Put a panda in a room with a bald eagle, a bear, a kangaroo, a tiger, a Dachshund, a bulldog, a cockerel and a golden pheasant and what do you get? The answer is a lot of noise, violence, feathers and fur − and very little harmony.

Much the same can be said of international talks on climate change. Put the representatives of the countries symbolized by these animals in the same room and the results tend to be noise, division and recrimination.

And so it is with the United Nations IPCC (i) and the Kyoto Treaty, which unfortunately for the FOE and their environmental brethren, have been exposed as a sad indictment against the intellectual integrity and credibility of the environmental protection community, based as they were, in our view, on scientific fraud and data manipulation!  

Results of a recent poll conducted in 11 countries released this week in advance of the start of a major international conference in Poland where delegates are considering steps toward a new international climate-change treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, showed a new public wariness and skepticism towards the environmental movement.

The 11 countries surveyed were Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. There were 2,000 respondents surveyed in China, including 1,000 in Hong Kong.

Less than half of those surveyed, or 47 per cent, said they were prepared to make personal lifestyle changes to reduce carbon emissions, down from 58 percent last year.  Only 37 per cent said they were willing to spend "extra time" on the effort, an eight-point drop.  And only one in five respondents - or 20 per cent - said they'd spend extra money to reduce climate change.  That's down from 28 per cent a year ago.

Recently, satellite-derived global temperature measurements showed only little warming which are at odds with the temperatures obtained on the ground that show more warming. However, according to Jarl R. Alhbeck of Abo Academic University in Finland, after 1995 both sources show about the same, (see graphs below drawn from Hadley-data (ground) and satellite data (NASA)). (ii)

Says Alhbeck: “A good reason to start a diagram from 1995 is that since that year no big (cooling) volcano eruptions have disturbed the temperature trend. Contrary to common belief, there has been no or little global warming since 1995 and this is shown by two completely independent datasets.”

He pointed out that “the curves look very normal and it seems probable that the natural recovery from the little ice age has went on without any significant decelerations or accelerations caused by human activity.”

He concluded “It is impossible to say what is going to happen in the future. But so far, real measurements give no ground for concern about a catastrophic future warming!”

Climate change alarmism must be a profitable business.  How else can it be explained when environmental organizations such as the oddly named Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Greenpeace have made it something of a career attacking palm oil, obviously as a hired gun for competing oil lobbies?

The sheer irrationality and incongruity of their target, palm oil intrigues independent and neutral observers for they have “elected” to attack probably the most sustainable of all oilseed crops, accusing it of a litany of environmental transgressions.

Trundling out scatterbrained and poorly researched campaigns targeting various industries, particularly palm oil, these two NGO’s have lost every last vestige of any credibility that they have built up over the years.

For instance, in a “report” called “Malaysian Palm Oil: Green Gold or Greenwash?” the FOE makes the tenuous and false claim that palm oil is causing massive deforestation and consequently, global warming. Just why the FOE should single out palm oil for these outrageously dishonest attacks is intriguing and baffling, to say the least.

For one, palm oil is clearly one of the most productive oilseeds around, yielding more than 4.5 metric tons of edible oil per hectare planted.  This incredible yield does not sound remarkable until it is juxtaposed against the typical yield of its competitors, such as soy, sunflower and canola, which typically yields less than 0.5 metric tons per hectare.  Logic dictates that such high productivity should mean that palm oil requires far less acreage to produce the same unit of edible oil as its competitors.  

This probably explains why Malaysia, despite being the world’s largest producer of palm oil for more than a century can still boast forest cover of more than 65%.  Read that gain – one hundred years of palm oil cultivation by the world’s largest producer still leaves 65% forest cover. This might not sound like much, until we compare it against the typical 20% forest cover in the countries of the industrial west from which the “paragons of environmental virtue” such as the FOE hails!

Greenpeace, not to be outdone quickly joined the parade of the infantile!  Donning monkey suits and screeching like the juvenile delinquents that they really are, monkey suited Greenpeacers scaled the walls of Unilever factories throughout Europe, on the grounds that Unilever was a major consumer of palm oil, despite Unilever having helped initiate the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

In the view of Deforestation watch, it is time that we take a hard and close look at the legitimacy of the scaremongering of the climate alarmists like FOE and Greenpeace, examine their agenda and bank accounts and carefully examine all the science, economic, political and ethical factors surrounding climate change issues!  THE END.

References
(i)  UN International Panel on Climate Change
(ii) http://www.factsandarts.com/articles/no-significant-global-warming-since-1995/