Greenpeace BS

I've commented before about Frack-Off's spectacular hypocrisy, and a recent video that really brings out the science around shale gas development.

In this post, here's Greenpeace using bullshit in lieu of actually managing to get a story. This actually came out a little while ago, but it was just before Iain Stewart's Horizon documentary, and then events in Balcombe, which have somewhat dominated most of my "social media time".

In a post from Lawrence Carter of Greenpeace, who reckons he has some sort of scoop, trapping a Cuadrilla executive on tape "admitting that everything he says in public is bullshit". You can listen to the recording here, and, as always, judge for yourself.

Funnily enough, the tape cuts just after the "bullshit", although you can just about hear the "but" that comes afterwards. I've asked Lawrence for the rest of the tape (and I'm not the only one to do so), strangely enough it has not been forthcoming. Perhaps the tape just happened to conk out just at that point. Or maybe he goes on to say something along the lines of, as Nick Grealy suggests: "everything I say sounds like utter f***ing bullshit, but it's the real deal". Or as I imagine it might be: "everything I say sounds like utter f***ing bullshit, but it's actually backed up by peer reviewed science".

According to Lawrence, it "was something about renewables and shale gas living hand in hand, aka bullshit". I'm not sure how that ranks as bullshit, given the generally agreed consensus that large-scale renewable grid penetration requires quickly-dispatch-able gas power plants as back-up - read here for a recent report from Citi-Group on the issue, for example. This is borne out in real life too, as well as in studies: renewable energy has boomed in the USA the same time as the shale gas revolution. Texas is the undoubted 'home' of shale gas, yet renewable energy has grown significantly over the same time period.

Greenpeace have an annual turnover of over £200 million. That makes them a lot larger than the likes of Cuadrilla. I think that they have a certain responsibility to act in good faith as they pursue their agenda - bullshit like this simply does not cut it.