I’ve never had a headline like this, but Greenpeace deserves it for their mind-bending defense in a defamation lawsuit: basically their defense is “we publish hyperbole, therefore it isn’t actionable because it isn’t factual”. GMAFB!
Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, whom they have tried to erase from their website, resigned from the organization because:
The organization I co-founded has become a monster. When I was a member of its central committee in the early days, we campaigned – usually with success – on genuine environmental issues such as atmospheric nuclear tests, whaling and seal-clubbing.
When Greenpeace turned anti-science by campaigning against chlorine (imagine the sheer stupidity of campaigning against one of the elements in the periodic table), I decided that it had lost its purpose and that, having achieved its original objectives, had turned to extremism to try to justify its continued existence.
Now Greenpeace has knowingly made itself the sworn enemy of all life on Earth. By opposing capitalism, it stands against the one system of economics that has been most successful in regulating and restoring the environment.
Get a load of this:
Greenpeace Claims Immunity from Lawsuits Because Its Claims Are ‘Hyperbole’
2:02pm EST March 3, 2017
by Katie Brown, PhD
There’s been an interesting twist of events involving Greenpeace, one of the major groups pushing the failing #ExxonKnew campaign: They’ve been sued by Resolute, a Canadian forest-products company, for defamation and false claims about the company’s operations.
But when Greenpeace had to answer for its actions in court, the group wasn’t so sure it could defend its claims. In fact, they admitted those claims had no merit. As Resolute’s President and CEO Richard Garneau explained in a recent op-ed,
A funny thing happened when Greenpeace and allies were forced to account for their claims in court. They started changing their tune. Their condemnations of our forestry practices “do not hew to strict literalism or scientific precision,” as they concede in their latest legal filings. Their accusations against Resolute were instead “hyperbole,” “heated rhetoric,” and “non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion” that should not be taken “literally” or expose them to any legal liability. These are sober admissions after years of irresponsible attacks. (emphasis added)
No “forest loss” was caused by Resolute, the groups concede — now that they are being held accountable.
As the Financial Post also reported,
But now Greenpeace says it never intended people to take its words about Resolute’s logging practices as literal truth.
“The publications’ use of the word “Forest Destroyer,” for example, is obvious rhetoric,” Greenpeace writes in its motion to dismiss the Resolute lawsuit. “Resolute did not literally destroy an entire forest. It is of course arguable that Resolute destroyed portions of the Canadian Boreal Forest without abiding by policies and practices established by the Canadian government and the Forest Stewardship Council, but that is the point: The “Forest Destroyer” statement cannot be proven true or false, it is merely an opinion.”
In other words, Greenpeace is admitting that it relies on “non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion,” and because its claims are not meant to be factual, the group believes it cannot be held legally responsible for what it says.
Notably, Greenpeace has been actively pushing for legal action against ExxonMobil, alleging the company “knew” about climate change in the 1970s and 1980s before the world’s top scientists had come to any solid conclusions. When the Rockefeller-funded InsideClimate News and Columbia School of Journalism produced their #ExxonKnew hit pieces, Greenpeace immediately called for the Department of Justice to investigate ExxonMobil, saying,
“The Department of Justice should open a federal investigation immediately and hold the company legally accountable for misleading the public, lawmakers, and investors about the impacts of climate change. A DOJ investigation should be broad and look into the role of other fossil fuel companies, trade associations, and think tanks in sowing doubt about the risks of climate change.” (emphasis added)
Greenpeace claims it cannot be sued because its misleading claims were not meant to be factual, but it then claims the U.S. Department of Justice needs to investigate an energy company for what it calls “misleading the public.”
It will come as no surprise that Greenpeace is also funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rockefeller Family Fund, the same groups that have been bankrolling #ExxonKnew every step of the way.
Representatives from Greenpeace were in attendance at a secret strategy meeting in January 2016, held at the Rockefeller Family Fund offices in New York, where the activists met to brainstorm how “to establish in public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution,” “delegitimize them as a political actor,” and “force officials to disassociate themselves from Exxon.”
A former member of Greenpeace’s Board of Directors, Kenny Bruno, last year tweeted,
“I don’t want to abolish Exxon. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
If it wasn’t already abundantly obvious, these latest developments just go to show how much credulity Greenpeace has.
I hope Resolute takes these eco-clowns for every penny they have and they get shut down. Like the case won against Gawker for defamation, they deserve it.
(From Left) Richard Brooks, Forest Campaign Manager for Greenpeace, Steve Kallick, Director, International Boreal Conservation Campaign, and Avrim Lazar, President and CEO, Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), answer questions from the media in Toronto in 2010 after 21 member companies of the FPAC and nine leading environmental organizations unveiled the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement.
http://wpmedia.business.financialpost.com/2013/03/greenpeace.jpg?
or
http://wpmedia.business.financialpost.com/2013/03/greenpeace.jpg?quality=60&strip=all&w=620
Dream on guys. Goonpiece is solidly encased in Teflon coated baby polar bears. Ain’t nuthin hapnin to those hucksters.
