Hi Jennifer,
You may have read on the front page of Courier Mail on Saturday the article about Queensland’s First Carbon Farmer, Peter Allen.
Here is the link:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,20797,21794589-952,00.html?from=public_rss
The project was the first avoided deforestation project of its kind in Australia and one of the biggest in the world.
The project secured 12,000 hectares of vegetation which was eligible to be cleared under the Stat Governments 500,000 hectare clearing ballot process.
It was estimated (both ground truthed and reconciled with the AGO) that the project prevented 1,200,000 tonnes of C02 emission being released into the atmosphere.
The cut off date for clearing permits to be acted upon was the 31 December 2006 which brought an end to broad scale land clearing of remnant vegetation in Queensland
It is amazing to read some of the responses in the article and also on the blog entries linked to the project.
Instead of being supportive of a project to protect vegetation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions many people were critical of the project.
One response was:
“I thought Peter Beattie past a law a couple of years ago that said no established forest of natural growth could be bulldozed. This farmer appears to have pulled a good one to me, He’s turned a few baron and unusable acres of scrub into a million bucks”
Another response:
‘How come the farmer, was in a position to destroy all those trees in the first place? There’s no moral here, merely a financial decision! Such thinking has created the problem in the first place and that by a shear a ‘twist of circumstances’ makes the farmer look ethical.’
Green groups have come on board to say the voluntary market is open to exploitation, with no controls on who can sell carbon and no checks on the work carried out.
However, to eligible under the scheme vegetation had to be approved by the Australian Greenhouse Office under the Greenhouse Friendly initiative.
To secure the carbon, landholders had to agree to enter into ‘carbon rights’ agreements.
Briefly, the ‘carbon rights’ agreement consists of:
– A 120 year agreement not to clear the vegetation which binds to title for future owners;
– On-going grazing and management is allowed to reduce bush fires, weed outbreaks and feral animal infestations;
– The agreement areas are surveyed and added to the survey plan.
To account for fire and carbon loss a 20% buffer was added to area eligible to be sold for credits.
In the future, there are further ‘avoided deforestation’ projects planned for eligible vegetation in Queensland and Northern New South Wales.
This eligible vegetation must meet the requirements set down under the Kyoto Protocol definition of forest and enforced by the Australian Greenhouse Office.
Landholders are already skeptical of the merits of reduced land clearing after the way in which Premier Beattie and the Queensland State Government have enacted and enforced the Vegetation Management Act.
Now the job will be even harder to convince eligible landholders to enter into the project because of the criticism that the project may attract.
The Allen’s (who were interviewed for the article) did not want the media attention but where interested in the diversification of income potential in selling the rights to carbon held in their vegetation on their own land and also the opportunity to contribute something back to the environment.
However, the attitude from many (mostly urban) is that it should be an ‘ethical’ decision rather than financial.
People want the benefits but no one wants to pay for it. We (the farmers) cant win.
For more information on the project go to www.carbonpool.com.au .
Cheers,
Tom Marland
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The big question is, what happened to all the credits that should apply to all landowners impacted by the clearing controls. This amounts to about $600 million each year which should be returned to the actual communities that have made the sacrifice.
The responses from the metroscum are entirely predictable. To them any advantage to a farmer is seen as some sort of unwarranted excess and indulgence. In the brave new green utopia we will all be expected to count our blessings, dip our forelocks and be thankful for small mercies.
Note the 20% buffer demanded by the AGO. In what other sphere of business or government is one allowed to just add an extra 20% to the bill just for good measure. So this farmer is being taxed an additional 20% on the income he will get from his credits, which will then be taxed at the standard rates. And as the average Australian pays 25% of income as tax, it means this farmer will be paying almost double the tax paid by ordinary Australians.
So even after the farmer has been ripped off blind without any compensation, the AGO just couldn’t help themselves by taking him down again in the only scheme left for him to recover part of his losses.
Predatory governance in the pax ecologia.
