A row between the fast food giant Burger King and one of its major franchise owners has erupted over roadside signs proclaiming “global warming is baloney“.
The franchisee, a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, has described Burger King as acting “kinda like cockroaches” over the controversy. MIC says it does not believe Burger King has the authority to make it take the signs down.
The dispute began to sizzle last week, when a local newspaper reporter in Memphis, Tennessee, noticed the signs outside two restaurants in the city and contacted the corporation to establish if the message represented its official viewpoint. Burger King’s headquarters in Miami said it did not, adding that it had ordered MIC to take the signs down.
But a few days later readers of the Memphis paper said they had seen about a dozen Burger King restaurants across the state displaying the signs and that some had yet to be taken down. Media attempts to contact MIC to establish why it was taking an apparently defiant stance were rebuffed, but the Guardian managed to grill MIC’s marketing president, John McNelis.
“I would think [Burger King] would run from any form of controversy kinda like cockroaches when the lights get turned on,” said Mr McNelis. “I’m not aware of any direction that they gave the franchisee and I don’t think they have the authority to do it.”
McNelis added: “The [restaurant] management team can put the message up there if they want to. It is private property and here in the US we do have some rights. Notwithstanding a franchise agreement, I could load a Brinks vehicle with [rights] I’ve got so many of them. By the time the Burger King lawyers work out how to make that stick we’d be in the year 2020.”
Global warming is indisputable. But then again… they probably believe in an indivisible being as well.
Jagermeister, a basic problem with that chart is that the temperature measurement stations are flawed, and much of the warming comes from urban heat island effect. When they put in new sensors to measure ocean temperature, we have not seen the heat uptake associated with global warming models, and if that lack of ocean warming continues, it would falsify the current global warming models.
http://surfacestations.org
Here’s an article on ocean heat.
http://tinyurl.com/oceanheat
#21, Jagermeister, An indivisible being — is that like a prime number being?
#22 – MikeN
Nice source for your second link:
Real climatologist.
#23 – BubbaRay
LOL – Oops… a typo.
From the article:
William DiPuccio was a weather forecaster for the U.S. Navy, and a Meteorological/Radiosonde Technician for the National Weather Service. More recently, he served as head of the science department for St. Nicholas Orthodox School in Akron, Ohio (closed in 2006). He continues to write science curriculum, publish articles, and conduct science camps.
I have no idea what other things he does.
MikeN, your single sample of a (questionable) scientist must truly know more than all the other reputable ones who say that global warming is real.
@Skippy
If they put a sign like that in Tennessee, the BK would be set on fire within an hour.
I really don’t get people that knock on religion, wasn’t “global warming” a religion because if you debated the facts they’d label you a “climate change denier” as if you insulted their religious beliefs.
I’m convinced everyone believes something and despite being an atheist I have to say some atheists are at least as annoying and as bigoted as the bible thumper guys who cry when they got busted with a prostitute and try to roll back science to medieval times.
Global warming isn’t baloney, but it is irrelevant. Towards the end of 2012 the suns gonna blast us with an intense coronal mass ejection. The destruction of technological infrastructures will be much more devestating to our highly specialized society than global warming, at least in the short term.
#28 – Hmeyers – I’m convinced everyone believes something and despite being an atheist.
Very true. Atheists believe in things that make can be proven over time.
#28, Hmeyers: I’m going to knock religion as long as religious types come into my child’s school and into my government and into my life and try to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong and how I should live my life, all based on an ancient book of superstition and an imaginary friend.
As soon as they stop doing that, I’ll stop knocking them.
Am I the only one relishing in how these bitter Joe-The-Plumbers of the world are lashing out? Look at the funny monkey! Ooh, he’s an angry monkey!
@ fpip
“As soon as they stop doing that, I’ll stop knocking them.”
I’ve learned over time my differences with religious people probably amount to about 1%-3%.
Don’t kill, don’t steal, half the stories of any religion are at least as good tales of morality as any other collection of fiction.
At the end of the day, my disagreements really amount to the age of Earth, evolution and dinosaurs — not really enough at least for me to get riled up about.
Skippy, if the guy had just said he doesn’t believe in global warming you’d have a point. The link was to a specific argument.
#1 I don’t know about where you live, but the Burger Kings where I live(southern california) the a automated machine, raw patties in the top, serpentine stainless belt,under gas flames, cooked patties out the bottom.
MikeN, thanks for the laugh! (your chart)
MikeN, you are awesome! (teh chart)
# 25 Jägermeister said
#23 – BubbaRay
LOL – Oops… a typo.
Yes, but the finest typo I’ve seen in many years. I’ve got to remember “the indivisible being” as the “Jägermeister indivisible being.” This is award class material, all we need now is the picture to go with it.
HAR I love all the “morans” who have the ignorance or the temerity to believe that scientific debate can be OVER on any issue. Those who declare the global warming debate are Marxists disguised as well-meaning do-gooders who only care about saving us from ourselves.
Hey Goreski, read about real climate change and realize that we’ve been in a warming period since the mini ice age. All anthropogenic? I don’t think so. Get educated and get wise or be a useful idiot to making Al Gore wealthy.
#2 I would eat more Whoppers if he had a franchise here.
Global warming is baloney…we still getting snow in some states for pete’s sake.
Wake up.