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  • 2019-03-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Patrick Moore, a Doubter of Anthropogenic Climate Change, Co-Found Greenpeace? (en)
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  • On 12 March 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted about a portion of a Fox and Friends television interview with a man named Patrick Moore. Fox and Friends, and by extension Trump, claimed Moore co-founded Greenpeace: People who adopt ostensibly oppositional views to their own perceived political background are popular fodder for punditry. The problem with this specific example is that Moore did not co-found Greenpeace. Though he once was involved with the group, his views have diverged substantially since he left in 1986. According to that organization: Moore was one of Greenpeace’s earliest and more influential members, eventually serving as president of Greenpeace Canada. Greenpeace, as an organization, has its origins in a voyage made by activists to the Aleutian Island of Amchitka in a largely failed effort to stop nuclear weapons testing in the area. These activists, who at the time called themselves the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, raised money and commissioned a vessel, the Phyllis Cormack, for this purpose beginning in 1970. In March 1971, as a graduate resource ecology student, Moore applied for and was given a berth on the ship, later nicknamed The Greenpeace. In fairness, many people associated with these early days apparently describe themselves as co-founders of Greenpeace. An archived Greenpeace history page from 2007, which lists Moore under co-founders and first members, says: Moore left Greenpeace in 1986. Speaking of that decision, Moore wrote in 2005: In 2004, Wired Magazine described Moore’s shift away from Greenpeace in more cynical terms: Moore is now or has been paid by several entities or causes that Greenpeace now opposes. According to the climate media blog DeSmog: In one notable media appearance, he defended the safety of glyphosate, a weed killer, by saying he could drink a quart of the product straight with no problem. When challenged to do so by the interviewer, he changed course, saying he wouldn’t because he’s not an idiot before abruptly ending the interview: Moore has also long been associated with a cadre of academics who consider themselves climate skeptics. In 2015 he was a speaker at a Texas Public Policy Foundation conference that included sessions like CO2 is the Gas of Life, echoing the statements Moore made on Fox and Friends in 2019. As Moore states, it is true that CO2 is a crucial building block of life that provides the raw material for plants to grow. This, in turn, provides animals with food and oxygen. However, such an observation, which you can find described in any middle-school science textbook, does not infringe upon the fundamental, physical truth that higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the planet. Moore’s anti-climate-change statement on Fox and Friends is a bad-faith argument, and attributing such statements to a Greenpeace co-founder is factually inaccurate. (en)
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