There is much community concern about global warming and an expectation we will all do our bit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
So why did the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) decide to transfer its annual requirement for 400,000 railway sleepers from timber to concrete?
According to Mark Poynter* this will result in an extra 190,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year that could otherwise have been negated by carbon sequestered in forest regrowth and saved by avoiding concrete manufacture.
At the recent AEF conference Poynter said:
“To put this in perspective, the Victorian government has firmly embraced windfarms as part of its renewable energy strategy. They are estimated to be saving 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Some 75 percent of this has been negated by the ARTC preference for concrete sleepers.”
According to Minister Warren Truss back in April:
“This contract will provide a massive and ongoing boost to the Australian concrete and cement industry … the concrete sleepers can carry heavier loads and incur less maintenance costs. They provide a more consistent, stable and reliable track and have a longer life, with less degradation than timber, he said.
No mention of the greenhouse cost?
———————————————————————-
* Mark Poynter is a member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia, he spoke at the recent AEF conference as part of a panel on ‘Saving Australia’s Forests’. ABC Online mentioned the conference last Friday, and in particular the AEF award to timber company Gunns Ltd.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
You ask why was there no consideration of greenhouse cost?
>> Probably because AGW is NOT actually happening.
>> Possibly because there is no requirement to reduce the GHG intensity of commercial activities.
Mark/anyone else – did you challenge them/ask about this aspect of their decision? They’re not, by chance, using GHG minimising concrete (Aussie invention whatever it’s called) are they? (what?)
The implications of this post support the argument I keep making – that mechanisms to reduce GHG emissions get increasing support as businesses realise opportunities. The scientific validity then falls into the background.
Are foresters in support of GHG emissions now? After all, their product is key and it could be a growing money spinner!
Where does the ARTC find 400,000 wooden sleepers today?
Which timber is on offer?
This connection between wind farms and new sleepers is another RED HERRING.
Up the MINERS and concreters!
What about all the concrete(and steel) that goes into the part time power generators in the first place?
In this case I’m white anting our timber workers from a single perception.
If there is any depth in their expectation that either Mark Poynter or his institute can sway authorities to a political view where wooden railroads can compete economically with road traffic long term then we are in for a ride. Perhaps the institute could ask for wooden roads as well.
CO2 is saved by getting bulk goods off the roads in terms of concrete and everything to do with our energy production.
Whose idea was it in the first place to pick on wind?
Pinxi
Foresters have always understood that CO2 sequestration in forests may give commercial forestry a boost. Does your question imply that foresters are loggers, are therefore conservatives, and are therefore AGW sceptics?
For foresters who are sceptical about AGW, or uncertain about what is causing global warming, well, riding the CO2 sequestration gravy train may help get the industry through a rough patch.
Boxer I was probing. I wasn’t intending to imply any certain position of foresters = loggers = blue underpants or anything of the type. However their self-appointed prominent spokesperson on this blog, Mr Motty, is anti-AGW theory & anti-Kyoto incentives etc. You should recall that Im sympathetic to, um ahhh, ‘sustainable’ (sorry for dirty word) logging. Should I say well managed logging instead? Personally I prefer wood to concrete but dunno if I’d be dishing out any enviro awards to Gunns unless I was on the take or unless the competition was slim!
I am implying though, that resistance to GHG emissions reductions and resistance to investment in sequestion will fall as business opportunities appear. The screams will silence but we will remember! Same thing has happened with other environmental issues previously, eg CFCs. Hence importance of establishing property rights and values where none currently exist – so people will find incentives to protect/maintain/restore. Dreadlocked greenies may protest such enviro values & property rights on ethical grounds though.
How many countries that have adopted intermittent wind power have actaully reduced their CO2 emissions?
The base of a single, near-shore wind turbine requires around 500 tonnes of cement, 550 tonnes of sand and aggregate, and 100 tonnes of steel. For the cement alone, the fuel used and the calcining of the calcium carbonate emit some 625 tonnes of CO2, and this does not include transport. If you add the emissions and environmental damage associated with chalk and limestone quarrying, the dredging of sand and aggregate, and the production of the steel, the emissions per unit of intermittent power are high. Moreover, a turbine requires regular maintenance and rebuilding. Any corrective carbonation in the concrete takes hundreds of years.
Boxer,
You say that “CO2 sequestration in forests may give commercial forestry a boost,” but I wonder if that is true. Will anyone be allowed to cut the trees for lumber?
Indeed, anti-logging sentiments may have motivated the switch to concrete.
A 2MW turbine at 30% capacity factor (a modest capacity factor for a new australian wind farm) will offset:
2 MW x 0.3 x 8760 hours in a year x 1tonne CO2/MWh (average national electricity market greenhouse intensity) = 5,256* tonnes CO2 per annum.
Wind turbines last for 15-20 years.
Assuming Paul B’s numbers on CO2 from the concrete bases etc is correct (i’m interested where you got your numbers from Paul, the concrete industry are very secretive about the energy and emissions produced from their operations, ditto for Poynter’s numbers)
A 2MW wind turbine will offset the greenhouse impact of its construction in a fraction of a year, ditto energy embodied in its construction.
