Conversations That Matter: Environmentalist Patrick Moore"},"lengthSeconds":"1380","ownerProfileUrl"

Conversations That Matter is a partner program of the Center for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University. The production of this program is possible thanks to the support of the following and viewers like you, our guest today is environmental consultant dr. Patrick Moore in 1971 was one of the co-founders of Greenpeace today he is considered one of the most controversial environmental activists in the world when he co-founded Greenpeace he followed the principles in which he believed today he does the same thing in the 80s he looked at Greenpeace and said that the environmental movement had lost sight of what was important and had lost touch with science.

Greenpeace said that, in fact, it was he who had gone missing. Today we hear what he has to say on a variety of topics such as the climate, the environmental movement and GMOs. welcome organisms, thank you Stuart, it's a pleasure to be here, you are someone I have wanted to talk to for a long time because I find that at the moment the discussion that is taking place about the environment and everything to do with it is so intense that if you don't If you don't completely agree with someone then you must be drinking the bath water or you have been paid and I can't think of anyone who has deeper credentials in the world of environmental activism than you and at the time you you start to look at things and say well let me look at this versus this, it's not like that, it's like you do things campaign by campaign, what's the science behind this?

Why are we doing these things the moment you question any of those goals all of a sudden? you must be discredited, how did we get to this point? Well, one of the reasons we got to this point was because in the early years of the environmental movement we successfully addressed what you call the low-hanging fruit, I mean the obvious problems that you need a nuclear war to kill whales toxic waste those things were addressed the air is much cleaner now in our big cities in the west so at that time in the 70's mm-hmm the chinese have work to do but they are doing it now that they are getting some wealth and have discretionary income , as it is called, when it is personal, they can address their climate and pollution problems, so I think the problem is that we got to a point where we won and we were so successful that you almost had to invent issues to stay on the opposite side from the establishment because the establishment had basically adopted pretty well all the issues that we were defending in those early years because they made sense, they made sense and now we have a lot of problems, let's start with genetic modification mm-hmm there is nothing in those seeds that is harmful there are no ghosts there there is no demon there there is no evil there and that is why it ends up being directed towards Monsanto as an evil company mm -hmm, because there is really nothing in the seeds, the farmers prefer the seeds, that is why they buy them if in many countries they are allowed to do so. 66 I think GMO seeds are banned, so farmers can't buy them, but if they were legalized, they would. because they are better mm-hmm and that is why an improvement in technology is rejected and made to seem evil and harmful for no reason.

It's like when trains were invented and people said we don't want trains. I'll stick with the horses, yes, but what's also interesting about mentioning GMOs is that if you look at the case of Mark Lynas, who was the main proponent, he starts to look at the science and says he was wrong, the people who he followed it. in the anti-GMO campaign were not willing to listen to his reasoning as to why he had changed his stance there and then he goes back to well then why are they so opposed to this that if even the guy leading the charge in the anti-GMO campaign OGM were not willing to listen to his reasoning as to why he had changed his stance there?

GMO globally says: you know, I've looked at the science, I was wrong, there is money in opposing it, I mean the march against Monsanto and that GM Watch and Greenpeace are raising millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in opposing the GMOs and it's much bigger than the anti-vaccine movement, which is also completely stupid, but the GMO movement gained momentum with Frankenstein seeds, killer tomatoes, and Terminator seeds. All you know was a total propaganda campaign because propaganda is really about doing what should be a neutral descriptor like genetic modification, right, there's nothing wrong with it if you just look at the two words genetic, okay, it has to do with DNA and modification, as if it were genetically modified.

I'm not identical to my parents, so every moment you get sick, your genomic structure changes, well, your genomic structure changes just by getting injured or sick, so everything changes all the time and every single organism that was produced by sexual reproduction It's genetically modified so the term is is used in a very narrow way when it's actually a very broad term mmm-hmm and then they say this never happens in nature, that's not true, that's not true, no, It's called horizontal gene transfer by bacteria and it's been happening since bacteria were the first organisms of any kind were able to reproduce 3.5 billion years ago.

