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Coal use is leveling off in China this year.
http://m.greenpeace.org/eastas...

Coal use should drop in china:
http://america.aljazeera.com/a...

Coal mines are closing:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Making their products environmentally friendly.

When will they be doing that?

They've been doing that for many years. Here's the info, specifically the products. Even Greenpeace are singing their praises, specifically, saying: Apple has put its money where its mouth is: Greenpeace's report, "Clicking Clean," found that the company's embrace of renewable energy is genuine, and is leading the technology sector.

So your evidence that Apple makes environmentally friendly products is that Apple says so, and that Greenpeace (basically the greeners equivalent of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition) is singing their praise?

Here's the real thing (read more on http://www.naturalnews.com/031...):

Many large, multinational companies have operation facilities in China, including HP, Sony, Nokia, Samsung, and Toshiba. But among a list of 29 major companies that run facilities there, Apple turned out to be the worst overall, routinely evading inquiries from environmental groups about environmental pollution and other factory problems.

The report, issued by a group of 36 Chinese environmental groups, cites HP, BT, Alcatel-Lucent, Vodafone, Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp and Hitachi as among the best companies for both addressing environmental and workplace concerns, and working on specific ways to fix them. But at the bottom of the list were Nokia, LG, SingTel, Ericsson and Apple.

"Apple behaved differently from the other big brands and seemed totally complacent and unresponsive," said Ma Jun, author of the report and Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Chinese non-governmental organization (NGO).

Supporting gay rights.

Almost everyone does that and it does not cost them a single cent.

They spent money commissioning a video celebrating gay pride.

They spent money on lawyers to petition the Californian government on Prop 8.

They donated $100K to the No to 8 campaign.

Their supplier responsibility reports have been auditing their suppliers for discrimination for years.

It is just public relations.

Again, like the other guy I responded to, you're setting up a no win situation. They don't support gay rights? They are unethical. They do support gay rights? It's just marketing.

Their CEO is widely believed to be gay and I'm sure a hell of a lot of their employees are gay as well. You're asking me to believe they aren't doing this out of principle at all? That's not the most plausible explanation here.

Enforcing worker rights in their contracts abroad.

Again, this is mainly a PR thing. People got upset (for the wrong reasons -- Apple's contract manufacturers may be bad employers by European or even American standards, but people in China appear to be happy to work for them) and Apple had to repair damage.

Nope, they actually started internal audits of their supply chain and generating public reports several years before all that happened. You can go and download them on their website and see for yourself.

Making their products environmentally friendly.

When will they be doing that?

They've been doing that for many years. Here's the info, specifically the products. Even Greenpeace are singing their praises, specifically, saying: Apple has put its money where its mouth is: Greenpeace's report, "Clicking Clean," found that the company's embrace of renewable energy is genuine, and is leading the technology sector.

Their entire product portfolio is based on planned obsolescence. They may be very proud of how much material they are saving by making critical parts as flimsy as possible, but in reality the reduced lifespan hurts the environment more than the minor savings help it.

This is just FUD. Apple hardware lasts a lot longer than the equivalent from their competitors. I've lost count of the number of laptops, PCs, and non-Apple smartphones I've seen people around me churn through while Apple users with the same needs just buy once or twice in the same time period.

Improving the privacy of their users

By storing all their personal data in a country that has effectively declared war on privacy? By secretly tracking their customers? Apple is doing the exact opposite of what you claim.

By forbidding abusive behaviour in the App Store. By removing application access to identifying information several times. By providing an alternative to third party analytics like Google Analytics that isn't driven by a market need to sell that data. By encrypting a whole bunch of things they aren't compelled to.

First is that as many as 17 of their 58 plants have been knocked offline or scaled back in a single heatwave because of a shortage of water for cooling thereby needing to import from their neighbors to keep the lights on and costing up to $1300 per megawatt hour.

This would be true of almost any heat engine-based power plant, regardless of the source of the heating, save for a few very high-temperature systems which can live with air cooling. Also, a 30% reduction in production from an 70-80% resource implies an overall shortfall of ~20% - we know how to bridge those temporary loss gaps with hydro, fossil and other dispatchable short-term backup technology. Wind, meanwhile, experiences periodic 1-2 week long shortfalls of 90% or more, whereas solar famously loses 100% of its output every day and varies by as much as 70-80% in output over the course of the year. Good luck smoothing those curves out.

In short, there are engineering solutions to this problem that are known and understood today.