* If you assume that the wind farm offsets gas power and not the market average which is mainly coal, then its maybe 2,500 tonnes CO2 per 2MW turbine per year, and still offsets the emissions from its construction in a fraction of a year.
Steve Your figure of 8760 hours is on the high side because it doesn’t include the times when there is too little or too much wind.Even in the home of the windmill, The Netherlands, I believe the in use figure is around 160 days per year.
And you still require the base load.
Schiller
The principle is that land with a standing forest, even if that forest goes through repeated cycles of regeneration and harvest, holds more carbon in store per hectare than other land uses. If you take farmland cleared before the magic 1990 for the Kyoto protocol, and then establish the forest on it post-1990, the average amount of carbon sequestered could be traded, in theory. Farmland might have 0.5 to 8 tonnes of carbon per hectare, I suppose a eucalyptus plantation just prior to harvest might have a bit less than 100 tonnes C per hectare, so the average C per hectare of the plantation over its full growth cycle might be several 10s of tonnes.
Perhaps more useful in reality, the wood that comes from the forest can then substitute for another material, such as wood building frames instead of steel and so on. The forest is a mechanism for transfering C from the atmosphere into long-term uses = storage, and this would apply to any forest, plantation or native forest. This would also reduce the amount of CO2 emitted in the production of steel etc. I’m rusty on this, but a tonne of wood harvested and turned into sawn timber sequesters about 200kg of C in the sawn product and a tonne of steel emits about 5 tonnes of C during its production.
If you never harvest the forest, then it reaches a static of dynamic equilibrium where the amount C lost by decay = the amount absorbed by photosynthesis and you have a “stable” C store. Until there’s a wildfire and the forest is vaporised and then carbon credits for the forest presumably have to be returned and I think it would all become as untidy as a badly burnt forest. Auditing this would be complex and I don’t know how realistic it all is.
Pinxi
I was just trying to draw you out a bit. Mr Mott is a vocal forester but he is not like me in all respects and Ian is probably happy to keep it that way. Diversity is good. I wouldn’t get too hung up on “good logging” versus “bad logging”. The best practice in one forest may be very bad practice in another and visa versa. Selective logging (normally perceived to be “good-ish”) can lead to degradation in some forests.
The drift towards CO2 emission reductions for commercial reasons must be the way to go. The trick is to get the right balance between creating artificial markets or values for C saved or stored and genuine market forces. Everytime I look at the European model of tax things you don’t like and subsidise the things you approve of, I am left with the impression that it’s not economically sustainable. I can’t work out what holds all those subsidies in the air – is it Visa or Mastercard?
I can’t work out what holds all those big shiny new Holdens and big shiny new droF’s in people’s driveways Boxer – visa & mastercard too I reckon. Economies run partly on faith and confidence. It’s best that not too many people find out though. Private expenditures to offset climate change get all sorts of heavy criticism here but all sorts of other useless and unnecessary types of expenditure don’t. One little point of note though is that when you have relatively equal income distribution then you have a more robust per capita private tax base!
I’m a wee bit curious about Paul’s calculations underlying high “emissions per unit of intermittent power”.
Some of the farmers in the US who allowed the turbines onto their land were faced with bills of up to $10,000 per turbine to decommission them. It would seem that some components of the turbine need to be treated as hazardous waste. Of course the net result of this was that the turbines weren’t removed at all but were left to rot thus spoiling the view and introducing dangerous waste products into the environment.
In 2003 in Germany (who are big into wind turbines) what they call their “capacity credit” for wind was equal to about 6% of the installed capacity. So we’ve come down from a quarter of the plated capacity to 6%.
The turbines planned for the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, a remote island with very few voters but with moorland protected because of its unique place in terms of ecology and wildlife will be getting turbines 140m in height with a rotor diameter of 100m and they will string across the bog for over 40km with at least 200km of access road. (No objections to the road building from the greens either for what must be the most significant new road construction in the UK for a very many years. Though Greenpeace are, sort of, objecting to the wind farm in some strange and half hearted manner.)
In Denmark wind produced a “surplus” of 84% in 2004. That is to say that because of the nature of the delivery of wind power and the nature of the grid it was impossible to use 84% of the power produced (and remember that the turbines produce only 6% of their plated capacity so in fact the Danes were able to utilize 16% of 6% of the plated capacity of their installed turbines.) Cunningly the Danes sold all but a small amount of the surplus to Norway , though I have no information on price etc. or whether Norway was able to use it.
The Amec proposal for north Lewis is, according to the Amec ES, expected to kill a golden eagle every 4 – 6 weeks. Other proposals for the island are expected to have a significant impact upon the white tailed sea eagle population. It is illegal for an individual to even disturb one of these birds, never mind kill one, and should you set out to kill one then a prison sentence is the almost certain outcome. Quite what the reaction of the court would be if you announced the intention to do it on a monthly basis I don’t know.
Wind farm ‘hits eagle numbers’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5108666.stm
chrisl, the capacity factor of 0.3 takes into account intermittency. this means that i assume that the wind farm is operating at rated capacity only 30% of the time.
