Only 10 percent of Victoria’s native forests are logged. Yet anti-logging campaigners are still unhappy, ramping up a campaign in conjunction with the upcoming state election to have the industry closed down completely.
Why anyone would oppose the sustainable harvest of such a small percentage of Victoria’s extensive native forest estate is difficult for me to understand. Then again I see both environmental and economic benefits in growing and cutting down trees as part of the active management of a native forest.
In ‘Campaigners can’t see forest for trees’ Mark Poynter* expains the value of logging in terms of carbon sequestration:
“Sustainable logging in Victoria’s designated wood production zones produces about 1.5 million cubic metres of hardwood sawlogs and residual logs a year from an estimated total harvested biomass of about 2.1 million cubic metres, including roots, bark, branches and foliage. The concept of sustainability dictates that annually harvested amount is replaced by an equivalent volume of growth.
Carbon sequestered each year in new biomass growth in Victoria’s production zones is estimated to be equivalent to saving 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. This is net of emissions from fuel and power use inherent to timber production and emissions from the regeneration process. It is also additional to the carbon that could have been sequestered if the forest had alternatively been left unlogged.
Putting this into perspective is that clean energy produced from Victorian wind farms has been estimated to save 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year. Put another way, if anti-logging campaigns were to close Victoria’s native forest timber industry, 10 times as many wind turbines as now exist would be required just to make up for the carbon sequestration lost by “locking up” wood production forests.
Enhanced carbon sequestration is only part of the “greenhouse” benefit of sustainable logging. Australian domestic hardwood production also offsets imports of tropical hardwoods and the use of steel, aluminium and concrete that offer poor environmental outcomes.”
Read the full article, click here .
If 10 times as many wind turbines would be required to offset the locking up of wood production in the 10 percent of the forest that is still harvested, how much more carbon could be sequested if government allowed logging in say 30 percent of the forest estate? Not to mention the potential environmental and economic benefits.
—————-
Mark Poynter is a forestry consultant, member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and a member of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF). His slide show entitled ‘Saving Australian Forests, A Counter-Productive Indulgence’ given at the recent AEF conference can be viewed by clicking here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
On sequestration from logging:
I’m not sure of the details of how internationally accepted greenhouse accounting standards recognise greenhouse emissions from forestry. You certainly get a credit from ‘afforestation’ or ‘reforestation’, but you also get a debit from ‘deforestation’. I’m assuming that greenhouse accounting would assume that all logged wood breaks down eventually and release co2 into the atmosphere, offsetting any regrowth. It would be tricky to assume otherwise, due to the multitude of uses for wood. Anyone know for sure?
* On the use of hardwoods instead of steel/concrete:
This is definitely a good point, but the timber industry is going to have to do a hell of a lot more research to back that up. I would recommend building a cooperative and constructive relationship with sustainable building regulators and policy makers to investigate this, rather than putting out media releases with no detailed work to back it up. The discussion of embodied energy versus savings in energy consumption (e.g comparing a timber home with a brick on concrete slab home) is still in its early days.
On the wind power comparison:
According to the Australian Wind Energy Association website (www.auswea.com.au), VIC currently has 134 megawatts of installed windpower, with another 1944 megawatts proposed.
Lets assume a capacity factor of 30%, which is pretty conservative for your average VIC windfarm.
The Australian average electricity network greenhouse intensity is about 1 tonne of CO2 per MWh.
Therefore, the greenhouse savings from the existing wind farms is approx.
134 megawatts x
0.3 capacity factor x
8760 hours per year x
1 tonne of CO2 per megawatt-hour
=
352,152 tonnes of CO2 saved per year.
It would be about half this if you assumed that only gas-fired generation was being offset, and it would be about 1.5 times as big if you assumed brown coal was being offset.
If the rest of proposed wind power got built in VIC, then it would be 5,460,984 tonnes of CO2 per year saved.
Jennifer is up to her old tricks again recycling arguments, not carbon; or is it Mark we should blame, windmills go round and round hey.