Interesting, how is the money to be paid – upfront or over 120 years? Does Rio “lease” the carbon?
The message from metroscum to you is “get stuffed”. So now off you go and have a mega-tanty about burning it all down or blowing up bilbies.
A pity as you might have had some goodwill before you put the boot into city folk. So reading your big whingy whinge, the greenies first reaction is to lobby like hell to legislate you into the stone age. While we’re there let’s cancel all drought aid and ban anyone from the bush attending any city facilities.
So who are you going to vote for – both sides of politics have dudded you.
Ian nobody forced the guy to take the deal. If you don’t like the terms then piss off or go to Europe and convince the Conference of Parties to change the accounting rules. But try to not tell them to get rooted in the first five minutes of discussion. (and for heavens sake don’t tell them you think it’s all bullshit anyway and you’re only in it for the money).
The reality is that the gentleman in question has done some good business. He made the decision to take the deal on the dollars. If you guys weren’t such red necks and had leaders asleep at the wheel you could have had trading carbon for biodiversity offsets as an best practice international model. But because you couldn’t get organised it’s gone to legislation.
And don’t look at most of us – we didn’t support the legislation. So your cries of scum simply ratchet up the determination six more notches by reactionary green groups.
Dont you read before you react Luke?
– judging by comments by “metroscum” there was little or no goodwill to lose and after the attitude expressed by the urban warriors, like Luke, it is less likely that the farmers will repeat the deal.
The credits were a once off payment to the landholder for the ongoing protecting of carbon credits over 120 years.
I am aware that ‘carbon leasing’ programmes are available but because the voluntary market is currently unregulated purchasers of credits prefer a more solid agreement.
The greatest contradiction from critisism about the project is that we (rural and city) as a society want to save the planet but we are not willing to pay for it. It is all well and good to hell abuse from the side line but until someone has to put their hand in their pocket- the silence is deadly.
The great principle established in the Carbon Pool Project was that if something is worth saving, it is worth paying for. Also, the vegetation was protected not simply for carbon credits but for biodiversity value. The areas can continued to be grazed and managed and it is not an attitude of simply ‘locking it up and throwing away the key’.
I know of real estate developers buying up land, and paying market rates, to offset clearing in other areas.
There was a discussion on the “Australia Talks” programme on the ABC last night on the issue of Landclearing and also carbon trading.
Here is the link if anyone would like to listen: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/australiatalks/stories/2007/1936021.htm
This type of carbon trade should be applauded, it is probably one of the few that recognises that there is a cost imposed in manageing remnant vegetation.
I imaginge that governments would also seek to have such trading expanded as it will reduce the taxpayer burden in regards to stewardship payments.
Whether the market will be fair to landowners is yet to be seen, but on the surface this seems to be a step in the right direction.
Luke,
The concept of biodiversity credits is not new and has been around for probably twenty years now. It has not gotten off the ground in any meaningful way due to a number of factors, primarily due to the government regulating land clearing they have distorted the market and secondly, where attempted, the restrictions on existing land use are often so restrictive that they become a disincentive to participate in such schemes.
Luke has made it necessary to repeat the statement, “The responses from the metroscum are entirely predictable”. Any farmer who was in two minds about whether he or she can trust the public to deal with them fairly has had all the ambiguity stripped away by Luke’s diatribe.
To get such a rant for the apparently heinous crime of pointing out that normal commercial contracts don’t involve 20% overpayments “just for good measure”, highlights the true nature of the problems farmers face.
This particular deal is only possible because the landowner had approval to clear under the final 500,000ha allocated under the veg act. He was lucky enough to win a ballot which enabled him to clear, and this enabled him to then enter into the contract on terms that are quite outside community norms.
When it is crystal clear that every farmer who was once able to clear, but chose not to to do so, can get carbon credits for all future carbon sequestration, and is only required to account for emissions when they actually take place, then I will support the scheme.
I will continue to oppose any scheme that imposes a carbon penalty for carbon that will still be in a tree stump in the year 2087.
