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Sometimes you're talking to someone and they say they're an environmentalist but they think Greenpeace et al are a bit off the deep end.

Yeah, even Patrick Moore, one of the original co-founders of Greenpeace, believes that Greenpeace has gone a little bit off the deep end.

Check out Patrick Moore's http://www.greenspirit.com/21st_century.cfm?msid=2 9&page=8 writings on the subject. His page is very interesting for other enviromental issues too.

Note that Patrick Moore was founding member of Greenpeace and is on the side of saving the environment.

It's interesting/funny to read Patrick Moore describing his former colleague in environmental groups:

[...] They rejected consensus politics and sustainable development in favor of continued confrontation and ever-increasing extremism. They ushered in an era of zero tolerance and left-wing politics. Some of the features of this environmental extremism are:

Environmental extremists are anti-human. Humans are characterized as a cancer on the Earth. To quote eco-extremist Herb Hammond, "of all the components of the ecosystem, humans are the only ones we know to be completely optional". Isn't that a lovely thought?

They are anti-science and technology. All large machines are seen as inherently destructive and unnatural. Science is invoked to justify positions that have nothing to do with science. Unfounded opinion is accepted over demonstrated fact.

They are anti-business. All large corporations are depicted as inherently driven by greed and corruption. Profits are definitely not politically correct. The liberal democratic, market-based model is rejected even though no viable alternative is proposed to provide for the material needs of 6 billion people. As expressed by the Native Forest Network, "it is necessary to adopt a global phase out strategy of consumer based industrial capitalism."

I think they mean civilization.

And they are just plain anti-civilization. In the final analysis, eco- extremists project a naive vision of returning to the supposedly utopian existence in the garden of Eden, conveniently forgetting that in the old days people lived to an average age of 35, and there were no dentists. In their Brave New World there will be no more chemicals, no more airplanes, and certainly no more polyester suits.

Ref: Patrick Moore's Nuclear Statement to the US Congressional Committee

When I helped to create Greenpeace from a church basement in Vancouver in 1971 I had no idea that I would spend the next 15 years as an international director and leader of many Greenpeace campaigns. I also had no idea that after I left in 1986 they would evolve into a band of scientific illiterates who use Gestapo tactics to silence people who wish to express their views in a civilized forum. And I could never have guessed that my former colleague and then teen-age founder of Greenpeace France, Remi Parmentier, would be the one issuing the orders to silence me.

Patrick Moore is no longer with GreenPeace, and in fact is one if its harshest critiques. He runs a site called GreenSpirit, which at first glance appears to be "environmentalism for those who aren't brain dead".

"Lumber clear cutting" is a good one to work on. The protests aren't just about someone clearing a mountainside of trees, killing all the birds and frogs and ???. Some protest ALL lumber harvesting, even of trees planted specifically for harvesting, like a long-term corn crop. If the protesters aren't going to picket farmers for "clear cutting" their wheat and corn, why do they do it when lumber companies harvest their crop?

Some groups got the forestry agencies to stop doing preventative burns for years; it almost wiped out new growth of certain species of trees that couldn't grow without periodic thinning of competing species by fire. There were many protests when the burn policy was put back into effect... but the forest proved the protesters wrong.

About half the forest land leveled by Mt. St. Helens was privately owned, by lumber companies. The other half is federal. The federal lands have been left to natural restoration, while the evil lumber companies salvaged the wood they could and replanted. Guess where most of the animal life has returned to... yep, the "crop land".

Patrick Moore has a few things to say about these protests, since he used to partake in them.

Or would you prefer to continue separatism, child labor, or black lung?

Separatism doesn't seem to react as well to protests as it does to education and economic factors. Child labor has only been bannished from areas where economics made it possible to do so; it's still prevalent in poor parts of the world, where the picketing of Nike is only seen as the reason the factory providing jobs had to close. And the "cure" for black lung (better technology) also reduced the need for jobs in the mining industry... putting a lot of marginally-skilled people out of work in areas that didn't have other types of jobs to fall back upon.

Much as some people hate to admit it, economics moves the world. And many of the protesters are protesting that fact, directly or indirectly. But it is the prosperity that gives them the luxury of protesting.... Those who can't see beyond today's paycheck don't spend much time worrying about how the harvesting of the lumber for the house they live in affected the spotted owl's ability to make nests in KMart signs...

