The Blackboard

yesss, HE is!!!!! Hear the holy word!

That was brief! Good thing I didn’t wait to get a picture.

Lucia: he was cold. He needed to get back in the limo and warm up.

Ok, coal energy may be over and the sun energy is “in”, but did I hear something more technical chanted about what they intend to use in the night? No…

EW–
You turn the lights out and sleep at night. Don’t be silly.

Ok, Lucia, if you say so. it will be pretty early night in winter, though

If you don’t want to go to bed, then read by the light of the flickering fire from your high efficiency wood burning stove which should be outfitted to ensure low particulate emissions.

I bet you can make popcorn too.

The people on stage seems to be discussing the possibility of getting arrested now. I wish I had a second or third view.

Thanks, but no, thanks. No stoves for me. I just hate dragging wood and coal from the basement, having dust and embers everywhere.

The MC started talking about moving your arms and legs. I thought he was going to lead the Hokey-Pokey and turn himself about!

I would say that the onstage people are looking forward to having some police action. Like, a bit of martyrdom for a noble cause.

NO NUKES ON AMCHITKA!

NO NUKES ON AMCHITKA!

oops. sorry. Flashback to my first demonstration with Greenpeace.

I guess the QA/QC on homemade pharmaceuticals weren’t that good then….

Shortly (very shortly) after the creation of Rap music, was the creation of the mute button….

Hmmmm, yet another gal who should ponder about her personal consumption…

Ok… I heard some reading of rights while I was posting images. What did I miss?! Drat. (They are no hugging.)

Now – how the guy exactly intends to give the planet to our children in a better shape than we found it in? Which one it is? Cretaceous? Tertiary?

The MC says people at the other gates were shut down.

The chant is “Nuclear Hell No”, “Biofuels hell no”. So that’s two options off the table.

I see that there was a lot of crocheting in green before this event. Lucia, you’re expert – how long does it take to make such a hat?

The MC says, “We shut them down”. So…. is the capital without heat right now? Or do they mean something else?

I hate like that would take 2 hours max. This assumes you already know how to crochet.

The hat is mostly double crochet. The brim looks like single crochet.

The are now announcing the post-protest party.

A guy in the audience is yelling “But it’s open. It’s running.” “Why are we saying we shut the plant down if it’s running”.

And organizer is saying “We never intended to stay over night.”

There seems to be some disagreement about the organization and the point of civil disobedience. A woman’s voice is saying the goal was not to get arrested but to raise awareness.

A guy is pointing out that Ghandi got arrested.

They guys point out they don’t think they did anything disobedient.

Oh! I wish I was recording this conversation. Anyway, it seems some of the demonstrators feel they marketing was a bit bait and switch because the power plant is still running, no one is staying and, in there view, there was no civil disobedience. Oh well.

Ok… I’ll have to read more about what they accomplished. My impression is they managed to block all gates for a very short time during a period of time when I’d guess very few workers needed to come and go even on normal days. Plus, since in this case, the protest was pre-planned, the plant operators probably made sure they had coal, water, fuel, workers etc. all on hand to maintain operation.

So… the goal was to temporarily block the gates so that if anyone had wanted to enter or leave, they couldn’t. But it was done in a way that no one even bothered to try to enter or leave. So, nothing very dramatic happened.

Once the protesters blocked all gates, that meant they succeeded on ‘closing down’ the plant. So, then they could leave. left. After that, shifts of workers could come and go, coal could be delivered etc.

I think that’s all that happened.

If anyone gets additional information, let me know. I’m curious that people would travel a long way just to do this!

“Lets go to the tar sands and shut that down” Possible causes of death:

1. Exposure to -50C windchill for days on end.
2. Wildcat.
3. Hungy bear.
4. Soon to be out of work s.o.b. so tough that eco-weenie idiot lefty curls up and dies out of terror.

I can see the headlines tomorrow:

100,000 Greens Bring DC Power Plant to its Knees!

(it’s hard to stand up when you laugh that hard)

I’m glad I haven’t received my lukewarmers coffee cup yet, as I would have sprayed french roast all over my screen from laughing this hard.

[...] Lucia watched this simultaneously, she has some thoughts [...]

Speaking as someone who was actually there (I had a business trip to DC for the weekend, and figured I would stop by the the festivities given that the dean of my graduate school was potentially getting arrested), it was fairly uneventful. In the kabuki theater of modern protest, the organizers script everything out with the police months ahead of time, to the point of negotiating how many people get symbolically arrested (the organizers push for more arrests, the police push for less!). In this case, the police decided it wasn’t worth the effort of arresting anyone, given the large crowd, much to the displeasure of the organizers who would have gotten better press out of it.

There were some interesting folks there: Hansen, of course, as well as the poet Wendell Barry, Gus Speth, Bill McKibben, and the leaders of a number of different environmental organizations. The protest was split into four different groups, each with different color banners, who broke off from the march to stand in front of different gates. The whole thing was completely symbolic of course, given that the plant had planned ahead and changed shifts shortly before the protest started. There were even 16 or so counterprotesters from the CEI holding “Drill Drill Drill” and “Gore is Evil” signs.

