Greenpeace Betrays Founders to Peddle Junk Science
Since 2016, when acoustic sonar surveys required for construction of 1,500 wind turbines began on the U.S. Atlantic coast, 174 Humpback whales have washed ashore dead.
This represents a 400 percent increase in mortalities from previous years.
And then there are the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales, of which less than 400 individuals exist today.
They recovered somewhat after being hunted to near extinction in the 1930’s, but now they are thought to be declining.
Federal government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are authorizing the sonar surveys. Greenpeace, the organization I helped found in 1971, has sided with the wind turbines over the whales, stating there is no “proof” that sonar is involved in this tragedy.
Here is a quote from a Greenpeace spokesperson:
“At this time, due to the lack of evidence suggesting harm from offshore wind development, Greenpeace’s position remains that the best way to protect whales is to create ocean sanctuaries, eliminate single-use plastics at the source, and stop our dependency on oil and gas.”
Perhaps it would be a good idea to put the “ocean sanctuaries” where the whales live.
It is a fact that mortalities among whales in this region are often caused by entanglement in fishnets and by vessel strikes. But a 400 percent increase in whale deaths, coincident with the sonar program, should cause environmentalists like Greenpeace to swing into action and spend some of their hundreds of millions on a thorough research program.
Instead, they are doing nothing. Well, they do cruise around in their $30 million yacht which they call a “sailing vessel” even though there is an 1,850-horsepower diesel engine in the hold which provides the main propulsion.
It is understandable that federal agencies like NOAA would downplay the concern for the whales. The Biden administration is dead set on building all these contraptions even though they will be much more expensive and far less reliable than nuclear, hydroelectric, or fossil fuel generators.
Whales are acoustic species that use sonar to see the world around them. They have eyes for close-up recognition, but their sonar is how they navigate and speak to each other.
It is not only the sonar surveys that may pose a real problem for the whales. Depending on their size, each one of the 1,500 turbines will require a concrete base excavated into the ocean sediment up to 150 feet deep and 30-40 feet wide.
This will clearly cause a huge amount of mud to be dispersed into the water column. Both these species of whales are of the baleen type. They are filter-feeders using their baleen to strain their food into their stomachs. The mud from these many excavations may interfere with their feeding and may also affect the species they depend on for food.
I sailed variously as navigator, first-mate and leader on all four Greenpeace campaigns to save the whales from 1975-1978. We went into the deep-sea Pacific for months at a time during the whaling season, sometimes 1,000 miles from land.
We put ourselves in front of harpoons to protect the fleeing whales. When we arrived in San Francisco in early July 1975 with film footage of a harpoon going over the heads of our crewmembers in a small inflatable boat, and then into a Sperm Whale’s back, the images went around the world in a matter of hours. Greenpeace had arrived as a major player in the global environmental movement.
At the time we intervened in the Pacific whale slaughter, the Russian and Japanese whaling fleets together were killing about 30,000 whales annually. Many species – including blue whales, sei whales, fin whales and right whales – had been slaughtered to commercial extinction.
Among the most commercially valuable whales, only the sperm whales, the largest toothed animals ever to exist on Earth, survived in large numbers. But they were certain to be all but wiped out if the hunts continued. The much smaller minke whales, which were never considered optimum by the big fleets, are still present in reasonable numbers
In 1979, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned the hunting of all species – except minke whales – by factory ships and declared the Indian Ocean a whale sanctuary. In 1982, the IWC adopted an indefinite global moratorium on all commercial whaling.
Except for the right whales of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, all whale species are either fully recovered or well along in recovery.
I left Greenpeace when they began to refer to humans as “the enemies of the Earth,” a bit too much like “original sin” for me. To top it off, my fellow directors, none of whom had any formal science education, decided we should campaign to “ban chlorine worldwide.”
They nicknamed chlorine “The Devil’s Element,” conveniently dismissing that chlorine is the most important of all the 92 naturally occurring elements for public health and medicine. I guess this doesn’t count for those who don’t like humankind.
Today, Greenpeace executives work in cushy offices and sail around like a bunch of college kids on a summer cruise.
By siding with machines over living, endangered whales they have betrayed their founders and everyone who really cares about the natural world.
Now more than ever, I am glad I left them behind in 1986, after 15 years of service.
When it had its priorities right, Greenpeace was made up of voluntary crusaders for peace and nature.
Today, it has become a big business focused on fundraising, a backroom racket peddling junk science.
See more here co2coalition.org
About the author: Patrick Moore, Ph.D., ecology, is a co-founder of Greenpeace and was a director of Greenpeace from 1971 – 1986. He is a director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia, and author of several books, including “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom,” which debunks scare stories used to instill fear.
