Today feels like Groundhog Day to me. Once again I woke up and was greeted by yet another retailer ranking list from Greenpeace. This time it revisits its failed seafood sustainability campaign from the summer, but instead of ALL of the retailers failing because they refused to meet its unreasonable and arbitrary demands for seafood sourcing, some apparently “passed.” Greenpeace attributes the “major impact on grocery retailers” to their efforts. But that’s not the real story.

The real story is that the stores passed despite not a single shred of evidence that they are or have been working with Greenpeace on seafood sustainability in any way, shape or form. I have said it before and I will say it again, Greenpeace is a marginalized eco-extremist group that has chosen confrontation over cooperation for decades and its re-tooled “good news” approach on this campaign does not change that.

A mass email that went out today from Greenpeace Campaigner John Hocevar to a listserve of “friends” of his organization reveals the extremist group’s true colors. “…We’ve decided to make YOU the industry’s worst nightmare,” Hocevar says to listserve subscribers. Doesn’t exactly sound like a group retailers would be delighted to cooperate with. And there is no indication that retailers have.

The senior seafood buyer for Stop & Shop and Giant (Ahold USA) was quoted months ago as saying, “None of this is in reaction to the Greenpeace retailer rankings. These decisions were made as a result of the advice we received from the New England Aquarium.” But there they are moving steadily up in the rankings lauded for seeing the Greenpeace light. I can’t speak for Stop & Shop and Giant, but I can say that I am certain they don’t need Greenpeace’s approval or blessing to work on a responsible seafood sustainably program.

Aside from the fact that Greenpeace is trying to take credit for things it had nothing to do with, which–according to former members– it has a long history of doing, its rankings remain based on recommended sustainability practices that are often arbitrary and contradictory. When Greenpeace first released its seafood sustainability retailer rankings a “senior investigator” with the group told the Washington Post that Greenpeace was, “not recommending any species of fish to consumers.” And then later blogged that, “we think fishing should and must continue.” It’s the spirit of this kind of nonsensical grasping that led the Post to ask, “Anyone else scratching their heads?” When writing about another in the myriad ranking lists Greenpeace cranks out each year, Business Week wrote of its Green Guide to Electronics the “scoring system feels like a football field where the location of the goal line keeps changing.”

Whether the goal line has changed or not, there’s sure to be a lot of high-fiving and back patting at Greenpeace headquarters today. Elsewhere, there will be plenty of head scratching and dj vu.