ENVIRONMENTAL PROTEST
2 Men Arrested On a Ledge at NOAA Building
Silver Spring Demonstration Staged Over Global Warming
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 24, 2006; Page B08
A pair of environmentalists, protesting what they said are attempts to suppress evidence of global warming, were arrested yesterday after spending several hours perched on a ledge at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration building in Silver Spring.
After 8 a.m., the two men used an extension ladder to climb to a roughly 25-foot-high ledge at the building, in the 1300 block of East West Highway, an associate said. They carried a banner reading, "Bush: Let NOAA Tell the Truth" and brought food and drink with them. Other protesters stayed on the sidewalk below.
  Montgomery County police officers use a borrowed cherry picker to remove protesters from their 25-foot-high perch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (By Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post) |
Authorities tried, without success, to persuade the protesters to leave the ledge, said Lucille Baur, a Montgomery County police spokeswoman. Shortly after noon, officers borrowed a cherry picker from a construction site and brought the men down without a struggle, she said.
The two protesters were charged with disorderly conduct, reckless endangerment and trespassing, Baur said. They were identified as Paul E. Burman, 24, of Arlington and John Theodore Glick, 57, of Bloomfield, N.J.
The two men are members of a group called the U.S. Climate Emergency Council, said Mike Tidwell, the group's director. The group contends that NOAA officials are playing down scientists' findings about the dangers of global warming, including its connection to extreme weather events such as hurricanes and heat waves.
"They are failing at their job," Tidwell said. "They are suppressing scientific information because it is inconvenient data for the Bush administration's fossil-fuel constituency."