Re farmers faced with bills for turbine removal: i won’t believe that until i see it. All farmers in oz would negotiate to have turbines decomissioned as part of the land lease here. I find it very unlikely that turbines would be ‘left to rot’ on farmland now. Any specific examples?
Re “capacity credit”. I’ve never heard that term before. Do you mean ‘capacity factor’ or ‘firm capacity’?
In Australia, all wind farms have a capacity factor of 30-40%.
Nobody wants to see wind farms kill endangered birds. If a wind farm was expected to kill a golden eagle every 4-6 weeks, i doubt it would receive approval to be built. If those figures are correct (which i am sceptical of) then it is a massive failure of environmental impact legislation for the wind farm to have been built in that location.
The position of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds mentioned in the story you quoted seems sensible – they support renewable energy, and their spokesperson says “most wind farms would not cause any harm to birds but that the Smola wind farm had been badly sited in a place where it put white-tailed eagles at risk.”
and “more care needed to be taken when choosing a site for wind farms”.
On the topic of emissions from switching from timber sleepers to concrete – keen for more info – where do you get your concrete greenhouse emissions info from? I’d love to find a good source on this.
Jennifer; we get a lot of rubbish at times from people purporting to represent the timber industry. Its so often just poor campaigning by those outside the action in actual production.
This perspective here about part time power generators (wind), apart from being incomplete (hydro), has another parallel in our politics; part time employment!
So popular these days with a large section of the capitalist world we come to think of part time as normal and part of our lifestyle, yet it has no capacity in raising a mortgage for the family home. Part time only capacity in some sections of big business is crippling for the young. But this has nothing to do with timber you say.
We get a lot of comment from idealists following the narrow right wing arguments too.
From my own experience both rural and industrial; any wood does not last well in contact with dirt or water. Least of all in the quality stakes is our plantation timber. In particular P radiata was a troublesome material when used throughout much of our traditional building industry.
Try fencing some time with a pile of radiata posts and a tractor driven post driver over a dry white clay paddock. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a wooden truck tray or car trailer out and about for quite a while either. I wonder why the SUV has moved on too.
I still write to governments about CCA treatments and the APVMA. Some bright spark way back reckoned treating weak timber (young trees) with arsenic etc. was a good way of using up our mining waste everywhere. That stuff was first promoted when we ran out of quality hardwoods in our post war recovery.
My family was closely associated with work in developing methods of fast tracking bulk building grade materials of all forms (1940’s – 1980’s). At our huge industrial complex we gave up early on tests using substitutes for properly cured old timber including pine.
Since those times I have watched a form of industry exploitation difficult to explain. All the larger left over old hardwood logs became a target for wood chipping. I witnessed many conveniently diverted into sections of our old complex for pulp based products including particle board. We also did a lot of work with glues and surface fills like clay.
Elsewhere other people quietly made fence packs of solid timber for our cities or railway sleepers from logs big biz condemned.
There is a place for good timber today but its nowhere in the above as we go on.
All timber sleepers were hardwood. a lot came out of the Pilliga as the quality of the timber was good. Of course, the Pilliga is a long way from all rail lines.
I suspect the move to concrete was one of cost, they can mass produce large quantities of product with a known and consistent quality at many locations in the country. Design criteria can be incorporated into concrete sleeper to allow for loads and location. Savings can be made by awarding large contracts to single suppliers rather than having to deal with numerous mills on an individual basis.
Plus concrete sleepers are saving the forest, thats what we all want eh.
While we are on the subject of good wood; half a large wine barrel made from imported oak lasts about a decade used as a planter pot on an elevated tiled veranda in this dry climate. I don’t expect many contributors to know this either but merely charring the inside by the recyclers makes no difference.
How long does the living oak tree last in regard to CO2 reductions?
BTW it seems Paul Biggs (9.26 pm)has overlooked the fact that any turbine requires maintenance. Perhaps Paul has never looked hard at the rest of our industry. Part of my apprenticeship included working as a guest with a visiting German engineer on one very dirty Stal turbine that had been running for only a relatively short time on pure gas, superheated dry steam in our private power station fired by both oil and black coal.
It took the pair of us days to re align every delicate impeller blade one by one damaged in the ducks arse after we managed to let our riggers jerk the top casing off the rotor with their overhead travelling 50 ton crane.
Needless to say I admire those who followed us in the same area delicately lifting a 65 ton nacelle off an overland float up into the wind over and over as the wind farms were built. Mr Whitely had assembled a great crew.
I keep in touch with our technicians. On the question of redundancy a few places may be way ahead of Paul on another score in concrete recycling. What mining does in this instance is give us the tools, crushers and graders. In mining too we recycle electrics.
The last major industrial project I worked on was revamping a whole mine into a pilot plant for treating another ore body. Every cable was laid out up the road and re stretched by a dozer while I salvaged the atomic measuring devices from the old construction.
As I said before some commentators here continue sitting on their chairs.
I have only just been alerted to the fact that my comments on concrete sleepers is on the blog – otherwise I would have responded earlier.