Please explain “estimated” in this context “Carbon sequestered each year in new biomass growth in Victoria’s production zones is estimated to be equivalent to saving 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. This is net of emissions from fuel and power use inherent to timber production and emissions from the regeneration process. It is also additional to the carbon that could have been sequestered if the forest had alternatively been left unlogged.” At first glance Mark is putting a wood framed paper screen in front of real trees in our old forests.
It’s worth recycling this link re my next question where is the good science to explain how we get better carbon sequestration from coups like those in the stark photos here?
http://www.australianpaper.forests.org.au/index2/updates11-02.htm
Before anyone cries greenie; I have a substantial background in the processing side of this industry.
GAVIN BUGG
Argument has to for new forestry and net – part of business as usual isn’t relevant. Consult the carbon accounting rules or make a new case for net sequestration over whole-of-life-cycle before crowing too loudly.
Same whole-of-life applies to wind turbines, solar, electric cars, railway sleepers or anything.
Marvelling at the growth of new forestry doesn’t count if you’ve levelled a bunch of forest to achieve the new growth.
And don’t see all this as an “anti-forestry” comment.
Luke: Rumour or not? 700m climate change package with initiatives to help farmers stay on by paying them to replant trees (source CT today).
It makes the woody weeds issue, land clearing, clear felling, and forestry operations of any sort look silly at this critical time.
Perhaps big changes are afoot and strange bed-fellows aplenty. A week is obviously a long time in politics.
The decomposition of rotting, unharvested timber makes the Amazon rain forest the world’s largest emitter of CO2.
Therefore, logging would seem to be an essential element of carbon sequestration, and make a 30 percent harvest three times better than a ten percent harvest in terms of preventing the global collapse of the fragile ecosystem.
Schiller – “global collapse of a fragile ecosystem” – have you gone soft?
Anyway pity intact Amazon rainforest is a net sink where logging or disturbance makes it a net source.
You have to make sure with this carbon accounting stuff that you’re not having yourself on and have discovered Jack’s beanstalk.
Gavin may have a substantial background in processing but as with many processors has little appreciation of where or how his raw material is grown havested and regenerated. Why no mention from any of our “but I’m not a greenie friends” of the 02/03 bushfires that released thousands of tonnes of CO2 and burn over a million ha of iconic “protected” mountain country. By the way this area is already being reburnt this season with with several thousand ha of yound ash regrowth being burnt in Kossie so far – as there is no seed source there will be no ash regeneration in these areas the ecology has been changed!
Apologies to I think Schiller, the blog was hit with a lot of spam last night and in deleting the spam on mostly old posts I think I took out one or two comments on new posts by accident. apologies again. Jennifer
Since I have been testing the waters for some weeks now in my democratic way its time to say I actually found one today. Yes someone out there, who I see once a week actually thinks its just climate cycling. My question to those normally prepared to stop and chat, under our as it was again this morning perfect clear blue sky in all directions, “do you believe we are suffering from man made global warming?” was answered in the affirmative six to zero up till this moment.
To be precise, five responded with the climate change as their issue rather than global warming. Three of these guys had strong technical backgrounds, one is currently a risk management consultant, another is in taxies these days. He just happened to ask the same sort of question when one of his clients turned out to be….. a scientist!
Luke: My taxi owner part time marketing mate went right of the deep end today about how our scientist procrastinated, since his sister owns a canal front home at Burleigh Heads sixteen or eighteen feet or metres, I cant recall which, above sea level. But last season the king tide was only two inches from her door step. They got so excited they took photos to prove it and he took great trouble to tell me there was no cyclone surge at the time. Ten years is all he gave them in that location as we are.
Luke: You of all here must appreciate; I never mentioned once my experience way back digging out trenches for home made walls to hold up those estates. As I said in another thread I was shocked at council regulations in the face of early subsidence when meters disappeared. The only reason I asked him my question was to get feedback on our most likely preparation to defeat drought locally, TREES! My other techno mate was at the farm recently which, it is rumoured, will be used as the national example, something I have yet to see. I’m told it’s all about mixed exotic species, gleditsia etc.