Skeptics view of the Buenos Aires conference

Debate of the IPCC executive summary

"Stanford scientist Stephen Schneider has been a leader of the alarmist camp, which has received most of the publicity" Ronald Hilton (Stanford University - 03/18/99

E-mail correspondence between S. Fred Singer and Ben Santer

Industry contributions to the environmental movement

Environmentalism for the 21st Century

The CO2 & Climate Team

is calling a scientist with a contrary view "Mass Murderer" ok under the "ends justify the means rules

Now as a Parthian shot. Below are the primary movers in the anti "Big warming Industry". I cannot find, please point it out if you can find one, a page devoted to "Smear tactics" against the Big GW scientists, though I will admit that Milloy occasionally uses a bit of sarcasm, and Singer is none to friendly towards Schneider, none devote a page to "smear tactics". Lomborg of course, in Danish Stoicism, wouldn't say anything hurtful about anyone.

Patrick Michaels
Bjorn Lomborg
Steve Milloy

Now we move on to Schneider's site.

Schneider Contrarians

Here Schneider devotes 13,245 words to mud slinging and smear tactics (including the exorbitant amount of API funding to Soon and Baliunas that covered 5% of their budget, no mention to where the remainder of the funding comes from.

Name the last time you saw an anti GW article in the mainstream news. Be honest with yourself and say anytime you've seen a mainstream news source even mentioning the other side, or even noticing that there was an other side. Aside, of course, from people like me posting such articles in places like this.

As to scientists on the pro-GW side not getting press. Say the word I'll cite 10 articles a day till you tell me to stop. In fact I see plenty of articles about things that have absolutely nothing to do with GW saying something along the lines of "As global warming predicts.." or "We can expect more events like that because of global warming..." the Dec 26th Tsunami for example. There is absolutely no correlation between a seismic event under kilometers of water and global warming. Yet they grab headlines by supposedly connecting them. There are currently 6 to 7 articles about this in the British press everyday at this point. Quite frankly I'm calling you on that one, there are just to many contrary examples.

As to whey the likes of Lomborg, Michels, Milloy, and Singer being more well known, quite frankly because the pond is smaller, and those involved feel strongly about getting the word out, not because they are paid by oil companies (Do you think I make money from oil companies?) but because they are disgusted (as am I) by the me too science that is going on in this area, and the obvious distortions (which I notice you don't want to talk about the science, just the semantics, sorry I'm keeping it down but it struggled up), Singer for an example was a member of the IPCC, his stated reason is quite simply what he saw during that time, and as I've mentioned his site sepp is 100% funded by private contributions. So if it's a motive argument, I put my money on "my" guys every time.

But your comment about Lomborg intrigues me. Why skeptical about Lomborg. Again stick to the science and ignore what you've been told about him poersonally. Research it yourself. Lomborg himself talks openly and at length about the criticisms against him. References.

Lomborgs Critic page
Quote from Patrick Moore (one of the founders of Greenpeace "I believe they acted out of political motivation and are purposefully stifling Lomborg's efforts to defend himself." Patrick Moore Sci Amer rebuttal
If your opinion of Lomborg comes from the supposed case against him by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, note that the Ministry responsible found that committees judgment was "Not backed up by documentation and was "completely void of argumentation"
FBjorn's press release

And to my previous point. There was plenty of press about the case by the DCSD against Bjorn, but little about the retraction of that case. And I assume your opinion was jaded by this.

Continued

You mean This guy? Hmmm... He supports nuclear because of all of the stable, mass power production methods out there, it produces the least amount of air, water, and PCB pollution without requiring land area equivalent to Connecticut and Delaware (like solar). He supports renewable resources and working with the logging industry to plant enough trees to replace the ones lost. He acknowledges that with over six billion people on the planet, there's an argument for the higher yields from genetically modified crops.

Personally I prefer organic foods and I don't eat much red meat (much less meat overall in fact than I used to), but he has an argument. This also isn't to say that I like companies like Monsanto.

But an industry shill? C'mon. Someone disagreeing with you doesn't automatically make you an industry shill. Oh wait. This is Greepeace we're talking about. I guess it does. *sigh*

In any case, I could replace "environmental group" with "group" in your question and have the answer still be "no".

So, because you've hiked in a couple forests, you're an expert? Also, since when does beauty have anything to do with good ecology?