I detect some cynicism regarding credibility and motives re my role as a spokesperson on this matter. I am a consultant forester – have been for 12 years. I have researched this issue as part of a job that I had (in conjunction with another forester) preparing a submission on behalf of the timber industry to the Victorian government’s investigation into the future of Red Gum forests on the southern side of the Murray River. My public comments on this issue were made on behalf of the Institute of Foresters of Australia – see http://www.forestry.org.au – which has 1300 members.
The majority of Australian foresters are IFA members – I currently have a role as the Victorian division’s media spokesperson.
Victoria’s Red Gum forests are declining due to changed flooding regimes, but this could be somewhat alleviated through improved use of regulators to hold water in the forest to better mimic natural flood regimes.
Part of these forests support a small timber industry that has for some years been targeted by anti-logging activists – indeed, the government’s investigation is occurring at the behest of environmental groups who received a $69,000 grant from the Myer Foundation in 2002 specifically to fund their campaign for a Red Gum National Park.
Sleepers have traditionally been produced from these forests and this continues either as a by-product from sawlog production in good quality stands or as a primary product from poorer quality stands. Depending on forest type, 4 – 6 sleepers can be cut from each cubic metre of round log. So, 400,000 sleepers requires somewhere between 70 – 100,000 m3 of round log.
Sleepers have some similarities to woodchips in that both products can utilise lower grade timber (ie. short lengths and small sizes) to fund silvicultural operations that can improve the forest for higher value products such as sawlogs.
The ARTC was sourcing wooden sleepers from sawmills throughout NSW (many in coastal areas) and some Victorian mills. So a wide range of species were being used with varying levels of durability, although Red Gum is regarded as being one of the most durable species.
Their switch to concrete sleepers is ostensibly an economic decision, but the fact that ‘save the forests’ campaigns have been advocating this must also be considered as a factor.
Concrete sleepers cost more than wood (ie. $85 cf $55 per sleeper) but are expected to last longer (ie. 50 – 70 years cf. 25 years) – although wooden sleepers have a lengthy secondary use in landscaping. However concrete sleepers require a deeper ballast bed to counteract inflexibility and more frequent ballast cleaning – these are presumably substantial costs.
The poorer ‘greenhouse’ credentials of concrete sleepers are related to the fact that concrete manufacture emits 6.4 times the GHG compared with harvesting and processing the same sized unit of timber. In addition, not sustainably harvesting up to 100,000 m3 of timber (which would effectively be part of a larger sustainable harvest producing a range of products) removes the corresponding sequestration of carbon in the equivalent volume of new wood growth stimulated by harvesting in timber production forests.
The shorter working life of sleepers cf. with concrete is an additional benefit because it requires more frequent harvesting therefore more carbon stored in timber products and more sequestration in forest regrowth.
The ‘greenhouse’ credentials of continued timber production in part of our forests is a critical argument for active forest management which is after all, the key to fire management which is now the greatest threat to the environmental integrity of Australia’s forests and a key influence on water flows in the future. For example, thirsty fire regrowth from the 2003 bushfires is set to substantially reduce flows in the Murray River headwaters for decades to come. Its effect may well have been substantially mitigated by active fuel reduction programs that had substantially lapsed as more of the forests had been placed in National Parks. Its effect could still be reduced substantially if thinning is undertaken in this regrowth in the future. Unfortunately, the push to ‘save’ all Australia’s forests is likely to prevent such sensible management.
At present, the timber industry harvests some 9.5 million m3 of wood from Australian native forests. Most of this is from public forests and is regarded as sustainable. It stimulates an equivalent volume of new wood growth that sequesters substantial volumes of atmospheric carbon.
If anti-logging campaigns continue towards the ultimate goal of completely removing the native forest timber industry it will counteract an enormous amount of the emissions saving achieved from embracing renewable energy sources such as wind.
Mark Poynter
Thanks; Mark’s own lengthy comment is extremely encouraging and makes it obvious he is not really knocking the local wind industry.
What is not clear however is whether red gum as the primary choice for an upsurge in heavy rail transport is as readily available as it once was in the heyday of Australian railways.
I agree what must be debated more at the federal level is the poorer greenhouse performance of concrete across the board but not this furphy of wind power and its contribution to the grid on its part time basis in relation to our ongoing sleeper issue.
Mark may be interested to know that the quality of recycled sleepers in this region OF NSW varies enormously. Some in my garden used for topsoil retaining have almost disappeared. Using treated pine sleepers cut to similar dimensions for landscaping is another story.
On the vexed question of thirsty fire regrowth after 2003, I was chatting only yesterday to a private landowner who has acres of steep bush on the banks of the Murrumbidgee. Although spared in the big firestorm I reckon she will be the last to entertain returning to a routine native fire managed ecology.
I mentioned our forest guru at ANU Prof. David Lyndenmayer was written up again last week in promoting more work and studies by traditional owners.
http://www.banksiafdn.com/index.php?page=285
Mark has a long way to go.
I was interested in Mark’s comment about red gum forests being in decline because of changed flooding regimes.
This may be the case in some places along the Murray – and I’ld be keen to know where.
