Former Greenpeace Founder Patrick Moore Says Climate Change Based on False Narratives
Prominent scientist backs up claim that there is ‘no climate emergency’
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Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, said in an email obtained by The Epoch Times that his reasons for leaving Greenpeace were very clear:
“Greenpeace was ‘hijacked’ by the political left when they realized there was money and power in the environmental movement. [Left-leaning] political activists in North America and Europe changed Greenpeace from a science-based organization to a political fundraising organization,” Moore said.
Moore left Greenpeace in 1986, 15 years after he co-founded the organization.
“The ‘environmental’ movement has become more of a political movement than an environmental movement,” he said. “They are primarily focused on creating narratives, stories, that are designed to instill fear and guilt into the public so the public will send them money.”
He said they mainly operate behind closed doors with other political operatives at the U.N., World Economic Forum, and so on, all of which are primarily political in nature.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] is “not a science organization,” he said. “It is a political organization composed of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.
“The IPCC hires scientists to provide them with ‘information’ that supports the ‘climate emergency’ narrative.
Their campaigns against fossil fuels, nuclear energy, CO2, plastic, etc., are misguided and designed to make people think the world will come to an end unless we cripple our civilization and destroy our economy. They are now a negative influence on the future of both the environment and human civilization.”
“Today, the left has adopted many policies that would be very destructive to civilization as they are not technically achievable. Only look at the looming energy crisis in Europe and the UK, which Putin is taking advantage of. But it is of their own making in refusing to develop their own natural gas resources, opposing nuclear energy, and adopting an impossible position on fossil fuels in general,” Moore wrote.
The Left ‘Hijacked’ Greenpeace
He said “green” for the environment and “peace” for the people were the organization’s founding principles, but peace was largely forgotten, and green had become the sole agenda.
“Many [so-called] ‘environmental’ leaders were now saying that ‘humans are the enemies of the Earth, the enemies of Nature.’ I could not accept that humans are the only evil species. This is too much like ‘original sin,’ that humans are born with evil, but all the other species are good, even cockroaches, mosquitos, and diseases,” Moore argued.
He said the new dominant philosophy is that the world would be better if fewer people existed.
“But the people who said this were not volunteering to be the first to go away. They behave as if they are superior to others. This kind of ‘pride’ and ‘conceit’ is the worst of the Cardinal Sins,” Moore said.
Environmental Activist
As a prominent scholar, ecologist, and long-time leader in the international environmental field, Patrick Moore is widely regarded as one of the world’s most qualified experts on the environment. He is also a founder of Greenpeace, the world’s largest environmental activist organization.
Moore received his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of British Columbia in 1974 and an Honorary Doctorate of Science from North Carolina State University in 2005.
Image: Patrick Moore, Canadian Ecologist, Chair of CO2 Coalition, and Co-Founder of Greenpeace. (Courtesy of Patrick Moore)
He co-founded Greenpeace in 1971 and served as president of Greenpeace Canada for nine years. From 1979 to 1986, Moore served as the Director of Greenpeace International, a driving force shaping the group’s policies and directions. During his 15-year tenure, Greenpeace became the world’s largest environmental activist organization.
In 1991, Moore founded Greenspirit, a consultancy focusing on environmental policies, energy, climate change, biodiversity, genetically modified food, forests, fisheries, food, and resources.
Between 2006 and 2012, Moore served as co-chairman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a U.S.-based environmental advocacy group.
In 2014, he was appointed Chairman of Ecology, Energy, and Prosperity of Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a non-partisan Canadian public policy think tank.
In 2019 and 2020, Moore served as the Chair of CO2 Coalition, a U.S.-based nonprofit environmental advocacy group dedicated to disputing false claims on CO2 as relates to climate change.
False Narrative on Chlorine
“At the time I decided to leave Greenpeace, I was one of 6 Directors of Greenpeace International. I was the only one with formal science education, BSc Honors in Science and Forestry, and Ph.D. in Ecology. My fellow directors decided that Greenpeace should begin a campaign to ‘Ban Chlorine Worldwide.’”
Moore said it is true that elemental chlorine gas is highly toxic and was used as a weapon in World War I. However, chlorine is one of the 94 [naturally-ocurring] elements on the Periodic Table and has many roles in biology and human health. For example, table salt (NaCl or Sodium Chloride) is an essential nutrient for all animals and many plants. It is impossible to “ban” NaCl.