Environmental fascists promote no practical solutions--in their eyes, the only solution is "less people." A lot less people. A founder of Greenpeace has a different, more sensible viewpoint. He promotes more use of wood, as opposed to use of non-replenishable resources or things like plastics that cause worse harm to the environment. (Perhaps you've read the Wired article on him that tried to paint him as a sellout.)

Q. Why not spend some time investigating environmentally sensible solutions instead of reiterating the same shrill pablum? A. Because that's not as fun as crying wolf.

As far as the pristine public forests of Oregon are concerned, blame your government for letting them at the trees so cheaply. As mentioned elsewhere, loggers aren't stupid. If they own a fixed amount of land, they'll always be regrowing on that land. If the government is dumb enough to let them rape public forests, take your beef up with the government. Last I looked, Oregon was an extremely liberal state; I'm sure they'll listen.

Clearcutting is a sign of bad government management of resources.

Selective cutting preserves the ecostructure quite nicely.

Clearcutting is a sign of bad government management of resources.

Selective cutting preserves the ecostructure quite nicely.

Using hemp would be nice, but there are some problems. First of all, you need someplace to grow it. With genetically modified crops, we can grow more food per acre, and thus free up farmland to grow hemp. However, there is currently controversy over GM foods, so I don't know if we can definitely count on that happening. The alternative is to cut down forests in order to make way for hemp-farms. This is counter-productive to the goal of saving forests.

On top of that, hemp is not nearly as useful as trees (note: this is a general statement, some trees are probably better for certain uses than other trees). Hemp has usually been used to make rope and sacks. However, wood from trees goes into building homes, furniture, and other structures along with the pulp we use for paper products (a lot of the the wood the makes paper is actually waste from mills that produce building materials) and is a cheap fuel source for developing/poor people.

Hemp would compete with other crops for manpower and machinery because it is a seasonal crop. Harvested hemp would have to stored under weatherproof conditions while trees usually can be left outside with the elements. Hemp doesn't work with existing mills, so new, specialty mills would have to be constructed. Basically, we would need an infrastracture change in order to accommodate large-volume hemp production.

Recently, I became a proponent of sustainable forestry (this is also where I got all that hemp vs. trees info). If people want to save forests, replacing what forests produce with other materials isn't the way to do it. If a tree has no value (can't turn it anything that can be sold), then trees will be cut down and replaced with something that will make money. If you want trees (and forests) to exist, then there has to be a demand for them. This seems like simple economics (glad I took that class) and seems logically correct (glad I took a Practical Reasoning class, too).

As long as care is taken to make sure a forest is replanted after logging, forestlands can be sustained.

Umm, no, you didn't read what I posted (and your argument is specious as well -- more on that later).

Lomborg specifically addresses his choice of Nordhaus/Boyer both in TSE itself and at greater length in his rebuttal to the SciAm smear piece. If you had read either, you would be aware of this. While it is, perhaps, understandable that you have not read the latter, as SciAm went to great lengths to silence it (something you mysteriously consider acceptable, showing just how elastic your idea of `scientific dishonesty' really is), you should do so before making false statements about its content -- it can be found here.

In any case, your accusation is what exactly? That you don't like the model Lomborg chose, a model he chose because it conforms to the studies released by the UNEP and the IPCC which are the basis for much discussion of global warming? This, you would have called `scientific dishonesty', while you excuse Schneider's open admission that he exaggerates his findings and hides doubts about his data for political ends simply because Schneider is on the `right' side?

As I've said elsewhere in this debate, I expect that readers of this thread will take your attacks on Lomborg in the context of this consistent dogmatism and application of double standards on your part. Good day.

Again, you're the one making accusations here, so start backing them up.

So Quiggin has doubts about Nordhaus/Boyer. And? How does this get you closer to your attacks on Lomborg? Is Mr. Lomborg misrepresenting what Nordhaus/Boyer is? No. Is he deriving conclusions from it incorrectly? No. What he says is (to paraphrase)`here is one widely used model, which is broadly consistent with estimates from the UNEP and the IPCC. These estimates are often used (as per Schneider) to make wild claims about global warming. But here's the actual scope and context of these estimates.'