As far as chants go, my running tally was: No coal, oil, gas, nuclear, biofuels, and big hydro. Alas, if only they could power the country on their smug sense of self-righteousness!

Even managed to snag a picture of Hansen and McKibben:
http://twitpic.com/1t5u2

So, at the end of the day it was a cute symbolic effort for what I personally think is a good cause (phasing out coal), though it was rife with the usual utopianism of the left. It got fairly good media coverage (CNN, ABC, USA Today, etc.), though the uncooperative weather gave Fox News a chance for the token snarky “global warming protest snowed out” headline.

Four dozen protesters, Lucia? BBC’s Newsnight last night identified “10 thousand young supporters” as taking part. Are we to believe that we can place absolutely no trust whatsoever in anything the BBC has to say about Climate Change, no matter what that might be? Surely not.

(OT, Lucia, but each day I dutifully visit your site, desperately hoping for a
premiere of “The World’s Most Boring Video – The Sequel” . But what do I get? Nothing – just another lot of statistical analysis!)

Paulus–
First, when reading estimates of the the number of people involved in individual events, it’s important to realize there were two events going on in DC.

One was the mostly indoor event called “Power Shift”. The other event was the coal plant protest. My post is about the coal plant protest.

If the BBC reported 10,000 students, they were probably discussing Powershift — not the coal protest. Powershift claims 10,000 participants here. Power Shift seemed to take place all weekend, it’s a regular event (PowerShift 08 and possibly earlier conferences have taken place), it doesn’t highlight civil disobedience, and mostly doesn’t seem to involve standing around outside in the snow chanting. Here is their blog: Power Shift.

Powershift did also staged an outdoor event– “lobby day” which took place at 11:30 am outside the Capital building.

In contrast, the coal protest began with a gathering at Spirit of Justice parkt 12:30 pm and continued through the afternoon.

From there, people marched to the coal plant used to heat some buildings at the Capital. This second event is discussed atat capitol climate action.org.

Now for numbers:

I was watching the video of the protest at the coal plant. I would be very surprised if attendance ever approached 10,000, but it was more than 4 dozen. Here’s how the numbers seemed to appear in the video.

I wrote the 4 dozen when I first turned on the video which I discovered through youtube.

Based on the time stamp of 13:30 Central time, that would be a few hours after people marched over from Spirit of Justice Park. Since web pages told people to gather at 12:30 ET, that’s about 2 hours into the the coal plant protest schedule.

At that time, there seemed to be about 4 dozen in front of the camera which appears to have been placed in front of some sort of main stage. The camera moves around, so I can’t be sure. But it wasn’t very many people.

If you examine my post, you’ll see I updated as the event unfolded. (But it’s done in a “hey this is caught my atttention now!” sort of way.)

More people arrived about the time of the update showing the woman in the Navaho blanket. So, after that, there were definitely more than 4 dozen– but definitely not 10,000!

As people at PowerShift may have been sympathetic to the coal protest, it’s possible that a number swung by the coal protest gathering to hear the coal protest speakers (particularly Hansen, McKibben and Kennedy.)

I don’t know how many came to the coal plant in the end– but the news stories I saw yesterday estimated “hundreds”, not “thousands”. There were certainly not “thousands” in front of the main stage listening to the speakers.

That said: I think there were five gates to the coal plant. The cameras never showed all the people. I’ll google a bit today to find out whether anyone came up with a better estimate for the total number of protesters specifically standing out in the cold protesting the coal plant. (As opposed to sitting inside nice warm conferences rooms listending to indoor presentations at PowerShift.)

I’ll look for some even more boring videos for you. BTW–this one included bongos, singing, chanting. Overall, it didn’t seem as fun as Woodstock though.

Zeke–
Great picture. I had to grab that and highlight Bill McKibben’s hat. It’s crocheted! I may need to whip up one in green to wear to the protest they plan in Chicago. It will let me fit right in with the green activist mover and shakers!

Lucia, you are a really heartless person.
These young people have put so much effort to their chanting, singing, jumping on various legs, placard making, hemp hat crocheting, ethnically and profesionally diverse speakers searching, just to prepare an emotionally laden event. And here comes you with your cold head counting, guesstimates of people density per number of gates, evaluation of protest goals fulfilled and exact definitions of the degree of civil disobedience and coal plant shutting.
Can’t you just chant a bit along?

EW–
We don’t know if the yarn was hemp. It could have been bamboo or soy. You can get all sorts of eco-friendly yarns.

As far as numbers go, while all crowds above a certain size tend to look alike, 2,000 is not out of the questions for the size of the initial crowd at Spirit of Justice park and during the march to the plant (which was at least 5-6 blocks long). Once at the plant, the protest split into 4 groups on different sides/gates of the plant, and I imagine some people started leaving relatively quickly because it was bloody cold outside.

Also, I think the electronic doodad you see in the picture belongs to Hansen’s Mobile Media Swarm™ that accompanied him most of the time.