Also, they've been caught dumping nuclear waste in Russia.

So I looked into this and I can't find any authoritative sources for the claims that this was actual spent fuel instead of just pure uranium. I read there's going to be an investigation. Can you find the results of it? All I can find is Greenpeace bragging about "uncovering" it, but they never said it's spent nuclear fuel. In fact, they explicitly said it's UF6 (uranium hexafluoride), which is a common enrichment feedstock. After enrichment 90% of that is going to be depleted uranium tailings, which cannot be used in thermal reactors (which is why it doesn't make any sense to ship it back to France), but it's still usable as fuel for fast neutron reactors (which is why Russia might want to hold on to it - free fuel, w00t!). It's NOT spent nuclear fuel and certainly not fission products.

Because the argument that GMOs are these evil terrible things that you should totally give us your money to fight is going to be a harder sell once you've got news stories talking about how they are saving the lives of children whose only crime was being born in the wrong part of the world. Golden Rice is a big deal to many in the anti-GMO movement, which just goes to show you how little the 'not anti-biotech just anti-Monsanto' line goes.

And one other thing I forgot to add:

Had they focused their modifications only on creating high yield and high nutrition crops

There is no single gene for yield. Yield is a factor of weather, soil fertility, moisture, biotic conditions like disease, pest and weed pressure, ect. You take away pest pressure, and you don't think yield won't go up? well, it kind of doesn't, not in developed countries anyway, where we were spraying pesticides to control pests. But in developed countries, things are very different. So, you really can't say they don't improve yield, or sustainability. Even the much maligned herbicide tolerant ones do.

Of course, higher nutrient crops don't fair any better than Monsanto's crops, perhaps they are hated even more, if the protesting is anything to go by. Which makes sense I guess...the claim that GMOs are all bad and there's no nuance whatsoever and therefore you should don't money to professional anti-GMO activists might look a bit silly when it is out saving even more lives. God forbid Greenpeace, Navdanya, OCA, and all those other greedy sociopaths put humanity before profit. Their actions have lead to more deaths than the anti-vaxxers.

Everything you said is complete bullshit.

Now, read this and STFU.

Moron.

I'm as green as anyone, but lordy that was some one-sided summary Hugh.

Can I at least ask for some other numbers, such as the number of bird kills resulting from pollutants dumped out by the big coal fired plants in Ohio?

Your question makes your assertion incorrect: a typical "green" person doesn't think in terms of "best alternative", but simply opposes whatever is being done since it will inevitably have some consequences. Can't build coal plants, they pollute; can't build nuclear, it leaves radiactive waste; can't build dams, they drown habitats; can't built wind farms, they kill (blind) birds. Dunno what the excuse for solar will be, but I'd wager the sheer amount of land covered. Heck, Greenpeace has already declared they're going to be opposing fusion, should it ever become viable, since it's still nuclear.

The green movement is all about reacting, and usually pretty irrationally at that. It's the worst enemy of actually protecting environment. Imagine, for example, if the anti-nuclear sentiment had never existed: we'd have Gen-IV reactors rather than fossil fuels powering the grid, and the resulting cheap reliable electricity would be simultaneously driving both an economic boom and adoption of electric cars, and the resulting investment in battery tech would in turn make renewables viable in areas too risky for nuclear. But it did, so we have the double-whammy of expensive energy and climate change hammering our economy at the same time instead, with the predictable result of failing to do much of anything about either. Thanks, Greenpeace.

With those hard numbers the remaining thing to see in this discussion is how many people is paid for Koch industries and similar ones, and how many got fooled by them into denying that human activity are causing changes in global climate strong enough to be responsible for the consequences of some of the extreme weather we suffered in recent years.

When the first alerts of global warming started to appear, most people tough only in a bit more heat, while everything else continues the same. Then we had seasons of extreme weather hitting big cities, alerts on ocean rising, pests, and a lot more that is still coming, as everything is interconnected. Global Warming is just part of the problem, just a symtom, one where scientist can take a bunch of historical data and point a finger showing to even the dumbest persons that is happening, but our effect in the global ecosystem goes beyond temperature, changues in atmosphere, ocean and in life (specially the most abundant and invisible one). Changing the ecosystem we are taking high bets (agriculture that depends on climate being stable, cities that ties people to specific places), and a lot of people will pay those bets with their lives if the change happens fast enough (as it seems to be doing).

