Al Gore was addressing the House and Senate on global warming.  Showing that he had lost none of his skills as a master politician, he put forth a litany of half-truths that he twisted into a morality tale.

Arguing that the Earth has a fever, Gore says that 10 of the hottest years in history came in the last 11 years, and this proves we must do something, because, "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor."  Nobody told Gore that the world had been much, much hotter than today and yet no giant space nanny fed it medicine.

The earth has been generally warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the early 19th century, but that has not been uniform. It's had warming phases (the 1920s and 1930) and cooling phases (the 1940s to 1970s).

It's also had periods like today, when temperatures are flat - there hasn't been much warming since 1998. Yes, it's warmer today than it was a hundred years ago, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Talking about fevers is misleading, but it's a great rhetorical trick.
 
In the view of Deforestation Watch, palm oil has had to undergo a similar gauntlet of half truths, lies and spin concocted by “environmental” organizations such a s Greenpeace and the curiously named Friends of the Earth (with an even more curious acronym “FOE”).

Accusing palm oil, one of the most sustainable of oilseed crops of causing massive deforestation and thus contributing to global warming, Greenpeace and FOE were at their alarmist best!

As a vegetable oil, palm oil has the highest yield per hectare amongst all oilseed crops with a productivity exceeding 4.5 metric tons per hectare (compared to the 0.5 metric tons typical of competitors like soy, rapeseed or sunflower).  What this extraordinary yield translates to, in practical terms is that palm oil requires less land which in turn leads to LESS deforestation and land clearing to cultivate the crop.

When compared to rapeseed, soyabean and sunflower, palm oil based biofuels has the lowest life cycle greenhouse gas (LCA GHG) emissions. When compared to fossil fuel, the LCA GHG emission reduction savings of palm oil exceeds the threshold value of 35%, which easily qualifies palm oil as a green fuel in the EU.

If all the world’s arable land currently planted with oil seed crops (estimated at 177 million hectares) were to be planted with palm oil, 651 million tons of vegetable oil could be produced, which would be almost 5 times the global requirements for edible oils, all without the need to open up precious arable land.

Yet the triumvirate of Greenpeace, FOE and the Rainforest Action Network has seen it fit to make unfounded charges against palm oil of causing deforestation.  In the view of Deforestation Watch, rather than the current irrational attacks against such an inherently sustainable crop, what is required is an informed debate about the costs and benefits of replacing all edible oilseed crops with palm oil. Another debate should focus on those policies' economic costs.

Could it be that Greenpeace, FOE, RAN and Al Gore do not want to have those debates, because the majority of evidence suggests that emissions reduction will be very costly and will have little effects?  Meanwhile, 2 billion people around the world go without electricity. About 3 million die each year because of fumes given off by primitive stoves.  THE END.