I will continue to oppose any scheme that fails to discount the cost of future emissions by current market discount rates, as is the norm for every other market.
I will continue to oppose any scheme that penalises my family for the fact that we were planting native trees back in 1959.
I will continue to oppose any scheme that fails to give me a carbon credit for forest management actions that actually reduce the volume of natural emissions (like decay of old stems) in my forest.
So run along you fascist little piece of departmental pond slime. Let me know when you actually own a single tree. You can design all the tree management policies you like that will please all the treeless wankers of this world. But if you want the slightest co-operation from people who actually own trees then you need to address our concerns.
If not then you can put the next fire out, I’ll just drink the tea and watch the show.
Lots of people like this sort of scheme, I bet. When it is fully matured, they’ll be paid *not* to go to work.
It’s been proven that going to one’s job, and coming home after, coupled with the activities in between, are the worst emitters of CO2.
Planet-wide unemployment is an urgent necessity!
The other interesting point to make is the question of whether the farmer concerned actually intended to clear when he applied for the ballot.
If it was always his intention to organise a carbon credit then this intention was not consistent with the aims of the balloting process, which was to provide a limited amount of clearing to those who needed to do so. It was especially designed for farmers who were part way into a management plan and needed extra clearing to achieve a minimum productive area.
If there was never any intention to clear then this farmer has deprived other farmers of their legitimate right to gain a share of the limited clearing approvals.
I will be refering this matter to appropriate authorities to determine if this particular ballot was ultra vires.
What an excellent idea. We can just pay our farmers to let their fields and paddocks grow up in scrub and import our food by selling off our non-renewable minerals. It’s called sustainable management. We are already doing this in our fisheries and it only costs $1.8 billion a year for the imports.
If you hear of any clapped-out cattle properties for sale cheap let me know.
To be eligible under the Carbon Pool Scheme landholders had to demonstrate that they were able and willing to clear the vegetation to be covered under the agreement.
The Carbon Pool agreement was formulated after the Ballot process was finalised and landholders were unaware of the potential to sell the vegetation as carbon credits at the time their ballot applications were lodged.
The vegetation would have been cleared if not for the scheme. This is despite poor seasonal conditions being experienced in western Queensland. This is not because the landholders are ‘vandals’ but because the State Givernment set a mandatory date (31 December 2006) when all permits were to expire.
If a more flexible approach was taken to the permitting process a much larger percentage of the 500,000 hectares which was allocated under the scheme could have been sold as carbon credits.
To take that a step further if the entire scheme for vegetation management in Queensland was more flexible more vegetation could have been sold as carbon credits – offsetting the large burden being placed upon landholders with remnant vegetation on their properties.
In fact it has been estimated that the net cost to landholder in Queensland alone has been $2 Billion in lost income and capital gain.
Paid for doing nothing? How very, very European of the IPCC.
“To be eligible under the Carbon Pool Scheme landholders had to demonstrate that they were able and willing to clear the vegetation to be covered under the agreement”.
This is consistent with Kyoto that carbon credits not be allowed for activities that would be considered “business as usual”. Essentially any activity that was going to be carried out is not considered under Kyoto accounting rules.
This is of course different to the UNFCCC reporting rules for the national greenhouse gas inventory.
What the business as usual rules fail to take into account is the cost of maintaining the carbon pool and indeed the costs associated with protecting a pool that has become both a financial asset and liability once the stored carbon has been sold. Remember that for biological storage carbon will still be accumulated indefinately in a well managed pool.
The problem is that very soon after 1990 the corporate stakeholders demanded and received a “no disadvantage rule” which was meant to ensure that companies that took early action to curb their emissions or increase their rate of sequestration did not suffer any disadvantage compared to other companies that may start later.
This seemed fair enough until it was realised that any company or person who happened to have commenced desirable activities prior to 1990 were not included under the “no disadvantage rule”.
