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Global Warming and Media Manipulation on Palm Oil |
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Written by Frank Tate
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 Global warming and inclement weather! Ever since 1988, when a prominent climatologist, James Hansen dramatically announced the arrival of global warming in his testimony before a joint House and Senate committee headed by Senator Wirth of Colorado, a link has invariably been made between global warming and inclement weather. Hearings were cleverly scheduled for June of that year so that Hansen could deliver his testimony right smack in the midst of a sweltering heat wave. It was a set up from the very beginning.
This unquestionable and vile manipulation of the media continues to the present day. Every time a major hurricane like Katrina hits, “experts” points to the mishaps and alludes to global warming as the cause! Everything from floods to tsunamis to typhoons to El Nino to La Nina is linked to global warming!
Here’s the take! Inclement weather has been visited on mankind since time immemorial. Remember Noah’s Ark? The biblical story is told of the great flood that Noah anticipated and prepared for with his massive ark to save the creatures of this earth.
In fact, I can’t recall a time when the world was not assaulted by inclement weather in the form of hurricanes, typhoons, flooding and blizzards leading to droughts, famines and other natural disasters. I am sure that if I were to trace my ancestors right back to the time of Adam and Eve - that they too would have experienced inclement weather from time to time!
Let’s take a look at the facts. Following the media play on global warming, the UN saw it fit to form an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the late 80s. This august body grouped together scientists and bureaucrats. The idea was that since global warming was a global problem, the UN would track climate research and issue reports every few years. The first assessment report in 1990 reported that it would be very difficult to detect a human influence on climate, although there was a concern that this might exist.
However, just 5 years later something sinister took place. The 1995 Report announced with conviction that there was now “a discernable human influence” on climate. The trouble was that the original report did not contain those words. In fact, the scientists who prepared the original Report were at pains to point out that they couldn’t detect any human influence on climate. In other words they said explicitly, “We just don’t know”!
Hansen for all his reputation as a prominent climatologist has been shown to be as fallible as the other alarmist scientists who followed him in playing up the “global warming’” card. When he announced in 1988 that global warming was upon us, Hansen predicted that temperatures would rise .35 degrees Celsius by 1998. The actual increase was 300% less, a minute .11 degrees Celsius! In the real world of science and the standards normally required and expected of scientific research, a 300% variance means that the scientist does not have a good grasp of the subject under study! Just ten years after his testimony before the Joint House and Senate Committee, Hansen threw in the towel and confessed that the forces that govern the climate is currently, so poorly understood that any attempt at long term prediction is humanly impossible!(i)
The IPCC itself has also come up with limiting statements. In a 2001 Report published by the Cambridge University Press, the IPCC confessed that “in climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” (ii)
Even in the world of weather prediction, which is a far better developed science, nobody tries to predict weather more than ten days in advance without having egg on their faces. However, if we take a look at the biggest events in global climate, the El Niño’s, the futility of trying to predict them become obvious. And the El Niño’s is supposed to occur roughly every 4 years. However, climate models have failed to predict them with any degree of accuracy – not their timing, their intensity or their duration. In my view, if the El Nino which is supposed to occur every 4 years cannot be predicted, with any degree of scientific certainty, it boggles the mind why the media should buy into these long term prediction of future climate states by so called environmentalists such as Al Gore and the FOE. (iii)
It is certainly disconcerting when both the IPCC and the pre-eminent climate scientist such as Hansen have been honest enough to confess to the impossibility of predicting long term climate change and yet the media can be so easily hoodwinked into giving prominent media voice and space to the climate change advocates such as Al Gore, Tree hugger, The Friends of the Earth, Wetlands, et al.
This brings me to the allegations by some of our fellow environmental NGO’s that palm oil cultivation is causing deforestation and that this in turn is leading to global warming. As far as the plantations in Malaysia are concerned, nothing could be further from the truth!
