Monday, August 02, 2021
Patrick Moore talks about why he left Greenpeace and why the the push for net-zero emissions is an unattainable goal
Patrick Moore was only 24 when he co-founded Greenpeace in the early 1970s. He soon became the driving force behind the environmental activist group’s many influential campaigns, such as to stop nuclear testing, protect endangered whales, and prevent toxic dumping.
“It began in 1971 with the first voyage to stop U.S. hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska, which we did,” Moore told The Epoch Times. “And then we went after France’s atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific.”
Greenpeace would go on to launch its “Save the Whales” campaign in 1975, followed in 1976 by a campaign to end the killing of baby seals for their fur, and later that decade a campaign to end toxic dumping in rivers by factories in Europe.
But as Greenpeace gained influence, Moore says he started to see it getting hijacked by what he characterizes as people with political ideology from the left.
“None of us in the original group was there to make money. We were all volunteers,” he said. “But the ultra-leftists took over my organization when they realized there was a lot of money and power to be had there.”
He said it was during the “Save The Whales” campaign that people started donating money to Greenpeace in larger numbers, and that was when the group started getting a bank account and renting an office.
“So as time went on into the late 1970s, Greenpeace turned into a kind of business,” he said. “Pretty soon it actually became a business where fundraising started to become more and more important.”
By the time Moore left in 1986 after being with the organization for 15 years, “fundraising had now become the most important priority, and they would go ahead with a campaign for which there was no scientific basis,” he said.
He left Greenpeace due to “philosophical and political” reasons, he said, after having served as director, president, and international director.
“Greenpeace had started out with a strong humanitarian orientation, as well as a belief in saving the environment,” he said. “‘Green’ is for the environment, ‘peace’ is for the people not to be killed by nuclear war, among other things, or pollution.”
Over time, “peace” was gradually dropped, and Greenpeace, along with the rest of the environmental movement, drifted into a belief that sees the “human species as the enemy of nature, the enemy of the Earth,” Moore said.
Emphasis on Fundraising Over Science
In the mid 1980s, Moore, who has a PhD in ecology, says he found himself the only director with a formal science education on Greenpeace’s international board, and the only director disagreeing with what the rest would propose next.
“They all agreed that the next campaign for Greenpeace should be to ‘ban chlorine worldwide.’ … They named chlorine ‘the devil’s element,’” he said.
Moore says he pointed out to the board that chlorine is one of the building blocks of the Earth, and of utmost importance for public health, as chlorine added to “drinking water, swimming pools, and spas has ended waterborne communicable diseases like cholera.”
He also said chlorine is critical for medicine because 25 percent of medicines contain chlorine, and chlorine chemistry is essential in the making of some 85 percent of medicines.
Greenpeace International proceeded to launch the campaign nonetheless, the reason being “largely based on fundraising,” according to Moore, and so he decided it was time to go.
Moore believes this is where scare stories of impending catastrophes and doom started. “It begins with the politicians and their bureaucrats funding the scientists who can be trusted to give them a good scare story.”
The Importance of Carbon Dioxide
When it comes to climate change, the continued narrative of carbon dioxide being a “bad thing” and “destroying the world” is contrary to what the scientific community has found, Moore says.
Moore currently serves as a director of the CO2 Coalition, established in 2015 to create educational material on the importance of carbon dioxide. The organization has published papers presenting scientific data to dispute that CO2 emissions are causing global warming.
Contrary to what climate alarmists claim, Moore says, “carbon dioxide is the basis of all life on Earth.”
“It makes the oceans less alkaline, thus making it suitable for life,” and “on land, CO2 makes the greening of the Earth plus it makes plants more efficient with water.”
In April 2016, an article published in Nature funded in part by NASA found that CO2 fertilization has had significant impact on the greening of the planet.
“From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” reads a post on NASA’s site on the study.
“Studies have shown that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide increase photosynthesis, spurring plant growth,” the article added.
Moore said the push for net-zero carbon emissions by governments around the world is “purely a political slogan.”
“I’m not sure how they could reduce CO2 emissions if they didn’t stop using fossil fuels virtually altogether,” he said, questioning how the transportation, agriculture, mining, and forestry sectors could function without them.
“I believe this is an unattainable political goal for society. And I also believe it is a goal that will bring greater hardship than people have endured since the great wars, since the great disease epidemics of the past.”
Moore said there is a powerful convergence of interests among key elites in Western society pushing environmental scare stories.
“It puts [politicians] in the media, and the media makes much money from the sensationalism, and the activists then raise money,” he said.
Hollywood plays a big part as celebrities join to endorse the climate change narrative, he added, as well as many scientists.
“Nearly all the money going to the scientists who are writing these things is public money, so it all has to be approved by politicians, and bureaucrats working for the politicians,” he said, adding that scientists who utter anything to the contrary get cancelled.
In his latest book, “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom,” Moore talks about how the hyped up environmental catastrophes and threats create fear.
“There’s so much propaganda and so many lies, but the unified theory of scare stories is what I call these, because they have something in common—they are all based on things that are invisible or so remote that the average citizen cannot observe what these people are seeing, and cannot verify what these people are saying.”
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British families face paying an extra £400 a year on food, goods and travel over the next decade to cover cost of Britain hitting its 2050 net-zero emissions target
Britain's families face paying hundreds of pounds more a year on food, flying and shipping costs to help industries remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, experts advising the Government on infrastructure said today.
The poorest tenth of households will pay an extra £80 each year by 2050 while the richest tenth will face a £400 annual bill to help sectors that currently have a low chance of hitting the Net Zero emissions target by this date.
The National Infrastructure Commission said the UK needs an industry to store the gases to help meet its pledge on carbon emissions – and taxpayers will have to spend up to £400million in the next decade to fund this.
