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THE PROBLEM: OTHER PEOPLE
Envirovangelist Tim Flannery slams deceitful money-lusting earth rapers:
The people who are still resisting calls for action are leaders of industry who have “set out systematically to deceive the public on this matter,” Flannery said.
“I hate the term special interests,” he said. “Why don’t we call them people who want to make money through continuing to pollute the planet? Why dignify them?”
If Flannery earns just $5 for each copy of his latest book’s initial print run, he’ll pull in $375,000. He wants to make money. How is he promoting the book? By flying to and within Europe and the US (a 20-city tour there, in fact). No eco-friendly Internet tactics for Flannery, who does things the old-fashioned way. He is continuing to pollute the planet, the despoilment of which Flannery mainly notices in his hotel rooms:
Another area where we can make a difference is in the amount of electricity we waste, which Flannery illustrated by comparing two hotel rooms from his recent travels. While conducting our phone interview from his room in New York, he said there was a refrigerator “the size of a Buick” running empty 24 hours a day. “Isn’t that madness?” he exclaims.
By way of contrast, his hotel in Denmark offered an option. “If you forgo having your room made up,” he noted, “they would give you $20 to spend in their restaurant. Imagine how much energy that saves.”
Imagine! And then he got a cab to the airport.
UPDATE. Jeremy in NYC writes: “Ever been to New York? You couldn’t even fit a ‘refrigerator the size of Buick’ in the average hotel room. I can barely fit my visiting parents in the average hotel room here. I have a lot of visitors come who stay in different hotels here, and believe me when I say, the only refrigerators they’ve ever had in their rooms are teeny-weeny minibar fridges.
“There is one exception: extended stay hotel rooms with full kitchens, including normal refrigerators. Since those are meant to be for extended stays and function as apartments, of course they have a real fridge turned on. But if Flannery is being wasteful enough to stay in one of those, without actually needing the facilities, whose fault is that?”
Nutjob thinking:
Hotel cuts down on maid service > marginal worker loses her job > gets on the welfare rolls > becomes dependent on the government > votes for leftwing politicians who promise more welfare > taxpayers are saddled with another unproductive parasite.
The silver lining? Flannery saves $20 on dinner.
While conducting our phone interview from his room in New York, he said there was a refrigerator “the size of a Buick” running empty 24 hours a day. “Isn’t that madness?” he exclaims.
Could be “madness” - his, not the hotel’s. But I suspect “disingenuousness” or “lying” might be more accurate.
Ever been to New York? You couldn’t even fit a “refrigerator the size of Buick” in the average hotel room. I can barely fit my visiting parents in the average hotel room here. I have a lot of visitors come who stay in different hotels here, and believe me when I say, the only refrigerators they’ve ever had in their rooms are teeny-weeny minibar fridges.
There is one exception: extended stay hotel rooms with full kitchens, including normal refrigerators. Since those are meant to be for extended stays and function as apartments, of course they have a real fridge turned on. But if Flannnery is being wasteful enought to stay in one of those, without actually needing the facilities, whose fault is that?
Posted by jeremy in NYC on 2006 04 09 at 10:28 AM • permalink“refrigerator the size of a Buick”
I gotta get me one of those!
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 04 09 at 10:52 AM • permalinkCan’t these Earth Firsters finally remove themselves from the rolls of resource-wasters and return their stolen atoms back to Mother Gaia already?
Posted by Tommy Shanks on 2006 04 09 at 11:09 AM • permalink“I hate the term special interests…”
I imagine Flannery does hate this term…..largely because he is part of a special interest group as well. One that makes lots of money from generating environmental disaster hysteria.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 04 09 at 11:17 AM • permalinkBlondie Hasler got across the Atlantic in 20’ of lumber and a bedsheet. What’s Flannery’s excuse?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 04 09 at 11:50 AM • permalinkThe_Real_JeffS,
“I hate the term special interests…”
I imagine Flannery does hate this term…..largely because he is part of a special interest group as well. One that makes lots of money from generating environmental disaster hysteria.
I’m sure he finds it demeaning to be considered part of a mere “Special Interest Group”. It must be so wearisome for him to constantly be forced to ask, “Goddamnit, do you f*cking know who I am?!?!”
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2006 04 09 at 01:06 PM • permalinkIt’s all in a good cause, people. How else is Flannery going to drum up support for laws forcing the rest of us to drive Buicks the size of refrigerators?
Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2006 04 09 at 01:54 PM • permalinkIt occurs to me…...if Flannery wants to travel with minimum environmental impact, why not make use of all those Mother Gaia™
worshippersadherents? Everywhere, I mean.I’m sure his fellow greenies are eager to prove their devotion to the cause.