All of this is discussed at length in Lomborg's rebuttal of the SciAm smear job, which can be read here. This rebuttal has not been discussed or answered by SciAm, and indeed they have threatened lawsuits in an attempt to have it removed from the web. Now that's scientific dishonesty -- don't you agree?

Please reconfirm your "facts" on desalination. There is not a lot of info online, but I managed to scrape up a few costs.

• In the Sept 14, 1999 Trinidad Express, they refer to two bids at US$0.536 and US$0.736 per m3 of industrial water (water for drinking is a tiny proportion of what we actually use)
• In Cyprus in 2000, desalination unit costs were 0.997 USD (0.54 Cyprus pound, which is divided into cents, not pence)

FYI, Peter Gleick is the President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, which "strives to improve policy through science-based research and dialogue with action-oriented groups from the international to local level"They claim to be non-partisan, but he appears to have a radical green bias. Let's look at what else Gleick says about desalination:

But desalination cannot yet be considered a reasonable solution to domestic water shortages in most regions, even wealthy ones. Whether it will eventually become sufficiently cheap for large-scale use remains uncertain.( Gleick, 2000)

kuro5hin had a better article on Lomborg a while ago. The Economist just had another one as well. And of course, you should read Lomborgs response to SciAm , which is posted in it's entirety on Patrick Moore's website. SciAm threatened legal action if Lomborg included their article in his line-by-line response, although they felt free to include Lomborg's response on their website with more SciAm comments - hypocrisy worthy of RIAA or MPAA. So, Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace posted Lomborgs response to SciAm, with the following comment:

"Scientific American did not give Lomborg any opportunity to respond to his critics, even though they gave him a copy of the editorial before it went to press. They said they would give Lomborg one page in a future edition to reply to 11 pages of full-on attack. Lomborg's response was to publish the text of the Scientific American article on his own website and to intersperse it with a detailed response to every point raised by his critics. Scientific American then threatened to sue Lomborg over copyright. In response to my complaint Scientific American wrote "This is an infringement of our copyright and interferes with our business of selling the article." Does Scientific American really think that they will lose readership because Lomborg has posted a response to a publication that is already off the newsstands? I believe they acted out of political motivation and are purposefully stifling Lomborg's efforts to defend himself. And I don't blame Lomborg for giving in to such a huge organization when threatened with legal action. (If you go to Lomborg's website www.lomborg.com and look under Critiques you will find he has removed the offending text, thus gutting the effectiveness of his response.)

" I think we should defy Scientific American's blatant attempt to muzzle Lomborg. Anyone who reads his response to the Scientific American attack will have to agree that it is thoughtful and thorough. Here is a link to the entire response complete with Lomborg's comments."

People like you will eventually make me buy Lomborg's book, just so I can bitchslap you properly.

dschl

If you think hunting is barbaric, you should visit a chicken farm someday

That's because many environmentalists chose to have the forrest burn "naturally". With a little bit of preventative maintenance, those wild fires could have been prevented.
http://pushback.com/
http://greenspirit.com/

I believe that trees are the answer to a lot of questions about our future. These include: How can we advance to a more sustainable economy based on renewable fuels and materials? How can we improve literacy and sanitation in developing countries while reversing deforestation and protecting wildlife at the same time? How can we pull carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emissions, carbon dioxide in particular? How can we increase the amount of land that will support a greater diversity of species? How can we help prevent soil erosion and provide clean air and water? How can we make this world more beautiful and green? The answer is, by growing more trees and then using more wood, both as a substitute for non-renewable fossil fuels and materials such as steel, concrete and plastic, and as paper products for printing, packaging and sanitation.
[...]
http://www.greenspirit.com/trees_answer/

Scientific American Threatens to Sue Bjorn Lomborg for Daring to Defend Himself.

A few points:
1) What is a camaro?
2) I'm not married, and if I were, I certainly wouldn't strike my wife.
3) I thought you weren't going to waste your time responding. Tsk tsk.

If you think you are running out of oil, Iceland, instead of acting like a silly celebrity thinking the sky is falling, call my friends down in Texas. I am sure they will be happy to sell you some oil from the massive underwater oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Its so abundant in the Gulf that if you SCUBA dive to the bottom you can see oil leaking from the sea floor all by itself. After that call, give Sting a ring and see where all that money that was donated to his Amazon forest campaigns went because it sure didn't go to the trees (the trees have no wallets or bank accounts...believe it or not).