Environmental organizations have a penchant for saying that not only is global warming happening and bad, but also that what we are seeing is even worse than expected?
This gives away their lack of grounding on good science, given that any reasonable understanding of how science works would expect that, as we refine our knowledge, we find that things are sometimes worse and sometimes better than we expected, and that the most likely distribution would be about 50-50. Environmental campaigners, however, almost invariably see it as 100-0 or either black or white.
If we are regularly being surprised in just one direction, if our models get blindsided by an ever-worsening reality, that does not bode well for our scientific approach.
Indeed, one can argue that if the models constantly get something wrong, it is probably because the models are wrong. And if we cannot trust our models, we cannot know what policy action to take if we want to make a difference.
Yet if new facts constantly show us that the consequences of climate change are getting worse and worse, high-minded arguments about the scientific method might not carry much weight. Certainly, this seems to be the prevailing bet in the spin on global warming. It is, again, worse than we thought and, despite our failing models, we will gamble on knowing just what to do: cut CO2 emissions dramatically.
But it is simply not correct that climate data are systematically worse than expected; in many respects, they are spot on, or even better than expected. That we hear otherwise is an indication of the media's addiction to worst-case stories, but that makes a poor foundation for smart policies.
The most obvious point about global warming is that the planet is heating up. It has warmed about 1C over the past century and is predicted by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to warm between 1.6C and 3.8C this century, mainly owing to increased CO2.
An average of all 38 available standard runs from the IPCC shows that models expect a temperature increase in this decade of about 0.2C.
But this is not at all what we have seen. And this is true for all surface temperature measures and even more so for both satellite measures. Temperatures in this decade have not been worse than expected; in fact, they have not even been increasing. They have actually decreased by between 0.01C and 0.1C a year.
On the most important indicator of global warming, temperature development, we ought to hear that the data are actually much better than expected.
Likewise, and arguably much more significantly, the heat content of the world's oceans has been dropping for the past four years where we have measurements. Whereas energy in terms of temperature can disappear relatively easily from the light atmosphere, it is unclear where the heat from global warming should have gone, and certainly this is again much better than expected. We hear constantly about how the Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than expected, and this is true. But most serious scientists also allow that global warming is only part of the explanation. Another part is that the so-called Arctic oscillation of wind patterns over the Arctic Ocean is in a state that it does not allow build-up of old ice but immediately flushes most ice into the North Atlantic.
More important, we rarely hear that the Antarctic sea ice is not only not declining but is above average for the past year. IPCC models would expect declining sea ice in both hemispheres but, whereas the Arctic is doing worse than expected, Antarctica is doing better.
Ironically, the Associated Press, along with many other news outlets, told us in 2007 that the "Arctic is screaming" and that the Northwest Passage was open "for the first time in recorded history". Yet the BBC reported in 2000 that the fabled Northwest Passage was already without ice.
And this is so too with palm oil. Unfairly singled out by dubious Environmental NGO’s such as the Friends of the Earth (FOE) for every environmental ill they could dredge up, these environmental organizations ignore the positives that the palm oil industry brings to the environmental table.
It is well established that palm oil is the singular most productive oil seed in the world, bar none – so productive, in fact that one hectare planted with palm oil will yield close to 4.5 metric tons of oil. Compare this with the productivity of its competitors such as soy, rapeseed or sunflower which have yields closer to 0.5 metric tons per hectare. Such superior yield should mean that palm oil should have been the most favored oilseed crop for the true environmentalists, as it will result in less deforestation for each unit of production, given the much smaller footprint required for oil palm plantations compared to the competing oil-seeds.
Yet, inexplicably, the FOE in their ‘report” entitled “Malaysian Palm Oil: Green Gold or Green Wash,” launched an inane attack against 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. What the “report” conveniently leaves out is that Sarawak has an agriculture to forest ratio of 8:76. If agricultural land in Sarawak remains at just 8%, how can it be true that palm oil is causing massive deforestation as FOE alludes?
If we juxtapose the 76% tropical rainforest currently standing in Sarawak against the usual 20% standing in the countries of the industrialized West, from which environmental organizations like the FOE hails, it is very difficult to give their views much credence.
It is even harder to take them seriously when the FOE has the temerity to argue in their “report” that monocultures like palm oil cultivation is even worse then timber logging as they deprive wildlife of their habitat.
The Palm Oil Truth Foundation is compelled to ask, just what happens when palm oil is cultivated on previously logged over areas? It is inevitable in such a situation, that the natural rainforest which inevitably, abuts such plantations provides the natural habitat for wildlife, a fact that these environmental NGO’s true to tradition, are not too willing to highlight! For the State of Sarawak, that the FOE has so viciously attacked, such a scenario is a fact of life, considering its still subsisting 76% rainforest sitting cheek to jowl with the palm oil plantations. Wildlife habitat loss, if any would consequently be miniscule – certainly not the dire picture painted by FOE in their spurious “report”.
Ultimately, for the uninitiated reading environmental “reports”, the Palm Oil Truth Foundation cautions that the casual reader bears in mind the tendency of these organizations to claim the backing of science and yet have a penchant for the worst case scenario, which is as unscientific as they come, to suit their agenda. THE END.
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