Here’s a newsflash for the Rainforest Action Network and others of their ilk, who’ve made a living out of using global warming and deforestation to bash palm oil.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, inclement weather has been with us since time immemorial.  

The most famous recounting of inclement weather has to be the story of the great floods and the biblical narrative of Noah’s ark.  Even Islamic authorities appear to support the existence of Noah's Ark with official claims that it has been found on the Turkish-Iranian border, 32 kilometers from Mount Ararat.  This was confirmed by a team of scientists that has been investigating the site for six years.

The Turkish government is so convinced by the findings that, after years of intransigence, it has designated the site one of special archaeological interest and agreed to its excavation next summer.

The remote site contains a buried, ship-like object, resting an altitude of 2,300 meters. At 170 meters long and 45 meters wide, it conforms almost exactly to the 300 cubit by 50 cubit boat that God told Noah to build, according to Genesis 6 in the Bible.

On surrounding terrain, the American and Middle Eastern scientists have identified huge stones with holes carved at one end, which they believe are "drogue-stones," dragged behind ships in the ancient world to stabilize them. Radar soundings indicate unusual levels of iron-oxide distribution.

Salih Bayraktutan, head of geology at Turkey's Ataturk University, estimates the age of the 'vessel' at more than 100,000 years. "It is a man-made structure and for sure it is Noah's Ark." The site is directly below the mountain of Al Judi, named in the Koran as the Ark's resting place.

In the view of the Palm Oil Truth Foundation, the recent rash of strong hurricanes is just part of a cycle. Ever since Grade 8, I can remember listening to the hurricane warnings everytime hurricane season comes along. It was an annual affair, and although I do not live in the hurricane belt, our little city of Waco, Texas has had to endure the biggest tornado in the state’s history.  Just last weekend, we had two tornadoes.  Climate change is normal and natural. There was a Medieval Warm Period, for example, long before Exxon Mobil, Shell or BP ever existed.

Sterling Burnett, who is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, says that even if he's wrong about global warming, mandating cuts in carbon emissions would mean economic disaster for poor countries, and cost jobs in America.

Yet, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has attempted to use the global warming link to try to discredit palm oil.  Running a smear campaign called “The Problem with Palm Oil”, RAN made some wild and unsubstantiated allegations against palm oil.  

Calling on volunteers to spread the word about the problem of destroying rainforests with palm oil, this militant environmental NGO even went to the extent of organizing volunteers to affix stickers on products containing palm oil on supermarket shelves!  We can only surmise that RAN’s objection to palm oil is based on the plank that deforestation leads to global warming and climate change.

What RAN does not tell its volunteers is how, if at all, palm oil is destroying rainforests.  After all, Malaysia, a tiny SE Asian country was heretofore, the largest palm oil producer has been producing palm oil for more than one century.  Yet, even today, the country can justifiably boast of forest cover in excess of 65% (way, way ahead of the 20% or so prevailing in the industrial west, from which RAN hails!)  The same forest cover can still be said to exist in Indonesia, which has just edged ahead and taken over the mantle of the world’s largest producer of palm oil.

So what destruction of rainforest is RAN alluding to?  

It is also well known that palm oil is, by far the most productive of oil seed crops.  In fact, so productive that one hectare of oil palm can produce more than 4.5 metric tons of palm oil (again far higher than the typical 0.5 metric tons productivity of competing oilseed crops such as soy, rapeseed or sunflower).  That’s the reason, for the past decade or so, palm oil plantations in Malaysia has be set up only on legitimate agricultural land and logged over areas.  Its high productivity makes it totally unnecessary to lop off rainforests.

Palm oil trees, because they are really palm trees sequester much more CO2 than the aforementioned competing oilseeds.

That said, it is clear that the deforestation allegations of RAN are just that – mere allegations, unsubstantiated and unjustified!

The Palm Oil Truth Foundation views RAN’s militancy against palm oil with suspicion – suspicion that the San Francisco based militant NGO could be working for an anti-palm oil lobby.  If it is so, it must be a truly lucrative business, working for a lobby, that is!  THE END.