Meanwhile, the people behind the main human factors in the change try to convince people that nothing is happening nor is their fault, are the ones that control laws and government politics in this topics, and won't care at all as have enough money to keep living comfortably even if things get very wrong for everyone else.

If water rises tomorrow (to put an extreme example) 5 meters, hundreds of millons could die. Adaptation is good, if you are one of the survivors, or the elite with plenty of resources (the one that don't care about this because that reason, and even fund denial campaigns).

No problem, in the meantime they will just patent the pig.

If maybe you don't trust Greenpeace, not that many would blame you, just do a simple search for "Monsanto pork" sans quotes and you will get plenty of other links, maybe even some related to congress. After all, the US government has been in bed with Monsanto and covered up for them causing large numbers of deaths since before most of us was born. Things started heating up on them with PCBs, then Agent Orange issues so they took a derivative of their Agent Orange research (Round-Up) and after researching a bit into the field of GMO, they dumped most of their chemical plants or closed them.

Here.

Also, absence of anything on Greenpeace's pages should be outright disregarded beforehand as a proof of anything. We're talking about organisation which threw it's founding member down the memory hole: Patrick Moore of the original Don't Make A Wave Committee is missing now, though still listed as a crewmember of the ship. I vaguely remember he used to be completely vaporised from the pages but not sure and don't have time for Wayback Machine magic.

not so long ago Greenpeace found, in the cooling water of a nuclear reactor in a less than waspish country, so much tritium that had it been separated and sold, the GDP of the said country would have doubled overnight ..

Really? Then how come neither Google nor Greenpeace's own website has any mention of this? There are plenty of Greenpeace articles complaining that Canada has the worst tritium contamination in the world, but I don't think Canada is either non-waspish nor low GDP. There is also an article about tritium contamination in India, but that was a case of deliberate sabotage. So could you please explain what you are talking about, and maybe provide an actual citation?

http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/en/mediacentre/media-releases/food/Greenpeace-calls-on-CSIRO-to-come-clean-on-commercial-relationships/

http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/13325-csiro-in-bed-with-multinationals

Even if it was igniting and had good fusion gain, there are such a huge array of serious engineering issues that they have got no economic answers for that it is never going to work commercially.

But let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that those are all miraculously solved within the next month. Can we start using fusion? No, because it's nuclear fusion, and thus still nuclear, and thus still scary. For example, Greenpeace has already declared that they will oppose fusion plants.

Not that you can generate power any other way either, since windmills kill birds and spoil the view, solar plants take up space, geothermal brings up toxins, fossil fuels generate CO2, renewable fuels take up farmland, orbital solar risks exposing living things to microwaves, etc. etc. Everything has consequences and no consequences are acceptable, thus nothing can be done. That's "green" for you.

And let's totally ignore that not a single person died from the meltdown

Ok, I am a massive supporter of Nukes, HOWEVER, NOBODY can honestly claim that not a single person died from the meltdowns. In Japan, the ones that went into the reactors were much older because it was known that their lives will be massively shortened. In fact, they brought retirees in to do the work because it was known that it was going to kill.
Likewise, even IAEA says otherwise, WRT Chernobyl.
2. How many people died as an immediate result of the accident?
The initial explosion resulted in the death of two workers. Twenty-eight of the firemen and emergency clean-up workers died in the first three months after the explosion from Acute Radiation Sickness and one of cardiac arrest.

So, when ppl claim that nobody died, they are either kidding themselves, are ignorant, or lying. I have to believe that you are just ignorant of the situation.
BTW, here is Greenpeace's garbage. GP is far too extremists for me, however, in this case, they are probably closer to the truth than not.
And here is what WHO says.

Now, with all that said, the issue here were companies/groups that were irresponsible. Both Chernobyl and Japan were caused by cheating at protection. The nice thing about Thorium is that NONE of this is possible (with the right design). The reason is that it can NOT have a meltdown. And if the reactors are built small and enclosed in the ground, then it pretty much makes them secured against true nasty situation.

ITER is a toilet for flushing down money

All fusion research is a toilet for flushing down money. Even if they produced a working and cheap reactor tomorrow, it still couldn't be used because it's still nuclear. Greenpeace, for example, has outright stated that they'll oppose fusion because it's nuclear. The opposition to nuclear power is ideological, thus fusion will not help.

In about 30 seconds with Google, I found:
- an entire book on the subject
- Greenpeace, for whatever their word is worth, claiming that the Koch brothers have donated over $61 million to the cause of denying global warming.
- a 2007 article from Newsweek about it.

