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February 07, 2005
Founder's doubts?
When the founder of one of the world's most vociferous, and sometimes most obstructive, "green" lobby groups, distances himself from that organisation because it has forsworn “science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism.” My thanks to Weekendpundit for the post labelled "Greenpeace - controlled by know nothings!"
Patrick Moore's doubts about the direction and leadership of Greenpeace are well founded. This is the organisation that launched a massive assault on the truth when they campaigned to prevent the sinking of the Brentspar storage bouy in mid-Atlantic a few years ago trumpeting (and the media eagerly rushed into print with it) that the bouy had onboard "thousands of tons of oil and hundreds of tons of radio-active material". Their "experts" had invaded the Spar Bouy while it was undertow and "tested" the tanks coming up with the conclusion that it held 15,000 tons of oil and "highly radio-active waste." This, they blazoned across the newspapers, would contaminate the ocean, destroy marine life and place everyone in the UK "at risk."
In fact the Spar held at most a few tons of oil residue and the "radio-active" waste was mainly mud which had been drawn from the seabed anyway! Their "expert" had been unable to gain access to the tanks or to measure anything - so, Plan B - lie!
The government of the day fell for it and backed down instead of ordering in the RN to sink it with the protestors on board, they had it towed back to the UK and ordered it broken up on land. The result has been real pollution - seabed mud is highly saline and damned difficult to remove or to dispose of - oil residues (the final tally was under 100 tons) are equally toxic and very difficult to purge or to destroy, so had to be cleaned and removed by hand - with the increased risk of cancer or mutagenes entering the bloodstream of the workers - and cost an astronomical 20 times as much as it should have.
The same problem applies with "wind farms" and their blanket opposition to anything nuclear or, now, hydro-electric. The fact that hydro-electric dams in the third world are about the only viable way to solve the two perrennial problems of water shortage and power needs seems to have escaped them completely. At its heart, this organisation is unable to distinguish between common sense and a pragmatic approach of weighing up FACT and then making an informed and sensible decision and the emotive and often completely unsustainable position of "no development".
Hat's off to Patrick Moore for being honest enough to come out and say it!
Posted by The Gray Monk at February 7, 2005 09:01 AM