Shelby Talcott Reporter
September 23, 2019 10:55 AM ET
Climate change activists protested on the streets of Washington, D.C., Monday, aiming to shut down the city in an effort to push the government to take action on the climate crisis.
Activists blocked key intersections throughout the nation’s capital Monday morning, causing “gridlocked” traffic across D.C., Sam Sweeney, a reporter for WJLA, tweeted. Police began arresting protesters Monday morning, and the demonstrations are expected to continue throughout the day.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
In the video, it looks like most of the pedestrians ignored the protesters, and most of the motorists honked for them to get out of the way. They only succeeded in making nuisances of themselves.
The protesters were the only ones wearing masks, while everyone else found the air to be perfectly breathable.
The protesters should take their protests to China, the most polluted country in the world, where many residents do wear masks. Except that Xi would probably take them to jail, never to be seen again.
From the video, most of the pedestrians ignored the protesters, and most motorists honked at them to get out of the way. The protesters did succeed in making nuisances of themselves.
They should take their gig to China, the most polluted country in the world, where lots of residents routinely wear gas masks. Except that some might disappear into Xi’s jails.
The USA has reduced CO2 emissions. China and India continue increasing CO2 emissions. Why aren’t they protesting there?
The revealing thing, as always, is that no-one can say exactly
— what it is they want to have done, and
— what effect doing it will have on global emissions and temperatures.
And this is because the aim of these demonstrations is not to get any action at all, and certainly not to get any action on emissions.
The aim of these demonstations is to use the issue to radicalize. And that is all.
If you want to combat this nonsense, just ask the two key questions.
1) What specifically do you want done by who?
2) And what effects will your proposed actions have on global emissions and climate in (say) 2050. Or whatever year you want.
I am afraid their answers would at least include:
1. Stop all oil and gas production, including drilling and fracking, and ban the use of coal.
2, The effect it will have is to save the climate.
They know not the consequences of 1, nor the absurdity of 2.
Yes, but go on and ask the whole question: Ask WHO?
Who is supposed to stop the production and use of oil and gas and coal? And what effect will their action have on global emissions?
You will find a curious movement as you ask this question, and the way to get to it is to ask who ‘we’ is.
We are facing a climate crisis, emergency or whatever. In this context, we is the whole planet, the entire population of the planet.
We therefore must stop producing and using oil, gas, coal. In this context, we will turn out to be only the country the demonstrators are active in. It could be the US or the UK.
But what those paying attention will notice is that it is no longer all countries and everyone on the planet. You will find that China and India and Russia are no longer mentioned as having to stop using.
In some logically inexplicable way you will find that the initial demand that its necessary for all fossil fuel use anywhere on the planet to stop almost immediately has turned into the demand that the West stop all fossil fuel use immediately while the rest of the world carries on and increases its use.
So what started out as a demand that the world reduce its emissions from 37 billion tons a year to zero now becomes the demand that the West reduce its emissions from 10 or so billion tons to zero, while the rest of the world raises its emissions from 20 billion or so to 45 or so.
So this is not in fact a demand for a reduction in global emissions or a demand to stop, globally, actions which will lower global emissions. And it cannot be argued for in order to defend civilization or stop global warming. Its directed to objectives which cannot reduce global emissions.
Now ask yourself and your interlocutor why.
It is my opinion that alarmist social media on this issue is mainly driven by paid astroturfers. I don’t have specific evidence. It is however the only conclusion that the logic of their demands can lead one to. What other motive could there be for demanding action at the same time so locally damaging and so globally ineffective? What else could be the justification for demanding that global emissions stop, but the largest emitters carry on emitting?
Even the Guardian is starting to notice this – with its little one sentence aside to the effect that in the Pacific region, China has none of these climate demonstrations going on. Yes, curious, that…
Anything that can piss off lots of entrenched deep state bureaucrats is ok with me.
The stupid Climate Activists don’t seem to know who their fellow travelers are in the Climate Crisis Crusade for the destruction of Western Civilization. Almost nobody Inside the Beltway is likely to be sympathetic to evil capitalists or to be supporters of the Constitution.