I put some time into understanding the Barmah – Millewah forest because this is a forest I understood to have been negatively impacted by river regulation – and I was looking for worst case examples back in 2003 when I started working on the Murray.
But anyway this is what I found, and wrote up for Myth and the Murray back in 2003:
…Significant quantities of timber continued to be harvested from the Barmah forest during the 1900s.
There was an official assessment of the Barmah forestry resources in 1929–30 and then again in 1960–61.
The 1960–61 assessment indicated a considerable increase in growing stock and total sawlog volumes, notwithstanding that significant volumes had been harvested in the intervening period and despite the fact that river regulation since the construction of the
Hume Dam in the 1930s had changed flow regimes.
An assessment was again conducted in the late
1980s. By this time, however, the focus had changed from assessing the forest for its timber resources to recognizing its value as a wildlife habitat.
The Barmah forest was listed as a Ramsar site in 1982 making it a ‘Wetland of International Importance’ because it is, ‘a particularly good representative of a natural or nearnatural
wetland’ and ‘regularly supports more than
20,000 waterbirds.’ According to the 2002 Barmah
Forest Ramsar Site Draft Strategic Management Plan,65 ‘Barmah is of special value for maintaining the genetic and ecological diversity of the region because of its size, variety of communities and its high productivity.’
Over recent years, the Victorian Government has
regulated down commercial forestry activities to the extent that commercial harvesting is now limited to 2,500 hectares with a limit of 370m3 of sawlogs per annum from the Barmah forest.
The impression given in the Wentworth Group’s
documents, and generally reported in the media—that vast numbers of ancient red gums are dying along the entire length of the Murray River—is not substantiated by the available evidence.”
from http://www.ipa.org.au/files/IPABackgrounder15-5.pdf
which includes references
If Mark’s comments regarding logging are “on the mark,” then having a house built of lumber is environmentally responsible as it “sequesters carbon.” (No, I am still not buying the idea that managing CO2 adjusts our thermostat.)
But doesn’t logging “destroy the fragile framework of a delicate ecosystem on the brink of collapse?” I.e., if you’re into the notion of “untouched forests,” don’t you have to go for the concrete option in order to save “precious arboreal habitat?”
Let’s not forget, trees that die of natural causes and remain in the forest (not logged) become habitat to any number of creatures.
Timber that comes out of the forest for human use is eventually biodegraded by microbes and the CO2 is released back anyhow. So that’s a wash.
Until I hear otherwise, I’m sticking with the theory that concrete is better because the Greenies will get you for using wood.
Jen – what about the Darling River – Two Men in Tinnie (ABC TV) seemed to have noted tree death at a number of spots – usptream due to not enough water (blame Queensland/Cubbie said the locals) and around Menindee – inundation from the impoundment? Just seeking an opinion – I have no idea how widespread the tree death is.
If using concrete sleepers is negating a large part of the impact of Victorias windfarms on CO2 emissions, all that’s really saying is that windfarm’s haven’t had much effect. Victoria’s electricity base load (ie, coal fired) generation is running at about 4500 MW.
http://www.nemmco.com.au/data/GRAPH_30VIC1.htm
At about 1 tonne of CO2 per MW, this is nor far short of 40 million tonnes of CO2 per year. And that’s just baseload electricity. Against this, the claimed 250,000 tonnes saving due to windfarms pales into insignificance.
So neither concrete railway sleepers nor windfarms have any great impact on the CO2 problem.
Jeniffer: “I put some time into understanding the Barmah – Millewah forest because this is a forest I understood to have been negatively impacted by river regulation –“. Why focus on just this place?
A good environmentalist would want to know this whole system from top to bottom.
In the 1960’s there was some good science about water retention via vegetation in the high country as opposed to expanded cattle grazing and more big dams to control floods. That’s where I came in on the water argument back then. There was an equally strong lobby after more dams for irrigation too. However we only had to stand by the Kooyong after reading Storm Boy any time later to see where that wish was taking us.
Here is a quick review of the politics, curtsey our ABC 2001
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/stories/s232137.htm
This was the time a few us of looked hard at mono engineering in our politics.
Dick Johnson an engineer eventually published “Alps at the Cross Roads”. Dick had been involved with some research into exclusive hydro engineering before Peter Thompson “Power in Tasmania” was published in 1981 by the ACF.
There is a lot more history here –
http://home.iprimus.com.au/yarragon/pages/bookshc.htm
I often say science comes only after the event. In the case of the Murray Darling river system it’s about a hundred years too late.
Some further comments:
Comparing the GHG credentials of concrete sleepers against windfarms was not meant to denigrate renewable energy sources – it was simply a means of benchmarking what is being lost in moving along the path to totally preserving all forests.
Similarly I’m not suggesting that wood is the answer to global warming, but actively managing forests makes a positive contribution. Whereas unnecessarily removing an activity that operates in just a 7% portion of our public forests will have negative consequences and seems non-sensical given the efforts being made to mobilise the population to change their lifestyles (a la Al Gore’s movie).
