Well it is that time of year again, the Arctic ice begins to melt, as it does every year, and all sorts of crazy talk starts coming out. This time from Greenpeace. I am encouraged though, as they have come around to the idea that maybe they are doing more harm than good by overselling the alarmism.
NSIDC also has taken a more moderate tone, announcing that there will “likely be no record low ice extent in 2009“. This is a sharp contrast to last year’s ridiculous press statement from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze about an “ice free north pole”. Now that Greenpeace has come clean on their statement, maybe Dr. Serreze will finally admit his statement was “a mistake”. – Anthony
From Not Evil Just Wrong:
The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.”
Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.
Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.
“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” he said.
Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.
The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” and using “exaggeration and alarmism.”
Leipold’s admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization’s practice of “emotionalizing issues” in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.
“We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. … The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model,” Leipold said. “If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary.”
Sponsored IT training links:
Subscribe for 646-230 training and get 642-426 certified in days! We offer high quality 642-661 dumps with 100% success guarantee.
(Watch the full BBC interview with Leipold here.)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Did he, perhaps, describe how he proposed to lower his standard of living?
Without a scare, any scare, Greenpeace would not exist.
Thanks to Stephen Sackur for is sensible remarks and questions.
Well that’s a cute trick; compare the July average with the annual average, and report that the summer average is lower than the annual average.
Maybe they think people are dumb enough to belief that the polar ice never changes during the year (if everything is working “properly”.
Then there is also a new letter from Dr Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy Meteorologist, hitting the NYT between the eyes with the 2 x 4 approach.
“It’s the Clouds, Stupid!”. Which is pretty much what I have been saying ever since I got myself involved in this question.
You can find Dr Hertzberg’s letter over at Marc Morano’s Climate Depot.
George
“Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world.”
Yes, feeding and clothing people = BAD.
Al Gore flying around in jet = GOOD.
Somebody lock these people up before they do damage.
I expect Greenpeace meant to say that the Arctic Sea would be ice-free by 2030, which might happen if the world kept on warming like the eighties and nineties, but said “Arctic” instead. Very sloppy for an organisation that considers itself to be “scientific”.
Wow ! This guy is bombing the bridges in front of his organization’s Gravy Train. HE is breaking the first and last rules on Environmental Whackoism.
How do they expect to scare people into donating money if they don’t fear monger & use hysterical claims ?
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world.
It’s ironic that the very people who openly promote “change” are the ones who are least able to cope with it.
I guess they yearn for a world where advancement doesn’t outpace their intellect. And the music never dies. And the climate never changes.
I feel a country music song coming on…..
It’s clear from the press release that this claim of “ice free summers” refers specifically to the arctic sea ice. It’s not clear, in this context that this claim is an exaggeration. Of course it would be an exaggeration in the context of the Greenland ice sheet, but it plainly doesn’t. Sakur is either misinformed, has misread the press release or has performed a bait and switch / built a straw man to skewer Liepold. Liepold even admits ignorance about the particular press release, so his mistake is purely conditional upon the veracity of Sakur’s claims, which are false. You should make a correction to reflect this.
George, try looking at volume not area and this inconsistency is removed.
How nice of them to admit the error.
“Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.”
Never heard this figure [3km] before. Misprint? Error? Correct?
Anybody have a credible figure and source?
Will we now see Scott Pelley at 60 Minutes do a piece about this recantation?
Doubt it.
Greenpiece (as in piece ‘o the money pie) really lost me back in the late 80’s.My wife and I lived in Port Orford,Or. We were walking along Orford Head, which is a bit of land and rock sticking out into the pacific.We were stinng looking at the nice day,rock and ocean-the place is a lot like the coast of Wales and Scotland’s west coast,when we hear
the awful racket- a big,noisy motorsailer chugging into port.I said “Look at that piece
of junk!””It was leaving a good cloud of smoke from the ‘D’-sail exhaust.
It was the Rainbow Warrior, in port for a little protest of mining the ocean.They threw up the Mains, shut the ‘D’ sail down and sailed into port-for the media and their admirers.That coupled with a picture I had of their old PBY Catalina that they had dripping oil on the ramp in Athens Greece,with no drip pans or cat litter,that was the final straw…
He’s referring to to the Greenland ice-cap which is ice and is in the Arctic. So that’s alright then.
I think you’ll find that Leipold, like most of the Greenies, believes that as long as the proles do their bit the elite can carry on pretty much as they like.
I didn’t watch this interview first time round (my blood pressure’s not what it was and I thought Sackur was too much of a devotee) but was delighted when the Beeb repeated it, and pretty pleased with the result.