I could keep going, but the point is that this is a demonstrably incorrect counterargument (or the pro-global warming folks have some sort of massive conspiracy that they've been able to keep going for a couple of decades).

Yes, that's the difference between public sector where there is enforced transparency due to acts like the Freedom of Information act, and public sector where no such transparency is necessary.

It's a stupid proposition, the reason climate change is exposed by public sector is because public sector is not tainted by an inherent bias to profit. Despite the conspiracy theory about how scientists are bigging up the climate change thing to keep themselves in a job things are different in reality. You mention the met office for example, well, the jobs there aren't dependent on global warming being true or not true - they're full time employees there to study the climate regardless, yet they still have come to the same conclusion that climate change is a problem.

Contrast that to private sector where there's a lot of money to be lost if climate change is a real problem and you can see why private sector groups would fund so much FUD that people like you naively fall for.

But regardless, thankfully due to investigative journalism, your proposition isn't completely fruitless. Here, have some links, go educate yourself. That's if you want to of course, which I'm not sure you do, most deniers don't after all, they just prefer to deny what is right in front their face:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/thinktanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/tea-party-climate-change-deniers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/15/leaked-heartland-institute-documents-climate-scepticism

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/

No, I think this should ding Sony's 'green rating', because of a too-short lifespan and no little-to-none recycling-to-keep-in-use options. Is everyone expected to suddenly buy a new TV set every now and then? Gimme a break. All Sony has to do is allow user-mods to happen. Imagine if a classic car owner was not allowed to 3d-print the broken dashboard controller-thing just to keep it alive. I dunno, something like a plastic turn-signal lock doo-hickey which otherwise makes the car illegal (except when hand-signals are used). Same difference.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/cool-it/Campaign-analysis/Guide-to-Greener-Electronics.

Admittedly I am biased because I see an old PC, and I think, 'will it run linux?'

But then again, this is Sony that refuses even the U.S. Military the right to run linux on their paid-for playstations. Apple lost its soul a long time ago, and Sony continues to show them the way.

For anyone who's unfamiliar with this, and is curious, Greenpeace has a Guide to Greener Electronics.

[Greenpeace rep Casey Harrel] said in a Kotaku interview, that Nintendo (as Kotaku writes, "barely even attempt to submit, or make available, the information Greenpeace require to make accurate judgements." According to Casey (I think; Kotaku suddenly uses the name Corey): "Nintendo consistently scores the poorest on our Guide to Greener Electronics primarily because they donâ(TM)t submit, nor have any publicly available information, on over half the criteria that we use to assess company performance on the Guide."

In other words, Nintendo's "worst environmental record" is the equivalent of a database null. It's not "the worst", it's "unknown".

For the information Nintendo does put out, Greenpeace's rep does note, "those that they do have answers for, are quite poor."

In a response, Nintendo says, "We would like to assure customers that we take our environmental responsibilities seriously and are rigorous in our commitment to comply with all relevant laws relating to environmental and product safety, including avoiding the use of dangerous substances in our manufacturing processes and ensuring the safe disposal and recycling of materials."

Whether one loves or hates a company, it's a bit difficult to fault their abysmal environmental record just because they didn't fill out a third party company's survey.

Disclaimer: I'm a rational Nintendo fanboy. I love their products, but I can criticize Nintendo and their products as well.

There are people that oppose ITER? I have never heard this before.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/ITERprojectFrance/

Nuclear fusion reactor project in France: an expensive and senseless nuclear stupidity

Press release - June 28, 2005

Greenpeace deplores the agreement by the Representatives of the Parties to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) (1) to construct one of the world's largest nuclear fusion experiments in Cadarache, Southern France. The project, estimated to cost 10bn euros, will not generate any electricity, instead it will need massive amounts of energy to heat up.

etc. etc. etc.

While I wholeheartedly support Greenpeace in their conservation efforts (eg. saving the whales in 1970s), their other efforts in the realms they know nothing about, like nuclear, kind of negates any goodwill I have towards them.

How Greenpeace cannot see that nuclear waste is not a problem for nature, but a problem for man, is kind of beyond my level of thinking. Nature doesn't care about nuclear waste because nature functions through evolution via natural selection. DNA damage, mutations, cancers, etc. don't matter provided some can survive. Human society does not follow those principles and hence any nuclear waste "problem" is a problem for man, not a problem for nature.

A wise man said that the only way to save the Amazon jungle is to spread nuclear waste all over it. I say he was right.