Not exactly, but close in practical terms. They don’t care about capitalists, communists, vegans, whatever – they care about power. Specifically, how much personal and organizational power they can wield. If it pays well, that’s a bonus.
The Constitution was specifically designed to handcuff their acquisition of power – so they hate it. Populist politicians from Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump are also scorned, but occasional resets are necessary.
Erm, boring, but going back to Rob and ice and polar bears- yesterday’s equinox had the Arctic ice turnaround at just over 4 million sq kilometres as every year since 2007 save 2013. Polar bear population is c 35,000 some say more. Read “Arctic Dreams” for how Darwin has fixed up the polar bear against Rob and the BBC. But why the Black Nose? Counterintuitive.
We are reaching ‘peak hysteria’.
It’s on our streets, in our media and swamping our politics. Is the public convinced? I don’t think so, or at least, without peak hysteria they wouldn’t be as convinced.
The whole thing can only go on for so long before people get utterly bored with it all. Frankly, you’re average man in the street doesn’t see any difference in the climate from 20 years ago and doesn’t really give a hoot about African nations that have refused to move into the 21st Century.
We are all getting sick of having crying, emaciated children with flies around their faces projected into our living rooms nightly, because nothing we have done in generations seems to have solved any of their problems.
Where has our money gone? All those donations we have contributed over the years?
Well, we all know the answer to that – straight into the pockets of corrupt African politicians and warlords. Decades of financial contributions from western children, and Africans are still eating bush meat, from where the Ebola virus emerged. And who steeped in to clean up the Ebola mess? The UN of course, having failed for around 70 years to make any meaningful impact on African poverty they celebrate their success in controlling a disease that should never have existed.
The world is waking up thanks to the internet. The climate scam can’t continue for much longer, particularly as NASA is now tentatively telling us there appears to be a cooling trend.
When that particular snowball (pardon the pun) begins rolling, there will be an awful lot of people with an awful lot of egg on their face and I sincerely hope I’m around to see it.
The problem is, of course, in order for sceptics to prove they are correct, we must wish for precisely what we don’t want, and what will be bad for the world, a cooling trend.
Sadly, I think the writing is on the wall and cooling is what we should expect. Its horrible, but thanks to scum running things we’ve frittered away a lot of the resources we SHOULD have been expending to prepare for the shift to colder conditions. But, that would require honesty on the part of the power-mad elitists that found a way to game the system (literally, the people Ayn Rand called the Looters & Moochers, the rich and powerful who used government power to increase their wealth instead of competing in the Free Market).
But hey, what do I know, I don’t have a scientific field PhD from some prestigious University where I could forever keep the grant-money gravy train going as long as I scientifically illiterate spewed “Scientism” nonsense to the deluded mass of low-IQ idiots.
You suffer from a low self-esteem. These days all you need to be successful is to be an autistic fresh big mouth, making a career in truancy. It is an equal opportunity movement.
“We are reaching ‘peak hysteria’.”
The word “hysteria” has interesting origins. May have something to do with why many of these “doom speakers” are female. Severn at Rio in 1992, AOC, Greta in 2019 etc etc…
Far from it. They are just getting started. I have seen their demands;
Shutdown debate. Almost all comments I have read want “denier” comments deleted and the emails used blocked, like at The Conversation. These people want restrictions on energy, fuel, food, private transport to name a few. A country, rich in oil, is currently experiencing that: Venezuela. This is exactly what these people believe is good for humanity and the planet.
It is mass delusion on a global scale. The bigger these things are, typically, the bigger the fall will be.
marxism
No. What I am seeing is feminism, sub-adult (Greta, female) and “other” being “right”. Anything that is white, male, middle aged (Experienced enough to see twaddle for what it is) working, hetro and white, did I say white male, is “wrong”
Here’s interesting commentary from Canada’s Terence Corcoran:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-from-innocents-to-anxious-activists-what-are-we-doing-to-our-kids?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=National%20Post%20-%20Top%20Stories%20%202019-09-24&utm_term=NP_HeadlineNews#comments-area
All these demonstrating alarmists are hypocrits unless they “Take the Pledge” and immediately swear off the personal use of fossil fuels.