So anyone who planted trees, or regenerated native forest prior to 1990 is allowed to suffer major disadvantage because they get no credit for any carbon stored before or after 1990 but are taxed on the carbon in those same trees when they come due for harvest. And that tax will be loaded into the prices for that wood which must compete with new participants who will have an offsetting credit.
And if anyone is incapable of recognising the deep and fundamental betrayal this represents to those who were creating forests long before it became “cool” then I choose to be incapable of recognising the next bushfire that comes over the hill.
And you will have the environment, and the carbon emissions, you deserve.
Well it’s all settled then – given Ian has used “oppose” 4 times – we’ll just go with that and do what’s being suggested in many other quarters.
The bio-sequestration sector is too hard to manage with too many angry people. The AGO just ain’t up to the task. So much monitoring and verification required, indentifying forest ages back 50 years perhaps, individual tree stumps, wood under houses, how quickly sawdust heaps do or do not decay, tracking parcels of timber for a 100 years. Then of course there’s the simple matter of convincing all the other nation states in the world to agree.
So just wipe trees as a source of carbon credits.
So yep I agree – oppose it all.
Don’t bother with carbon trading schemes as it just makes people angry.
It will only make a marginal difference to the outcome anyway.
“.. too many angry people..”
You always think of yourself in the plural Luke?
You must live in a house of mirrors
Luke,
I can assure you that the AGO is up to the task of monitoring carbon fluxes due to land use change, whether they be due to emissioins or sequestration.
The national carbon accounting system (NCAS)is the most sophisticated of its type in the world. The monitoring is required to ful;fill Australia’s obligations under both UNFCCC reporting and Kyoto accounting ( eve thought he later is not required the system reports on it every year).
The reason that the NCAS does not take into consideration such things as wood waste, trees tupms, sawdust etc is that the carbon is assumed under the reporting and accounting rules to have been emitted at harvest. The Europeans certainly ensured that countries with ample forests and more importantly, available land on which to plant new forests, would not gain a competitive advantage.
When Kyoto was being negotiated the green NGO’s had worked themselves up into afrenzy over the prospect of any trees being harvested and lobbied very hard to ensure that the rules would not advantage forest growers.
Together with like minded countries they lobbies hard to ensure that the Kyoto accounting rules did not allow forest based sequestration to offset any more than 2% of a countries carbon emissions. This was apparently designed to ensure that countries reduced their emissions as opposed to sequestering their emissions.
The perversity of this outcome is that countries that have the land base and the economic capacity to remove CO2 from the atmosphere are denied the use of the ONLY tool that currently exists to do so.
Oh Rog you’re soooo cruel. You beast.
Well AGO has conned you Peter. Try ground truthing their remote sensing. And see if NSW are really happy with their satellite interpretations. You may be shocked. Some people would like to argue with every parameter in every allometric equation but it won’t happen.
But anyway back to Kyoto accounting. Ian isn’t going to accept the rules. And given one would have to negotiate with all those recalcitrant Europeans it’s unlikely to progress don’t you think. So we might as well pull up stumps and can the credits.
Peter’s comment on the AGO and their capacity to monitor carbon had me google again the AGO history under Andrews and their subsequent framework development for our greenhouse accounting system. The AGO Annual Report 1999/2000 reviews the process and gives all the names in management then. Some may recall my interest in its evolution.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/ago/annual-report/1999-00/pubs/annualreport_2000.pdf
Luke: A later doc outlines a DYO carbon measurement kit with a how to do your own fallen tree (illustrated). See Greenhouse News V 4 issue 3. 2001 We had come a long way hey.
However Peter could be right in this respect as I know our people lead the way at least in this region if not the southern hemisphere with these simple ground tests for evaluating mega data. But stumps must be included as Ian says for a fuller picture where that land is in a new forest “reserve”.
On the other hand offsets can’t come from stumps in plantations can they? Kyoto would be a lame duck!
Back in 1999 Gwen Andrews spoke on energy at the AIE national Conference.
http://www.aie.org.au/material/NatConf99/nat-abst.htm#Andrews
Our energy efficiency is still not properly on the table downunder yet is it? Imo JH & Co lost a good executive.