Last night’s interview with Lovelock didn’t pull any punches either. Maybe someone in the BBC has at last cottoned on to the idea that there is another point of view?
At least Lovelock is credible though at 90 it shouldn’t be too difficult for the Moonbats to convince themselves he’s lost his marbles.
Here’s the link:- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/8206892.stm
“were sitting looking…” dang it…
Nothing new here! Did you notice how hard he tried to get around the question being asked? Alarmists love to scare, exemplifiy their articles to get the public reading their statements. It was great to see the interviewer pushing! It’s about time and more and more the Wall of BS starts to fall.
Now it’s time to take Climate Change in it’s Scientific view, not Political, and research what really makes Climate Change tick! To realize that Science is constantly in Flux, so to say. Theories constantly change, constantly can be challenged with one little fact and change the whole hypothesis, and so on and so on! That’s Real Science. You have to remember, Climate Change is Abnormal in it’s workings, normal is always short term IMO. Extremes in Weather is the norm and unpreditable at the present beyond 3-5days. Meteorology is always changing their predictions to the latest Climate Change! For this is what the Public demands!
Alarmists need a new agenda, like watching out for large Meteor’s, Asteroids and Comets ready to hit the Earth. Of course, we have to thank the Alarmists on one note, and that is the awareness they brought upon Mother Earth. But only that!!
My eyes, they must need checking. Did I just see a BBC presenter giving a warmist a very hard time live on air? It cannot be true.
Tim S. (10:06:14) :
Somebody lock these people up before they do damage.
Pick up a newspaper Tim. They trumpet the damage daily.
When the day is over there are going to be quite a few people (global warming alarmists) with egg on their face.
It will be interesting to see how they try to wiggle out of it.
Robinson
Yes, it is true and I hope you were sitting down! LOL! 🙂
They are loosing members.
DouglasDC
Didin’t Greenpeace scuttle Rainbow Warrior after the French turned it into a heap of useless metal in NZ?
Claimed it would provide a nice comfy home for the cuddly fish.
Then screamed foul and made great political capital out of Shell trying to do the same thing with Brent Spar?
Eventually they admitted they’d got their facts wrong but said it didn’t matter because they’d been right “in principle”.
“Towards the end of the campaign, in the absence of official figures, Greenpeace released its own estimate of the amount of oil left on the Brent Spar. However, we quickly realised that our improvised measurements had been taken from the wrong part of the Spar, resulting in a significant overestimation of the amount of oil left in the storage tanks. As soon as it became aware of the error, Greenpeace proactively apologised. Although almost unreported at the time, the estimate subsequently became notorious and a persistent media myth was born – that Greenpeace had ‘got it wrong’ over the entire Brent Spar issue.” That quote from their own web site – http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/history/the-brent-spar
I love that concept of “proactive apology”!
“Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world.”
This is a religious belief or point of view. I have nothing against religious people provided they don’t shove their religion down other people’s throats or use a paternalistic agenda in order to control and/or abuse women (as is done in many parts of the world). If these people have their way then they will deprive all rapidly industrializing developing countries of any future or escape from subsitence living and in many cases abject poverty.
The fact that almost NONE of these Greens remotely practice what they preach (a la Al Gore) is the very height of hypocrisy. To these folks, I say, “Go live like the old order Amish. Practice what you preach and reduce your own industrial footprint before you tell everyone else what to do! It can easily be done – what are you waiting for?”
Big City Lib aka Michael J. Murphy of Toronto has been permanently banned from participation at WUWT.
Despite my treating him fairly here, he has decided to reveal the true childish person he is and start resorting to 4 letter f-word attacks in his own blog because he disagrees with stories posted here. Given his behavior, I don’t see any value to welcoming his participation here any longer. – Anthony
===========================
Well, the claim in the presser is that the arctic ocean might be ice free in summer by 2030, which is not an outlandlish claim at all. He does NOT say that the Greenland ice sheet will melt by 2030–as the interviewer suggests– so if anything the video merely shows that the BBC reporter is semi-literate.
Douglas DC said…”Greenpiece (as in piece ‘o the money pie) really lost me back in the late 80’s.My wife and I lived in Port Orford,Or. We were walking along Orford Head, which is a bit of land and rock sticking out into the pacific…”
I am currently packing up our valley house for a move to Nesika Beach area. My wife is the new City Manager/Admin for Gold Beach. The beach house we found, as no Cell, No Cable, No Internet. It does have a lot of view… I call it the End of the World.