If there should be an award for dud predictions on global warming, the environmental movement led by the likes of the oddly named Friends of the Earth (with the strikingly accurate acronym “FOE”) and equally grossly misnamed Greenpeace should win it hands down!

They unfortunately, are not helped by “weather scientists” at the British Met Office which is home to the Hadley Centre, one of the top centers of the man-made global warming faith.

In April it predicted: "The coming summer is expected to be a 'typical British summer."

Unfortunately, in August it was forced to admit: "(This) summer . . . has been one of the wettest on record across the UK." In September it predicted: "The coming winter (is) likely to be milder than average."

In fact, winter has been so cold that London had its first October snow in 74 years -- and on the day Parliament voted to fight "global warming".

The prediction business has not been so hot for the Met.  It has so far predicted 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2007 would be the world's hottest or second-hottest year on record, but nine of the past 10 years it predicted temperatures too high.

In fact, the Met this month conceded 2008 would be the coldest year this century.

That makes 1998 still the hottest year on record since the Medieval Warm Period some 1000 years ago. Indeed, temperatures have slowly fallen since around 2002.

As Roger Pielke Sr, Professor Emeritus of Colorado State University's Department of Atmospheric Science, declared this month: "Global warming has stopped for the last few years."

In the light of this, Deforestation Watch is compelled to ask: “If the Met can't predict the weather three months out, what can it know of the climate 100 years hence?”

So what are we to make of the dire predictions of FOE and Greenpeace that palm oil would destroy tropical rainforests at such a rate that global warming is inevitable?  What are we to think of their “predictions” that palm oil cultivation would lead to the extinction of the exotic great ape, the orang utan by 2011?

The trouble with their “predictions” is that they fail to take into account the incredible productivity and yield of the oil palm tree.  It is well known that one hectare of oil palm plantation yields more than 4.5 metric tons of oil.  This is more than 10 times the productivity of the competing oil seeds.  What this productivity translates into is that LESS land is required to yield the same quantity of oil.  That explains why Malaysia is able to maintain such a high degree of forest cover (more than 65%) despite being the world’s largest producer and despite more than a hundred years of oil palm cultivation.

Secondly, the oil palm tree, being a tree with a high leaf index is certainly far superior to the ground crops and bushes that constitute soy, canola or sunflower farms in CO2 sequestration.

Thirdly, the palm oil tree is virtually a perennial crop with a productive lifespan of up to 30 years.  This characteristic of the oil palm tree means that palm oil plantations are spared the ecological damage that is caused annually by the competing oil seeds with their annual harvest, replanting and fertilization cycles.

In the view of Deforestation Watch, this “prediction” bias is not the best way to frame a debate on so crucial an issue.  To work towards a better world, we need to cool the rhetoric, allowing us to have a measured discussion about the best ways forward.  Being smart about our future is the reason we have done so well in the past.  We should not abandon our smarts now and yield to the hooting, screaming and screeching tribe of global warming alarmists led by the likes of FOE and Greenpeace!  THE END.