Sure, logging has some impacts on wildlife – arboreal animals in particular – but let’s put it in perspective – if most forests are not logged, then putting up with a minor portion being less than pristine is surely acceptable given wood’s benefits and the reality that we are amongst the top five per capita consumers of wood and paper products.
About the slow decline of the Murray Red Gum forests: yes, governments do consider the Barmah-Millewa to be an important water bird habitat – that is why environmental water allocations are being deliberately targeted to watering just the 50% portion where water bird breeding is concentrated. The rest of the forest is being neglected – now very rarely flooded when pre- regulation it was flooded 8 years out of 10. Forest growth rates in much of the forest are now substantially less than what they naturally should be – hence the forest is in decline and in the long term cannot survive unless efforts are made to ensure all areas are regularly flooded.
Ironically, thinning of regrowth by the timber industry is staving off moisture stress by lowering between-tree competition for scarce moisture – but this can only go on for so long.
The timber industry is potentially going to be made the scapegoat for the decline of these forests – but creating a National Park will do nothing to address the underlying problem of vastly changed patterns of flooding since river regulation.
I am not the expert on this, but echo the thoughts of a collegue who has studied these forests since the mid-1960s. I will endeavour to get him to contribute more.
Mark Poynter
Off the topic but I figure it’s worth posting nether the less, another side to the high country management argument. Recall I reckon it’s all about water up there not fuel reduction. Given this drought, water retention on the lower slopes becomes a big issue for forestry as well.
http://www.mcav.com.au/campaign04.html
Before 4 corners goes to air tonight on the AMCOR issue I will get in first by saying tactics used in campaigning on both sides of the divide moved up a notch in Victoria from 1972. Note; AMCOR made decent cardboard like their rival Visy.
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/asaw/biogs/A001539b.htm
Although some like me won’t be identified as having a foot in both camps at once let’s say it has been most helpful in developing a better perspective. By that time I had experience in pulp and paper production at various manufacturing locations.
Considering all the public assets up for grabs though, forests were never as precious as the water that ran through them.
Sorry; the APM, Visy etc manufacturing history starts about here (Technology In Australia 1788-1988).
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/253.html
Perhaps Mark Poynter could estimate how much potential sawlog in Victoria went into APM pulp over the decades then give us an update on the situation now.
Gavin
I worked for a Tasmanian woodchip export company for six years in the early – mid 1990s. During that time it was the practice for an officer from the Forestry Commission (as it was then)to spend time at the weighbridge checking loads for sawlog grade material.
My recollection was that he would find only about 15 m3 of sawlog grade material being wrongly delivered to the mill each year. So it didn’t happen to a great extent.
Having said that though it wasn’t uncommon for small straight logs to be chipped – they obviously had sawlog potential but were too thin at the time of harvest to be merchantable. If a coupe was being clearfelled or cleared for plantation there wasn’t much point leaving them standing.
I have no first hand knowledge of what happens at Maryvale, but have no reason to suspect it would differ from Tasmania. Perhaps you know differently.
Having viewed the Four Corners program I am disappointed that it failed to illuminate the situation about the extent of timber production and created an impression that the industry controls where it goes and how much it logs. The reality is that the proportion of Victoria’s public forests that are available and suitable for timber production has fallen from 31 to 10% since 1986, and much of this occurred during the A -team’s time. Perhaps the A-team delayed this trend for a few years in Gippsland by spoiling attempts by ‘green’ political activists to completely close the industry – but they’ve hardly been spectacularly successful.
Mark Poynter
Watching 4 corners had me grinning throughout. There were some naive folk being interviewed on there. The program also exposed serious weaknesses within the ALP
Mark: Your frank response tells us a lot. Firstly it’s a small world but I will get to that later. Although my direct involvement with the industry ended officially in the 1970’s I kept in touch in various ways including the odd job at APM Fairfield during their expansion program.
The best reason I can give for that fall in availability of suitable native forests available for exploitation in Victoria in the very nature of all modern industry. Logging like mining is brutal in any form. For those not accustomed to either it can be devastating, and we lost any gentle touch ages ago.
To me experienced as I am it’s this little sentence that means so much ”If a coupe was being clearfelled or cleared for plantation there wasn’t much point leaving them standing” Although I suspect you are referring to re-growth only, not old growth here it bothers me to think that a native forest is being eliminated.
On this score I am ultra conservative. Mono crops everywhere are essentially exclusive which makes companies like Gunns exclusive in the eyes of many.
Some recollections: Before export woodchip considerations dominated Tasmanian hardwood forestry operations even the pulp concession areas for ANM and APPM had some managed natural regrowth everywhere. Note the APPM group disappeared some time ago and APM became part of AMCOR. Any emphasis on timber production disappeared with both of them.
http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/246.html#989
Mark, my home ground was the NW of Tasmania. While I was a boy an uncle was busy surveying much of the northern forest for the Tasmanian Government. He had access to all the post war aerial photos for his stereoscope 3D studies.