He pointed out that adding chlorine to drinking water, swimming pools, and spas was one of the most significant advances in public health history in preventing the spread of water-borne communicable diseases such as cholera. And about 85 percent of pharmaceutical drugs are made with chlorine-related chemistry, and about 25 percent of all our medicines contain chlorine. All halogens, including chlorine, bromine, and iodine, are powerful antibiotics; without them, medicine would not be the same.
“Greenpeace named chlorine ‘The Devil’s Element’ and calls PVC, polyvinyl chloride, or simply vinyl, ‘the Poison Plastic.’ All of this is fake [and] to scare the public. In addition, this misguided policy reinforces the attitude that humans are not a worthy species and that the world would be better off without them. I could not convince my fellow Greenpeace directors to abandon this misguided policy. This was the turning point for me,” Moore said.
False Narrative on Polar Bears
When asked how Greenpeace utilizes its massive donations, Moore said it was used to pay for “a very large staff” (likely over 2,000), extensive advertisements, and fundraising programs. And virtually all of the organization’s ads for fundraising are based on false narratives, which he had thoroughly disproven in his books, one example being the polar bears.
“The International Treaty on Polar Bears, signed by all polar countries in 1973, to ban unrestricted hunting of polar bears, is never mentioned in the media, Greenpeace, or politicians who say the polar bear is going extinct due to melting ice in the Arctic. In fact, the polar bear population has increased from 6,000 to 8,000 in 1973 to 30,000 to 50,000 today. This is not disputed,” Moore said.
“But now they say the polar bear will go extinct in 2100 as if they have a magic crystal ball that can predict the future. In fact, this past winter in the Arctic saw an expansion of ice from previous years, and Antarctica was colder during the last winter than in the past 50 years.”
Moore said that he does not pretend to know everything and predict the future with confidence like many in the “climate emergency” business claim they can do.
The Goal of the ‘Environmental Apocalypse’ Theory
“I believe the human population has always been vulnerable to people who predict doom with false stories,” Moore said.
“The Aztecs threw virgins into volcanos, and the Europeans and Americans burned women as witches for 200 years claiming this would ‘save the world’ from evil people. This has been [referred to as] ‘herd mentality,’ ‘groupthink,’ and ‘cult behavior.’ Humans are social animals with a hierarchy, and it is easiest to gain a high position by using fear and control.”
Moore said the environmental apocalypse theory is mostly about “political power and control,” adding that he is dedicated to showing people that the situation is not as negative as they are told.
“Today, in the richest countries, our descendants are making decisions that our grandchildren will have to pay for,” he said. “Predictions that the world is coming to an end have been made for thousands of years. Not once has this come true. Why should we believe it now?”
“People are naturally afraid of the future because it is unknown and full of risks and difficult decisions. I believe there is also an element of ‘self-loathing’ in this apocalypse movement.”
Moore said the young generation today is taught that humans are not worthy and are destroying the earth. This indoctrination has made them feel guilty and ashamed of themselves, which is the wrong way to go about life.
The Demonization of Carbon Dioxide
“Very few people believe the world is not warming. The record is clear that the world has been warming since about the year 1700, 150 years before we were using fossil fuels. 1700 was the peak of the Little Ice Age, which was very cold and caused crop failures and starvation. Before that, around 1000 A.D. was the Medieval Warm period when Vikings farmed Greenland. [And] before that, around 500 A.D. were the Dark Ages, and before that, the Roman Warm Period when it was warmer than today, and the sea level was 1–2 meters higher than today,” Moore said.
“Even until about 1950, the amount of fossil fuel used and CO2 emitted were very small compared to today. We do not know the cause of these periodic fluctuations in temperature, but it was certainly not CO2.”
Moore clarified that the “minority opinion” is not about the history of the Earth’s temperature, but it is the relationship between the temperature and CO2 that is at the center of the dispute.
“In this regard, I agree that many believe CO2 is the main cause of warming. CO2 is invisible, so no one can actually see what it is doing. And this ‘majority’ are mainly scientists paid by politicians and bureaucrats, media making headlines, or activists making money. [The rest are] the public who believe this story even though they can’t actually see what CO2 is doing,” Moore said.
Moore provided a graph of temperature continuously measured over 350 years (from 1659 to 2009) in central England. “If carbon dioxide was the main cause of warming, then there should be a rise in temperature along the carbon dioxide curve, but it doesn’t,” he explained.
