From: jamesh@aifh.ed.ac.uk (James Hammerton)
Newsgroups: talk.environment
Subject: Re: "A Quarter Billion Years" (Greenpeace Press Releases)
Keywords: rebuttal
Date: 24 Jan 93 13:40:37 GMT
Reply-To: jamesh@aifh.ed.ac.uk (James Hammerton)
Organization: Dept of AI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <89OV0240335c01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com>, jjh00@diag.amdahl.com (Joel
Hanes) writes:
# 
# agreed.  I skip most of the "GreenPeace rebuttal" articles
# as well, for the same reason -- as you point out, some of
# them are nearly as strident and content-free as the GP
# press releases they address.
# 
# However, I have found that Russ Brown, Mr. Parsons, Jim
# Hurst, and a few others actually provide hard information,
# with citations, and I try to read their postings closely,

Hmm, I'll try and get a look at their postings.

# >Finally I would like to ask(out of interest) what people's opinions on
# >other environmental groups are and why? Specifically the following:
# 
# (list deleted)
# 
# It's my perception that The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy,
# the absurdly-named Natural Resources Defense Council, and,
# in California, Citizens for a Better Environment are doing
# top-flight work on environmental issues, motivated by an
# accurate understanding of the science, and a pragmatic
# approach to politics.  I'd say that the Sierra Club and 
# National Audubon society are almost as good; I give money
# to all these folks.
# 
# Your mileage may, of course, vary.

Yeah it does, but living in Scotland it shouldn't be surprising. I have
found that the World Watch Institute publications are well documented 
and have bought two of them(State of th World 1992 and Saving the
Planet). It's the only specifically US based organisation I'm familiar
with(Greenpeace & FOE are worldwide). Rocky Mountain Institute I'm not
altogether familiar with, except that I've read a lot of Amory Lovins
work and if he's anything to go by, they do great work. I am a
member of the Scottish Green Party(which is separate from the
English one), and find them to be very radical in their outlook, but
their spokespersons usually have a good deal of knowledge and backup
in their particular fields. I also subscribe to the Safe Energy Journal
which is published by SCRAM, the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic
Menace. The journal is full of references etc... and this anti-nuke
group at least has MOUNTAINS of reports, journals etc... to back up
their case. I went into their offices one day to find out about the
toxicity of plutonium(you may remember that posting), and they had
shelves with all the issues ever published of the New Scientist and
various other journals, they had lots of books on renewable energy,
the history of nuclear power,  radioactive waste disposal, public
inquiries for various nuclear facilities, reports commissioned by the
government etc.. In short they may preach a hardline anti nuke message,
but they sure as hell have plenty of information to back it up.

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.   *