Abc: may be amused to know I’m also trying to unearth a purist in our midst when it comes to who is directing local government plantings. Many local natives are dying so my private suggestion on Friday to Greening Australia was to try stock from our North West, in particular E Sideroxlon. My other favourite in my private reclamation experiments on damaged country was E. rubida or perhaps E viminallis as first stage in the wetter southern country, neither will preform like those weeds radiata or globulus though.
Mark won’t appreciate this but I quite dead set against restarting a coup any where with a pure mono culture under any circumstances. Nature is dead set against that too as abc probably know best. The even crop of regrowth ash after a bad fire is most vulnerable to another bush fire, as the sides of Mt Wellington, Mt Dandenong or Mt Macedon will prover over and over.
Getting big trees well past maturity again after clear falling will become harder and harder as our climate gets hotter and drier. Development of our fire ecology has a long way to go before we can guarantee carbon will stay where we put it.
My militaria acquaintance got me thinking how we can be fooled by a particular line of rhetoric, gun laws, knife laws etc. If a theme is repeated enough some believe it but how does it flow? A few in my community once supported ‘One Nation’. I recalled then my long term interest in our old League of Rights and the innocents I knew who were influenced so much. However I have also tangled with National Civic Council and Socialist Workers Party people simultaneously but it was thoughts about the League that haunted me again today. Note I make a distinction between Ken Dolls and He Men toys.
I grew up in a gun culture. My dad was probably a good shot before he joined the Light Horse at sixteen but he had an old hole in his face from his early days, so he hunted alone till I was ten. Three 12 gauge shells, all we could afford, two buck bunnies for dinner one jumped but lost its tail. Otherwise he had no time for guns or rifles, and bayonets were quite beyond the pale.
Where does this intense sense of power come from? Safari mentality, stamping superiority on everything, Relaxation is buzzing wildlife with a plane, we are the master race! Old Baroness Blixen of Kenya fame (ABC TV this Sunday arvo) would always be wondering if there was rain on the old coffee farm but she did quite well in America with a book or two about it.
I preferred dad’s collection of Zane Grey as I read Biggles exploits. Dust and droughts or anything else under this sun are not new as most readers will say, some sooner than others, but nobody here today has seen a drought like this before.
To the last man hey
Jen,
I didn’t see that you deleted any of my stuff. I am curious what the spam looks like and whether it lends support to theories regarding Greenie behavior.
Luke, I like to say things like “global collapse of a fragile ecosystem” to show how I can appreciate both sides of things.
All, I’d invite you to visit the page at
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/Nr_ss_May_2__5_vegetation/CO2/C__photosynthesis_and_plant_emissions_4nk.html
If you look at the “carbon cycle,” it would appear that logging would be a very effective way to prevent CO2 sequestered in trees from becoming ‘un-sequestered’ and re-entering the system.
Logging would only delay the return of C to the system, however, not prevent it entirely, because eventually stuff made of wood eventually rots, is burned, etc.
Ultimately, it would appear that planting trees is a rather bogus method for sequestering carbon.
Schillsy – what contorted logic. Methinks you have discovered Jack’s beanstalk. The Amazonia studies indicate undisturbed rainforest is in general a net sink. And disturbed systems a source.
Tree planting on previously cleared land, not part of routine forestry operations, is indeed an effective way to sequester new carbon above the baseline.
I think you’ll find the people that have devloped the best practice guidelines for sequestering carbon in new forestry have thought about the loopholes and what would count as a new carbon store and what does not. Business as usual doesn’t count.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/nrm/publications/pubs/sinks-landholders.pdf
Forest sink activities that
contribute to Australia’s
climate change response
This means that a newly established forest area
should comprise the following characteristics:
• a forest of trees with a potential height of at least
two metres and crown cover of at least 20%;
• in patches greater than 0.2 hectare in area, and
(for reasons of detectability) a minimum width
of 10 metres;
• forest established since 1 January 1990, on land
that was clear of forest at 31 December 1989;
• established by direct human induced methods,
i.e. planting, direct seeding, or human induced
promotion of regeneration from natural seed
sources; and
• occurring in Australia.
These criteria are consistent with those developed
internationally, and which apply to Australia’s Kyoto
emissions target, for eligible forest sink activities.
If I clear my land now and then reforest
it in a few years time, would the forest
be eligible?