If they don’t, then don’t come crying to me, because I’ll know they are not serious about the world ending in 12 years.
If you are going to “talk the talk” then you need to “walk the walk”. Otherwise you are a hypocrit.
“Circus dementiae”, a festival, posing, virtue signalling, a marketing gimmick, but “the product” is to make us all poorer and the investors richer.
Climate change Litigation Poor product, nobody wants to buy, so they try to force it through legislation.
And, of course silly stunts, that look quite ridiculous.
“Perhaps I have the advantage of being an active professional scientist for over 50 decades and still active and current in my retirement. ”
You’ve been an active professional scientist for over 500 yrs? Lol…written with all of the precision that an average liefty (new word alert; that wasn’t a typo) can muster. Next, I imagine that you’ll be concentrating on “smoothing” some historical temperature records.
Hop to it, Rob! There are still a lot of liefties who need still further enstupidification, so as to even more perfectly fulfill their proper role (spreading fear, ignorance, and chaos) in society, and you’re JUST the man for the job!
What’s that? . . . about 50-100 people? That is simply embarrassing. We have nothing to worry about — with public support running that high (…ahhhh– low?) neither the President or Congress is going to do anything more than virtue signalling.
Our generation fielded 10,000 in LA and San Francisco — maybe more in Sacramento — protesting the war in Viet Nam.
How many of you were there? I covered all three for radio news….motorcycle helmet, Sony battery-powered portable reel-to-reel tape recorder…empty pockets — Press Pass taped to helmet, both sides.
Professional signs…who paid for those?
Stuff is not cheap
And made of polypropylene most likely. Idiots like Rob and the XR numbskulls maybe don’t realize that polypropylene is a plastic, polymer of propylene that was produced from petroleum/natural gas.
“Yes, he did. If removing a moratorium on hunting increases the numbers, then it had to be the hunting that was reducing the numbers.”
What Rob actually said, James Schrumph, is that PUTTING the hunting moratorium (NOT removing it) on bears was what increased their numbers.
Hello Greta My Old Friend
What Donald should have done is walked up to her, smiled, and called a couple of child protective service agents over, then introduced them.
Climate change Aftermath.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2765426/Climate-change-protesters-marched-Manhattan-branded-hypocrites-leaving-litter-strewn-city.html
Poor Greta appears very distraught about the lack of progress on saving the world from CO2. It wasn’t pretty watching her speak before the UN. She seems to have bought into every catastrophic event the alarmists have come up with lately. No doubt, she is convinced the world is crumbling around her.
It’s really child abuse. It’s pyschological warfare on children and it looks like it is damaging at least some of them mentally. Children do not have the ability to judge many situations adequately due to lack of experience, and adults are taking advantage of them in the case of human-caused climate change.
It’s criminal. People ought to raise hell about it.
The protesters set a trash dumpster on fire. The fire dept had to come out and put it out.
The planet is choking and burning so lets help by lighting fires?
I really do not understand why they do this (blocking roads, gluing themselves to roads etc). What do they think that kind of thing will achieve? They will succeed in making lots of enemies, but I can’t see any upside for them. They are basically a very negative cult with negative thoughts and actions. They would be useful if they went around picking up litter, clearing beaches, clearing rivers and streams of debris and vegetation. Why don’t they get together and plant lots of trees? All they do is inconvenience other people and shout a lot. Apparently they are going to have a big ‘mess up London’ activity starting on 7th October. I hope the authorities crack down hard on them, they caused untold misery and disruption in April when they did it before.
There also seems to be a disconnect or discontinuity in their thought processes.
We are carbon based life forms. We need carbon based molecules to live; fossil fuels and materials are ancient biology. They seem to desire that the planet’s own biology cannot or should not interact with itself when clearly it was biological processes coupled with geological and atmospheric conditions to gave the planet fossilized resources.
Perhaps I am wrong; it seems to me that the order of events:
Oceans formed – no coral reefs existed
Biology formed
Biology evolved
Biology dies
Rinse and repeat 2-4 over the next billion years
Coral reefs form….
Biology left the oceans
Rinse and repeat 2-4 over the next billion years
Fossil fuels formed….