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Koen Vogel
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Thanks for an excellent post. It highlights the complexity of “going green” for environmentalists: choose for lower CO2 emissions in the hope such will save the planet or choose to save the birds, whales etc that must die if wind energy hits the big time. I gather Greenpeace is the former and you are the latter. I don’t judge the ideologues who want to save the planet (even though I think them misguided) but I do judge those ideologues who want to judge environmentalists for whom the current extinction of species weighs heavier than trying to fix the climate, and who regularly smear and censor those with opposing views. I fully agree that Greenpeace has become a “big business focused on fundraising, a backroom racket peddling junk science”. Prepare to be smeared.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Patrick,
Your article is very good.
However, its title “Greenpeace Betrays Founders To Peddle Junk Science” is deceptive.
I ask you, a founder, when did Greenpeace not peddle junk science?
Have a good day
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Patrick and PSI Readers,,
John W. Hill , in the preface in each edition, of his chemistry textbook, which became popular after a slow start, wrote to the student in a short paragraph titled “Changing Times”: “We are sometimes forced to make a best a best choice among only bad alternatives, and our decisions are often provide temporary solutions to our problems. Nevertheless, if we are to choose properly, we must understand what our choices are. Mistakes can be costly and they cannot always be rectified. It is easy to pollute, but cleaning up pollution once it is there is enormously expensive. We cam best avoid mistakes by collecting as much information as possible before making critical decisions. Science is a means of gathering and evaluating information and chemistry is central to all the sciences.”
You have pointed out a ‘new’ cause of the sudden increase of whales dying along the east coast of the USA which wasn’t being considered by any others as a possible cause of this increase of whale deaths. The failure to see what what you saw is a great problem to people who have not learned to see.
Einstein observed that “The only source of knowledge is experience.” At 50, I had not read what Galileo wrote and how Louis Agassiz had taught some of his students to see. Now after 3 more decades I have experienced the difference between my first 5 decades of experiences and am now reaping the benefits learning to see. I did 6 years of graduate study without grasping the significance of the diffusion process, which was my thesis experimentation project. Which project, a GOOD and CAREFUL technician could have done without taking the academic courses which greatly challenged and stressed me.
Patrick, I see that you have learned to see, whether or not you are aware of it.
Have a good day
(You have become sloppy lately second time I correct your e-mail address today) SUNMOD Administrator
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Jerry Krause
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Hi S???,
I am usually informed, like I expect to be, as I intentionally make a mistake in my email address.
So there must be a mistake at your end.
Have a good day
(Maybe I should stop correcting your errors and send the post to the trash instead?)
SUNMOD Administrator
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Jerry Krause
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Hi SUNMOD Administrator,
I know you did not have to correct my deliberate mistake because I was notified of it and corrected it myself.
Yes, I make many mistakes and I read that others also do. I tell you I am usually notified of mistakes in my email address. But you don’t seem to believe me.
Have a good day
(Then you made more than two spelling mistakes since I corrected two of them today to get you off being at zero posts to 4,200 level again, meanwhile you are really confused because you posted this earlier today wondering why you are in moderation: How is it that my comment is “awaiting moderation” again? Which is why I helped you get back on track with those two posts but now you seems to dislike my helping you thus anymore of your spelling mistakes goes uncorrected and the post gets trashed is that ok with you? have a good day Jerry)
SUNMOD Administrator
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Editor, forgot your name,
I am usually informed in a mistake in my email address. As I expected to be informed about an incorrect email which I purposefully made.
Have a good day
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Kevin Doyle
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Thank you, Dr. Patrick Moore, for addressing this topic. Most media are silent, including the biggest advocate for whales, Greenpeace.
The reason the Greenpeace is silent on the topic is because they value the ‘symbolism’ of windmills somehow saving the planet, and their own pathetic souls, over the well being of whales, dolphins, etc.
As you point out out, Greenpeace was founded to protect whales…
What is causing the death of several dozen juvenile whales is seismic surveying by a ship determining best sites for offshore windmills. The ship, ‘Fugro Enterprise’, owned by Fugro Corporation, operates from New York City and has been surveying the coast of New Jersey for the past three months. It utilizes very powerful sonar, termed ‘sub-bottom profiling’, to penetrate layers of mud and sand to find rock for future windmill foundations. The ‘sub-bottom profiling’ sonar is incredibly powerful, and happens to use the exact frequencies within whales hear. A deaf whale soon becomes a dead whale. Dead whales floating on the surface get hit by ships. Living whales are too alert to get hit by a ship.
I am curious why folks like BOEM, NOAA, and Greenpeace used to demand ‘observers’ onboard seismic ships performing sub-bottom profiling when oil companies were using it in the Gulf of Mexico, to find sites for offshore drilling platforms? Why do they now have zero interest in protecting whales?
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Kevin Doyle
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Dear PSI,
Could you please give Jerry a six month ‘time-out’?
His self-absorbed ramblings are both a distraction and a hindrance to the promotion of productive discussion.
KD
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Keven,
Thank you for reading my comments. Your comment depends upon YOUR definition of “productive discussion”.
Have a good day
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