"I saw a very nice documentary the other day showing what happens to a lot of our electronic waste."

Me too. It gets shipped to Ghana and India where people burn it (or what's left over after they physically dismantle it) in open fires to reclaim the metals.

I'd love to believe that a significant amount of this stuff goes to people who can use it, but I don't. The "used merchandise" label is often just an excuse to dump trash in 3rd world landfills.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/poisoning-the-poor-electroni

"Containers arrive in Ghana from Germany, Korea, Switzerland and the Netherlands under the false label of "second-hand goods... majority of the containers' contents end up in Ghana's scrap yards to be crushed and burned by unprotected workers."

Yeah, healthy happy people in Ghana are watching used TVs and installing Linux on our X86 hardware using 15" CRT monitors.

If you care for such things use Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics to help you sort through the manufacturers. Even if you don't agree with their methods it is a good point of reference

Excellent points. But did you know that Greenpeace is opposed to fusion research? In their own words:

Fusion energy - if it would ever operate - would create a serious waste problem, would emit large amounts of radioactive material and could be used to produce materials for nuclear weapons. A whole new set of nuclear risks would thus be created.

Contrast this with Fusion.org's FAQ (or consult your physics book):

The major conclusions reached by the SEAFP team in 1995 were that fusion has very good inherent safety qualities; there are no chain reactions and no production of 'actinides'. The worst possible accident originating in a fusion power station could not breach the confinement; any releases could not approach levels at which evacuation would be considered.

The radiotoxicity of a fusion power station's waste materials decays rapidly, and they present no accumulating or long-term burden on future generations. They would not need guaranteed isolation from the environment for very long timespans. In addition to these favourable results, fusion produces no climate-changing or atmosphere-polluting emissions.

I'm linking to archived version of the FAQ, since the current version seems to be dumbed down.

Greenpeace "assumed" that there was a rule of thumb power-used/cost-of-facility metric. Which they probably made up, but they came up with 1MW/$15 million. (Full report PDF here ) Now, not only is that number kinda smelly in and of itself, but they also include the entire $1 billion Apple is spending, which seems to include the cost of their big solar array and fuel cell farm. There could be all kinds of overhead costs in there that don't compare to other facilities, like putting in roads, plans for expansion, surveying, etc.

Apple's servers aren't any more efficient than anyone else's. It's just Greenpeace making stuff up.

In a bit of irony, there isn't a single link on the Army page promoting violence. In fact, 3 stand out as reducing violence or it's effects: Reducing PTSD, condemning hazing, and drawing down forces in Europe.

The morning newspaper is more violent.

I' notice this site promotes hatred: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/ (hatred of pollution, whale killing, etc). And France has taken action against them in the past, unlike the links you listed.

Add the DGSE and http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/the-bombing-of-the-rainbow-war/ to that as well, oh wait... thats OK for the French to commit international actions of terrorism on foreign soil.

I found this article from 1998 about Novartis and maize grown with antibiotic immunity, as well as this article on Monsanto Roundup Ready cottonseed, as well as this article on GMO safety directly from Monsanto which specifically states that they build in antibiotic resistance.

As far as devices go, Apple has been the greenest and most friendly to manufacture. Not that I would have guessed the 12 years ago.

Bullshit

Apple is doing better, but only after people started saying "wtf".

Have been there. This factory is way beyond garment factories in terms of attractiveness. The Shenzhen campus, which has about 600k employees, makes not just Apple but HTC, Sony, Panasonic, you-name-it. They are owned by Taiwan, employ management from Hong Kong, employ Cantonese labor , and are governed by Mandarin communist party staff. They are ISO certified. There are so many reasons to run this factory right, it's kind of surprising that activists who are really concerned would pick on a factory like this in the first place, as opposed to say the garment industry in Guangdong. http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/releases/toxics/2010/textile-industrial-pollution/ My theory is that White People have their own "ju ju" words. Like Cameroonians who are scared to death of owls, environmentalists have an exaggerated sense of risk when something is technological and involves anything with toxics. A lot of cognitive risk dissonance over high tech and brown people. Personally, I think it's kind of cool that the Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Japanese, Communists, etc. get along here and run a factory that produces the coolest gadgets ever produced by humans. At the rate they have grown, I'm sure the auditor will find lots of violations. But the headline is accurate... the auditor knows within a few hours that they are NOT in the textile hell-hole up the river, or the smelter, or the copper mine.