Luke,
you said
“Well AGO has conned you Peter. Try ground truthing their remote sensing. And see if NSW are really happy with their satellite interpretations. You may be shocked. Some people would like to argue with every parameter in every allometric equation but it won’t happen.”
Not conned, Just imformed. Sorry mate but as I used to be in the employ of the AGO, specifically to undertake project level carbon accounting I am in a position to pass judgement on the NCAS.
As for ground truthing the remote sensing, well since leaving the AGO I have had cause to. As it is a strategic level tool operating at a defined level of precision and resolution it passes well. If you are looking for a level of precision and resoplution that is beyond the reported scope of the NCAS then you will find fault, as indeed you would if you applied the same criteria to any model.
Indeed if you applied the same criteria to the GCM’s you will find that they do not even come close to matching the criteria that the NCAS has adopted, nor do the GCM’s match the NCAS with a single repostory of peer reviewed literature and technical papers that underpin the system.
Its chalk and cheese really, the NCAS has a stated level of precision and resolution that it operates under and provides the technical papers that underpin it in a single web site freely available to the public. The GCM’s do not.
The NCAS determines emissions from land use change and informs the national greenhouse gas inventory (under the UNFCCC reporting framework) and Australia’s Kyoto accounts (Kyoto accounting framework). You will need to take up any grievances concerning what, how and why it is calculated with the UN and the IPCC.
Gavin,
“On the other hand offsets can’t come from stumps in plantations can they? Kyoto would be a lame duck!”
Well this is an interesting point. If allowed to coppice over 50 to 60 years then the stumps in teh plantation would still have sequestered carbon over that period. It will depend on the management regime of the forest owner. However it is not implausible.
In native forests, research has indicated that tree stumps decay over many decades. It will be interesting to determine how long they take to decay in Eucalypt plantations. Kyoto may not be as lame as it may at first appear in this regard.
But I will await further research before I’d bet on it.
It will be interesting to see who now wins the land clearing battle .
The Greens may have allies in some big companies paying farmers not to clear and gain carbon credits , but the ethanol fuel industry will be looking to change land and water use from food production to ethanol production .
If farmers won’t convert cleared land for this then the pressure will be on for someone to clear more land and find more water to grow crops that will keep the “gas” guzzlers going.
Luke is attempting what, in marketing terms, is called a “withdrawal close”. That is, “don’t worry about the faults in this dud car, just buy it as it is the only one left”. Standard spiv bollocks.
Luke also tries to exaggerate the complexity in ground truthing as some sort of criminal rationalisation for institutionalised injustice and inequity. But I have a 1942 aerial photo that was taken only a month before my father bought his neighbours property. It had been compulsorily cleared to the boundary as a condition of the grant of title.
That photo allows us to state, with absolute certainty, that every one of the 5,000 tonnes of carbon that is found there today, would not be there at all if we did not choose put it there.
That photo allows us to state, with absolute certainty, that if we had not acted as we did, there would be 18,300 additional tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere right now.
Yet, we now have a likely system of carbon management rewards and penalties that provides maximum benefit to “landholders (who) had to demonstrate that they were able and willing to clear the vegetation to be covered under the agreement”.
It provides maximum reward to those who only refrained from removing a forest after they were offered a bucket of money. It provides no reward to all those farmers who, for half a century or more, were able to clear but were unwilling to do so. And it imposes maximum penalty on those who actually replaced a forest that they were unjustly compelled to remove.
So don’t try and tell me that is not the work of some seriously sick perverts.
Ian: We seem to be running up a gum tree in two places.
I guess all our “managed” forest such as it was way back in the late 90’s could hardly count as a Kyoto type carbon reserve since its value would be fluctuating i.e. production interests would dominate giving us a flawed reserve. The same scenario must apply to bits and pieces in left general agriculture.
