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Posted on 07/07/2012 5:08:25 PM PDT by Libloather
Climate activists scuttle plans for ice-melting protest on Capitol Hill
By Ben Geman - 07/07/12 10:59 AM ET
A climate advocacy group has canceled plans to unveil an ice sculpture next to the Capitol Saturday that was meant to counter global warming skeptics in Congress, citing concerns it would be insensitive to West Virginia residents still without power.
The group 350.org had planned to unveil ice forming the word “hoax?” on a day when Washington, D.C. temperatures are expected to reach almost 105 degrees, which would break the daily record and approach the city’s all-time high.
The fast-melting ice would have been a jab at Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has claimed global warming is a hoax, and other Republicans who disagree with widely held scientific views on climate change.
But 350.org founder Bill McKibben, in a message to supporters Saturday, said “I think I screwed up,” and explained that the event was off.
From his message:
The idea was simple enough: if this epic heatwave gripping the nation has one small silver lining, it's that its reminding people that global warming is very very real. And the response was strong -- we raised the $5000 it would have taken to pull off the event, and far more than that for relief efforts.
But we also heard from old friends, especially in nearby West Virginia, who asked us not to do it. The sight of ice melting while they sweltered would be too hard to take; their region, they pointed out, is as hard hit as any in the country by the heat wave, and it would make people feel like their plight wasn't being taken seriously.
Nearly 160,000 West Virginia customers remained without power as of Friday evening, a week after violent storms tore through the region, according to The Charleston Gazette.
McKibben said the money collected will go for heat and drought relief, but added that contributors could also get their money back if they wish.
The cancellation comes as activists are using this year’s heatwave – which is shattering records across the country – to call attention to what scientists predict will be increasing bouts of extreme weather as the planet warms.
But the effort is not without its pitfalls. The Hill explored the politics of extreme weather and climate change in a story on Friday morning.
Update: It appears the Capitol ice-melting plans had drawn the particular ire of Bob Kincaid, a prominent West Virginia activist who battles mountaintop removal coal-mining.
Kincaid, on his Twitter feed, bashed the ice plan in a stream of tweets directed at 350.org Friday. For instance, he called it “nasty and elitist” when people need ice and water in West Virginia, and wrote that it amounted to “slapping suffering, struggling ppl in the face.”
But Saturday he applauded the group for nixing the event, saying over Twitter that 350.org showed “compassion & mindfulness” and that people battling mountaintop mining have “tremendous allies” in the group.
Melting ice in the Sumner.... Yes, proof of global warming!
How funny and ironic that the group whose first response to anyone who points out that AGW isn’t a real Scientific Theory is “you are confusing weather with climate” confuses weather with climate.
I remember when I was child, before global warming, when ice would sit out in the sun all day in mid July and not melt. Oh wait, I think that was January.
That’s Summer not Sumner! woops
they could have Pelosi stand out there in its place and we could all watch her face melt.
That’d do more to cheer up WV and the entire country
A little anectdote. Yesterday we were warned that temps here around the Hudson Vly and Catskills would reach well into the 90’s, near 100 in some places. It never got above 85 here, just a typical July day.
I am still trying to understand this one. I guess I am just not smart enough to be an environmentalist
Well, you could argue all day to most of these blockheads and it wouldn’t make a difference. Again, the real joke is the fact that some people want to put ice out in the summer, which any given summer it would rapidly melt, not to mention run an electricity-guzzling device most likely involving grid power to produce the large ice neccessary for the sculpture in the first place, in other words, these people dumped a whole lot of their own CO2, and in essence contributed to their own GHG effect, just to try and prove that their warming is real. Their own actions are self-contradictory, and if anything, they’re simply beyond reasoning at this point.
I studied Environmental Policy, not even climate science, mind you, but enough science to realize that they pretty much contributed to the very thing they protest against by producing so much ice. So essentially, assuming there is a warming of the Earth, they just added abnormally to it by refrigerating and forming all that ice involved in that sculpture, in addition to simply throwing it out in the summer where it doesn’t matter if it’s 75 or over 100, it will melt rapidly and surely. Should have thought of putting it out in winter to prove that winter is leaving us.
*ICE*, logistics delay Shell Alaska drilling plans
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The event has been postponed for 6 months.
Every time there’s a heat wave, they trot out this global warming baloney. The earth is getting warmer, and it’s man’s fault.
When they have a streak of cold weather, then the climate is “changing,” and it’s man’s fault.
Must have been less carbon dioxide. Are you sure you are still breathing?
What's really humorous is that the cold blasts (blocking patterns in winter) were not predicted by the climate models. They predicted the opposite. Once we got the cold blasts in 2009/2010 (caused by blocking probably by low solar activity) the alarmists found a study from around 2006 that "predicted" more blocking. Of course it was just GIGO, but that doesn't matter to these activists. To them science is just a set of hammers, they can choose the one they want.
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