Not this time, against this opponent.
And Trump was never going to be President.
And sit at the ‘Resolute’ desk.
Doesn’t surprise me in the slightest – they generate so much hype and spin Orwell could have had them as a department in 1984…
They are going to come unstuck.
This is the kind of crap that makes WUWT look like a right-wing, knee jerk, elitist hangout, and causes me to unsub, yet again.
Mzl, Then please leave here, permanently. Cause you plainly do not grasp the legal issues already proved and discussed upthread. So you are frankly just more stupidity evidence. Skeptics do not need more of that. We already have more than enough in Mann, Marccott, Karl, ….
I beg your pardon? Michael A. Lewis? Is this like a Facebook Troll post? “I don’t like you, or what you represent, and I’m going to unlike you, but I’ll stick around for all the booing and hissing, even if that means I have to like you in order to post about how I don’t like you!!!”
Meh. Whatever. The smell of dirty socks in your parent’s basement must be overpowering.
Don’t let the door etc.
Michael, I’m going to take a different tack than those above (no insult to them intended) and instead ask you to engage.
Can you explain precisely why this article is “crap”? Is there something in the article that is untrue? Misleading? What makes it “crap”?
Michael A. Lewis
If you get your knickers in such a twist over this article and headline after Anthony’s qualifying explanation, then do us all a favour and jog on.
So Michael A. Lewis–have you ever contributed to Greenpeace and are you now a member in good standing?
You sound like there’s only one side to an issue and your side is always right, even when they resort to Alinsky-style tactics.
If you support, financially or otherwise, an organization that claims dishonesty as a defense, wouldn’t it be better to disassociate yourself from that organization?
Otherwise, can you not personally be considered a co-conspirator?
(From your comment it appears the answers to my questions are a foregone conclusion.)
The truth sure does bother you.
By the way, there are no subscription fees here.
Finally, for someone who hates this site so much, why do you keep coming back?
Grandstanding then… grandstanding now.
Then it was whales, Nuclear testing, seal hunting, automobiles, trees …
Now it is Genetically Modified Organism ADVOCACY
No…. I am not getting on board with a leftover hippy grand-stander with a pedigree of activism and actions that put humanity second to his issue du jour. He has a lot of damage to undo while he is in the midst of creating more damage.
If I were the judge, I’d be bringing down the gavel as we speak.
all green policies are heads i win, tail you lose.
When can we expect a judgement in this case? Will we hear about it on wattsupwiththat?
The Steyn case is still dragging on almost 4 years later.
More ‘What’s brown, and rings?’
A rusty bell?
it makes a “dung” sound.
GMAFB. Welcome home.
From youtube ‘aerial views of the ground’ to ‘welcome home’.
that’s progress.
Isn’t GP guilty of Childish Behaviour here?
And why not, the rest of the world indulges in it, even the last POTUS.
Wonder why………………
But it’s far more serious than “childish behavior”–one observer noted the steep decline in cop killings after the last POTUS left.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Greenpeace just destroyed all credibility it may have ever had. At the very least, they should be forced to add the following disclaimer, taken from their own admission in legal filings, to every publication and solicitation they make in the future:
“All statements or accusations issued by Greenpeace should be considered hyperbole, heated rhetoric, and non-verifiable statements of subjective opinion that should not be taken literally.”
I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to understand the case described in this article. So my comment deals only with what I can read in this WUWT article.
Opinion is constitutionally protected. Apparently rank speculation, surmise or hyperbole are not defamation.
Even if it sounds ridiculous on the face of it, it is unsurprising that Greenpeace is using the defence that they are using.
On the other hand:
That seems to be an issue in Michael Mann’s suit against Mark Steyn. link
If we are being completely fair, we note that Greenpeace’s ‘Forest Destroyer’ remark seems similar to Tim Ball’s ‘state pen‘ remark. As always, the devil is in the details. YMMV
I don’t know if either of these suits will eventually go before a jury. IMHO going before a jury in the US is basically a roll of the dice. The US legal system often seems designed more to resolve disputes than find justice.
commieBob:
You say,
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!
Tim Ball clearly and unarguably provided a witticism when he wrote
There was no provision of wit and clearly no intention of anything other than misleading propaganda in the admitted “rhetoric” of calling a logging company a
Your assertion of some equivalence between those two remarks can only be
(a) stupidity verging on mental disorder
or
(b) a ‘red herring’ intended to pretend the Greenpeace propaganda was less egregious than it was.