You sound like the guy who wasn't affected by the collapse of the credit default swap market, because he personally hadn't invested in any.

I'm afraid I don't follow the metaphor.

Going forward until the effects of carbon dioxide pollution is addressed, it is going to impact your life more than any other event.

I'm not convinced. Clearly you are.

By the way, do you realize that my comment was saying that the measures to fight carbon release won't hurt me personally as much as those measures will hurt most of the people in the USA? I didn't say that a global warming doom scenario won't hurt me, I said the steps AGW proponents want won't hurt me (too much).

It may do so indirectly and you may be too thoughtless to notice, but rest assured you will be affected far more dramatically than you currently realize.

Not good enough. You want to convince me, these vague words won't do it. Make a specific, testable prediction please.

For example, in 2005, UNEP predicted that 50 million people would be forced to flee their homes by 2010 due to flooding caused by global warming. That prediction didn't work out so the new prediction is that 150 million people will be displaced by flooding by 2050. This seems safely far in the future.

I'm sure if I looked, I could find some crazy "expert" making some predictions about how an ice age will doom us all unless we do something to make the Earth warmer. So don't just quote "the experts". Tell me about the predictions that have been proven correct.

What are the testable predictions of the AGW proponents that have panned out?

By the way, I do not thank you for calling me "thoughtless". I don't believe I have insulted you (I don't even know you) and I believe my comments here on Slashdot have been polite and focused on the issues. Can you discuss this issue politely? Maybe you should try it.

You talk about trillions of dollars being lost addressing the problem

Correct.

and therefore we should do nothing but let the fossil fuel industry dictate to us the fate of the planet.

Incorrect. I never said that; you are just putting words in my mouth.

I didn't actually propose anything, but a reasonable person reading what I wrote might correctly infer that I would be in favor of studying the issue and studying geoengineering approaches to solving the issue.

I claim that (0) the proposed remedies to global warming would cause trillions of dollars worth of harm and (1) the current level of proof isn't adequate to convince me that the trillions are warranted. So, you can find a remedy that costs less, or you can find more proof that is convincing, and either way you have answered this pair of objections.

Without addressing the issue, eventually, there won't be enough food being shipped anywhere to need trucks.

Please provide some sort of reference to back up this idea.

P.S. I note that my original post, which had been modded up to 5, has now been modded down to 2. At least you chose to discuss the issue rather than just modding me down.

steveha

not to mention environmental issues. They are known as the lease green company

I don't think Apple leases hardware. IBM used to, but that was a while ago.

And if you meant "least green company", well, if you ask Greenpeace, it's more like fourth greenest company. (Then again, a lot of what Greenpeace rates highly is openness about policies and advocacy; Apple was, for a long time, not very open about its environmental policies and not much for advocating particular policies - the lowest-rated company on that list, RIM, was dinged for, among other things, not having explicit policies - "New to the Guide, RIM needs to improve reporting and disclosure of its environmental performance compared to other mobile phone makers.")

It seems like the better solution would be to educate people and train them not to be so susceptible to hysteria. The consequence of worst-case nuclear plant failures are of the same type and on the same scale as worst-case chemical plant failures, but there is no public movement to shut down Dow Chemical or Proctor & Gamble.

Example: Here is Greenpeace doing their thing with respect to a chemical plant in New Jersey:

Imagine a low-lying cloud of lethal chlorine gas spreading through New York City or your home town, stretching 15 miles past your childhood playground, your place of worship, or your friends’ homes. Imagine that you witness the same horror seen by American troops when Hitler used chlorine gas as a weapon: people gasping for air and grasping their throats as fumes melted their lungs and slowly suffocate them. Imagine that your Senator could have done something to prevent this.

That's right, the vile bleach manufacturers are genocidal Nazis come to separate you from God and murder your children. So that's their usual fare then. But nobody pays them any mind because they're a bunch of hysterical crackpots. It doesn't get any real media coverage, but if the problem is actually legitimate then responsible people in government and industry quietly work together to reduce the risks. (Which they did.)

And when actual disaster strikes, it's the same thing: Have you ever seen the list of Superfund sites in the United States? It's literally a thousand pages long. When somebody discovers a bunch of barrels of toxic waste leaking into the drinking water, the local newspaper writes a couple of stories about it, the EPA comes in, the site gets cleaned up, the offenders are bankrupted or significantly punished by the fines and cleanup costs, we learn from our mistakes and do better next time. There is no call for hysteria. Scientific analysis to reduce the risks of future failures requires no fear mongering whatsoever, and in most cases we do a pretty damn good job of sticking to the facts. It is, in fact, still safe to drink the water in New York City and San Francisco, notwithstanding two hundred years of industrial progress.

