The complete absence of evidence that man is causing global warming was one of the key messages presented in the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. (i) The documentary argues the theory that man-made greenhouse gases are causing global warming is a scam.

Following its screening in the United Kingdom in 2007, more than 260 complaints against it were lodged with the British Office of Communications, known as Ofcom.

This July, Ofcom released its long-awaited ruling, which included finding the program did “not materially mislead viewers so as to cause harm or offence” by arguing man-made global warming is the biggest scam of modern times.

By contrast, the British High Court ruled Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, contained 11 serious inaccuracies that must be pointed out to children if the film is to be shown in schools.

With growing numbers of people now questioning the basis of the man-made global warming theory, there is increasing speculation that the defeat of the British Labor Party in the local body elections, and more recently in the by-election for the party’s former safe seat of Glasgow East, indicates a change in the mood of the British public against the government’s climate change agenda.

A recent survey suggests more than 70 percent of British voters are no longer willing to pay higher taxes to fund climate change initiatives, with two-thirds of those surveyed believing the green agenda has been exploited in order to increase taxes.

In his article “A Green Miscalculation,” published in the Financial Post, the editor of the international science policy network CCNet, Benny Peiser, states, “For many years, Labor has chanted the green mantra that in order to prevent disastrous climate change caused by excessive energy consumption, Britons must make personal sacrifices in their lifestyle and behavior. No other government in the world has employed the specter of climate catastrophe as forcefully as Britain; no other administration has saddled taxpayers with a heavier burden of green taxation.”

This is not only scientifically ignorant, it’s a political mistake, Peiser noted. “Labor’s fundamental miscalculation has been to bank on the strength of the environmental movement and climate change anxiety in an attempt to ‘modernize’ its agenda. Labor’s climate policy, however, is now backfiring, turning into one of its biggest political liabilities,” he wrote.

With the 2008 general election fast approaching in the United States, American politicians might like to learn from the U.K. experience. That experience suggests politicians who ignore public sentiment on the climate change issue might just feel voter backlash at the polls.

However, political mistake or not, palm oil has been the target of smear campaigns by environmental NGO’s using these exact same premises of climate change, alleging incredulously that these tree crops contribute to global warming and threaten the extinction of the orang utan.

In this respect, one of the worst is the Friends of the Earth (FOE)!  Publishing a “report” called “Malaysian Palm Oil: Green Gold or Green Wash?” FOE sought to paint a picture of the Malaysian State of Sarawak developing large-scale plantations at breath-taking speed having overexploited its timber resources and depleted its forests. The "report” asserts that oil palm plantations are being expanded at the expense of tropical forests.  Ironically, in the same breath, the FOE massively contradicted themselves on Page 30 of the said “report” by declaring that “it is unlikely that virgin forests are still cleared for oil palm expansion in Malaysia.”

If we were to examine the cold facts, it becomes patently clear that FOE is well off the mark here.  Sarawak, it is well established has an agriculture to forest land ratio of 8:76.  That is to say that agricultural land in Sarawak currently stands at only a paltry 8%.  

How can it be credible then for the “report” to allege that Sarawak is expanding palm oil plantations “at the expense of tropical forests”?  Whatever plantations that are established in Sarawak are clearly established on previously logged over areas, areas that have been, in FOE’s own words “overexploited…for timber resources”.

The credibility of this “report” can also be called to question as the Malaysian co-author of the “report”, Ms Meenakshi Rahman of Sahabat Alam, the Malaysian chapter/representative for FOE was blacklisted and declared persona non grata by the state of Sarawak? Could personal vendetta be behind the fact that the State of Sarawak was singled out for this diatribe?

Deforestation Watch takes the view that environmental groups such as the FOE owe a duty to the environmental movement never to abuse their position for pecuniary or personal reasons.  A personal vendetta certainly ranks as one of the most heinous of examples of abuse of power – the power to generate and influence public opinion!  THE END.

References:
(i) The Great Global Warming Swindle (DVD) is available through Amazon.com.