Only establishment of new forest on land that was not
forested on 31 December 1989 counts towards Australia’s
greenhouse emissions performance (see section 6).
Establishing new forests on land that has been previously
forested (since 1990) would not be recognised as a sink.
What if areas of woody weeds are replaced
with plantations or parkland?
Managing woody weeds can improve farm productivity
and provide environmental benefits. Removing stands
of woody weeds that meet the definition of a forest
and replacing them with new forests would not count
towards Australia’s greenhouse emissions performance.
Replacing scattered woody weeds (that do not meet forest
criteria) with trees may be eligible.
What about harvesting and harvested
wood products?
So as to conform with international guidelines, Australia’s
greenhouse accounting approach treats harvesting as a
source of emissions at the time of harvest, regardless of
the end use of the timber. When a forest sink is harvested,
the carbon stored in harvested material is considered to
be emitted.
Can I harvest an eligible forest?
Emissions from harvesting need to be accounted for, and
a harvested forest would need to be replanted to maintain
a carbon benefit. Managing an estate or pool of a number
of forest sinks can allow emissions from harvesting in one
area to be covered by sequestration in other areas.
So Luke, are you saying that the guidelines are nonsense? They certainly look like it if carbon sequestered is assumed to be emitted at the time the wood is harvested.
Graham – I’m simply reporting what they are, not endorsing them. The rules have evolved to what they are to deter rorting.
The problem is to be certain that harvested timber goes into long life products. Or is it burnt as firewood? It might go into a sideboard but who knows how long that item might last – 100 years or was it dumped as surplus stock. We know what happens to harvested stocks on average but this isn’t about on average – it’s about “someone’s” carbon asset. I’m sure they’d be happy for better suggestions.
In the end all these measures are about making a quantifiable and readily verifiable NEW removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, not part of business as usual, one side of sink/source balance sheet, or some wishful thinking. It’s not as simple as people think.
Luke,
So you’re suggesting turning farmland into forest is the answer?
I’m not suggesting that “turning farmland into forest” is THE answer to total removal of excess CO2 from the atmosphere. It’s a part of a matrix of solutions. Depends on the worth of the farmland and a range of issues.
Remember – as far as politics goes – Australia is a Kyoto-hostile nation. Yet it is still providing guidelines to landholders that comply with the international position on carbon trading.
So if you want your woodlot or forest to be counted in carbon trading you need to follow the rules and check it out before you purchase !
A proposition that has been run in recent weeks is to retire up-slope grazing country in southern Australia and replace the pastures with trees. There is also some new evidence that tree strips can be planted in our extensive grazing lands with a carbon sink, biodiversity and grass production benefit (tree strips reducing wind evaporation). And much also depends on the price of carbon.
It’s my view you are all talking nonsense in our struggle to grasp the way forward. It’s about volume but not in any of the ways discussed here.
Irrespective of Kyoto there is ample evidence that Australia carried a lot more wood in the first hundred years of European settlement than it does today. The natural half life of a tree both alive and dead is probably three hundred years across all major species. Wood chipping forestry gives us only thirty years considering the products like paper that regularly goes down the drain. Therefore constant recycling of wood in forests cannot be considered in any as part of our CO2 recovery. Very little paper or cardboard is returned to the bush. That whole product range must be seen as fuel. My argument on this point is only about how we go about reducing leakage through bad wild fire periods.
My main contention has always been about broad acre farming methods developed since the late 1800’s where mono crops everywhere became part of the fuel cycle. Our major losses first occurred with wholesale land clearing for wheat crops etc. Malley roots were railed into Melbourne for house hold fuel and the red soil blew in soon after. This was our Amazon in operation. On the other hand I know we can use this malley country for fuel today in a different way, solids to liquids to gas but it’s still a process in the fuel cycle.
Where we re establish the natural cycle of three hundred years or more becomes the key to restoring wood volumes as they were. It must involve a big sacrifice living as we are, consuming consuming consuming.
One day we will all have to go back to using solar direct for everything we think we need. Re planting trees in a parched landscape is just the first lesson.
