From: jamesh@aifh.ed.ac.uk (James Hammerton)
Newsgroups: talk.environment
Subject: Re: "A Quarter Billion Years" (Greenpeace Press Releases)
Keywords: rebuttal
Date: 21 Jan 93 23:34:17 GMT
Reply-To: jamesh@aifh.ed.ac.uk (James Hammerton)
Organization: Dept of AI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <29AQ02T133=a01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>, jjh00@diag.amdahl.com (Joel
Hanes) writes:
# Hold it, Jym.  I called Jason (the name of the Greenpeace
# spokesman) on two occasions, originally to check to see
# if he really thought 0.25 billion was the correct number,
# and later to assess his understanding of the opinions
# he was presenting as fact.  I received his permission to
# summarize his remarks to the net, and did so. You must
# have missed the posting.
# 

[stuff deleted about Jason's apparent lack of scientific awareness on
environmental issues]

# 
# Jason, who resides in Boulder Colorado, was unaware that
# there is such a thing as natural background radiation.
# His belief was that the natural environment is devoid
# of radioactivity.  He said to me: "I don't know much
# about science".
# 
# 
# See above.
# My point is exactly that the "GreenPeace spokesman" who wrote the
# press release and the curriculum for the Colorado school
# children is approximately the negation of an "informed
# participant in the nuclear debate"; he was unfamiliar
# with science in general, and factual information about
# nuclear energy in particular, but was preparing to teach
# misinformation.

Ouch!

# >=o= To cite this as a "severe error" is to grasp at straws.
# 
# If Jason had understood the claims he was making, I would
# agree with you.  If he had been able to recognize, on his
# own, that the "billion" number was unlikely, I would agree
# with you.  If he had ever read a single primary or even
# secondary source of information in this field, I would tend
# to dismiss the incident.  None of these obtain.
# 
# (BTW, I sent Jason a large file of primary literature 
#  citations and facts for him to follow up, most of which
#  came from Russ Brown, I think.)

Good thing.
 
# >That this particular straw has been held onto for about 18
# >months is better testament to the integrity of the press
# >releases than any argument I could make.
# 
# Perhaps. 
# 
# However, it may simply reflect the fact that 
# I quit reading GreenPeace press releases
# as a result of my conversations with Jason, and because of
# the high volume and low information content of the postings.
# I imagine that many other talk.environment folks who
# are competent to detect such errors have done likewise.

I have usually only skimmed these postings until recently when I felt that
the Greenpeace bashing was becoming very strong, and I felt that I should
try to defend them when and where I could back it up with evidence. Recent
postings of press releases don't seem to have been as bad as you make out,
but I'll admit to having missed a lot of earlier ones. The trouble was that
I saw some discussions where the followups seemed as bad as many on this
group feel the press releases are; so for a while I ignored them, until
I noticed that there seemed to be a strong anti greenpeace contingent on
this group making wilder and wilder claims about their honesty/accuracy
etc... I will take much more notice of them now.
 
# It was my perception that the "call to all nations to outlaw
# chlorine chemistry" articles were far more egregious; I 
# simply didn't read them closely.  Anone else?
# 
# Look: I'm an environmentalist.  I'm not sure fission power is
# a great idea; it's complex, and the risks are hard to quantify.
# Mass dissemination of slogans and misinformation make it
# harder to reach a good decision, not easier.
# 
# Jym, it is a *fact* that GreenPeace has low credibility in the
# scientifically literate community.  The stridency, sloganeering,
# and lack of rigor in typical GreenPeace statements is, I think,
# the main cause.

Now this is one of the few posts attacking Greenpeace that I've seen which
has substance. I'll admit that my experience of Greenpeace has been
limited mainly to the books and reports I've read and press releases.
(There is a Greenpeace group at the university here where I found out a
bit more about their organization). Firstly the impression I get is that
the Greenpeace that publishes scientific reports and the Greenpeace that
do the press releases don't know what the other is saying! However I think
this can be explained(not excused though) in the manner in which Greenpeace
organises itself. As far as I'm aware apart from national and international
organisations, Greenpeace is made up of largely autonomous support groups
run mainly on a voluntary basis. Therefore the members of these groups will

a) Have a large amount of leeway in what they say/do

b) Will vary greatly in their experience and knowledge of environmental
issues.

This could easily lead to situations like that of Jason above. Greenpeace
should try to take more care in making sure that people who engage in
educational activities know what they are talking about. It also seems that
they should take more care in providing evidence to back up their claims in
press releases. Most of the ones I've taken notice of, have made claims
where I am aware of evidence that supports them so I have had the
impression that most attacks were jumping to conclusions about Greenpeace
that were unfounded. This incident will make me think a bit more about it.

What gets me now though is that Greenpeace seem to have a good database of
information on many of the issues they campaign on. The evidence given in
their books(that I've read) is often from respected and widely varied
sources(e.g. Scientific Journals, UN organisations, Government departments, 
specific researchers reports, press cuttings etc...) I do get the
impression that the scientists in Greenpeace somehow don't manage to 
communicate with the other parts of Greenpeace, and this, sadly IMHO, is
to Greenpeace's detriment. Part of the problem is probably that Greenpeace
has very radical hardline views and want to concentrate on getting a clear
message across, thus using slogans etc... to catch peoples attention. This
is fine if they can back their claims up, but if it leads to errors and
misinformation then it can only lead people to distrust them...
It would be nice if after discussions like this, Greenpeace were to
be persuaded to look more critically at what they do, why and how.

Finally I would like to ask(out of interest) what people's opinions on
other environmental groups are and why? Specifically the following:

Friends of the Earth

The World Watch Institute

The Rocky Mountain Institute

The Green parties(in general and specific to particular countries)

James

-- 
*  James Hammerton               *  If Pascal is equivalent to the     *
*  Email: jamesh@uk.ac.ed.aisb   *  mini-metro,then ML is the concept  *
*                                *  car where steering is done         *
*                                *  recursively using the gearstick.   *
Newsgroups: talk.environment