The palm oil industry in Malaysia has for long been efficient in sustaining agro management practices in favor of sustainability. With a zero burning replanting strategy, the industry was the prime mover of the Round Table of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Major plantations in Malaysia have also been focusing on improving efficiency, reduced chemical usage and employing advanced pest management systems.
Scientists have also been engaged by the industry to map out the flora and fauna found in the rainforests as well as palm oil plantations and to look for ways to reduce emissions. The rights of indigenous tribal occupied land has also been preserved and protected, to the tune of 10 million hectares, in the state of Sarawak alone!
Malaysia has close to 70 % forest cover and oil palm is largely grown on agricultural land only. Consequently, the allegations of deforestation by oil palm plantations are largely a myth in Malaysia. Furthermore, following the recommendations of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, many palm oil plantations in Malaysia have adopted sustainable planting practices. Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, for one have adopted practices that showed that palm oil can be planted in a way that preserves biodiversity, mitigates climate change and yet bring economic development and earning opportunities to the rural poor.
In the circumstances, it is about time that the world as well as the environmental groups wake up to this fact and stop the frenzied and alarmist call by ill informed NGO’s to link palm oil to deforestation and global warming. After all Hansen, the climate scientist who started it all and the IPCC have both been honest enough to own up to the fact that the jury’s still out, as to whether it is even possible to predict long term climate change, let alone blame human action for it.
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(i) James E. Hansen, Makiko Sato, et al, ”Climate Forcings in the Industrial Era,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95 (October 1998): 12753-58
(ii) IPCC. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 774
(iii) Landsea, et al, 2000, “How Much Skill Was There in Forecasting the Very Strong 1997-1998 El Nino?” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 81: 2107-19. “….one could have even less confidence in anthropogenic global warming studies because of the lack of skill in predicting El Nino…the successes in ENSO forecasting has been overstated (sometimes drastically) and misapplied in other arenas.”
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The IPCC is a disgrace. The Nobel Prize Committee should recall the NObel Peace Prize from both the IPCC and Al Gore. Posted by Dave Scott, on December 11, 2007 at 9:15
Yeah, I like that suggestion. Al Gore, Africa needs you. Let me know. I'll be happy to prepare a mudhut for you! Posted by Dave Scott, on November 12, 2007 at 3:34
Al Gore should take his global warming theories and his Nobel Prize money and invest in energy saving devices in his own home...or there's an easier alternative. Move to Africa and live in a mud hut and use his legs as public transport! Posted by John Kanye, on November 9, 2007 at 2:45
I agree with Fisher. All these environmental NGO's like FOE and Wetlands have just been feeding us crap about palm oil causing deforestation & global warming. Every single one of my friends and email contacts will be hearing from me on this issue! Posted by Jack Scipione, on September 11, 2007 at 7:48
Lies! Lies! Lies! All the lies that we've been fed about palm oil causing deforestation and global warming. What a load of bull! The blindfold is off! Posted by Isaac Fisher, on September 11, 2007 at 7:45
This is a true eye opener! I've always believed the lies fed by the envirnmental groups through the media. Thanks for enlightening us! Posted by John Kanye, on September 11, 2007 at 7:42
It is like having scales removed from our eyes, isn't it Felicia? I've known for some time that these environmental groups are just after our money, looking for donations by scaring us out of our wits with doomsday scenarios. After they fill their coffers, they can live the high life, like all the officials of environmental groups that I'm acquainted with have been observed doing! That's their true motivation. Palm oil is just another victim in their devious but grandiose plans to enrich themselves! Posted by Dave Scott, New Orleans, on September 5, 2007 at 6:48
What a breakthrough piece of writing this is! For IPCC to admit 'they don't know' just goes to show there is no truth in the global warming-inclement weather link. So glad I came across this article as I had actually thought palm oil led to global warming. I now see it's nothing but lies. Thanks for opening my eyes. I'm sharing this with my friends. Posted by Felicia, Seattle, on September 4, 2007 at 10:39
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Global Warming and Media Manipulation on Palm Oil 
