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The sham of Patrick Moore (1/3/2007)

1.Moore on Genetic Engineering
2.The sham of nuke power & Patrick Moore

In 2006 Patrick Moore addressed a Biotechnology Industry Organization conference in support of GM crops. He told the gathering that global warming and the melting of glaciers is not necessarily a negative event because it creates more arable land and the use of forest products drives up demand for wood and spurs the planting of more trees!!
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1.Moore on Genetic Engineering
taken from SourceWatch
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_Moore

On February 22, 2004, the German conservative magazine "WELT am Sonntag" ('World on Sunday') - which is owned by the Axel-Springer media-group - published an article by Patrick Moore...

In an opinion column, Moore approvingly referred to an essay by Peter Schwartz - The Anti-Industrial Revolution - published in Return of the Primitive edited by Ayn Rand. "In it, he warned that the new movement's agenda was anti-science, anti-technology, and anti-human," Moore wrote.

"Environmentalists were often able to produce arguments that sounded reasonable, while doing good deeds like saving whales and making the air and water cleaner. But now the chickens have come home to roost. The environmentalists' campaign against biotechnology in general, and genetic engineering in particular, has exposed their intellectual and moral bankruptcy. By adopting a zero-tolerance policy towards a technology with so many potential benefits for humankind and the environment, they have lived up to Schwartz's predictions. They have alienated themselves from scientists, intellectuals and internationalists," Moore claimed. [7]

In a response Greenpeace's Steve Sawyer dismissed Moore's claims as inaccurate. "...If Moore applied the logic he claims is missing from the arguments of opponents of GE crops, he would realise that such crops are no more 'science' than refrigerators, nuclear weapons or washing machines. GE crops are commercial products that result from the application of one specific technology from within a much broader field of scientific inquiry. GE crops are commercial products, not science - and there are sound scientific reasons for opposing them," he wrote in an opinion column in The Age.

"Patrick Moore's attempt to characterise his proselytising on behalf of industry as 'consensus politics' stretches credulity. The reality is that the issues of environment and development are complex. Minimising human impacts on our biosphere, while promoting a basic level of equity and social justice on a global basis, is a challenge beyond anything human society has ever faced," he wrote.[8]

Moore claimed that the European Commission has given genetically engineered products a clean bill of health. "In 2001, the European Commission released the results of 81 scientific studies on genetically modified organisms conducted by more than 400 research teams at a cost of $US65 million. The studies, which covered all areas of concern, have 'not shown any new risks to human health or the environment, beyond the usual uncertainties of conventional plant breeding. Indeed, the use of more precise technology and the greater regulatory scrutiny probably make them even safer than conventional plants and foods'," he wrote.

Steve Sawyer, from Greenpeace International disagrees. "What the EC actually did in 2001 was to identify 81 EC-funded research projects on GE organisms that were in progress. Most of these studies have not yet been published in peer-reviewed scientific literature.A more accurate assessment of the status of peer-reviewed studies on the human health risks of GE foods can be found in Pryme & Lembcke (2003)," he wrote.

"They concluded that there had been only 10 peer-reviewed 'in vivo' studies examining the possible health consequences of GE foods and feed. Only five of these were independently funded. The authors found that more scientific effort and investigation was necessary before GE foods could be considered unlikely to cause long-term human health problems," he wrote.

In particular, Moore points to the potential of "golden rice", genetically engineered to boost vitamin A levels and therefore the potential to prevent blindness. "Surely, if reasonable people saw the choice between the risk of a daffodil gene in a rice plant and the certainty of millions of blind children, they would descend on Greenpeace offices around the world and demand to have their money back," he wrote.

Sawyer argues that Moore's enthusiasm for genetically engineered rice is overly optimisteic and ignore broder inequities that cause and maintain poverty. "Blindness is not caused by a lack of vitamin A in rice, just as starvation is generally not caused by a lack of food production. Malnutrition and starvation are the result of a lack of access to a balanced diet - a problem of poverty, which in turn is caused by problems of economics and politics," he wrote.

"The proponents of GE crops and foods are only too quick to promote the alleged benefits of whatever panacea happens to be the flavour of the month, often with little real understanding of the problem they are purporting to solve," he wrote.

"When those who raise questions about GE foods are lambasted for being ideological, "anti-science", or "anti-human", one has to ask why; and also why the proponents of GE foods manage to avoid being tarred with the same brush despite repeatedly overstating the benefits and systematically understating the risks, he wrote. "The reality is that golden rice is a research project. It has not undergone safety tests and its claims to solving health problems are extremely optimistic, bordering on fantastic."

