It has been 20 years since NASA's James E. Hansen testified before a joint Congressional hearing that there was a strong "cause and effect" relationship between "current" climate conditions and emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The then prevailing conditions in 1988 were a big heat wave and drought in the eastern U.S. The public bit.

Two days later, 70 percent of the respondents to a CNN poll agreed with the proposition that 1988's misery was caused by global warming. Yet in fact, no climate scientist can ever blame an individual weather event, like a heat wave or drought, on global warming.

Hansen's testimony that year included a graph of annual temperatures, with a dramatic spike on the last point, the January-May temperatures. He knew, as does any scientist, that a sample of monthly data will vary much more than year-to-year temperatures, and that monthly data could give a false impression of extremely hot (or cold) conditions, compared to annual temperatures.

On June 23, 1988, he delivered his testimony in an unusually toasty hearing room. Why was it so warm? As then-Sen. Tim Wirth (D., Colo.), some years later told ABC's Frontline: "We went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn't working inside the room...it was really hot."

Every climate scientist knows there's been little, no — zero — net change in surface temperatures in the last ten years, as shown in the climate history of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Unless you throw in a volcano (there hasn't been a decent one in the last decade), none of Hansen's valid 1988 models predict what's actually happened. He simply predicted too much warming, especially for the last ten years.  In other words, Hansen's 1988 predictions were flatly wrong about the extent of global warming.

Like Hansen, environmental NGO’s like the Rainforest Network (RAN), Greenpeace, the Friends of the Earth (FOE), Wetlands and Mongabay.com have never been disinclined to employ smoke and mirrors and stagecraft for their cause.

RAN for one, recently made some wild allegations that Malaysia plans to increase palm plantations by one million acres and that the orang utan may go extinct by 2011. 

How Malaysia may increase such plantations by one million acres, RAN does not say.  After all, Malaysia is a small country with a land mass of only 328,000 square km.  Despite being the world’s largest producer of sustainable palm oil and despite having developed palm oil plantations for over a hundred years, Malaysia can still boast forest cover of more than 65% which is far higher than the 20% forest cover typically found in the countries of the industrialized West, from which lobbies such as RAN has emerged to take this unconscionable stance against palm oil!  Take the Malaysian state of Sarawak which is the most active in developing palm plantations.  Its agricultural to forest ratio is 8%:76%.  Compare this to the united Kingdom for instance.  The UK has the typical Western nation agricultural to forest ratio profile of 70%:12%.  It is about time that RAN comes off its moral posturing!

However, it is their allegation that orang utans may go extinct by 2011, a short three years from now that reveals how credible this organization is!  Whilst it’s true that the most recent estimate for the Sumatran Orangutan is around 7,300 individuals in the wild (i) while the Bornean Orangutan population is estimated at between 45,000 and 69,000. (ii) How can the orang utan, by any leap of logic or stretch of imagination, go extinct within 3 years. 

This is tantamount to insulting the intelligence of RAN’s supporters and sympathizers!  Moreover, major conservation centres had been established in Indonesia including those at Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan, Kutai in East Kalimantan, Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, and Bukit Lawang in the Gunung Leuser National Park on the border of Aceh and North Sumatra. In Malaysia, conservation areas have been set up and they include the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre in Sarawak and Matang Wildlife Centre also in Sarawak, and the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary near Sandakan in Sabah.  The Malaysian Palm Oil Council has also recently launched the Malaysian Palm Oil Wildlife Conservation Fund at the International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference. Malaysia is also a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992).

Says RAN campaigner, Brihannala Morgan in a recent posting on an environmental blog:  “Deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia-- far and away the largest producers of palm oil-- has been going on for decades, driven by market demand and the IMF's structural readjustment policies. Even before biofuels came on the market, palm oil was causing massive rainforest destruction.”

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, she then gives away the real reason for RAN to launch its campaign against palm oil:  She says: “America's consumption of palm oil is set to increase with increased demand for palm oil biofuels... but the vast majority of the demand still comes from food and cosmetics. Taking on both of these uses of palm oil is the only real way to make a dent in our consumption of this rainforest destroying oil.” (iii)

In our view, this campaign by RAN is totally unjustified and illogical and smells of the grand scheme of an American lobby, with the connivance of RAN to stop the growth of palm oil and in the process, preserve western hegemony!

References:
(i)  Singleton, I.; Wich, S.A. & Griffiths, M. (2007), Pongo abelii. In: IUCN 2007. 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>, <http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/39780/all>. Retrieved on 2 April 2008
(ii) Ancrenaz, M.; Marshall, A.; Goossens, B.; van Schaik, C.; Sugardjito, J.; Gumal, M. & Wich, S. (2007), Pongo pygmaeus. In: IUCN 2007. 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>, <http://www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php/17975/all>. Retrieved on 2 April 2008
(iii) http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/27/85846/3119