For those who have never done landscaping, the most obvious advantage of retaining substantial tree belts on farms is their creation of micro climates, more simply, wind breaks and shade for our topsoils.
But I have met plenty of farmers who took out their last tree so they could leave their tractor running on auto pilot between 180 degree turns. We only get away with regularly using tractors because of cheap oil. But in a three hundred year cycle tractors may become a thing of the past or return to being wood fired and steam driven. Any remaining wood reserves could be quite handy. However trees do something else in their cycle and that’s stabilizing the nutrient supply for the micro organisms so important in productive soils
Sustainability considerations must also include things like worms and fungi in the calculations. Plantation forestry likewise has to be seen as more than just a log. In my experience blue gums and pines can slowly sterilise the ground. This stupid comparison of natural regen forestry with wind farms also glosses over significant details. Thinking about how a professional can get away with it really bothers me. Advice like this to governments and the public can only be the froth blown off a beer
Gavin – well that is correct – massive land clearing for agriculture and grazing – timber burnt or decayed and the other big flux is the rundown in soil carbon (which happens after clearing). This would have been a considerable net national emission of CO2 and CH4. Some of it would have been absorbed back into global vegetation stocks or the ocean – but a sizeable slug would have gone in to the atmospheric CO2 increase.
And people with little time for our point of view would say “well jee if you like to eat you’re involved in agriculture” and that would be true. A small part of the story but it all adds up.
Of course the Feds are quite clever – Australia has pseudo-complied with Kyoto by the Queensland government (not Feds) banning remnant tree clearing in Queensland. Meanwhile national energy and transport goes up considerably. A one-off tricky-dicky job and they didn’t pay a cent for the carbon. The Queensland goverment provided some very small amounts of compensation. So that’s why I don’t mind the agricultural and grazing sector getting some drought relief. Society at large has nicked their carbon reserves.
Australia was about the only country at Kyoto leading on the land clearing clauses – we full well knew what we were on about. Who knows – maybe it was tactically brilliant – but strategically ??
Incidentally I’m told that the yanks actually don’t like the current rules – they’d like wall to wall accounting where you add up everything – all the biosphere sources and sinks in your territory – conceptually great but practically difficult – soils, trees, grasses, fires, agriculture, forestry, wetlands and fate of timber stocks – think about it !
Luke: Finding an effective carbon sink in any agriculture is only a minute part of returning to sustainability. Gross loss of fertility is our most serious risk in this drought and beyond. Dryland farming across the board is at risk and so are all natural trees. Death is evident every where.
Any program for recovery that is driven by our old expectations is doomed to fail as we race time itself. For example river red gums as we knew them have had it. Forest reds in my area are particularly affected. But darned pine is up and away. That means an early harvest or we all burn. What once grew where is irrelevant. We need a massive shift in administrative focus.
Gardeners too should start with cactus but let me be the last.
So, we have aboriginal burning of the “wet” growth, soon after the wet, gives carbon credits, under Kyoto, but harvesting timber for house construction, doesn’t.
What a pile bull Kyoto is. Any one who professes to agree with it should make the time to read a bit of it. It wont take long. You don’t have to read much to get the picture. Pure crap, wrapped up in nice icing.
It is the peak of long haired, radical rat bag idealism.
Don’ fall for it, without understanding it.
Who says aboriginal burning gives carbon credits?
Where’d you get that one.
And so Hasbo – if your woodlot went for firewood – you want a credit ? How do YOU propose to keep track of the carbon?
One simple answer is “don’t bother” with ANY forestry stuff at all and only concentrate on easy to measure coal and petroleum emissions. But that will upset a lot of investors.
And as for “radical rat bag idealism” – think again – your Kyoto guys who negotiated these arrangements were all establishment suits, not long haired radical greenies.
Perhaps it’s all designed to be “too hard” and not work. Ever considered that? Designed to fail.
So after all the eye gouging and negotiating in Kyoto by suited gentlemen that’s all that could be agreed. So doesn’t leave much hope that you could do better. Too many vested interests and knockers. So enjoy your climate change and don’t whinge about the changes.