And then, Spiny, we’d all know who he is.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 04 09 at 02:25 PM • permalinkHmm… 75,000 books printed. Now how many trees do you have to cut down to obtain the paper to make 75,000 books? And how many tons of CO2 do you have to release to the atmosphere to transport all that wood to the paper-making people? And how many tons of CO2 do you have to release to the atmosphere to process all that wood and get it converted to paper? And how many tons… Oh but I forgot: he must have used recycled paper. Well then, how many tons of CO2 do you have to release to the atmosphere to convert recycled paper to usable paper? And how many tons of CO2 do you have to release to the atmosphere to…
-JAF
The causes and consequences of global warming are still debated. But few still dispute its existence. According to NASA, 2005 was the warmest year since the late 1800s. The next four warmest were 2004, 2003, 2002 and 1998. The last time the Earth was this warm, by many estimates, was 100,000 years ago.
This really gets to me. There is a 100,000 year cycle which is quoted in the article, yet these airheads dismiss it as What, useless info??
The level of the oceans were 12 ft higher , he states, 100,000 ago.
The sky is not falling, the climate is going through a natural cycle.
BTW: I might be changing my login name.. Canucks aren’t doin so good,eh.Posted by Go Canucks on 2006 04 09 at 04:57 PM • permalink#23: You have to love how the absence of detailed enough year-by-year data for the period of 98,000 BC to 1900 AD is taken as evidence that it was never as warm as in 1998+, as they just grab the most recent warm period that was obviously warmer and declare that absence of evidence for the time in between is identical to evidence of absence. We’re looking at climate cycles that might operate on a scale of centuries or just decades, and they make declarations based on data that (at best) is granular down to millenia.
“By many estimates”, my ass.
I’m imagining like mad, but I can’t figure out how not having your bed made saves any energy.
There’s vacuuming the floor, but yeah, I don’t think the ordinary maid uses all that many electrical appliances. Okay, and there’s the energy saved washing a daily load of towels if you don’t have them changed every day, but even that seems to be relatively minor.
#26 Not having your room cleaned is probably the best thing you can do for the environment;
- no electricity on vaccuums, turning the lights on to clean etc.
- it protects all those poor defenceless bacteria which evil humans are eradicating faster than any other period in history.
- dirty sheets and towels save our precious rivers by not depositing phosphates
- and last but not least, the maid who cleans the bloody room gets fired and doesn’t have to drive to and from work in some crap little polluting shit box which is the only thing she can afford because she is working as a maid.Of course, not all of us spend as much time in hotel rooms in the first place, so maybe Big Tim could cut back a little any way. Skip the Copenhagen leg of the tour and go straight to Amsterdam.
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 04 09 at 08:27 PM • permalinkAh, New York, New York . . .
I’ve only stayed in a hotel in New York one time. It was for a week-long seminar, and the hotel faced Central Park South. My whole room was not as big as a Buick. Other features included a heater that had two settings(“Off” and “Tropical”), and a bathroom with an amazing turquoise and silver zig-zag pattern that looked as if it had been designed (and, for that matter, installed) by a blind man. My sleep was disturbed intermittently by someone dumping hammers into the garbage chute. As I was checking out on the last day, I found that I had been billed $500 for a banquet which I presumably had eaten all by myself. When I got back to Miami (where I lived at the time), I thought of the Pope’s visit the previous year, and how he had kneeled down and kissed the tarmac. Had he been there that day, I would have slapped him on the back and told him I knew just how he felt.
The Boston Globe (ptooie!) has an article today which posits that one of the reasons for a lack of action against global warming is that the media has been too “fair” about airing contrarian views in its environment stories. The gist of it is that everybody is agreed about global warming except for a few fringe cranks, so the media has been doing the planet a great disservice by providing these
hereticsunbelieversdenialists (yes, that was the word he used) a hearing.Does this dickhead know that you shouldn’t unmplug fridges as it would cause them to breakdown, meaning that a repairman would have to drive in all the way from Queens. How much gas is that reparman going to use everytime he drives in to repair the fridge.
This dickhead is smoking somthing he shouldn’t be.
‘Environvangelist’ is worth copyrighting, Tim. It’s a term destined for greatness -well, plenty of use anyway.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 04 09 at 11:58 PM • permalinkLots of dedicated enviros outside his hotel living in cardboard boxes I bet.
Homeless people are Gaias friends!!Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 04 10 at 12:53 AM • permalinkWhy don’t clowns like this guy and all the other enviro-doom pork chops head to say the Palestinian territories to live out their dream of what a non resource intensive future would look like???