1659–2009 Temperature and Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Central England. (Courtesy of Patrick Moore)
Moore described the demonization of CO2 as “completely ridiculous.” He added that CO2 is the basis of all life on Earth and its concentration in the atmosphere today, even with the increase, is lower than it has been for a large majority of life’s existence.
Rising CO2 Correlates With Increased Plantation: Study
A study in 2013 found that increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years.
The Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found the distribution area of vegetation increased by 11 percent due to the effect of carbon dioxide fertilization in arid areas of the world between 1982 and 2015 through satellite observations. (Courtesy of Patrick Moore)
The Australian government agency CSIRO conducted the research in collaboration with Australian National University (ANU). The data was based on satellite observations from the year 1982 to 2010 across parts of the arid areas in Australia, North America, the Middle East, and Africa.
It found an 11 percent increase in foliage cover in the studied area due to what’s called “CO2 fertilization.”
The study said a fertilization effect occurs when elevated CO2 levels enable a leaf during photosynthesis—the process by which green plants convert sunlight into sugar—to extract more carbon from the air or lose less water to the air or both.
“If elevated CO2 causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants in arid environments will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves. These changes in leaf cover can be detected by satellite, particularly in deserts and savannas where the cover is less complete than in wet locations,” according to Randall Donohue, the CSIRO research scientist.
Breaking the Global Warming Narrative
“Climate alarmists prefer to discuss climate knowledge only since 1850. The time before this they referred to as the pre-industrial age. This ‘pre-industrial age’ was more than 3 billion years when life was on the Earth. Many climate changes [occurred during that period], including Ice Ages, Hothouse Ages, major extinctions due to asteroid impacts, and other unknown causes,” Moore said.
“Today, the Earth is in the Pleistocene Ice Age, which began 2.6 million years ago. … So, the most recent major glaciation, which peaked 20,000 years ago, was not the end of the Ice Age. We are still in the Pleistocene Ice Age no matter how the climate alarmists wish to deny this.”
He said the great irony of the present panic about the climate is that the Earth is colder today than it was for 250 million years before the Pleistocene Ice Age set in. And CO2 is lower now than in more than 95 percent of Earth’s history.
“But you would never know this if you listen to all the people who benefit from the lie that the Earth will soon be too hot for life and that CO2 will become higher than in Earth’s history,” Moore said.
‘More CO2 Is Beneficial to the Environment and Humans’
According to Moore, nearly all commercial greenhouse farmers worldwide buy CO2 to inject into their greenhouses to realize up to 60 percent higher crop yields.
“I was impressed when flying over South Korea [and seeing] how many greenhouses there are in the valleys. Like British Columbia, Korea has a lot of mountains and not so much flat fertile farmland.
“I am sure the greenhouse farmers are putting more CO2 in their greenhouses, up to double and triple what it is in the atmosphere today. This is because nearly all plants growing outside in the natural atmosphere are starved for CO2, and it is what limits them from growing faster,” Moore added.
“Please refer to the chapter titled ‘Climate of Fear and Guilt’ in my book, [Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom], if you wish to gain a full understanding of these facts,” he said.
Moore said that most environmental activists, politicians, and so-called experts know that we cannot stop increasing the use of fossil fuels or reducing CO2 emissions within their proposed schedule.
“In 2015, while attending the COP (Conference of the Parties) in Paris, I offered a public bet for $100,000 in a broadcast media release which went out on more than 200 media feeds, that by 2025 global CO2 emissions would be higher than in 2015. I did not receive one taker, not even from the ‘greens,’” Moore said.
“I know that more CO2 is entirely beneficial to both the environment and human civilization. I am proud to be a director of the CO2 Coalition.”
The Irony of ‘Carbon Neutrality’
Moore said “carbon neutrality” is a political term, not a scientific one.
“It is simply wrong to call CO2 ‘carbon.’ Carbon is an element that is what diamonds, graphite, and carbon black (soot) are composed of. [And] CO2 is a molecule that contains carbon and oxygen and is an invisible gas that is the primary food for all life. [Likewise], it is incorrect to refer to NaCl (table salt) as ‘chlorine,’ even though NaCl contains chlorine,” Moore said.
“He said when elements (atoms) combine with each other to form compounds (molecules), they always have very different properties than the elements they are made from.
“‘Net-Zero’ is also a political term made-up by activists who are not scientists. For example, the top leaders of this crusade are people like Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Greta Thunberg, none of whom are scientists.”
According to Moore, Russia, China, and India are 40 percent of the human population, and they do not agree with this anti-fossil fuel agenda.