“Only 10 percent of Victoria’s native forests are logged”
Jen, I am curious as to whether that means only 10% are ever logged and 90% protected? If so, how much of the 10% is logged each year ie what proportion of the total native forest is logged each year. How long will it take for that 10%, whatever that represents, to be logged out and what then for logging native forests?
Rossco,
trees regrow. in the Age article Mark Poynter explains that the actual harvest is less than the sustainable harvest so the forest will never be logged out.
not so long ago about 30 percent of the forests in Victoria were logged, the area available reduced because of protests from environmental activists.
here’s a different angle, suggesting japanese forests might benefit from some logging: http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Newsweek/2005/01/31/712386?extID=10037&oliID=229
Thanks Jen, but that response completely ignores my questions. Of course trees regrow but I thought they took many years to reach harvest size. Are the old growth forests being cleared faster than they can be replaced? If not, what is the balance between clearance and replacement with mature trees?
Rosco my understanding from a recent tour of the forests at Toolangi with Dept of sustainablity and environment are that approx 36 % of victoria is classified as forest( 4.5 million hectares of native forest)..of which 1% of the forest is felled each year…that is 1% of the 100% of victorian forests…less than 0.5 % of victoria.
The Mountain Ash tends to reach max height about 60-70 years of age and after that it just starts to fatten out and the inside rots and becomes hollow. They look to leave each coupe for at least 60 years so that the tree is at or near its max height.
Little if any rainforest is allowed to be cut down because less than 1% of our native forests are still rainforest.
in victoria some 42000 jobs are attributed to the forestry industry.
Whilst I am not involved in logging it is certainly an important sustainable resource that does appear to be reasonably well managed.
regards
Luke, a report on the ABC, Quantum I think, last week said so, as did someone on the charcoal post on here, just deleted.
Now we have some “B” grade universities, with many Environmental Science courses, we are getting plenty of “B” grade environmrntal scientists, in suites, infesting government depts, & even more in local councils. Only an activist would do these courses.
With an OP 18 cut off, these people are not quite top draw, & are now the “experts”. May god help us, because these dills won’t.
No Hasy – these guys were the “A” team. You see politics and power are more interesting than you might imagine. Activists angle is a dead end here.
But yes I also hear what you’re saying overall. But of course why would you do science as a young person – it doesn’t pay and too hard, too specialised – unis are now finding that the profession is being deserted massively for “ticket” degrees. In the end society gets what it pays for and values. That ain’t good science.
Rossco, I didn’t ignore your question … I indicated that Mark’s piece clearly stated that the amount harvested each year was less than the sustainable harvest: “Sustainable logging in Victoria’s designated wood production zones produces about 1.5 million cubic metres of hardwood sawlogs and residual logs a year from an estimated total harvested biomass of about 2.1 million cubic metres, including roots, bark, branches and foliage. The concept of sustainability dictates that annually harvested amount is replaced by an equivalent volume of growth.”
I so they are harvesting less than what regrows each year from the harvestable area.
Hasbeen: if I really thought you were discussing someone I know with these sorts of inflammatory statements then we could look into it a bit further. “ It is the peak of long haired, radical rat bag idealism”.
“Now we have some “B” grade universities, with many Environmental Science courses, we are getting plenty of “B” grade environmrntal scientists, in suites, infesting government depts, & even more in local councils. Only an activist would do these courses.- these people are not quite top draw” etc. but let’s say it’s just in the interest of robust discussion we get to use some rather attacking positions on Jennifer’s blog. BTW I’m not offended but others could be.
Rossco may wish to zoom into these BRS maps. There was a time when I could get right down and look at individual property but that was when I knew one of the scientists building the tools to find vegetation information.
Toby said the mountain ash reach max height at about 60-70 years. My experience is many eucalypts never stop reaching upwards or outwards and the hollowing out process certainly occurs in the buttress but meters up the tree the bowl is still maturing beter and better wood. This dry rot stuff depends very much on which miller you are talking too There are a lot of modern foresters out there who can’t recall what a big tree looks like especially when they are acting on behalf of a paper mill. Again I have met a few. Note too; mountain ash is not the only valuable tree for our genuine sawmills and some species take quite a while to make their best wood.