Richard
I would not be stupid enough to predict the outcome of a case in civil court. Apparently you would.
commieBob:
I pointed out that your attempted ‘red herring’ is daft.
I did not say, infer, suggest or imply anything about any court and/or its possible decisions.
And I defer to your great experience of practicing stupidity.
Richard
My dear Richard, Greenpeace and Ball are two court cases. You have clearly predicted the outcome of both.
commieBob:
It is no wonder that you get so much wrong: you clearly cannot read.
You assert
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! I HAVE DONE NO SUCH THING!
TRY TO READ WHAT I WROTE!
I refuted your assertion of what WE – n.b. “we” and not any court case – should “note” when you wrote
Your assertion was a clear ‘red herring’ that attempted to ‘muddy the waters’ by introducing the issue of the Ball case which has no relevance of any kind to any of the matters raised in the above article.
Richard
we note that Greenpeace’s ‘Forest Destroyer’ remark seems similar to Tim Ball’s ‘state pen‘ remark.
Wow. For starters, Tim Ball used a rhetorical device to draw attention to existing bad behaviour. Greenpeace use a rhetorical device to create the accusation of bad behaviour, and further, behaviour which they themselves admit did not exist.
But the big difference (not detailed in this article) is that Greenpeace used their accusation of bad behaviour to lobby Resolute’s customers to stop buying from Resolute. Their false accusation was used as fact to deprive Resolute of revenue, and when challenged on it, admitted that it wasn’t fact at all.
To draw a comparison between the two is just…. Wow.
I was pretty clear that my comments were directed to the contents of this WUWT article only.
I think most people here would like to see Greenpeace go down in ignominy. Probably most of us are cheering for Dr. Ball. My point is that the same points of law that should, in a just world, get Tim off the hook are the same that could work for Greenpeace.
Sometimes we have to cheer for people we don’t particularly like. There is no reason to believe that the ACLU or twenty-five media organizations have any particular fondness for Mark Steyn but they have filed amicus briefs in his support. If Steyn loses, it will set a very bad precedent that will seriously crimp our freedom of speech.
commieBob;
My point is that the same points of law that should, in a just world, get Tim off the hook are the same that could work for Greenpeace.
Tim used a rhetorical device to draw attention to things that are true. Greenpeace used a rhetorical device to draw attention to things that are not true, and which they admit are not true. Wow Bob, just wow.
As for restricting your comments to the content of the article, I provided you with additional information. The usual response is “Oh, I didn’t know that. That changes things.” Not “my original comment stands because I am allowed to arbitrarily ignore additional information that doesn’t fit my position”.
David wrote: “Tim used a rhetorical device to draw attention to things that are true. Greenpeace used a rhetorical device to draw attention to things that are not true, and which they admit are not true.”
In that is the key difference, shouldn’t Ball, Steyn, Simberg and Greenpeace be required to go into court and affirmatively prove the truth of what they have written? Where else can “true” and “not true” be decided?
I don’t want tan uneducated DC jury to be deciding (by a preponderance of the evidence) “the truth” about the various whitewashed “investigations” into Climategate, I think we need a better way to distinguish what is worthy of a trial.
1 – My position is that we have to be fair.
2 – As ridiculous as it sounds, Greenpeace is using a defence that has been successfully used. See my links above. As far as I can tell, they are doing what they have to do.
3 – You have stated that it is a fact that Dr. Michael Mann has done something criminal that should see him sentenced to a term in a state penitentiary. Don’t do that unless you can prove it in a court of law. That’s way harder than you would think. See my links above.
commieBob:
Having claimed I wrote something I did not, you have now added an accusation that davidmhoffer wrote something he did not when you say to him
davidmhoffer made no such statement! He wrote
and he later clarified that by writing
A mention of “bad behaviour” that is known to be “true” is not in any way shape or form stating as “a fact” that the “bad behaviour” is “something criminal”.
Making the dubious assumption that your misrepresentations are not intended to be a distraction from the point of the above article, then your responses to davidmhoffer and me demonstrate you really, really do need to undertake a course in reading comprehension.
Richard
You implied that the case against Ball is completely without merit and the case against Greenpeace is solid. If that is the case, then Ball should win and Greenpeace should lose. That’s the same as predicting the outcome of the cases.
The question in defamation cases is about what a reasonable person would believe. If I say that you are a purple skinned lizard from Trafalmagore, nobody should believe it and it is not defamation. Any reasonable person should recognize that my statement is conjecture, hyperbole, and even deranged. Whether it works or not, that’s part of Greenpeace’s defence strategy.
With regard to David’s statement: The question isn’t what he intended to say. The question is what a reasonable person might construe that he said. Even innuendo can be defamatory. We’re dealing with civil law, not criminal law, so intent doesn’t really matter.
With regard to Greenpeace going after Resolute’s customers, that sounds like tortious interference.
commieBob:
Your persistent trolling is becoming annoying.
