Approximately 200,000 people have died due to global terrorism in the last 10 years.

During the same time, many millions of people (mostly women and children) have died due to policies promoted by Greenpeace and other “green” organizations (e.g. anti-DDT, anti-golden rice, anti-fossil fuel).

I’ve said it before…I don’t really care where our energy comes from…as long as it is abundant and affordable. Until someone comes up with an alternative energy source with those two characteristics, humanity is stuck with fossil fuels as our primary energy source.

It’s not like the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior runs on solar energy.

Since poverty is the leading cause of premature death in the world, and fossil fuels have enabled the world to prosper and live longer, more comfortable lives, being against fossil fuels is, in my opinion, either misguided or evil.

It appears that Greenpeace is pulling out all the stops to minimize the impact that we skeptics have on the global warming debate. In addition to the COP21 meeting in Paris wrapping up this week, today’s Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness hearing chaired by Ted Cruz appears to also be an event Greenpeace is trying to thwart.

Here’s what’s been happening. Last month I was contacted by what now appears to be a front-group (or fictitious group?) for Greenpeace called “Hamilton Ellis”, supposedly headquartered in Beirut. Supposedly on behalf of Mideast oil interests, they contacted a number of skeptics with offers to pay for reports on climate change.

Here’s the email I received:

Dear Dr Spencer,

I am a partner in a business advisory firm based in Beirut, working across sectors but primarily focusing on energy and defence.

One of our clients is an E&P company that is concerned about the impacts of the UN climate talks later this month. I am writing to you now because we are looking to commission a briefing to be released early next year, following the talks, which highlights the crucial role that oil and gas have to play in developing economies, such as our client’s MENA region.

Given your influential work in this area and your position at the University of Alabama we believe a very short paper authored or endorsed by yourself could work strongly in our client’s favour. Does this sound like a project you would be interested in discussing further?

Kind regards,

Jonathan
—
Jonathan Ellis

Hamilton Ellis Associates
Tel: +961 1 956 412
Fax: +961 1 956 355

hamiltonellis.com

If you try their website, you get a blank page. A Google search turns up no previous consulting work.

It turns out what they were really trying to do was to find out what kind of fossil fuel funding skeptics have been receiving. I am told that more on this revelation (which was not my discovery) will be forthcoming at ClimateDepot.com. (UPDATE: I’ve published the information, in an article by Dr. Patrick Moore, here.)

Of course, the popular meme has been that we skeptics are paid large sums by Big Oil and Big Coal.

I wish.

Over the years, I’ve charged to give talks out-of-state, taking vacation time away from my research day job (which is 100% federal and state funded) to avoid any charges of “double-dipping”. A few of those talks have been for fossil fuel-related organizations, a few have been for environmental organizations, but most have not.

My affiliations with the Marshall Institute and Cornwall Alliance have been on a volunteer basis. I’ve also been paid a modest amount to write a couple of reports over the years, as well as to help in a recent legal case. The total compensation I’ve received is very small compared to my day job, and it’s even very small compared to the ad revenue I receive from our little weather website, Weatherstreet.com.

Many years ago I was paid to write articles for a website called TCSDaily.com, which turned out to be fossil-fuel funded. I didn’t know that at the time, but I don’t think it would have mattered. After all, like most of us in the modern world, I’ve given far more money to fossil fuel interests than I’ve ever received from them. 😉

I’m still waiting for that Big Check from Big Oil. After all, I’ve been carrying their water for years. In my case, my support of fossil fuels (and the prosperity and longevity they have enabled humanity to achieve) goes back decades. It’s a no-brainer. If there is another energy technology as cheap and reliable and large-scale, I’m all for it.

But there isn’t. So I’m not.

And I really don’t care if every CEO of every coal and petroleum company eventually sides against me. (Why should they take a public relations hit, when they know that – at the end of the day –people still need their energy?)

You see, as a scientist I won’t accept the premise…the premise that more CO2 in the atmosphere is “carbon pollution”, and that it is necessarily a bad thing.

After all, more CO2 is causing global greening, and increased crop productivity, with only mild warming (which isn’t necessarily mostly due to increasing CO2) and no demonstrable increase in severe weather.

But, since Greenpeace seems to think that doing any work for a fossil fuel interest is bad, let’s talk about what is “evil” for a moment.

Besides promoting global warming policies that will cause energy poverty (and if there’s one thing that kills people reliably, it’s poverty), Greenpeace has been promoting anti-human policies for decades. Their opposition to golden rice alone is enough to call them out as bigger enemies of humanity than ISIS…at least so far. We really don’t see the harm they do splashed over the TV screen because it’s the poor in third world countries that suffer the most from the policies they promote.

In 2014, terrorism killed over 32,000 people. But golden rice could save as many as 1,000,000 poor children’s lives each year, by supplying necessary vitamin A….yet, Greenpeace has been actively campaigning against poor countries growing golden rice.

Although they now deny it, they were also opposed to DDT, which is relatively safe and saves millions of lives.

It’s not just religious organizations calling them out. Atheists have been outraged, too: The Evil that Greenpeace Does.

Of course, Dr. Patrick Moore famously left the organization he helped found and lead when it became clear that they were valuing nature above human life. Patrick also has called them evil.

And this is besides their opposition to the primary fuels that power the global economy and allow people to live long lives free from the misery that poverty brings.

So, does Greenpeace have any moral authority on matters related to the wellbeing of humans? There seems to be a serious shortage of it in green circles these days.

For example, George Soros, after years of driving down the value of coal companies by promoting “green energy” policies, turned around and recently bought over 1 million shares of Peabody Coal at dirt-cheap prices. So, where is his moral authority on environmental matters?

And I’m also reminded of Al Gore selling Current TV to Al Jazeera (funded by Mideast oil interests) last year, netting him $100 million.

Apparently, hypocrisy runs deep in the Green Blob.

If Greenpeace believes that there are too many poor people in the world using up the natural resources they want for themselves to power their ships and commute 250 miles by jet to work, then they are on the right track with the policies they support.

They just shouldn’t expect to keep the moral high ground in the process.