Okay, just a reminder that there are one or two things in the world that are larger in importance than Michael Jackson. Here’s the story:
Today 11 Greenpeace activists were arrested after they unfurled a 2,275 square foot banner on Mount Rushmore. The idea, according to Carroll Muffett, Greenpeace USA’s Deputy Campaigns Director (whom I spoke to when he was still on site in South Dakota, the wind whistling past his cell phone speaker) was to challenge President Barack Obama to “show stronger leadership on the climate crisis.”
To that end, the banner read: AMERICA HONORS LEADERS NOT POLITICIANS: STOP GLOBAL WARMING
The demonstration was timed to coincide with President Obama’s meeting with the other G8 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy to discuss the global warming crisis in the lead-up to UN climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen this December.
Here’s how the demonstration worked: the Greenpeace team consisted of five experienced rock climbers, and six others who bought the climbers enough time to unfurl the banner and anchor it properly to the monument’s face. (And presumably to film same.) The six auxiliary activists accomplished this end by locking themselves to areas of the park facility in order to block park rangers ingress path as the rangers rushed frantically to the base of the monument to see what in the hell was going on and presumably to arrest the climbers.
Muffett explained that the climbers were careful to use existing anchors (bolts) already embedded into the monument’s granite face (and used by park employees to regularly clean the monument). Although there was little chance of the Greenpeace climbers harming the monument, they nevertheless took every precaution, said Muffett.
“A climb like this doesn’t happen without quite a bit of groundwork.”
Muffett said that one slightly scary moment came when the wind kicked up and one of the climbers who was attached to the banner’s bottom was being “whipped and whipped around” as the banner suddenly behaved like a huge sail. With the help of the other climbers, the banner was eventually anchored to the granite but not before some tense moments passed for those watching from the base.
(As the mother of a serious rock climber, I got the vapors just hearing about the sailing Greenpeace guy.)
So did Greenpeace feel their action was a success?
Greenpeace did, said Muffett. “I can’t tell you how energized people are. The activists took a big risk and it was well worth it. Everyone knew there was a virtual certainty that they would be arrested. Here it was part and parcel of the communication. We feel that the need for action is so great right now, that it requires some personal risk.
“We’ve been monitoring the situation for quite some time,” he said. “And we’ve known with growing certainty that it was time to speak to President Obama in a more significant way. He’s done a number of important things. He’s acknowledged the seriousness of global warming, and he’s made massive investment in green energy in the stimulus package. But we have to measure him, not by what Bill Clinton or George Bush have done, but by the seriousness of problem of global warming. By that metric he’s still falling short. ”
“We wanted to say that greatness is never given, it is earned.” said Muffett, when I asked him to sum up the point of the demonstration. “And it’s not the path for faint of heart. What we’re asking is for him to live up to his potential and to be more than just a great politician, but to be a great leader.”
Whoever we are, whatever our political beliefs or causes, we can all be down for that goal.
The devil is, of course, in the definitions and the details.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. People who accept man-made global warming as truth and a threat are uneducated, and a government that pushes it as truth and a threat is lying and wants to put huge, new taxes on the public.
“The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it” — H L Mencken
Oh come on Woody. If not man who the Hell spurned this dynamic, this global weather anomaly that is transpiring now as we speak? I’ve always admired your “naysayer’s take” on most any topic that arises, but this is over the top/out of the box , and preposterous for even you. So for the sake of Celeste’s readers please kind sir, give us your illuminating, albeit probably skewed view of just what caused this calamity. I detest taxation without verification as much as the next working stiff, but please don’t segue to that exit when you give your reasons for what’s causing these heat waves, droughts, and violent storms. I live directly in the center of Tornado Alley in the Midwest and have discussed the topic with many of the old timers here and they’re as taken by the changes of late as the rest of the country. Apparently all but you, my friend. So please elaborate.
What a pile.
I’ll be impressed with Greenpeace when they take positive actions to support nuclear power.
Until then, the remain a bunch of adventure seeking hypocritical fools. They aren’t interested in solutions that work, only solutions that hurt mankind, so that everyone will be forced to partake in the penance these fools feel is so strongly due.