However the executive agency added that the biggest polluting industries such as agriculture, shipping and aviation should make a £2billion-a-year contribution from 2030 – even if these costs are passed onto households.
The suggestion issued in a report provoked fury among consumer groups amid mounting concerns over how much Boris Johnson's Net Zero commitments will end up costing hard-working families in the long run.
Among the organisations concerned about the costs involved is the TaxPayers' Alliance, whose chief executive John O'Connell told MailOnline today: 'The net zero target must not see working taxpayers landed with the bill.
'With the highest tax levels in 70 years, family finances are already strained and they cannot be expected to pay more for food, goods and travel. Ministers must promise to protect Brits from any green cost hikes.'
But the NIC pointed out that the higher costs for consumers were in the context of the average household earning £15,000 more than today by 2050 - and that the Government could help support the poorest families.
It comes as proposals to get to Net Zero as part of the Prime Minister's plan to make the UK a green 'world leader' are now in disarray after Chancellor Rishi Sunak raised objections to the eye-watering cost to the Treasury.
Downing Street had been expected to publish in the spring details of the strategy for moving away from gas boilers ahead of Glasgow's COP26 climate change conference in November. But this has been delayed until the autumn after estimates that hitting Net Zero will cost more than £1.4trillion - equating to £50,000 a household.
The NIC report suggests Britain must make quicker progress on engineered greenhouse gas removals at a decent scale to address the hardest-to-abate sectors such as aviation and agriculture to meet Net Zero by 2050.
It adds that this could create a whole new infrastructure sector for the UK, on the scale of the water sector by 2050, with the carbon removal industry possibly worth tens of billions of pounds a year by this date.
Initially this will involve government support to get it in motion, but the NIC said the only way of making this work long term is by creating a viable market based on removal credits, which polluting sectors would pay for.
Its analysis suggests that costs per household for helping to assist the sector in removals will be higher for households with higher expenditure.
There will be an annual cost of £80 for households in the lowest expenditure decile and £400 for households in the top expenditure decile, based on an average cost of £200 per tonne of carbon dioxide removed.
The NIC estimates the average is £200 per household per year by 2050 - although this is in the context of the market possibly absorbing some of the costs.
On household costs, its report said: 'Making the polluter pay for emissions is likely to gradually increase costs for households, particularly those with higher expenditure and a higher carbon footprint, as the offset obligations on polluting industries rise. The impact of this gradual rise in costs on households will be eased by increases in average earnings per household.
'Assuming household incomes grow in line with productivity in the economy, the income of an average household is forecast to grow by around £480 on average per year between 2020 and 2050 - around £15,000 in total.'
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Ban on gas boilers delayed by five years
Claims the Prime Minister is looking at delaying a ban on gas boilers by five years has triggered a furious interdepartmental row.
Currently gas boilers are due to be scrapped by 2035 - to help Britain meet its target of reaching 'net zero' greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
But this week officials close to the Prime Minister briefed that the deadline could be extended by five years to give Britons extra time to swap their boilers for greener alternatives - such as heat pumps.
Killing off gas boilers is a political hot potato because alternatives are currently much more expensive - with ground heat pumps costing £10-18,000 compared to around £2,500 for a gas condensing boiler.
Sources said the delay would give more time for heat pumps and hydrogen boilers to come down in price. Quoting a Whitehall source, the Sun reported: 'There will be no ban on boilers just yet, we were going to by 2035 but now that's not happening.'
Officials in the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy department hit back - suggesting any delay was 'nonsense'. Over a third of Britain's carbon emissions, which must be slashed to zero by 2050 under current targets, are from homes.
A source told the Daily Mail that BEIS officials have made it clear the 2035 date has to stay - otherwise it would mean putting in gas boilers in 2040 that would need to be ripped out in good working condition just ten years later. 'It's nonsense from the perspective of our officials,' a BEIS source said.
'We can't do that as it would knock us off the replacement cycle for heating systems which is 15 years.' 'If we went for 2040, industry and stakeholders would point out that we will need to rip out working boilers to meet net zero by 2050.'
'Government should therefore carry out analysis on the distributional impacts, and what it plans to do to address any adverse consequences, by 2024 at the latest.'
Sir John Armitt, chairman of the NIC, said in a forward to the report: 'The UK has the right to be proud of its pace setting targets for decarbonising our economy.
'The goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 is enshrined in law, and we have globally leading ambitions to help rebalance our environment.
'Turning those ambitions into reality requires detailed plans, and in some areas, radical innovation. With that in mind, this report sets out the potential – and indeed, the necessity – of a whole new infrastructure sector.'
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Goodbye Global Warming: One Climate Scientist Warns ‘Next 20-30 Years Will Be Cold’
Climate scientist Dr. Willie Soon, a Malaysian astrophysicist and aerospace engineer, is now warning that the next 20 to 30 years will be cooler rather than warmer. He is urging his fellow peers to watch the sun's activity which suggests we are not experiencing a global warming effect.
Whoops. That certainly doesn't fit the woke, left's agenda!
While speaking with New American's Alex Newman, Soon said that “what we predict is that the next 20-30 years will be cold. It will be cold, so it will be a very interesting thing for the IPCC to confront.”
The sun is in a “weakened state” and far less active than during the 1980s and 1990s, Soon noted, which should last until “around 2050," he added. “The whole climate system is powered 99.1 percent by the sun’s energy,” he stated.
Breitbart reports:
Soon, a researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that global cooling is a far greater source of concern than global warming.
“We will have a lot more problems were the planet to cool rather than warm,” Soon insisted.
Humanity can solve a lot of problems including overheating, but the problem of a “little ice age” like that of the 1700s, “those problems are much harder to solve,” he said.
“If you want to face a serious problem, worry about an ice age; never worry about global warming,” he declared.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
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