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2.The sham of nuke power & Patrick Moore
By Harvey Wasserman Online Journal Guest Writer, Mar 1 2007

Vermont, like too many other places with nuke reactors, was recently disgraced by an industry-sponsored visit from Patrick Moore, who claims to be a "founder" of Greenpeace, and who is out selling nuclear power as a "green" technology.

The two claims are roughly equal in the baldness of their falsehood.

But the impacts of the lies about Vermont Yankee---like so many other reactors---are far more serious. Vermont is now at a crossroads in its energy and environmental future. The reactor is old and infirm. Every day it operates heightens the odds on a major accident...

It is fitting... that the industry has insulted Vermont by sending in a spokesman of the caliber of Patrick Moore. Moore has claimed for years to be a founder of Greenpeace, an exaggeration of his actual role. Moore sailed on the first Greenpeace campaign, but he did not actually found the organization. According to Dorothy Stowe, an American Quaker, who immigrated to Canada in 1966 and founded Greenpeace with her husband Irving Stowe and other Canadian pacifists and ecologists, "Technically, Patrick Moore cannot be described as a founder of Greenpeace. He was there in early stages with a lot of others. But what he is doing now is unconscionable."

In "Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World," author Rex Weyler writes "Greenpeace was founded by Quakers Dorothy and Irving Stowe, Marie and Jim Bohlen, and journalists Ben Metcalfe, Dorothy Metcalfe, and Bob Hunter. This group organized the first campaign to sail a boat into the U.S. nuclear test zone on Amchitka Island in the Bering Sea.

"Canadian ecologist and carpenter Bill Darnell coined the name 'Greenpeace' in February 1970. A year later, Moore wrote to the organization, applying for a crew position on the boat and was accepted."

Moore wrote his letter on March 16, 1971, two years after the group was founded, describing himself as a graduate student "in the field of resource ecology." Clearly, then, Moore was not a founder of Greenpeace. Founders don’t write letters applying to join. After the Stowes, Metcalfes and Bob Hunter left the organization, Moore briefly served as president, from 1977 to 1979. Former members recall that his bullying nearly scuttled Greenpeace. He launched an internal lawsuit against his rivals in other Greenpeace offices, was replaced as president in 1979, and eventually drummed out of the organization as a troublemaker.

According to Steve Sawyer, who still works with Greenpeace in Amsterdam, "Moore harbored hopes of regaining his throne. Those hopes were dashed when he was chucked off the board in 1985." Moore started a fish farm, but did not succeed. He then did public relations for the Canadian forestry industry, absurdly defending massive clear-cutting as an ecologically viable logging practice.

In a newspaper column in 1993, authentic Greenpeace founder Bob Hunter, called Moore "The Judas of the ecology movement." According to Hunter, Moore "burned off his old buddies because of his hubris. He was always a Green Tory at heart."

Moore says he is the "head scientist" of his public relations firm, but has never published a peer-reviewed scientific study. Moore exaggerates his role in Greenpeace and his credentials as a scientist to serve as a public relations hack for hire.

Moore now gets big money defending the indefensible, posing as a reformed environmentalist who has seen the light . . . any light he is paid to see. He has hyped genetically modified crops, PVCs, and brominated flame retardants. He has soft-pedaled dioxins and toxic mine tailings dumped by Newmont mines into Indonesia’s bays.

Now he wants to sell Vermont on its nuke power plant. In exchange for a paycheck, he portrays Three Mile Island as a "success story." But if a meltdown turned Vermont Yankee into a TMI-type, billion-dollar liability, would he pitch in his pitch man’s paychecks to help you underwrite this "success?"

Years ago, when he worked for Greenpeace, Moore wrote: "Nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devices that man has ever created. Their construction and proliferation is the most irresponsible, in fact the most criminal, act ever to have taken place on this planet."

Greenpeace agrees. The "revival" of nuke power is a hype being perpetrated by phony experts. Wall Street is not exactly lining up to invest in a failed technology with 50 years of proven failure. Vermont Yankee must be shut, dismantled and buried. Closing it now will narrow the burden of its permanent waste dump and open the door on the booming revolution in the real energy of the future: renewables and efficiency.

Harvey Wasserman, senior advisor to Greenpeace USA since 1990, is author of Solartopia: Our Green-Powered Earth, a.d. 2030. This article was written with research help from past and current Greenpeace associates. A version of this article was published by the Brattleboro Reformer.

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