Bacteria have been carrying DNA fragments to other cells throughout evolutionary history. In fact, horizontal gene transfer is an important part of evolution along with the radiation it brings us. to nuclear energy and there is another issue that people are deathly afraid of, you know, both in charities and in Fukushima and Chernobyl there were deaths, most of them were fighting the fire and trying to contain the situation, but they were strongly irradiated, many of those people, yes, and that. That kind of reactor should never have been built in the first place. The Russians took a shortcut during the Cold War.

The West had no say in what Russia was doing and they brought their weapons reactors and cookie cutters from all over the former Soviet Union to power reactors. with a design that could explode, faulty engineering and probably faulty construction, as well as flooding practice at the time of the explosion, they did something they should never have done, they turned off the safety systems so as not to interfere with their experiment. mm-hmm, so it wasn't during normal operating procedures that Charity blew up, it was during an experiment mm-hmm and the experiment went very wrong, but in Fukushima no one died, of course, and in both cases they evacuated all these people in Fukushima .

They were evacuated before radiation. Yes, in Chernobyl they waited a week or two, so people are already irradiated. In both cases it is clear that the damage caused by the evacuation was much more serious than if the people were left where they were. Maybe they should. They've made sure not to eat food grown on that soil for a while, but 1,600 people died because of the evacuation in Fukushima, for example, they did it to evacuate, yes, they evacuated from an intensive care unit in a hospital to a gym. Of those people died because they no longer had intensive care and in the charity it was even worse, as in the case of the three hundred and forty thousand people who were evacuated after Chernobyl and were taken to housing blocks around the city of kyiv from their rural homes around the reactor suicide murder drug abuse alcoholism wife beating and child abuse and everything else that happened as a result of that in this ghetto that they created for these three hundred and forty thousand people there is not a single known case of cancer in those people that can be attributed to the radiation and such a terrible social situation that occurred when and even the World Health Organization they removed it probably because they were pressured to do so, but for some time they had a statement saying that the effect of the evacuation It was far worse than anything that could have been affected if they stayed where they were.

I have to hold on for just a second while we take a short commercial break. We'll be right back. Conversations That Matter is a nonprofit program. made possible by the charitable support of the following and viewers like you, please visit Conversations That Matter Dot TV and help us continue producing this show to take a step back a little more about what happened around 3 Mile Island, nothing, there was an evacuation. of pregnant women, but that was, you know, in anticipation of there being a problem, the problem never occurred and yet to this day there are myths, there is mythology around all of these things.

Greenpeace says that 300,000 people died for charity, you know, of course, they have no names and there are no graves, but they just make it up mm-hmm and that's a hallmark of the current movement is that they just make up things they're making up, for For example, this ocean acidification story around the climate and co2 issue mm-hmm that all the shellfish and corals are going to melt because the ocean is going to become acidic mm-hmm when in reality that could never happen, the ocean is actually basic, ok, I'm having trouble understanding that because I have no way of knowing how to do it. it measures whether the ocean is becoming acidic or not, but I had someone who actually can't, yeah, I had Brian Radel from the Pacific Salmon Foundation and he talks about ocean acidification.

God. The US Consulate brought in an expert Scott Downey from the East Coast. Who wants to come and talk about ocean acidification? And I say, okay, it's a meme, it's made up, they say that's how it all starts when they say that since 1750 the pH of the world's oceans has dropped by 0.1 pH, from 8.2 to 8.1 or is 8.3 to 8.2 whatever the pH of the ocean changes daily by more than half of a pH of 0.5, changes around the world near the coast, where the water comes from the land , it can be well below seventh Even at six point five or so, there is no ocean pH in the avenue and these guys say it was 8.3 or something in 1750 and now it's 8.2 because of the CO2, no one measured the pH of the oceans in 1750 as a

matter

of In fact, the concept of pH was not invented until 1913 and it was not until 1924 that an accurate tool was created to measure pH and you cannot measure pH continuously , it can only be measured once and then it has to be measured again. -Hmm, with a sample, there is no tool that you can put in the water that will give you a reading of the tract like you can with temperature or high humidity, so you are saying that the comparison between 1715 is now simply done in a model, so you find in all these things when you look at it, they say evidence, they say there is evidence that oxygen must be depleted in the oceans by 2030, that's a big one that just came out, it's all over the media, the oxygen will be depleted. and they say there is evidence, where is the evidence?