As I recall most of our argument back in those heady 90’s was about getting state governments and their agencies to agree on something that could determine what was in and what was out of production. Each RFA had to come right down to the local level and include cut over rates for all significant species. Wood stored in stumps and private houses was not the issue then, neither were bits of paper.
As I see it; all potential fuel becomes another argument under Kyoto rules but of course we must accept AGW as the reason we go down this path before it makes any sense to even have the Kyoto protocol.
My conclusion: When international negotiations about carbon trading truly started our AGO under Andrews did accept AGW but governments did not; hence a few distortions along the way. One of the consequences is a very confused public debate over strategies.
Actually no – just leave the car yard. The product has been withdrawn from sale.
Oh gee AN aerial photo Ian – that’s one ! Out of how many needed for how many properties globally. You haven’t even begun to think what’s required. How about the affadavits, certificates, and photographs for your tree stump, pile of sawdust, fence posts, newspaper collection, and timber under the house. And the inspectors to make sure it’s still there. And a termite inspector as you don’t have any organochlorines.
Actually let’s allocate a special officer whose job it is to monitor Ian’s carbon for the next 100 years. Maybe 3 generations of officers.
You don’t believe in any of the underpinnings of AGW and carbon sequestration but you want the benefits.
You want rule of law but only if it suits you.
You have a million objections and details to consider but don’t offer any method for either resolving the complexity or alternatively keeping track of all these little bits of carbon. And no solution to persuading other nation states to accept your logic except calling them Euro-spivnicks. Solutions offered by Ian = zero point zero.
Anyone who doesn’t line up 100% with your ideology in 30 seconds is a spiv or scum.
“Institutionalised injustice” – gee we’re not signed up to Kyoto and there is no institutionalised trading regime. You make it sound like you’re a slave in the Deep South.
The solution and you’ve now convinced me to advocate it at every opportunity is to ditch carbon trading for trees.
P.S. Actually I think we should bill you for the clearing on your property as condition of title. Nobody forced anyone to buy the property and develop it. Or buy the property subsequently. Could have opened a grocery store instead. Isn’t this the precision attributional logic you like. Or is it more capitalising gains and socialising losses.
“But” you’ll say “that was so long ago and they didn’t know then”. “And everyone had such good hearts and worked so hard as honest citizens”.
Oh so you want a date of exemption for past works where we’ll draw a line. How about 1990?
Gavin,
Regardless of whether forests were mainatained as multiple use forests or placed within the reserve system as a result of the RFA’s none of Australia’s native forests under public management are counted under the Kyoto accounting system. The carbon fluxes over that estate are considered to be neutral.
Where the limited amount of harvesting occurs the small amount of CO2 that is emitted is well and truly compensated for by the C that is stored in wood products and most importantly the C that is sequestered by the estate as a whole. As the estate is the gross management unit.
Similarly the emissions from bushfires are compensated for by the carbon sequestration of the estate as a whole. Have a look at the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory 2003 under the section on agriculture for savannah burning. The maps of the areas burnt make interesting reading and put the recent east coast fires into some sort of perspective.
Luke,
The only reason 1990 was chosen as the base date for calculations of emissions is that it was the only one that could be politically agreed upon.
Lets face it the majority of the Annex A countries under Kyoto had pretty well ceased their land clearing activities and 1990 was a date that most of them could live with. Australia argued that land clearing was still occurring here and managed to successfully negotiate an 8% increase on its 1990 baseline as a part of its Kyoto commitment.
What needs to be kept foremost in mind here is that once ratified the Kyoto target is binding on the country. That is it becomes the relevent governments debt not the individual.
The balancing act is then how to manage the Kyoto lability with good governance. New Zealand have adopted a path where the government has legslated thatt eh carbon stored inplantation forests belongs to the government and not the grower. Is this the sort of over the top action you would like to see implemented here?
Putting Kyoto aside there is nothing to stop a forest grower from selling their carbon regardless of the age of the forest. The current market is gearing up for emission trading and the general public has a heghtened awareness of what carbon sinks are and their role in climate change mitigation. Unlike politicians and green groups they are also generally less concerned about the detail of Kyoto and display a greater amount of common sense when making decisions.
