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Hundreds of Thousands Turn Out For People's Climate March In New York City
mdsolar writes with an update on the People's Climate March. More than 400,000 people turned out for the People's Climate March in New York City on Sunday, just days before many of the world's leaders are expected to debate environmental action at the United Nations climate summit. Early reports from event organizers are hailing the turnout as the largest climate march in history, far bigger than the Forward on Climate rally held in Washington, D.C., last year. High-profile environmentalists including Bill McKibben, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Goodall and Vandana Shiva marched alongside policymakers such as Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and former Vice President Al Gore were also there, and more than 550 buses carried in people from around the country.
550 buses not including air-travel for speeches that could have been gotten over the internet. How ironic.
Something about this march has inspired a lot of ire across the internet, so before the negativity rolls in let me share my experience. I was hesitant to attend the march on Sunday, because I feel like protests like these are accomplishing less and less as time moves on. I was worried that people would feel they had 'done their duty' by showing up, and gone back to their day-to-day without changing anything. I've also constantly been cynical about the global warming movement, believing that we've done too much harm to reverse, that nothing we can do can slow the inexorable and extinction-level rise of global temperatures. After arguing about it with my girlfriend, I came to a few important conclusions. First, cynicism is laziness in disguise. The problem was too big, too scary, too complex, for me to tackle, but at this point is impossible to deny. How can I acknowledge the problem without allowing any responsibility to fall to myself? Cynicism and negativity (which I've seen comment board after comment board filled with regarding this subject). Another conclusion I came to was that our generation is going to be held accountable for any damage that climate change caused. We knew the danger, yet we allowed it to happen. I want to be able to tell the next generation, 'I tried.' I want to be able to show them pictures of the march and say, 'We were not filled with apathy, we fought, we tried.' Plenty of people who recognize the issue of climate change have been deriding the march based on the presence of socialists, 'dirty hippies,' punks, gays, etc. Yeah, there were some whackos there. I saw some people with signs about chem trails, 9/11 truthers, religious nuts. When you have 400,000 people in one place, you're not going to agree with all of them. But I also talked to doctors, scientists, politicians, students, teachers. And I work at a bank. Did we accomplish anything? Perhaps very little. But I could see the people there were galvanized by the event, their batteries were recharged, and they were full of hope. It generated discussion today. There are a lot of corporations throwing a lot of money around to prevent legislation regarding climate change. We can't challenge them on the money front, so numbers is one of the only tools we have left. If we can get enough people on our side, perhaps we can change the political climate (harr harr) through elections. I'd rather try, than sit at home and do nothing, and have to answer to future generations about my apathy.
"Big enviro"? You mean the total sum of all non-carbon based energy industries, technology companies and carbon credits markets?
Show me your math.
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Joel was way funnier than Mike.
Yes, that's why they had local events in other cities.
But I think it's kind of dumb to think that in a city with tens or hundreds of thousands of cars idling daily in traffic for the past 70 years, that 500 busses making a single trip is going to have a more negative impact than if leaders don't hear some kind of voice for change.
"F*ck the poor people who want to stay warm, or get to a job. They should die off anyway, the earth is overpopulated!"
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Again, it the trends, not individual weather on any specific year that matters
Except that after every single warm snap or hurricane the same people who were smugly reminding us that "weather is not climate" are busy pointing to the event as "evidence" of AGW, which it is not. Distributions are evidence, events are not, because the science shows that the AGW/no-AGW distributions substantially overlap in our current situation, particularly with regard to extreme weather events.
So only a person who does not understand science and statistics would ever suggest that any single event or small handful of events is worth mentioning as evidence either way. And yet Warmists are always out in force after any given extremum telling us it "proves" AGW.
Don't get me wrong: AGW is real, although there are some pretty well-proven techniques for reducing it (notably carbon taxes, which also have the benefit of reducing corporate and income taxes, so you'd have to be some anti-capitalist nut-job to oppose them). But anyone who ever opens their mouth to point at a single event as if it was somehow worth the bother of discussing is an anti-science wing-nut, and adds only heat, not light, to the discussion.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Sorry, the "trends" do not support your alarmism.
The trend in temperature is flat for the past 13-22 years depending on which temperature series you look at. And that does not account for the blatant "adjustments" to make to past appear cooler (GISS we are looking at you here !).
The best temperature measurement (USCRN -Google that ) with pristine rural sites, no adjustments, triple redundant aspirated platinum sensors, since inception 10 years ago, shows NO warming at all, confirming the temperature plateau.
There is NO trend to increasing tornadoes, heavy rains, hurricanes etc. Despite media manipulation of weather stories to create fear in a gullible public with poor or short memories.
The sun is an a quiet mode, in the past this has meant cooling, as well as the ocean decadal oscillations are going into their cool phases. This means the earth is probably cooling soon. And this is why the global warming alarmists are panicking trying to ram some draconian energy disaster upon the world before the cooling becomes apparent. And when it cools, we will need that energy.
Sea level is rising as it has for hundreds of thousands of years, and shows NO trend to accelerating.
Saying this year or that year is the hottest in the record says nothing about temperatures rising. It is like a 30 year old man saying that his height is the tallest for the past five years of his life. It does not mean that the temperature is rising or he is getting taller.
Antarctic ice is a record high extent, and this is NOT predicted by global warming models. Arctic ice is increasing the past couple of years, and is nearing the 2 sigma from the 30 year climate mean, which means we are approchign what would be normal arctic ice.