Toby is right though about Australian rainforest being scarce today. However there some old photos around of what a marvelous lot we once had. I was lucky enough to see plenty in wild places not far from my old home in Tasmania before massive hydro dams, mining expansion, wood chip operations and more frequent fires escaping from these new operations. Some pictorial history under M = Magnet > West Coast Mines, M = Mount Dundas
http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/Detail.asp?Letter=M&Subject=Magnet+Silver+Mine+%28Tas%2E%29+%2D+History+%2D+Photographs&ID=au-7-0016-125423087
The N E Dundas railway is one of my favorite areas for understanding sustained bushfire damage. Wood fired engines burnt this place out regularly long before my work there in mining. Sustained rains added to this accelerated rainforest destruction. Regrowth here carries fire easily despite the high average rainfall.
http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/Fullimage.asp?Letter=M&Subject=Mount+Dundas+Railway+%28Tas%2E%29+%2D+History+%2D+Photographs&ID=au-7-0016-125143610
There is more than enough info on biomass sources and sinks at the Australian Greenhouse Office website to keep this post going for a couple of years. See:
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/ncas/activities/biomass.html
Build up of soil carbon must not be ignored, but it is true that net carbon mass gain in the very long term are much less than the periodic harvest of logs would suggest. If carbon emitted due to land clearing is counted in any particular time step, so must any carbon sequestrated in the same time step.
Can anyone tell me what the ratio is between the amount of co2 produced by human use of fossil fuels in a year and the amount of turnover of co2 in the rest of the biotic system in a year?
I read of a paper ( lewis?? ) that works it out at 400:1 If true, human fiddling with the land biota, (forestry, or the lack of it, for example ) can not have any tangible effect on our emissions. And all the above debate becomes just testament to how successful the deep greens have been in shoehorning land use into the greenhouse debate.
Isnt the ocean the chief source of oxygen, and the chief sink of carbon? The total respiration of thin green fuzz on the surface of the earth is irrelevent compared to the squillions of billions of tonnes of phytoplankton and all the rest of oceanic life that live off it. dunno……
Wikipedia has a good summary on the carbon cycle and oxygen cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_cycle
See the stores and fluxes for yourself.
The ratio as you put it is quite large – but you have to do both sides of the balance sheets – sources and sinks; emissions and sequestration. It’s more or less in balance. So planting new trees on new land or stopping land clearing does have some effect – a modest contribution but no panancea.
IF you want forestry carbon sequestration to count for Kyoto it has to be brand new activity or stopping land clearing for agriculture/grazing.
General forestry, annual savanna burning is simply considered part of the background and in some sort of balance.
Soil carbon is a big store – but hard to measure – spatially and variable – and you can’t see it – it’s “down there”. Warm the place up and you “burn” it off too with greater microbiological activity.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/inventory/2004/index.html shows the latest inventory – obviously land use and forestry is all we have going for us; stationary energy and transport all going up. But what happens when remnant land clearing stops in a few weeks time!
Of course if you think AGW is bunk and Kyoto is rubbish then who cares. All this becomes an elaborate academic exercise with too many rules.
Emit and be happy.
For those who might want to know the complexities of accounting for harvested wood products.
http://aetf.emcc.net.au/pdf_references/HWP_article.doc.
Okay, I think I’m finally starting to understand this.
Coal and petroleum have sequestered CO2, burning them releases CO2, and that is bad.
Trees sequester CO2, and that is good. Burning them releases CO2, and that is bad.
Crops sequester CO2, but humans eat them and emit CO2, that is bad. That is why we should turn cropland into forest. Which, if it isn’t logged, results in rotting vegetation with microbes returning the CO2 to the atmosphere.
But houses and furniture and other wood products degrade too, releasing CO2.
But if there weren’t any CO2 there wouldn’t be terrestrial life as we know it. And with microbes accounting for 80 percent of the world’s biomass, and global warming increasing the microbial activity which produces most of the world’s CO2, we need an effective microbicide to prevent the Larsen Ice Shelf from breaking, because microbes produce more CO2 than people do.
How’s that for a summation?
