Environmentalists Sign Petition Banning Water

On a regular basis, anthropogenic global warming skeptics wonder how folks like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore and his band of not so merry climate change sycophants can so easily get seemingly intelligent people to buy their junk science hook, line, and sinker.

With this in mind, the comedy duo of Penn and Teller set out to see whether they could get people at an Earth Day rally called "WorldFest" to sign a petition banning water.

For those unfamiliar, this was the "6th Annual WorldFest, a solar-powered celebration of music, the environment, animals, health and social consciousness" held at Woodley Park in Encino, California, April 2006.

Penn Jillette marvelously described their intentions (absolutely hysterical video available here, grateful h/t to Gary Hall):

We sent one of our pals, Chris McGaughah (sp), to a rally to collect signatures for a petition. She's gonna ask people to sign a petition banning Dihydrogen monoxide. That's di-hydrogen-monoxide. Water. That's right, water. And she's not going to lie, or even stretch the truth. Not at all. She's just going to talk about what water is, and what it does, with vocabulary and tone of environmental hysteria.

So as not to give anymore away, I encourage readers to watch this three and a half-minute film, and get an understanding as to how easy it is to pull the wool over folks' eyes.

In the middle of the signature collecting -- which went remarkably well -- Jillette made the following spectacular observations:

Is passion supposed to replace common sense? We understand the desire to join up and do something important. It, it's sexy to save the world. But, you gotta spend a couple of minutes to find out if you're really saving the world and not just being herded around by some politically motivated a**holes who may not really care that much about the environment, but see this as some chance to raise money for whatever they think is a good idea. No end justifies the means of lying.

I couldn't agree more, Penn.

As an aside, this is not a recent video, as it was posted at YouTube last December. However, I imagine many of you are like me and are just now finding out about this wonderful exercise crafted by this great comedy duo.

Bravo, gentlemen! Bravo!