It's in a computer model where they put assumptions, then they build a computer model that gives them the answer they want, and then they tell you that they have evidence that this is going to happen in the future. future that's what the climate models are the same the IPCC models there are one hundred and two of them now 102 different models of more than 100 and 200 million dollars each institution that studies the climate has to have its own supercomputer model of the future climate and so put in the information that we learned when we were punching cards in college, that trash is in trash, we knew that back then and if there's a really good graph, you can get it on the internet, just Google the climate model of the IPCC versus reality. or something like that and you will see that the climate models are taken from above and the reality down here barely changes mm-hmm, you didn't know until I tried to read several of those reports and I don't get very far, it gets incredibly confusing for me, it's very thick and, but here's the kind of thing that needs to be analyzed.

They say we are very likely the main cause of warming since 1950. call it the mid 20s 1880s mid 20th century they just we go back that's when they first measured CO2 in the environment in Hawaii 1959 Keeling that's The first accurate measurement of CO2 on a continuous basis began in 1959, but the IPCC recognizes that the amount of CO2 emissions from human activity before 1950 was not significant compared to what it has been now, it is an exponential curve mm -hm and that's true, it's happening, but the Earth's temperature isn't rising on an exponential curve, it's basically been flat for 20 years except for this last El Nino, which spiked like it did in 98, yeah, so everyone says: "there it is, we are getting warmer, yes, but that is an effect of El Niño, yes, which is completely different, it will be La Niña again." Yes, and we don't know where it goes from here.

This is our second break, but I'm looking forward to getting back to it. We'll be back in a moment. Conversations that

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are made possible by a nonprofit program. Thanks to the charitable support of the following and viewers like you, visit Conversations That Matter Dot TV and help us continue producing this show. You know the problem is that people who say they canpredicting the future they seem smarter than everyone else because if you say oh no I can't predict the future like that guy can you know? But they can't predict the future. People have been Trent.

Most predictions of the future are about doom. There are many and those are the only ones that seem like it. to gain a foothold, yes, oh my god, I'm going to die if I do it, but if I predict it, there will be record grain harvests in 2040 mm-hmm, who's going to pay attention that no one cares? Well, because they, but you, must be receiving. Someone paid him to make that prediction accurately, but this year there are record grain crops and even with the drought in India this year, they have maintained their grain crops thanks to technology, GMOs and GMOs.

Well, not so much, there are no GMO grains in India, there are no GMO grains anywhere anymore because bread is sacred and is the sustenance of life, so we should not allow it to be genetically modified. wheat and although they have produced genetically modified wheat that is superior to the wheat we have now in terms of resistance to weeds and insects and all that is not allowed and here is a good example The Philippines has an approved genetically modified corn crop mmm- mmm Bangladesh has a genetically approved brinjal crop they call brinjal India has a genetically modified cotton crop so every single one of them in South Asia I mean surely they could all have all three it would be a logical thing if the Philippines is going to have corn , why not?