Its likely only a handful working in your industry today actually know what wide spread quality timber once existed all over that state and in many parts of Victoria. The best reference are the old photos in our state libraries. Look at historic towns as your key.
http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/Detail.asp?Letter=P&Subject=Papermaking+%2D+Tasmania+%2D+Burnie+%2D+Photographs&ID=au-7-0016-124373234#more
Gavin Bugg
This logging/forestry debate is circuitous, the die has been cast and the majority are anti logging yet pro timber.
re Schiller and the all timber house; essentially an all timber house is GHG positive as the carbon is locked up within the structure whilst additional carbon is being sequested during regrowth. However, additional enviromental problems impact on costs eg termite prevention using “soft” methods are costly and ongoing, added requirements for insulation and/or heating and cooling, added costs for building on piers, continued maintenance of timber that is exposed to the elements etc. These all act against timber as a building product.
Around here the most affordable and favoured is for masonry clad steel framed and roofed houses firmly bolted to a concrete slab.
In NSW the dept of forests grade all logs, mills complain when they receive logs more suited as fence posts.
Gavin
I agree with your comment about the brutality of modern mechanised logging, but lets not forget that forests regrow very successfully even after industrial scale harvesting.
I don’t believe your use of the word ‘exploitation’and the term ‘native forest being eliminated’ is appropriate to the process of harvesting and regeneration which occurs in most native foreests. There has been no clearing of native forest for plantation since 1987 in Victoria. All logged areas are re-seeded either naturally from retained seed trees or artificially using seed collected from the harvested trees or nearby – they become natural regrowth.
Even in Tasmania, most native forest logging is followed by regeneration. Some 60% of Tasmanian logging is selective logging, and much of the rest is clearfelling and regeneration as managed natural regrowth. Despite ‘green’ campaigns suggesting otherwise, only a minor proportion of logging on public land is to convert native forests to plantation and this is now being phased out. Much of the plantation conversion has occurred on private land on which about 30% of Tasmania’s forests reside, but even there the majority of logging is followed by natural regeneration. There is no shortage of managed natural regrowth as you seem to imply.
Mark Poynter
rog hits the nail on the head with this “However, additional environmental problems impact on costs eg termite prevention using “soft” methods are costly and ongoing, added requirements for insulation and/or heating and cooling, added costs for building on piers, continued maintenance of timber that is exposed to the elements etc. These all act against timber as a building product”.
rog; where is “here” ? Has timber maintenance and restoration has kept us both busy??
Mark says; “There has been no clearing of native forest for plantation since 1987 in Victoria” GOOD! Let’s say it took a while though and have another look at my argument.
It’s mostly about what went on before the RFA process was invented. All governments were up to their necks in over exploitation of our forest resources from about the late forties. The crunch for timber and local pulp production came with the granting of woodchip export licenses that enabled further exploitation over vast areas. A battle royal ensued over all logs as a result.
For instance; several large private mill managers in northern Tasmania desperate for saw logs gladly had me do some part time spying on forestry operations supervised by government forest rangers (where I routinely traveled on my sales trips). I checked the date of my contract with CIG in Hobart and it was 1985. I bet small employers in Victoria suffered likewise. Note Vic forestry officers were quite helpful to me in the mid 60’s however their skill with native species beyond a few in production then was very limited
Now let’s look at other details starting with the larger plantation operations in both states.
Pure globuless and radiata stands don’t make much of a landscape. Part of the deal in Victoria over alpine motor vehicle recreation was to let the bikies and 4 wheel drives use the state forests.
My workmate Ron at the paper mill in town got dozens of bikies out legally exploring the bush for the first time (mid 70’s) and it was they who decided the Strezleki Ranges should be first on the list of tradable managed assets. I recall the suggestion of an invigorated forestry program there but I kept right out of it since our softwood plantations were up round Myrtleford. There was no chance our mill would use hardwood pulp.
Mark can probably fill us in on just what happened up in those Strezleki Ranges.
For me the situation in Tasmania was about a substantial loss of mixed native forest with rainforest types such as myrtle being the victims of sustained management programs over time. Timber and flora diversity in the APPM concession area completely disappeared. Interference with traditional honey production has long been a complaint from our beekeepers.
Government managed forestry on both sides of Bass Strait failed to promote important species like E oblique at critical times however (Mark will appreciate this); the most recent RFA review in Tasmania has gone a long way towards recognizing species diversity with numerous additions to reserves. Even the Bass Strait islands got a mention.
Perhaps Mark can also update us on the islands of red gums left dry between the irrigators. Thanks.
Jennifer: This site is worth a glance in relation to my comments about water. Water issues are likely to determine all mainland forestry outcomes. It’s also a valid perspective for governments considering new pulp mills.
http://www.australianpaper.forests.org.au/docs/Water.htm
Gavin Bugg.
Gavin
If I was retired with a heap of time on my hands I could continue this on-line discussion indefinitely – but unfortunately I am not in that situation.
But just a few points:
Yes, WWII and the post-war building boom did put enormous and unsustainable pressure on Australia’s native forests – they were after all our only timber source (virtually).
This situation was what prompted the Australian Forestry Council in 1964 to set a target of 1 million ha. of softwood plantation to be planted by 2000. This was largely achieved.