The problem is that the population has been convinced that nuclear power is extra scary for no rational reason, which creates a vicious cycle: People are afraid of it because they don't understand it, the media (who could, if they wanted to, educate people with actual facts) respond by fear mongering and emphasizing extremely low probability worst case scenarios because it gets ratings, which in turn makes people even more afraid and even less well informed.

The solution has to be to break the cycle. Down with irrational hysteria. Hysteria kills, people. You don't want thousands to die as a result of irresponsible fear mongering, do you? Then fight hysteria. It's the only way.

'cos the only pages I can find about are pretty pro concentrated solar power and the rest of the pages against the Mojave desert development seem to be from oil lobby groups.

Just one example: GreenFreeze tecnology

They didn't state it on the banners, but they do state it here.

Nuclear power is neither safe nor clean. There is no such thing as a "safe" dose of radiation and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn't mean it's "clean."

Take action right now and tell the President that taxpayers should not take on the risk of building new nuclear plants.

If a meltdown were to occur, the accident could kill and injure tens of thousands of people, leaving large regions uninhabitable. And, more than 50 years after splitting the first atom, science has yet to devise a method for adequately handling long lived radioactive wastes.

For years nuclear plants have been leaking radioactive waste from underground pipes and radioactive waste pools into the ground water at sites across the nation.

In addition to being extremely dangerous, the continued greenwashing of nuclear power from industry-backed lobbyists diverts investments away from clean, renewable sources of energy. In contrast to nuclear power, renewable energy is both clean and safe. Technically accessible renewable energy sources are capable of producing six times more energy than current global demand.

In this case not really, since the rare earths required come almost unilaterally from China you would be unable to get them anywhere else. I have to agree that it is the responsibility of China's government to ensure that factories comply with pollution laws. I also think it's a good thing that Apple is willing to work with specific vendors and require them to report their waste emissions. Apple has switched vendors in the past for vendors with poor working conditions so they at least attempt to be good corporate citizens in that respect.

They are also small fries compared to folks like Dell and HP but Dell and HP also have very good green scores. It's the low rent manufacturer's like Acer, Sharp, Toshiba, and shockingly, RIM.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/cool-it/Guide-to-Greener-Electronics/

Unlike when they sent their terrorist team to blow up the Greenpeace "Rainbow Warrior" boat in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/the-bombing-of-the-rainbow-war/ With the French for "friends" who needs enemies?

Here you go: Greenpeace annual reports.

It's very tough to be a Greenpeace terrorist these days, you have to show up to court so you can get acquitted for criminal damages to a power plant.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/kingsnorth-trial-verdict100908/

People who think meat is inefficient compared to vegetable don't understand that Grazing animal use the massive tracts of un-airable land and don't require labor and oil and pesticide intensive production techniques. [...] Eat a banana and it probably traveled 2500 miles, was grown in a chopped-down rain forest, with massive amounts of pesticide.

Excuse me, but you are either extremely naive or an idiot! You really think that the animals that were farmed for meat all grazed happily on green meadows? Yeah sure! These are all lies after all: "The escalation in forest destruction is driven by the global livestock industry. The vast majority (above 80%) of soybeans are bound for animal feedlots, providing protein for cattle, hogs and poultry. The European Union (EU) is the largest importer of Argentinian soybean meal, with imports to EU agribusinesses accounting for almost 50% of all global trade in soymeal (3)." http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/the-expanding-soybean-frontier.pdf

Because fossil fuel industry has absolutely no lobbying incentive and no vested interest to sustain the public perception of nuclear power, yeah, sure. All those scientists are on nuclear power payrolls. We have nothing to talk about about then, just watch out for your tinfoil hat it seems to be blocking blood flow.

Where have I posted reports from fossil fuel engineers (or others who would benefit professionally if fossil fuel use were increased)? I know you hate Greenpeace, but they are mighty allies if you hate coal. Do you think THEY are secretly supporting fossil fuels!? Talk about tinfoil hats . . .

You may also want read more about Sievert unit, or not, you may actually learn something...