You now say to me
NO! HOW DARE YOU!?
I made clear statements and “implied” nothing. Importantly, very importantly, I have already refuted your lie that I made any comment of any kind about any court case when I wrote
Richard
‘credibility’ not ‘credulity’ is what they have lost some of. Credulity is what sustains them in the minds of poorly informed supporters, and is a feature of the supporters, not of Greenpeace itself. It does have some ownership of its credibility however. But let us hope that the ranks of the credulous have been reduced by this latest peek into the rotten core of Greenpeace, We all have limits to our credulity after all.
+100
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NUeNzCBqhu8
How Reagan era Hollywood debunked modern science
Let’s see what the Trump era Hollywood does
…receipts are down; revenues are declining; Trump is not returning phone calls.
They’re been exposed (politically, of course–they’ve been exposing themselves otherwise forever.)
Anthony:
The final sentence of the above article says.
I suspect it was intended to say,
If it wasn’t already abundantly obvious, these latest developments just go to show how much credibility Greenpeace has.
This comment is intended to be helpful.
Richard
Exxon provides gas for my car. The car gets me around; this makes me happy. What does GreenPeace do for me?
…it makes you pay more for that gas.
And the car. 😉
I have to take exception to the following by the author:
The “world’s top scientists” in the climate field are only “top” because of their work on a subject that is highly questionable. Hansen, Mann, and all the others are “top” only because of their work on anthropogenic global warming, which is an unproven hypothesis. The global warming we have documented (such as it is, with all the manipulation of the data) is presumed to be caused by increased CO2, but there is no actual empirical evidence of such. Being a “top scientist” in the current state of climatology is like being a “top scientist” in the field of Lamarckian evolution.
….. or alchemy!
How perfectly disingenuous of Greenpeace to oppose Resolute’s logging practices yet not issue a peep about clear-cutting timber in NC for wood-pellets to feed the subsidised – low effieciency – power generation in Drax. You’ve got to destroy the planet to save it (hyperbole).
“You’ve got to destroy the planet to save it (hyperbole).”
…… Nah, that’s sarcasm. 😉
Or protest the WWF for clear cutting tropical forests to plan palm oil plantations.
There was a case years ago in the North Sea when Shell wanted to simply sink one of the first North Sea Oil Platforms that it was de-commissioning. Greenpeace led a vociferous campaign stating this should not be allowed because the toxic wastes and materials on-board would generate a massive environmental disaster. Shell eventually backed off and spent £millions towing the Platform to a specialist Dry Dock in the UK where specialists techniques were used to remove and treat all such toxic wastes and materials and environmentally dispose it! Low and behold, the quantity of such toxic waste and material discovered was relatively miniscule and, given the dilution effects of the sea, would have created no environmental problems. Greenpeace never apologised!
If I remember correctly this was in the mid 90´s, the platform was called Brent Spar and Greencrap overestimated the amount of toxic waste by a factor of 10. Anything in the MSM? Nope.
GreenPeas is a big believer in the linear, no threshold theory of harm.
In their “minds” even one molecule of a toxic substance was too much.
What that thread leads to:
“My true New Yorkers, my die-hard Katz’s fans, know that we serve the best hot dogs in the city. We are consistently rated as No.1 in the hot dog department. There’s a reason for that: We make them with all-natural beef and crispy casing, and they’re juicy in the center. So get a hot dog first. Then, while you’re waiting for your pastrami, you eat your hot dog-it’s the perfect app. And there’s only one way to eat a hot dog, with mustard and sauerkraut. None of that Chicago dog nonsense: no relish, no pickles, no salad garnish, no ketchup. Well, ketchup is OK -if you’re under six years old. Don’t hate me, Chicago. I was rooting for the Cubs, but you don’t know how to eat a goddamn hot dog.”
You forgot the diced onions… mustard, kraut AND onions….
Gotta teach these New Yorkers everything….
🙂 sarc; and that other one… hypergolic was it?
I find Greenpeace’s defence unbelievable
The main defence against defamation is that the alleged defamatory statements are true
Greenpeace appears to seek to turn that principle on its head by arguing that its statements about Resolute were untrue!!
I cant see how such an illogical defence can be
sustained
The degenerate Rockefeller family trying to kill their founder and benefactor’s business is proof again that succeeding generations have a marked tendency to devolve and sink back into the pack.
” Canada has a ‘clear opinion’ exception.”
Saying “The world would be better off without Company X” is opinion. Saying “Company X kills people” is a statement of fact. Yeah, don’t see how they’re worming their way out of this one… guess they’ve gotten used to people not wanting to spend the money to hold them to account.
“In my opinion, company X kills people” is an opinion.
“Company X kills people” is a declaration of what you believe to be a fact.