climate change - The Art of the Prank

November 23, 2019December 15, 2023

“Sinking House” Sends Powerful SOS

Extinction Rebellion floats “Sinking House” on the Thames.

Extinction Rebellion Sends a Sinking Home Along the River Thames, Warning of Climate Disaster
by Sarah Rose Sharp
Hyperallergic
November 13, 2019

Climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion staged a public protest over the weekend, in the form of a floating structure that created the illusion of a suburban house sinking into the River Thames in London. Titled “The Sinking House,” the intervention took place in the early hours on Sunday, November 10, and is intended as a public appeal to politicians to make a more stringent and immediate response to regulate the effects of human industry and waste on the environment. Continue reading ““Sinking House” Sends Powerful SOS”

September 22, 2014December 15, 2023

Protestors Flood Wall Street

Flood Wall Street Protesters Assemble In New York
by Katherine Boehrer
The Huffington Post
September 22, 2014

Flood Wall Street, by ethanvanauken

A day after the People’s Climate March filled the streets of New York, a smaller group of protesters are engaging in non-violent, direct action against climate change. By conducting a sit-in on the steps of the New York Stock Exchange and blocking lower Broadway, organizers say they are confronting “the system that both causes and profits from the crisis that is threatening humanity.”

The protest does not have a permit, and some participants have pledged to risk arrest during the sit-in.

Pictures from the group’s assembly at Battery Park, the march to Wall Street and a blockade of Broadway are already appearing on social media. Follow #FloodWallStreet on Twitter and Instagram for more live updates. Watch a live-stream from StopMotionsolo.

UPDATE — 4:15 p.m.: At least one protestor has been arrested according to Newsweek’s Zoe Schlanger and there are reports that pepper spray has been used by the NYPD. Protesters had moved to the blocked entrance to Wall Street, attempting to remove barriers and get past police.

image: ethanvanauken

See more photos here.

February 16, 2012December 15, 2023

The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax

The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax
by Brad Johnson
thinkprogress.org
February 14, 2012

The first in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute”™s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green.

Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum“ for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.

“Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” Heartland”™s confidential 2012 fundraising document bemoans. The group believes that Wojick”™s project has “potential for great success,” because he has “contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula.” The document explains that Wojick will produce “modules” that promote the conspiratorial claim that climate change is “controversial”:

Continue reading “The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax”

March 26, 2011December 15, 2023

The Lomborg Deception – Debunking the Climate Change Debunker

Submitted by Larry Croft:

Book Review: The Lomborg Deception
by Sharon Begley
Newsweek
February 22, 2010

Debunking the claims of the climate-change skeptic.

In naming roustabout, lumberjack, ironworker, and dairy farmer America’s “worst jobs,” CareerCast.com omitted one whose awfulness is counterbalanced only by its public-spiritedness: fact-checking Bjà¸rn Lomborg.

The Danish political scientist won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists””that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic””are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist
(in 2001) and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030738652X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=pranks-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=030738652X"Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we’re grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg’s work is “a mirage,” writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. “[I]t is a house of cards”¦Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature” of Lomborg’s work. Continue reading “The Lomborg Deception – Debunking the Climate Change Debunker”

October 19, 2009December 15, 2023

Yes Men Feel the Heat

Pranksters stage Chamber of Commerce climate change event
by David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post
October 19, 2009

Will the real U.S. Chamber of Commerce please stand up?

Environmental activists held a hoax press conference Monday morning, pretending to be the business group — and pretending to announce that the chamber was dropping its opposition to climate-change legislation now in Congress.

The event, complete with fake handouts on chamber letterhead, at least a couple of fake reporters, and a podium adorned with the chamber logo, broke up when a spokesman from the real chamber burst in…

YouTube Video:

What followed was a spectacle not usually seen in the John Peter Zenger Room at the National Press Club: two men in business suits shouting at one another, each calling the other an impostor and demanding to see business cards. Continue reading “Yes Men Feel the Heat”