Zeke–
I was estimating based on the depth of people. Looking at the crowd, I just tried to see if the group took up the just the sidewalk? The whole street? How wide was the spread between the ends? When I first loaded the video, the camera showed a group on the sidewalk and the spread looked like about 12 or so. Later on, when major speakers appeared, people covered the blacktop. So… there were definitely different numbers of people at different times.

Of course, I have no way of knowing how many people were at the other gates.

It was definitely cold out.

We aren’t so state-of-the-art here in Czechia concerning ecoyarns and garments from these. I’ve seen some sweaters from bamboo in one boutique before Christmas (not very pleasant to touch, though) and once a commercial for hemp things. But soy for wearing is really new for me… So which yarn will you choose for your green eco-hat? Or will it be that definitely un-eco acrylic?

The number of protesters are certainly going to be limited. After all, they must be within walking or biking distance. They certainly wouldn’t be coming from so far away that they’d be driving or riding buses and spewing nasty GHGs into the atmosphere.

EW– I have plenty of non-eco friendly green acrylic yarn left over from making an afghan. So… I’ll use that up.

Michael– I think there were many students from far away states attending PowerShift. That seemed to be a fairly well organized event. Since PowerShifts lobby event ran just before the coal event, a number of people who came to PowerShift may have gone over to listen to the speakers at the coal plant. ( If I were at one event which ended, I’d go over to the other one. So…just guessing.)

Lucia,

The march to the plant took up about 6 full blocks of a 2-lane road, so make of those numbers what you will. The crowd at the stage (which was probably 1/3rd of the people at various gates) took up the whole street, and was at least 300 or 400 people. You do have to bear in mind that these were all a) people who could take a day off work/school and delay their trips back from the weekend Powershift conference (which had 12,000 registered folks) and b) were willing to risk being arrested. Not to mention the risk of hypothermia :-p

Still, the effectiveness of things like this are judged mostly on their media impact. As far as that goes, it seems reasonably successful.

For the “how much carbon did people emit getting there” crowd, the travel for all 12,000 folks at powershift was calculated (based on a survey included with registration) and offset by retiring credits from the RGGI market which, in my opinion, is one of the better ways to do carbon offsets (since by retiring credits in a compliance market, you are lowering the overall emissions cap).

Lucia,

As an expert on knitting and crochet, perhaps you can answer a question that has been nagging me for years.

I viewed a number of protest pictures, such as the plethora of them available at zombietime and the many that make the news. A common theme with the extreme left bong and dreadlock set seems to be these crocheted hats.

I’ve seen them worn all seasons. From my viewpoint they are hot and itchy, especially in summer. WUWT?

My question is: why these hats? What special meaning (if any) do they have for these folks?

Or does “hot an itchy” just seem comfortable to them? Or is it just a “me too” sparked from somebody that started selling them at a street fair in Berkeley one year?

These are the questions that haunt our times.

Anthony,
The crocheted hats worn by many who also wear dreadlocks could be made from any number of yarns. Few would be itchy.

The ones I see are generally open work, and I suspect they are either made from soft inexpensive acrylic or cotton. The ones I’ve seen are often in vivid colors, so I suspect acrylic which retains colors longer.

I have no idea how or why they caught on, but they have been popular a long time. I have no idea if they have any special meaning.

They could be made very quickly and cheaply. They are usually open work, so they wouldn’t be too warm. (Notice we see few worn in the cold of the recent DC event.)

If you ran a strand through the ends, you could also use them as re-usable net grocery bags. (But I don’t know if anyone does that.) If you soaked them in water on a dry day, you could probably get a swamp cooling effect. So… who knows?

lucia, I was being quite sarcastic. I’m fully aware many protesters anthorpogenically released mucho GHGs to attend the protest from far away.

As far as threads go…we aren’t going to be needing them in the future as hot as it’s going to be with global warming and as limited as A/C output will be due to energy restrictions. We’ll just need some dental floss and some crotch-concealing cloth. We will need an abundance of eco-friendly sunscreen, though. Will a hemp oil derivative do the trick?

To understand the knit hats amongst the bong and dread group, one first must travel to Guatemala. The ‘knit hats’ are affectionately known as ‘Guats’ and are peasant made using only the finest natural fibers, dyes and crochet hooks. They are very cheap and carry no import duties, and the markup back here in the states will more than pay for the trip. While wildly colorful ‘guats’ were popularized by rastifarians in the 70’s to contain dreadlock spillage, the industry has matured and broadened into more traditional and conservative colors. The line of items available has also expanded as well into sling purses and hackysacks. Its important in the alternative lifestyle crowd to obtain and wear these items as a statement of belief and as an identifying talisman.

Note: Jim Hansen’s overcoat and hat are not from Guatemala.

My mom is currently visiting friends in El Salvador and will be going to Guatemala next week where she is also visiting friends. Maybe I’ll ask her to pick up some “Guats”. Then we can see!

(My sister was born in Guatemala. My other sister and I were born in El Salvador.)

My first time here! What I’d like to know is how to find the Uranus data set. Can someone here point me in the right direction?

Thanks

Robin