Like it or not, the only way this was able to be achieved was because of the conversion of public native forest to plantation. This land was free and the timber generated from clearing helped to fund the plantations – tremendous savings to governments.
At least in Victoria, attempts were made to purchase cleared private land for planting but aside from the cost there were always strong rural community protests against this use of good farming land. The only area where this was substantially possible was in the Strezlecki Ranges where farms had been abandoned and the land was thought to be useless for farming.
Many of the Strezlecki plantations were eucalypts – Mountain Ash. Forty years on and there are concerted campaigns for these plantations to made into a National Park. Indeed, the Bracks government has promised that it will buy them back from Hancocks for this purpose if re-elected in November.
Only in about the mid 1990s had our softwood plantation resources matured enough to take the mantle from native forests as our primary source of timber. As I said earlier without native forest conversion this would not have happened so soon – if at all.
Your comment about loss of biodiversity in plantations is true, but in Tasmania you must remember that the large tree farms such as Surrey Hills where rainforest made way for Blue Gum – are on private land. Plantation development in that context may well be a prefereable land use compared to if the property had been cleared for pasture.
I also agree with you on water being a critical issue – but timber production through thinning of regrowth has much to offer. For example, 40% of Melbourne’s catchments are regrowth from the 1939 bushfires. Thinning studies in the Maroondah catchment in 1983 showed that removing 50% of the trees in 43 yo. regrowth increased run-off by 2.5 million litres per hectare per year. Melbourne has 65,000 ha. of 67 yo regrowth in its catchments – active forest management obviously has enormous scope to improve water yield if we want it to. Simply banning it from catchments is counterproductive, although perhaps there is a need to use it in a different way to what now occurs.
The ‘greens’ find water to be a convenient arguement because mature and old growth forests don’t use as much water – so stop logging and let all our trees grow old is the way to go, and their predictions of water savings are based on all forests staying old forever. Unfortunately nature doesn’t work that way – fire will always cause more regrowth eg. 2003 alpine fires killed or severely burnt over 500,000 ha. of forest on the Victorian side of the border – the regrowth from this will affect run-off for decades as the 1939 regrowth continues to do.
Your comment about E.obliqua is interesting. In Victoria, one mill operating out of the Wombat Forest invested substantial money in developing flooring products and markets from this species in the 1990s. There is now virtually no timber harvesting in the Wombat Forest – but that’s another story.
I quickly looked at the link you provided about water. The first thing anyone should do when looking at a ‘green’ website is remember that there is an upper limit to how much public forest is available for logging. In Melbourne’s catchments, 12.8% of 157,000 ha. of forest is available for logging over an 80 year rotation – so 87.2% will not be logged. While the site has references to how much is permitted to be logged each year in the various sub-catchments it never once mentions this upper limit. It therefore creates the erroneous impression that eventually all the catchment will be harvested.
I’m sure if I was to spend the time I could find other anomolies. One point that is interesting is that the greens have campaigned for plantations for decades – now they complain that they use too much water. An obvious answer is to have pastured catchments but no one wants that either.
Mark Poynter
Mark; I have no need to continue now we are off part time windy stuff or have the last word except to say radical land use programs run by governments leave us with odd legacies and governments are always doing big things on the cheap.
We had soldier settlements that had to be resumed, excessive hydro schemes in wilderness and water diversions that left some places without a trickle. I won’t go on.
By your reckoning Mark, I’m not green, having never campaigned for forestry plantations of any kind and believe me it’s not easy finding reliable info from recollections.
It’s hard enough keeping a thought long enough to complete a sentence.
Definitely over to you to put our railway sleepers and some quality T&G flooring back on the map.
Gavin Bugg
I’m having some difficulty with the conclusion that making 400,000 concrete railway sleepers involves the release of 190,000 tonnes of CO2.
Surprisingly, I haven’t been able to find any direct statement about how much a concrete railway sleeper weighs, but I did find an estimate of its volume, being 0.1 cubic metres (m3). This seems plausible. The density of concrete is in the region of 2.2 tonnes/m3, so the total mass of 400,000 concrete sleepers is around 88,000 tonnes.
The CO2 in concrete production is predominantly from the manufacture of the cement, and about 1 tonne of CO2 is produced per tonne of cement. The proportion of cement in concrete is up to 15%, meaning that the 400,000 concrete sleepers contain just 13,200 tonnes of cement.
So the CO2 released in the manufacture of the sleepers looks more like 13 thousand tonnes, not the 192 thousand tonnes claimed.
Sylvia.
The fact that the initial balance between gas the and the sleeper is irrelevant. Concrete sleepers will last much longer than the Timber currently available. Also the heavier improved rail will assist in taking freight off the road, what about the savings in diesel and bitumen. Not to mention the shipping costs that have a flowon effect.
http://www.tececo.com.au, a Tasmanian company, produces a CO2 absorbing cements based on magnesium. One hopes that such a cement could be used to sequester carbon in things like sleepers, rather than produce CO2 because that’s the way it’s always done.
So where can I purchase all the used wooden railway sleepers that will come out and be replaced? Please forward on the contact..
i wanted to know can old BHP sleeper be used for fire wood or can they be used for gardens