Greenpeace has lost its moral compass

You take it correctly, elegran. Different bloke.

I am a bit lost here. I take it he is/was not the Patrick Moore of "The Sky at Night"?

You had me confused for a while. I thought, blimey, he was a busy lad.

jess, agreed. You have put it very succinctly and, in my view, correctly. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a 'scientific' talk.

Environmentalists use exaggeration to get their points across too. TED talk by Ivo Vegter.

There are quite a few other famous environmentalists/activists who have changed their minds about environmental scares.

Greenpeace employees get well paid too.

Interesting information Faye, thank you for that. He has been exploiting his link to Greenpeace for a very long time then. Not sure he is the right person to talk about a moral compass

I thought his presentation was so badly put together that other than saying "all this science in agriculture could go horribly wrong" it was difficult to follow his rambling thought processes. It was, I'm afraid more of a stream of consciousness bit of musing rather than anything that resembles a scientific argument.

Even "genuine scientists" get things wrong. Scientists are not gods.

(mind you gods don't always do too well either )

Unless it's this one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pusztai_affair. Not the actual experimental write up, obviously, but what looks like a fairly thorough report.... with a dubious conclusion.

Is the Wiki report a fair report, aka? It reports both 'sides'.

I wouldn't want you to bother about me, aka, but I'd quite like you to answer my question about feeding a hungry child in my post at 11:05:05 on Thursday, if you would be so kind.

And a link to the write up about the rat experiment – the one where they were fed GM potatoes by a Scottish Scientist – would be nice. I can't seem to find it.

Thanks in anticipation.

Seeing this thread is about Patrick Moore and his opinion of Greenpeace I wondered what Greenpeace thought about him.

Patrick Moore writes about himself "Dr. Patrick Moore has been a leader in the international environmental field for over 40 years. He is a co-founder of Greenpeace and served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International. He later concluded that Greenpeace has "lost its moral compass." Patrick Moore is now working as an independent scientist and consultant, advising government and industry on a wide range of environmental and sustainability issues. "He is a Sensible Environmentalist, basing his policies and opinions on sound science and logic."

Greenpeace Statement "Patrick Moore often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental “expert” or even an “environmentalist,” while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance. He also exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson, usually taking positions that Greenpeace opposes.

While it is true that Patrick Moore was a member of Greenpeace in the 1970s, in 1986 he abruptly turned his back on the very issues he once passionately defended. He claims he "saw the light" but what Moore really saw was an opportunity for financial gain. Since then he has gone from defender of the planet to a paid representative of corporate polluters.

Patrick Moore promotes such anti-environmental positions as clearcut logging, nuclear power, farmed salmon, PVC (vinyl) production, genetically engineered crops, and mining. Clients for his consulting services are a veritable Who's Who of companies that Greenpeace has exposed for environmental misdeeds, including Monsanto, Weyerhaeuser, and BHP Minerals.

Moore's claims run from the exaggerated to the outrageous to the downright false, including that "clear-cutting is good for forests" and Three Mile Island was actually "a success story" because the radiation from the partially melted core was contained. That is akin to saying "my car crash was a success because I only cracked my skull and didn't die."

By exploiting his former ties to Greenpeace, Moore portrays himself as a prodigal son who has seen the error of his ways. Unfortunately, the media - especially conservative media - give him a platform for his views, and often do so without mentioning the fact that he is a paid spokesperson for polluting companies."

So you two know more than a genuine scientist

D'you know Bags you are simply not worth bothering with.

...rambled

Oh good. Glad you weren't terribly impressed with it either, jess. The speaker had a nice manner, but....

Listened to the TED talk. Messy and lacking in logical links. Lots of illogical links and blurring of issues e.g. pesticides, herbicides, antibiotic resistance, allergies etc etc . Lets just throw them all in and put on a disarming act.

Putin said that they had broken international law, not Russian law. To break Russian law, they would have had to be violent. They were not that.
The latest development is that Holland is suing Russia for breaking international law.

Bags you post on the Nature forum, but you don't seem to care much about the natural world.

My position is still: Russian rule of law, sock it to 'em.

I thought someone would ask that.

So predictable.

aka, no, you don't.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/4762481.stm
In case you couldn't find it as easily as you found Meaford. J

Do i detect a slight shifting of position here Bags ?

And superweeds?

And the scientific report about damage to organs in laboratory rats?

When I say unconvincing, I mean that while I accept that there may be (are even) risks associated with GM, overall I think the benefits outweigh the risks, just as the benefits of antibiotic use when they were first introduced outweighed the risks, and still do in spite of problems.

Thanks for the link to the TED talk, aka. Good talk. Good presentation. I took some notes while listening:

Why is he calling glyphosate water at the beginning of the talk?

Why is he calling scientifically produced weed killer and insecticide "magic"? Scientists do not talk about magic!

"Substantial equivalence" – I thought he explained this well but I'll need to read more about it.

Quite glad Canada has lost its export of Canola oil to the EU. Dreadful stuff!

Yet another argument for not eating soy products.

Loss of anti-biotic power against bacteria is being blamed on genetic engineering without proof. It is NOT KNOWN whether the gene engineering used for crops is responsible.

All plants contain toxins. Lotsa people don't know that and I suspect he is 'playing' on that ignorance.

FDA report about GE causing nutritional probs, allergenicities (think that's the word he used). OK. But golden rice is an attempt to solve "nutritional
problems" that already exist, not possible ones in the future. If you have a malnourished child in front of you, do you not feed it because the food you have might cause it to be allergic to something eventually (or might not) or do you think that the immediate benefit of ending the child's suffering in the here and now is more improtant?

Scottish scientist who fed rats GM potatoes... is that all he fed them? or were they allowed other foods too? Ah... it seems "his research was lacking". Lacking what? Scientific rigour? Hmm.

My conclusion: interesting, some things to follow up, currently unconvincing or at least not convincing enough.

Have I lost my way? Is this the thread about Greenpeace?

Shouldn' t they welcome cold cells? Saving oil/saving the environment.

(I do have great respect for them really. Although I don't know anything about the rights and wrongs of drilling for oil in the arctic seas)