And Gaya Joe, my avocation is storm chasing. That means I spend a lot of time reading the literature and the email lists of the scientists who study those phenomena. NOBODY has any evidence that global warming has had ANY effect on violent storms. NONE. ZERO. NADA. ZIP. For that matter, are you aware that the earth has been cooling since 1998? Are you aware that it was warmer during the middle ages? That there was a little ice age in the 17th century?
Global Warming hysteria simply a matter of mis-perception, propaganda and political agendas. To many, it is a lousy substitute for a religion.
Gava Joe, changes in climate are natural and cyclical, and solar activity and space weather, along with the Earth’s variable orbit, are the biggest culprits, as has been the case for hundreds of millions of years.
But, the FACT is that temperatures have been dropping recently rather than rising. Is that why the greenies renamed global warming alarms to climate change?
Climate Depot: Global Temperatures Have Plunged .74°F Since Gore Released ‘An Inconvenient Truth’
How do you feel about the U.S. substantially increasing our energy costs and costing jobs with this cap-and-trade when India and China, the biggest polluters, aren’t going along? Do you even understand what that bill will actually do?
Do you really expect the proposed changes to actually have any meaningful effect?
Al Gore said that “climate realists” (deniers to you) present a threat as great as was the threat from Nazi Germany. Do you agree? Do you know how many billions of dollars he stands to make on “carbon trading?”
Did you know how the IPCC study was rejected by a majority of participating scientists. In fact, fewer than ten actually signed off on the entire study.
Paul Krugman said that the “deniers” are guilty of “treason — treason against the planet” Do you agree with that?
Does it bother you that a government study refuting global warming claims was blocked?
Don’t you think that we need an honest and OPEN debate on the facts before we launch into a major transfer of money from the private sector to government?
Did you know that global warming alarmists do not follow scientific protocol for releasing data for open peer review and have not proved their theories or models according to scientific method? Economic conflicts of interests, politics, and/or left-wing ideology rule conclusions of their studies.
Is taxing our energy to extremes and increading prices more important to our future than medical research and education? What are your priorities, because you can’t have everything?
Please open your mind to learn about this yourself rather than jump on an out-of-control bandwagon that will hurt you and our nation’s future.
BTW, hurricanes are down.
Re: storms. NASA is concerned: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070830105911.htm
And hurricanes and typhoons have gotten worse; scientists just aren’t totally sure why. One possibility is that sea temperatures have risen more quickly than atmospheric temperatures – a feature of global warming. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0804_050804_hurricanewarming.html
Though from what I can tell, John Moore is correct about tornadoes.
Thanks to all three of you. I shall continue to study this, and keep an eye to the sky. There’s no person spookier than a transplanted Californian trying to acclimate to OZ.
Mavis, just so that you know, global warming has absolutely nothing to do with tornadoes. Nothing. Look it up. Your source has been found wrong.
Also, hurricanes are down. We used to rely every year on hurricanes to refill our lakes, but there hasn’t been enough activity in recent years.
Note that James Hansen, NASA’s global warming cheerleader and pal to Al Gore, is a complete nut case, compares global warming to the Holocaust, admits that the true goal of the global warming frenzy is redistribution of wealth, and wants to criminally prosecute energy executives and skeptics for “high crimes against humanity and nature.”
But, you really can’t judge climate changes over just a few years and with simple observations, like birds flew south later last winter. It takes hundreds and thousands of years to determine climate changes. Today’s models projecting changes are severely flawed and biased towards desired results.
Mavis, your link is to work based on the assumption of warming. There are tens of thousands of scientific papers analyzing the what if’s of warming – none of which say anything about the likelihood of it actually happening.
In fact, today if you want a better chance at funding your science project, link it to global warming. Hence there are over 1000 published papers tying surfing to global warming!
Your tax money at work.
Regarding what global warming alarmists used to call “global warming” but now call “climate change,” please check out this site, Climate Depot, along with some of its recommended reading links. Today’s headline: Gore: U.S. Climate Bill Will Help Bring About ‘Global Governance’ …Also, this: Gore’s claim of 10 year climate ‘tipping point’ was already made by the UN — in 1989! It makes you go hmmm.