Luke says emit and be happy. I said you are all talking nonsense. Not one has any flaming idea how the thing works in practice.
Carbon in, carbon out, it’s all so easy hey?
Some time ago I knew a little bit about the arty farty stuff that went into making up our AGO and our track to Kyoto. It never had teeth nor engineering. In the end someone high up stamped on it. We got the government we deserved and I blame you lot for that. Judging by this blog despite our capacity for individual abuse we are still far too timid to attack the root causes of green house problems.
We are capable of being a rotten lot though. People in my region have started stealing water from farm houses, creeks and dams. Its only one of the details we need to manage in a prolonged drought. Lock your taps!
Jennifer: Where would you start with a scientific/environment award that reflects your reader’s feelings for the most selfish group or band of individual on earth? Which reminds me where this thread started.
Rosslyn Beeby wrote for our CT supplement Times 2 yesterday “12 Ways you can save the planet” Item 7 Use natural nappies:
Quote: It takes more than 1.8 million trees to make the 800 million disposable nappies used in Australia every year. No point in planting trees to green the world for your children’s children if you are supporting large scale land clearing for plantation forestry.
I challenge this blog to say where they all end up in Kyoto terms.
Schiller, Schiller, Schiller
No, that’s not even half a summation. We’ll try again.
Coal and oil and natural gas are reservoirs of CO2 removed from circulation in the atmosphere some little while ago, even before Xerxes tried to bash up the Greeks at Marathon and got his arse whipped instead.
To oversimplify, if we used only resources that drew CO2 from the atmosphere in the present day, and those resources then broke down by decay or combustion to release the carbon that was taken from the contemporary atmosphere in the first place, the whole system would be in balance. Carbon released into the atmosphere would be balanced by carbon removed from the atmosphere. In such a world, we could use as much paper as we liked, eat as much as we liked, and if we derived our energy from the biosphere, we could use as much energy as we liked, with no impact on the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
In reality, we are using carbon from fossil reservoirs, but if we substitute contemporary sources of carbon (biomass) for fossil sources, we can slowly push the system back towards a balance. The more wood we use instead of steel, concrete and plastic, the more contemporary atmospheric carbon is temporarily bound up in the things we all use and so the amount of carbon left in the atmosphere is slightly reduced. We also greatly reduce the amount of fossil carbon that is released in the production of steel, concrete and plastic.
We could also, according to some estimates, grow most of the energy we need and so substitute contemporary sources of carbon energy for fossil carbon, but that is another story. In theory, we could almost completely close the loop. But moving partially towards closing the loop is worth doing, because it buys us time, and Al Gore, who is as honest as the day is long, says we only have 10 years to change the world. So time might be a useful thing to buy right now.
I went through all this crap ten years ago on the AGO’s consultative panel on landuse change and forestry and am feeling a bit time warped.
The only people seriously talking about carbon credits for tree planting are either the promoters who will not be around to carry the responsibility for what they have promoted or the plain gullible who have not costed the level of Bull$hit that would be needed to claim the damned credits.
As far as real forest establishment by real people on real farms goes, carbon credits are nothing more than a AAA rated wank. The entire concept was conceived by spivs for political objectives and exhibits all the integrity that one would normally associate with such people, ie, zilch.
Does anyone seriously think that after all the crap that has gone down in relation to forest management and clearing over the past 2 decades that there is any significant cohort of landowners who would be stupid enough to cover a perfectly good farm with trees?
brilliant post Boxer.
It doesn’t need farmers Motty, just cheap land from farmers who leave the land. Downshifters can snap up the land and frolick amidst the seedlings with a watering can.
A good site for carbon storage in wood products is
http://www.greenhouse.crc.org.au/counting_carbon/wood.cfm.
Rubbish tips look quite a good way of stiring carbon.
Interesting site from Richard – works if you delete the fullstop on the end of the web link.
I guess that is what it is all about, isn’t it? Screw farmers to provide cheap land for eco-bottom feeders to run prickle farms. Just landscape the front driveway with trees and stake a claim as a planet saviour?
Sorry doesn’t count on minimum area requirements for most driveways (except landed gentry), and the CO2 effect from your idling car biases the growth.