Does This Help or Hurt Appropriate Response to Global Warming?

Question

The recent NYC Spiderman climb brought attention to global warming, but didn't generate much publicity (positive or negative). Now a group has hijacked a coal train in Britain. This, IMO, tends to cause some to discount global warming as an issue of extremists (vs. a legitimate scientifically based concern). Do others think this type of activity helps or hurts the worlds recognition that global warming is real and needs to be addressed?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/13/activists.climatechange

Answer 1

Certainly hurts environmentalism, but surely the media is only attacking AGW-proponents because they have a liberal bias, right?

Yeah, I know, conservative logic makes no sense.

Answer 2

Idiocy transcends social, political, and economic boundaries.

Answer 3

Clearly it harms the global warming cause.  There is definitely different degrees of wackoism when it comes to AGW.   The world needs to recognize that global warming may be real but is an insignificant problem when compared to many others. People need to recognize that it has been hijacked by a leftist political movement that includes the wacked out ones you mentioned as well as more moderate ones.

Answer 4

For reasonable people on both sides they will see this for what it is, a foolish stunt, it will get a small sound bite and some negative press.   The problem is that the majority of the public may see it has a reflection of the AGW movement though I doubt it reflects the majority.  Those who really want to understand and know both sides of the issue will give this little attention and rightfully so.

Answer 5

It's slightly more direct than having federal marshalls shut down a coal train to enforce "emissions targets."

It kind of shows the movement for what it is - no better than Greenpeace attacking whaling vessels, disrupting WTO trade summits, etc....   or PETA picketing the circus and lying to a bunch of six year old kids on the way in.

Answer 6

Sheesh..... reminds me of the Code Pink wackos.

Answer 7

Hard to say.  There's the school of thought that any press is good press - at the very least it's getting the issue more attention and showing how important some people consider it.  On the other hand it also makes environmentalists seem like extremists.

Overall I don't think the net impact is either very positive or negative.

Answer 8

It shows just how backwords many in the enviromental movement are.   How they can not be trusted

Answer 9

Sounds like a mixed bag.  I didn't hear about the Spiderman climb or the coal train.  (How did the latter episode go?  I'll have to try to check this out!).  Hopefully, the true journalists of the world, wanting to finally be able to dig into this story, will hang back and the publicity will be spotty-to-poor at best.

But I think you're right.  This is not good publicity, because legitimate groups may want to hang back and not even comment at all, because doing so may give the wrong signals to some.  

There may be some gimmicks that would work by illustrating the cause, without stepping on too many toes.  We almost need something like this to help galvanize the general populace.  Something like a community-to-community race to improve the carbon footprint, for instance, with a donation made by the loser to establish, fund and run a community garden & compost.   Some get to open their wallets, others volunteer, etc. No one loses, everybody wins.

Answer 10

Well, I think it shows that the pro AGW loonies are extremist.