I mean there’s f*ck all industry their polluting the place, in fact progress has to all intents and purposes stopped and has almost gone into reverse… Just like every ME nation, and African etc, that didn’t have the luck to be pillaged and raped by western imperialist dogs, most of them appear to be at about the same stage Western Europe was as they groped out of the dark ages…
and another point about the paleo’s that Tim and his ilk would no doubt be mightily impressed with, have u noticed the regularity with which any news or doco story on the gaza strip etc has some dork with a donkey and a cart going by in the background??? in fact Tim could one day aspire to own his very own donkey and cart, once his jet-setting, money-grabbing, earth-destroying book tours were over????
Dunno, cas, he might object to the volume of evil gasses emitted by the constant firing of Katyusha’s and miscellaneous home-made rockets being fired off willy-nilly by the Philistinians.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 04 10 at 02:41 AM • permalink#28: “I don’t think the ordinary maid uses all that many electrical appliances”.
Enough of these filthy jokes.
Posted by Honkie Hammer on 2006 04 10 at 02:42 AM • permalinkYeah, Flannery’s right: There is a problem with global warming - it stopped in 1998
Mental, freedom fighters aiming to drive the evil Joooos into the sea probably get dispensation from criticism of their enviro-raping lifesyle choices…
plus Tim and his ilk would no doubt count in the paleos favour that once they destroyed the money hungry Joooos, the whole area would revert to the natural state of paleo backwardness and decay…. after all the term Philistine probably didn’t get its association for nothing i suppose…
so those few exhaust fumes now would save a whole heap of Gaia destroying progress in the long run….
and Philistinians eh… i haven’t come across that term before, but i guess its a good blending of the names they go by??? :o)
Just rereading the article:
“This is no part of any known cycle,” said Flannery, a burly Australian scientist who is a professor at the University of Adelaide and likes to be photographed in full bush regalia.
I’m not sure i have seen this guy, but he sounds like that fool Rob Qontok or whatever his name is, or there is some loon down here who wants to shoot all the cats or something and wears a dead cat skin round on his head….
what is it about these ferals and spending too much time in the bush????
“If the American government decided the future lay in low-emissions technology America could become a leader in a few years, and capture the intellectual prosperity.
Too late. According to this article, everything has to be done this year or we’re doomed. This is the “crunch year.”
BTW, I see no mention that this fellow is buying “carbon credits” to offset his jetting around the world.
#46 au contraire - the whales are fighting back
tim flannery runs a museum. he’s a scientist, but has he done any hands-on climate research? he’s in the pocket of the socialist government of south australia, a rust-bucket state reminiscent of victoria pre-Jeff. typical leftoid arse - wants all of us to change our behaviour while he changes diddly-squat
#47 Hey, bit tough on we ex-croweaters. At least we have a policy on uranium. We dig it up and we sell it. Unlike the Vics, who judging by the recent Simon Crean / Steve Bracks (we love each other, but we don’t) hoo-haa, couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery, and would still be wringing their hands in 20 years time about whether they should dig up uranium or not. Let alone worry about what to do with it if they did.
Nuclear - way to go.
Posted by Whale Spinor on 2006 04 10 at 08:39 AM • permalinkThe Boston Globe (ptooie!) has an article today which posits that one of the reasons for a lack of action against global warming is that the media has been too “fair” about airing contrarian views in its environment stories.
Ah, that writer must have attended the Algork School of Journalism. When he had that teaching gig at Columbia after Bush stole the election, Gorebot told his aspiring journalists that it was not their responsibility to present both sides if the story was about something really, really important. And the really, really important something he used as an example was—you guessed it—global warming. The responsibility there, he said, was to educate the public about the “facts” and not ill-informed claims to the contrary. And this man, but for 537 Florida voters (officially that is, and of course it only takes one more than the other guy gets), would have been president.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 04 10 at 06:43 PM • permalinkAnd not bathing. The French are years ahead of us on that one.
Yes Ernie, The French are the true environmentalists.
Not only do they have an economy where a large proportion of people are unemployed and therefore not wasting money on consumer items (you know like enough food) they also choose running over mechanised transport.
Like World War II - how environmentally friendly was that. Instead of wasting fuel in tanks and running munitions factories, they just turned around and ran from the Nazis.
A truly
cowardly smellynoble people.Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 04 10 at 09:40 PM • permalink
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Hey, I heat my house with lightbulbs. It’s as efficient as (resistive) electrical heating, and puts the heat where you are.
The refrigerator just adds to the comfort.
In fact, take home a large jug of hot water from work every day and put it in the refrigerator, to get yet more heat.
Lightbulbs are envirofriendly.
Unless it’s summer.