Somewhere in the midst of that biology scrubbed out methane and CO2; added O2
Yet these same people would gleefully go to say Mars and willfully try to terraform it regardless if there was life there or not.
It is junk science gibberish like this comment that gives science gainsayers and contrarians zero credibility. you are your own worst enemies and we can laugh at your feeble attempts. You were blessed with the brainpower to be a scientist. Tough luck.
“The atmosphere and biosphere are inextricably linked: changes in living things impact the atmosphere, and the atmosphere, in turn, affects life’s ecology and evolution”
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/170503_cyanobacteria
Where am I wrong exactly?
Why seek my advice about your shortcomings and failures? I have no clue as to why you are under-educated, inexperienced, and scientifically illiterate.
Rob
And you wouldn’t know what science was if it jumped up and bit you on the arse.
if that appeases you tiny mind who am I to interfere with how you get your jollies?
Rob
It’s not my tiny mind that’s in question here. It’s yours.
Go and find a blog up to your intellectual standard to troll, your local kindergarten probably has one.
Rob, are you really that stupid or are you just practicing to be a liberal politician ?
Your projection is boring and puerile.
Rob
WTF would you know about it?
More than a simpleton like you, apparently!
Rob
Clearly not.
@Rob
Again where exactly I am wrong? It is bit picture stuff and my timeline of events is rather simplistic (does not need to be complicated or convoluted) but what exactly is missing; perhaps the obligatory some super-continents formed and broke up. I mean, you have lived for 50 decades.
So glucose is not a carbohydrate? HDL, LDL, ATP are not carbon based?
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/why_oceans.html — I have links to backup each of my steps
The difference between us is that I am confident and you are arrogant. I long accepted my typo of 50 decades but you can’t let go and that is a prime reason that you will never be a scientist or scientifically literate. Your arrogance stems from ignorance, under education, aliteracy and an aversion to learning and knowledge. My confidence is from genuine knowledge, postgraduate science education, decades of science and engineering practice and an openness to consider multiple viewpoints on any given issue and then settling on that which has the evidence to withstand the rigors of the scientific method.
And you still have not pointed out where and how I am wrong in my thoughts and conjecture in this specific situation.
This is all far above your paygrade. Stick to your skillset of being a paratrooper. I am sure you are good at your profession even though the US has the most bloated and unsuccessful military in the history of the planet. Bet you hate socialism too yet you are/were employed by the largest socialist organization in the world.
Nice one that actually made me laugh but only because it was predictable, typical.
Yes all militaries are totalitarian in their command structures.
My MOS’es in the military were 98J/98G.
You still have not proved my conjectures wrong. Please provide links.
Rob
“My confidence is from genuine knowledge, postgraduate science education, decades of science and engineering practice and an openness to consider multiple viewpoints on any given issue and then settling on that which has the evidence to withstand the rigors of the scientific method.”
Bollox. You haven’t a scientific credential to your name.
@Rob,
[blockquote]
“Why seek my advice about your shortcomings and failures? I have no clue as to why you are under-educated, inexperienced, and scientifically illiterate.”
“It is junk science gibberish like this comment that gives science gainsayers and contrarians zero credibility. you are your own worst enemies and we can laugh at your feeble attempts. You were blessed with the brainpower to be a scientist.”[/blockquote]
But yet when I ask him to correct me: — more to the point correct Berkeley he seems to STFU.
“The atmosphere and biosphere are inextricably linked: changes in living things impact the atmosphere, and the atmosphere, in turn, affects life’s ecology and evolution”
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/170503_cyanobacteria
But hey you live for 50 decades so you just gotta know more then anybody…
Repetition of gibberish won’t alter the facts of your junk science, period!
I think we rational people can keep quite calm. There’s no crisis. This hysteria affects only a few privileged people in the lefty West. Billions have never heard of Thunberg and are busy building coal fired power stations to hoist themselves out of poverty. CO2 will continue to rise until nobody believes the futile ‘Paris Agreement’. There will be decreasing credibility in ‘extreme’ weather events. The future is visible in BPs authoritative energy production and consumption stats each year. It’s a bright future!!!