It has often intrigued me as to why an august body such as the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) should lend its name to a dubious environmental platform?  It now appears that things are beginning to unravel for the UN IPCC as truth has a funny way of getting out.

The UN global warming conference currently underway in Poland is about to face a serious challenge from over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe who are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Amazingly, a full two thirds of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC.

Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists' equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears.

In the view of Deforestation Watch this painful and embarrassing unraveling of climate change hysteria for the UN IPCC is inevitable as it was built on cooked and cherry-picked data.  The only surprise is how politicians, academia and the media have lapped it all up!

In this respect, environmental organizations like the FOE and Greenpeace have been equally culpable, not least for their spurious and dubitable diatribes against palm oil.

The FOE dug deep into their factual trashcan to come up with a “report” called “Malaysian Palm Oil: Green Gold or Green Wash?” in which they accused the Malaysian state of Sarawak of developing “large-scale plantations at breath-taking speed having overexploited its timber resources and depleted its forests.”  The “report” contends that oil palm plantations are being expanded at the expense of tropical forests.  The trouble with the “report” is that Sarawak has an agriculture to forest land ratio of 8:76. That means that agricultural land in Sarawak is currently only 8%.  How could it then be remotely possible for Sarawak to be expanding palm oil plantations “at the expense of tropical forests”?

Greenpeace quickly jumped into the parade of the absurd!  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.

What raised the ire of the neutral is the way that Greenpeace went after the first shipment of RSPO (i) certified palm oil by United Plantations (UP), which raised the specter that Greenpeace may have more than environmental conservation in mind and are not genuine in their expressions of concern.  After all, UP have more than a hundred years of compliance with sustainable planting practices and have gone to great lengths to comply with the stringent and strict audit procedures of the RSPO.  Alleging that the shipment did not meet the RSPO’s standards, Greenpeace attempted, in their usual bumbling and inept fashion to cast aspersions on the sustainable practices of UP.  In a detailed response, UP exposed in a calm and measured manner, the fallacy and inaccuracy of Greenpeace’s allegations, which is not exactly a difficult task considering the Greenpeace’s propensity for hyperbole and half-truths.

For instance, Greenpeace’s alleged that UP had violated Principle 7 Criterion 7.3 of the RSPO, since no High Conservation Value (HCV) assessment was carried out for United Plantations on PT SSS1, a parcel of land in Indonesia acquired by UP. UP pointed out that contrary to Greenpeace’s allegation, a HCV assessment was indeed completed for the Runtu property of PT SSS1 on 21st January 2008 subsequent to the main assessment announcement posted on the RSPO web-site in January 2008. In their response, UP observed dryly that “had Greenpeace consulted United Plantations prior to making the report, we would have gladly made available the Comprehensive HCV report prepared by the relevant Indonesian experts.”

The real reason for Greenpeace’s and FOE’s intransigence towards palm oil can be gleaned from this Freudian slip in their statements: “Palm oil is the world’s most important category of vegetable oil. In 2007, palm plantations yielded more than 38 million tonnes of oil, making it one of the world’s biggest commodity products. In Europe, palm oil is now used as an ingredient in a large variety of consumer products, including margarine, ice cream, chocolate, detergents, soap and biscuits.”

It is irresponsible actions such as Greenpeace’s that will operate as a disincentive for genuine palm oil corporations to seek RSPO certification.

Finally, in the view of Deforestation Watch, although saber-rattling and rabble-rousing can gain column inches, truth has a way of coming out as the UN IPCC, FOE and Greenpeace are finding out!  THE END.

Reference
(i) Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil