Global warming: Greenpeace abandons reality--lies, libel and scummy behaviour are more fun, I guess

Greenpeace is an environmental organisation that thinks global warming is the challenge of our age.  It is natural for them to combat opposing opinions, and vigorously. We would think less of them if they didn't.

But they have just published a report that flings mud in all directions, obscuring the issue they need to highlight. What they have done in this report is wrong, and will serve them badly in the future. The main target of their report is Koch Industries, a private oil firm that has contributed close to $25 million over the past 4 years to what Greenpeace calls 'a climate denial machine.'

I don't believe such a 'climate denial machine' exists. If you asked me for evidence, I would be happy to show you the Greenpeace report itself. That's how bad it is.

In yesterday's article on the subject, I showed how they used tricks and pumped up, phony language to convert Cato, a conservative thinktank that from time to time paid skeptic Patrick Michaels for articles and reports, into a 'front group' for 'denialist' Michaels. But, as I think I showed pretty conclusively, the Cato Institute is a general interest conservative thinktank that covers all policy topics on the domestic agenda, and quite a few in foreign policy as well. Their interest in climate change seems modest at best. Having Koch Industries fund them has relatively little to do with climate change, and everything to do with conservative rich people supporting conservative causes with liberal amounts of money.

Greenpeace also labels the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Manhattan Institute as cogs in the 'climate denial machine.' Like the Cato Institute, these are general interest groups that currently have no material on the front page of their websites regarding climate change, focusing primarily on the recent healthcare debate. (Whoops! A second look does find an article on the EPA Endangerment Finding on the Americans for Prosperity Foundation--ah, well.) Greenpeace doesn't really care about what they are interested in--their inclusion in the report is obviously to inflate the amount of money Koch Industries donates in order to make them seem more ominous. It's cheap, dirty politics--but this isn't the first time Greenpeace has done this, and it won't be the last.

The fact that these organisations have received funding from Koch Industries (and Exxon) since before climate change was even an issue should make it obvious that this is all about conservatives funding conservatives--not at all about 'climate denial.'

But it's the other findings of the Greenpeace report that anger me, and which I hope will turn around and bite them on the hind end quickly enough that they realize how stupid they have been. Greenpeace, in order to sex up their report, has had to resort to calling people receiving funding from these institutions 'climate denialists' who obviously don't deserve this appellation. They are being libeled by Greenpeace, and our intelligence is being insulted in the process.

Greenpeace calls the Manhattan Institute a 'climate denialist' organisation because they hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years. So they are sliming Koch Industries for providing some funding to the Manhattan Institue, whose 'climate crime' is hosting Bjorn Lomborg. They say Lomborg 'challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.'

Slime by association is bad enough. But I've interviewed Lomborg here, and to call him a 'climate denialist' who 'attacks policy measures to address climate change' is a lie, a libel, and just scummy behaviour on the part of Greenpeace.

He said in this space, "...my point has been to say surely global warming is real, but we’ve got to tackle it intelligently. Hopefully, intelligence is not a right or left wing trait. It’s not a Democrat or Republican trait, it’s something we can all get together on." This is a climate denialist? The Manhattan Institute should be painted as some kind of 'climate denialist' organisation because they allowed him to speak? (Whatever happened to free speech in this country?) And Koch Industries is the evil mastermind behind the 'climate denial' machine because they gave the Manhattan Institute money?

Greenpeace appears to have lost its collective mind. Lomborg is not a denialist. He understands climate change and anthropogenic contributions to it. He supports actions to alleviate it. He just doesn't agree with Greenpeace on specific policies. His real sin, in the eyes of Greenpeace, is that he wants us to remember the other problems facing this planet, such as poverty and disease. But it is absolutely straightjacket insane to call him a 'denialist.' The Greenpeace report can be downloaded in the UK, with its liberal libel laws, and could make Lomborg a very rich man at the expense of Greenpeace contributors.

The report characterizes organisations that reported on the Climategate scandal as comprising a 'climate denial echo chamber.' Any organisation that received money from Koch Industries and reported on the scandal is now automatically a part of a 'climate denial echo chamber.' So CNN would be in there, if only Koch owned some of their stock. As would the BBC. The Guardian. And many other mainstream organisations that called it a scandal, took it seriously and reported on the story several times. How come they're not in Greenpeace's Hall of Shame? It was the very liberal, very green Guardian that called for Phil Jones to resign--not any of the recipients of Koch's largesse.

The two Koch brothers at the top of Koch Industries are conservative. I am not. I oppose about 90% of what I see on the websites linked to above. I doubt if we'd be comfortable together at the dinner table unless we kept the conversation firmly on the subject of sports.

For Greenpeace to say that because Koch Industries provides part of the general funding for conservative thinktanks that occasionally engage on climate change issues and come to different conclusions than Greenpeace is vile. But it's worse than that.

Does Greenpeace think that these organisations do not have a memory or databases? Does Greenpeace honestly believe that this type of media terrorism won't be used against them and other environmental organisations in the future? This report will be thrown in their face for years--and it will be used to justify similar behaviour by opponents.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

As was mentioned during the recent inquiry by the UK House of Commons, Steve Mosher and I have written a book about the leaked emails that have caused so much controversy. The title is Climategate: The CRUtape Letters. It is available on Create Space here, Amazon here, Kindle here and Lulu here. One Amazon reviewer wrote, "Mosher and Fuller do a good job putting the ClimateGate documents in context, and the book is a riveting read. I received my copy yesterday, and find the book to be faithful to the climate war events that I have followed over a period of years. It reports actual email communications of a small group of paleoclimatologists and their roles in perhaps the biggest scientific hoax since Piltdown Man."