Bangladesh in India, if India can have cotton, why can't Bangladesh in the Philippines? Where is the logic? There is nothing, it is pure politics and, you know, I am still an activist because I have been campaigning for Golden Rice for three years. true, and there is a situation in which the anti-human aspect of the green movement comes directly to the foreground: two million children die each year from vitamin A deficiency, a quarter of a million of them have gone blind before they die, and Greenpeace is opposes Golden Rice. that if it were a drug that could cure malaria or AIDS or Ebola or this new virus then it would be adopted immediately and 15 years later Golden Rice is still not approved and the main environmental movement is still opposed even though it could save 2 million children every year and they have all these arguments about it being false and how it will cause an alteration of the gene pool in the world or whatever, they have a lot of arguments that some people might think are valid because they published it, they say that there will be unforeseen consequences to human health and the environment from Golden Rice when someone says unforeseen, it's like a boogeyman behind a tree somewhere, you know it's going to come out and scare you, but what is it really?

What it means is that we don't know anything about this, what could go wrong, because if they knew something real that could go wrong, they would say what it was, so the word unforeseen is really a piece of misleading propaganda because it makes people afraid. . the unknown when in reality it is just that it is unknown nothing is known and it could go wrong but that has been the course of human development we try things we find out what is going to happen we make adjustments exactly but that is my perspective these people what is their position is that we shouldn't try in the we shouldn't do anything, so the so-called precautionary principle applies, which is actually not a principle if it were, you wouldn't get out of bed in the morning mm-hmm, but the precautionary approach en Look both ways before crossing the street and then look again, but you are going to cross the street and when you see that there are no Moors on the coast, a jet plane leaves or a grand piano falls through a window in the apartment. up and kills you while you're at it. crossing the street that was the risk you took even though you had done everything possible to avoid any risk you cannot eliminate the risk I love your passion unfortunately I have to take a short commercial break here we will be back in a moment

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that matter it is a program without profit made possible by the charitable support of the following and viewers like you, visit Conversations That Matter Dot TV and help us continue producing this show.

Hear people say: yeah, okay, that's an individual risk. What we are talking about is existential risk, if we make a mistake, we are done. I was at an event the other night where someone was saying mmm, we have a year or two and then we're done, what a horrible way to feel when you wake up in the morning thinking what a horrible way to teach your kids mm-hmm that's what What really bothers me is that our children are being taught that we are evil and that nature is good and that we are destroying nature and that's all and we've done it right, it's all going to end, we're sinking into extinction, that's all we can do.

You know, a beautiful young woman in an 11th grade class in New York City calls me dr. Moore, when do you think the world is going to come to an end like it's going to happen in your lifetime and that's what people are being taught and with the climate issue, especially because you know the climate issue has corrupted science more than anything else since then? the Enlightenment is like going back to Galileo and the Inquisition mm-hmm I mean most people don't know that Galileo was actually put under house arrest for the rest of his life, that's true, and he was the only one who spoke , was a skeptic.

Yes, and today we are told that skeptics should be imprisoned. There is not just one climate skeptic. There are thousands of us, mm-hmm, including people like Freeman Dyson, and we'll let you top physicists know, Ivor, how many pounds the last one weighs. name G haver prominent Nobel laureate who walked away from the Physical Society of America saying yes, science, how can you say science is complete because science is never complete? Corruption is the public funding of science and it has become, I mean, the private sector. never fund this because what is the product is there a useful product that comes out of climate research what is the main product?

Being part of the United Nations, it is not a scientific institution, but they use science in a way to perpetuate themselves. Most people think that the IPCC is studying the climate. No, their mandate is only to look at human effects on the climate, not the natural effects they have. they have been changing the climate for millions of years, they only look at the human effects, so if they said well it's not actually being caused by humans, but by the Sun and ultraviolet radiation activity, yes, if they said that, or even if they said it right. It is being caused by people but it is not a disaster it is not a catastrophe a little warming will be good and also carbon dioxide is making all trees and food crops grow 15% faster than 50 years ago and that is a A really positive thing, so a little warming and fertilizing will eventually return the CO2 to a level that the plants find most productive is a good thing, as you can see Dr.

More is a passionate guest, so passionate that we went much further beyond our allotted time and gave us enough material for two shows, so we're going to finish this conversation now and then and then pick it up in a later episode.