If this is in response to your ignorance of the differences between internal and external exposure, I think I see how you perpetually remain ignorant. The system of units has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your are actually capturing the important data points. If you're measuring process is limited to gama radiation (which, economically speaking, is the best you can do without crowd-sourcing the entire public), you really are missing the most dangerous data points. Using the unit system that is based on biological impact does not magically make that gap in captured data disappear . . .

Because coal, oil and natural gas (those that make up over 80% of energy sources) will last forever, solving the problem once and for all, ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Are you making a non-renewable energy argument to support nuclear energy? Really? Hint: not only is nuclear power non-renewable, the waste disposal is a real bitch, too.

So the really big question is how long the primary evacuation zone is going to be left open. At this point it looks like it won't be that terribly long, maybe 50 years or so. However, Japan's history of negative attitudes about nuclear power (for quite understandable reasons) makes it likely that the zone will stay for longer than necessary. Even when we people are let in, it is likely that few people will actively want to return for a while. Since Japan is so small and has such population density issues this could have a much more disproportionate than Chernobyl did on the USSR even though that was by many metrics a much worse accident.

However, none of this is a good reason to be that fearful of nuclear power. It still seems clear that nuclear power is far safer and more reliable than most other forms of power including coal, gas and oil. By number of deaths per a terrawatt hour nuclear power is one of the safest. http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html. Nuclear power simply seems worse because radioactivity is so scary and because when disasters occur they are rare and spectacular rather than routine. To see how irrational the various anti-nuke fears are one needs to only look at how groups like Greenpeace protest anything remotely nuclear such as fusion power even though it shares none of the risks of fission power. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/ITERprojectFrance/.

Yeah: "nuclear power plant working perfectly fine as planned" doesn't make the news.

You know, as the majority of them do, year after year, decade after decade.

There are plenty of nuclear failures all the time, but of course they are not publicized. America reactors are known to contain unreported defects. Meanwhile areas around threatened reactors in the USA have been declared no-fly zones. You don't do this unless it's actually dangerous, or you have something to hide, or both. You know, like when they declared the entire gulf to be a no-fly zone in an attempt to hide the extent of the devastation... and of the spraying of dispersants, which occurred at a level vastly above what it should be. No-fly zones are for hiding malfeasance, barring long-running ones above airports and test sites.

You might want to justify YOUR baseless statements.

Even Greenpeace says they're the best tech company in terms of eliminating 'dangerous' chemicals, and only dings them on communicating policy:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/how-the-companies-line-up/
"Apple does best on the toxic chemicals criteria, where it scores most of its points. "

Somehow, that puts Apple in 9th place - best in practice where it actually matters, poor in clear communications.

This good enough for starters? And now the real question, if we could prove it to you would you man up and go vegetarian?

This is like when Copernicus and Galileo said the Earth goes around the Sun, every body got freaked out.

Fail.

Firstly, with hindsight, it's clear that the earth does go around the sun and so there was a clear choice between correct and incorrect information. The choice isn't so clear here. The introduction of GM foods into the wild risks destroying the whole ecosystem (quite useful for sustaining life). They're stepping into unknown territory. People aren't afraid of truth, they're afraid of the consequences of mistakes. Consequences which may affect the whole planet.

Secondly, it's more than a question of GM-crops being able to increase food-production. Presumably no right-thinking individual would be against that. The problem is that certain evil corporations *cough* Mansonto) */cough* are claiming patents on particular strains and then ensuring that those strains are hardier, those strains will push out all other varieties meaning that anyone wishing to grow the particular crop will need to pay licensing costs to Mansonto. They will be able to tax all food-production. Perhaps you see a problem with this?

Update: Apparently, Mansonto have filed for a patent on pigs :D
  * http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/monsanto-pig-patent-111/

(read quickly because this comment will deleted soon by those in power)

Since Nuclear power is statisticstically safe, and the power plants would have shutdown in the earthquake it is very unlikely that such a disaster really happened there. All that we can see is that real news is censored, everybody in a wide area was moved away, A No fly zone was erected , even as radiation at high altitudes is completely neglect able,and independand research are kept a great distance.

All that surely must point to something more serious and it can only lead to the conclusion that the tjunamis was caused aliens landing and that they came to land close to fukushima, or that the hatching eggs of godzilla caused the tsunami and now they are researching Godzilla at that location, or whatever, this region was filled with old folklore that either came to life or is now lost for the next decades.

By making a storage there it is a sure thing that they can keep the peopla away for some more decades, while they at the same time have a good excuse to build some huge buildings that can hide the cover-up. And since no more people live there, there is no-one who can protest.