Which means that is forest grower A has a regrowth forest on their property that they have managed for 40 years then the public will generally be wiling to pay for that sequestered carbon to remain sequestered. It will all come down to the marketing and how it is presented.
You need to avoid these long arguments with yourself, Luke, you may be assured of a win that way but you’ll also go blind.
Spare us the smoke screen. If a forest was not there at a particular point in the past, but is there now, then it is clear to the slowest departmental boofhead that this is a “business as usual” that needs to be encouraged, not penalised.
There is no reason why a 1990 cutoff cannot remain in place as a default sequence that will apply unless a case can be made for a different cutoff.
But the problem is that this whole issue was developed in a slop of arrogant incompetence heavily seasoned with ideology. The Greens were hoping to apply a tax on the cutting of every and any tree and this has shaped everything else that has developed out of that flaw.
And now that the scale of this folly is becoming evident you can only respond with rage.
And frankly, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest if wood carbon is taken right out of the picture. My primary interest is in the well being of all the other native forest owners who face gross discrimination under the “People’s Ecological Dictatorship”. After the way they have been treated there was never any way they would be so stupid as to plant more trees to benefit their persecutors.
The only forest owners to benefit from the carbon trading system in its current form are the plantation tax swindlers and their metropolitan clients, who ruin perfectly good farming land, deplete aquifers and communities, at the cost of the revenue base, and then mouth-off about how they saved the planet.
But the simple fact of the matter is that properly managed forestry, in an accounting system with integrity, is the one industry that can absorb and store some very serious volumes of carbon. And the fact that the Greens and the EUPCC have all the time in the world to indulge their perverted ideological whimsies, is a strong indication that the whole AGW issue is nothing more than a political beat up.
If it really was a serious problem they would not be p***f**ting about like they are.
So Ian – a consummate rhetorical blast. Close to a classic. Which is why we love you so.
But an alternative idea ssshshshshshshs – sound of white noise static on the radio … sshshshshhs – Earth to Ian ” Hello” .. shshshshshsh
Hmmm – no suggestions for sawdust pile monitoring. No gusto for being charged for 1940s carbon emissions. Can’t claim them only one way.
As for dicking around – well given most of the planet hasn’t signed up – it’s about what you expect. A hotch potch.
Meanwhile we notice that Aussie and the most of the globe has had a pretty hot hot hot start to the year. Tick tick tick.
P.S. Remember Ian – we’re on your side. You just haven’t worked that out yet.
Peter the Europeans were pretty sus on the whole Australia clause thing. How we got it negotiated and another 8% as well is pretty slick IMO.
If we only had Ian there we would have done better.
But it has now been exposed without the tree clearing saviour one-off – we’re doing very little. Like everyone else.
You may think you are on the same side, Luke. But it is not you that is expected to lay still and think of the brave new green utopia while being well and truly *%78#@ over.
And this excuse that it was the best one could achieve in the hallowed halls of the EUPCC is pure cop-out. The climate uberlords have the luxury of bearing no responsibility for the consequences of their actions while those involved in drafting Australia’s own response have specific duties, duties of care, and prescriptions in respect of proper exercise of power. And last time I checked there has been no ceding of those, or any other powers to the unelected, unrepresentative, swill that goes by the name IPCC.
And this continued cop-out under the need for “consistent” treatment of sources and sinks prior to 1990 does not wash. It is pure bullshit hypocrisy because the timelags involved in forestry mean that TODAYS EMISSIONS ARE OF YESTERDAYS SEQUESTRATION.
That is the fundamental difference from all other forms of carbon flux. It is a difference of fact, not of opinion. It is a material difference in the fundamental nature of the wood carbon cycle.
And it is symptomatic of the fundamental incapacity of the Eurocretins to distinguish between the permanent removal of a forest and the cyclical removal of trees within an on-going forestry purpose. The former involves an eventual emission while the latter does not.
