Greenpeace's executive director, Gerd Leipold, was busted by the BBC's Stephen Sackur for lying about the effects of global warming in the video below, which is making the rounds on the global warming-skeptic blogs.
On July 15th, Greenpeace put out a press release saying the arctic ice caps would melt by 2030, a claim that Leipold now admits is false. Rather than own up, and say it was a mistake and he'd never let it happen again, he says Greenpeace is "a pressure group" that has to "emotionalize issues, and we're not ashamed" of it.
This is horrible. Imagine if an oil company executive, or the head of the American Petroleum Institute made the same concession.
This is the problem with the global warming debate. Most people don't feel the effects of a warming planet on day to day basis, so proponents need to overstate the effects to get people's attention. Of course, the devastating effects are always predicted to be 20-30 years away, so we can't call them out if they're wrong. (See yesterday's meme: New York To Feel Like Atanta in 2050!)
When someone does call them out, they can't just admit it. Like in this video, or in yesterday's McClatchy story, which Matt Drudge highlighted, that points out the planet's temperature is cooler over the past ten years.
All the scientists in that story said it was "natural variability" that's causing the planet to cool. They're probably right, but it comes across as reactionary when someone suggests that planet is cooling, and scientists rush to defend it with such a non-scientific argument.
When it's warming, it's because of CO2, when it's cooling it's because of nature. How is anyone supposed to take that seriously?
Meanwhile, Greenpeace is undermining the whole climate-change movement.