“If we add Brazil, Indonesia, and most African countries, it is a majority of the population who are not climate fanatics,” Moore added.
“Another great irony is that many countries with the coldest climates, such as Canada, Sweden, Germany, and the UK, are the most concerned about warming. For example, the average annual temperature in Canada is -5.35 degrees Celsius.”
Moore also said that fumes from engines are not CO2; they are other substances, as CO2 is invisible and odorless. Dust is also not CO2; it is soot and can be controlled with present technology. And coal plants built today are much cleaner than ones built 20 years ago.
‘Wind and Solar Power Are Parasites on the Economy’
“Solar and wind power are both very expensive and very unreliable. It is almost like a mental illness that so many people have been brainwashed to think entire countries can be supported with these technologies,” Moore said.
“I believe wind and solar energy are parasites on the larger economy. In other words, they make the country poorer than if other more reliable and less costly technologies were used.”
Moore said that wind and solar providers rely heavily on government subsidies, tax write-offs, and mandates, where citizens are forced to buy wind and solar power even if it is more expensive, on the pretext that it is “environmentally friendly.”
“Millions of people pay more for wind and solar energy while a few people make millions of dollars, marks, pounds, etc. It is a bit like a Ponzi scheme in the stock markets,” Moore added.
“They require vast areas of land, are not available most of the time, and require reliable energy such as nuclear, hydroelectric, [coal, and natural] gas to be available when wind and solar are unavailable.”
According to Moore, the construction of wind and solar farms uses vast amounts of fossil fuels for mining, transportation, and construction. And in many locations, they don’t produce nearly enough energy in their lifetimes as is required to build and maintain them.
“Why not use reliable energy [such as nuclear, hydroelectricity, natural gas, etc.] as the primary source?” Moore questioned, adding if that were the case, “then wind and solar would be unnecessary.”
‘Plastic Is Not a Toxic Substance’
“Plastic is not a toxic substance. That is why we package and wrap our food in it, to prevent it from becoming contaminated. Plastic does not magically become toxic when it enters the ocean,” Moore said.
“Of course, they say on one hand that plastic will never break down, and then, on the other hand, they say it will quickly decay into ‘microplastics,’ which, of course, are conveniently invisible so no one can observe or verify this for themselves. How clever!”
According to Moore, our digestive system can tell the difference between “food” and plastic or tiny particles of sand. Our body does not ingest sand into our bloodstream, no matter how microscopic the sand is.
He said plastic floating in the ocean is like a tiny floating reef, the same as driftwood. It provides a surface for marine species to lay their eggs on, attach themselves to, and eat things that are attached to it.
“Pollution is usually toxic or causes harm to life. Plastic is simply ‘litter’ beside the road. It is not hurting anything. One exception is discarded fishing nets, not because they are plastic but because they are shaped to catch fish. The environmental community should work with the fishing industry to stop throwing damaged nets in the sea and bring them back to the dock, where they can be recycled, used in a waste-to-energy plant, or discarded safely,” Moore added.
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This interview is a compilation of an email exchange between Moore and South Korean Professor Seok-soon Park, professor of environmental science and engineering at Ehwa Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, in November of 2021. It was provided to The Epoch Times by Park with the permission of Moore on July 7, 2022.
Both he and Moore are among the 1,100 scientists and professionals that signed the World Climate Declaration (WCD), stating that there’s no climate emergency.
Professor Park is a World Climate Declaration Ambassador at CLINTEL and a member of the CO2 Coalition. He translated “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know (by Gregory Wrightstone)” and “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom (by Patrick Moore)” into Korean. Deeply impressed by these books, he founded the “Korea Alliance of Freedom and Environmental Groups,” dedicated to enlightening people on the truth of climate change, the eco-friendliness of nuclear power energy, the environmental advantage of a liberal democratic market economy, and sensible environmentalism.
Park received his B.S. in Zoology from Seoul National University (Seoul, Korea) in 1980 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey) in 1983 and 1985. Before joining as one of the founding professors at Ewha’s Environmental Science and Engineering Department in 1996, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University, visiting professor at Princeton University, and a tenured professor at Kangwon National University (Chuncheon, South Korea).
He served as the President of the Korean Society of Environmental Education, President of the National Institute of Environmental Research, and a Presidential Advisory Committee member on Science and Technology. He has published over 150 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and has written more than 20 books. He received the Best Scientist and Engineer Award from Korea Science Foundation in 2007 and a Presidential Commendation in 2013.
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