And your continued assertion that I have proposed no alternative is pure political spin. The alternative I have consistently promoted is fora carbon accounting system based on fact and integrity, on actual emissions at the actual time of emission, and of proper chain of carbon custody.
It is not hard to determine the amount of wood waste on a building site because the design software is fully capable of calculating the volume of each piece of wood used in construction. This wood volume is easily converted to carbon volume and that volume can easily be recorded during the building approvals process and kept with the Lot Plan for any future reference until the eventual removal, modification or destruction of the dwelling.
It is not hard to determine which landfills get what volume of used newsprint or unrecycled packaging material and how long they last in those landfills.
The only real hurdle to proper carbon accounting of wood fibre is that the major proportion of it ends up in a government owned facility where the eventual emission takes place. And we couldn’t have any system that left responsibility for carbon emissions on the shoulders of government, could we?
“unelected, unrepresentative, swill that goes by the name IPCC” – well gee Ian – did our goverment reps negotiate without Senator Hill’s approval and they they randomly select the advising scientists. Come on – the goverment has prided itself on its contribution the IPCC climate science effort. Are they people all acting unilaterally? Surely not.
And so would you as an unelected person like to nominate the rules?
Of course the problem with negotiations is that often the other nation states don’t agree. I’d suggest they all think Australia’s position is sus.
Ian in our ongoing hypothetical discussion you need to take responsibility for the clearing done on the property that you as a business person decided to acquire of your own free will. So the trees that have been replanted may now have equalled the carbon that was lost in the initial clearing. Assuming you have replanted 100% and allowed for soil carbon rundown. So now you’re back to zero? Is this not being 100% consistent?
As for your insistence that monitoring all this is easy – you have to do this globally. It would be monumental. For example does anyone know the volumes of timber being logged legally or illegally in the Amazon and Indonesia. Do we know the fate of the processed timber. Accounting at the level you suggest would be a mammoth undertaking. Although perhaps the AGO having world’s best practice might have a go.
Luke, when you have taken responsibility for the carbon released when your suburb was cleared for housing, I will take responsibility for the clearing that the previous owner was compelled to complete by the government of the day. But thanks for the demonstration of the lilliputan scale of your moral compass.
You seriously think it is appropriate to make a subsequent owner of land responsible for the actions of a previous owner acting under duress? Or is this just a little “special treatment” you have dreamed up for farmers but not to be applied to “real people” (ie, urban ones).
Either way, the only thing that disgusts me more than your ethical vacuum is the fact that people with the morality you demonstrate have major input to the policy process. And you have the gall to claim you are “on our side”.
Where’s that 12 guage, I think I saw a #$%&@* Bilby.
No I’m not going to take the blame for the suburb – just my block.
Was the previous owner acting under duress – it was a business decision to acquire the land under those conditions was it not? Could have opened a habadashery store in town instead?
Surely you’re not wanting to capitalise gains and socialise losses.
No we’re not on your side. We just spend half our lives trying to improve your lot and find solutions only to be kicked by both sides. Who says we influence policy – you may have worked out by now it steers itself on political winds.
Yeah, right, “improve our lot” by treating us without the slightest regard for any of the principles of natural justice. Perhaps you should try helping Bin Laden instead.
“capitalise gains and socialise losses”, what a crock. The only people I know doing that are the Eurospivs, keeping all the benefits of their affluence while internationalising the carbon costs. Sorry to refer to your political masters like that, Luke. But tell us, with all this bootlicking of European elites, do you ever feel like a traitor? Do you ever feel like the 21st century version of the Gombeen Man?
I don’t mind if you slag off political masters. Get up the system by all means.
I’m only supporting science mates from a personal and philosophical viewpoint.
Anyway – I’m unloved and rejected. Not allowed on property rights demos and banned from the great circle meetings at the collective.
So as the Gombeen Man I’m a a usurious predator on the poor ? And it was you telling me how you had made great wealth and I wasn’t worth a shilling.
I’m off for a big cry. My feelings are hurt.