of opinions, values, mores, ethics, voting behavior, and so on.
This is very profound. They figured out the mechanisms of social concord.
With these tools, they now use them to create social discord so that they can move society toward the Revolution, freeing us all from oppression, and ushering in the next evolution of human society, Communism.
Those who have noted that these promoters are appealing to our human desire to help a noble cause, and be altruistic, are spot-on. These manipulators are strategic, well-informed con men.
I respect it more if a bar serves you salty peanuts for free – knowing you will order a second round.
Read the Wikipedia entry on the “Frankfurt School.” Then, read a bit on the major figures of the Frankfurt School.
You will see how the disciplines of sociology, political science, marketing, etc., all grew out of this “school.”
Many of us attended institutes of higher learning with exactly such centers. The Frankfurt School was actually called the “Institute for Social Research.” For various reasons, it moved to Columbia University in the 1930s. From that point, the trend grew for many universities to have their own such center, often called ISR or something similar, such as “Institute for Social Science Research.”
You can see this is you google “ISSR” and “Social” or “University.”
They do not care about truth. They care about ushering in the Revolution so that our society can evolve to the next stage, per the Hegelian dialectic, of Communism.
I hope this helps people see the links between faux environmental scamming and its roots in Marxism.
Is that good or bad? You decide.
It had been taboo to reveal a proclivity for Marxism or socialism for decades, up until about 2 years into the Obama administration.
Demonstrators are now more obvious, bold, and involved. The Communists have always been here, but this capitalism-is-bad meme has gone mainstream. Many young adults now believe this because – due to the legacy of the Frankfurt School – it is known that you can repeat this stuff in Sociology 101, and kids will believe it. –Myself, my Soc 101 was led by such a progressive (a grad student), covering Weber (discounting piety and industriousness by dismissing “The Protestant Work Ethics), “multi-national corporations” ad nauseum but with NO point, etc. My “Government 102” was presented by one of these reds (a grad student), with a focus on voting behaviors and lots of theory from Erich Fromm.
Back then, decades ago, I did not know what was going on. I thought I was just learning cool, new stuff, and becoming one of the educated and morally superior liberals.
From Counterpunch, WEEKEND EDITION SEPTEMBER 19-21, 2014, How the People’s Climate March Became a Corporate PR Campaign—Business as Usual in Manhattan
It starts out this way, Anthony, with the author saying that they invoked the spirit of the Occupy Wall Street protests to get people to attend, but ultimately describes how it’s a multi-million-dollar fundraiser and PR campaign for the two sponsors Avaaz and 350.org:
The author, obviously a concerned climate person, notes,
Author Arun Gupta explains what they are doing:
He asked an insider:
Gupta says that Avaaz sent out an email last December headlined “24 Months to Save the World.” He writes, “Telling people there is 24 months to save the world is odious, as is implying an online donation to Avaaz can save the planet. The same overblown rhetoric is being used for the People’s Climate March.”