Last week the Australian National University released a report** on “Green Carbon” claiming that un-logged native forests store three times more carbon than previously reported and this prompted a demand by The Wilderness Society for an urgent end to logging of the carbon dense native forests in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.
Alan Ashbarry, a Tasmanian with an interest in the social and economic benefit of value adding native forest timber from sustainable forestry and a member of Timber Communities Australia, has sent me his critique of the report.
It begins:
The report was funded by the Wilderness Society as part of its campaigns against the harvesting of native forest of high political value. This campaign includes opposing Tasmania’s approved pulp mill as it will use pulp wood from native forests at a time when the Wilderness society claims that their “carbon storage is critically important to combat climate change”.
So is it not surprising that the report recommends the banning of all industrial logging in Australia’s south eastern native forests.
This means closing down the native forest timber industry in Tasmania, Victoria and Southern New South Wales and stopping the pulp mill.
In the ultimate irony, if the industry is shut down, it is likely that Australia will import timber and paper products from tropical forests in developing counties as alternatives for the wood products created by sustainable forestry in these areas.
It is these tropical forests that are most at risk and are the target of the United Nation’s REDD program. This program aims to reduce emissions from deforestation or degradation of forests in the developing world.
According to data from the United Nations the REDD program does not target sustainable forestry in Australia.
All official statistics and reports show that deforestation has virtually stopped in Australia and all forest harvesting/ management is undertaken and measured against international criteria for sustainable management.
Unlike the Wilderness Society, the UN’s Intergovernmental panel of Climate Change (IPCC) recognises the value of our forest sector explaining:
“In the long term, a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit”
But what about the new report published by the ANU and funded by the Wilderness Society? How robust is the claim that un-logged native forests store three times more carbon than previously stated in Australian government reports and by internal climate change experts?
The report itself states: “A technical paper that details the source data, the methods used and the full results is being prepared for a scientific journal.”
In the absence of this data, I checked their maths and found the report also failed the common sense test.
The ANU report has used a new model to estimate the carbon in our forests, a model that is completely at odds with studies undertaken by the Australian Greenhouse Office, Professor Peter Attiwill, Forestry Tasmania, MBAC, and the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse accounting and they have significantly higher results than modelling by the Australian National University in 2003 and 2006.
The report’s lead author, Professor Brendan Mackey, who is a Wilderness Society volunteer on their Wild Country panel, last year in The Age demanded logging must be stopped to solve the global warming problem.
In The Age article he claimed “One hectare of mature, tall, wet forest can store the equivalent of 5500 tonnes of carbon dioxide” this is the equivalent of the large figure of total 1500 tonnes Carbon per hectare stored in the biomass and the soil [The conversion factor used for C/CO2 is 12/44 (0.273)].
Now this new ANU report in which he is lead author claims that forests “can store three times more carbon than scientists previously thought.”
The model used in the ANU report somewhat quaintly colour codes the carbon throughout the World: black is for charcoal, grey from fossil fuel, green is carbon stored in the biosphere, brown is carbon in “industrialised forests” and blue is carbon in the atmosphere and oceans. As green carbon is defined by the report as carbon sequestered through photosynthesis and stored in natural forests, the report can then ignore all that carbon that is stored in timber products from managed forests. This is extraordinary given that the carbon in managed forests is also manufactured through photosynthesis, yes even the carbon stored in the “brown” trees!
The ANU report selects only 14.5 million hectares from Australia’s forest estate of over 147 million hectares.
The new model created for this report relies on data of the ‘gross primary productivity’ and the report states: “The value of GPP used was the maximum annual value for the period from 1 July 2000 to 30 June 2005 (the maximum was used in order to exclude periods of major disturbance such as the 2003 bushfires).” This statement begs the question of why would you want to exclude bush fires surely this is “green” carbon.
Thus the model is all about potential not reality, and states on page 7:
“The difference in carbon stocks between our estimates and the IPCC default values is the result of us using local data collected from natural forests not disturbed by logging. Our estimates therefore reflect the carbon carrying capacity of the natural forests.”
The ANU report argues that “If logging in native eucalypt forests was halted, the carbon stored in the intact forests would be protected and the degraded forests would be able to regrow their carbon stocks to their natural carbon carrying capacity.”
Until this report it has mostly just been the forest sector that has stated the forest re-grows after harvest and can maintain both biological diversity and carbon carrying capacity.
The report authors then make a series of assumptions to determine the carbon sequestration potential of the logged forest area.
The report claims that an average carbon carrying potential of 360 t C ha-1 of biomass carbon (living plus dead biomass above the ground). It also claims the highest biomass carbon stocks, with an average of more than 1200 t C ha-1 and maximum of over 2,000 t C ha-1 are in the mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) forest in the Central Highlands of Victoria and Tasmania.
These are the areas of highest political value and have constantly been in the middle of the debate about forest management for the last decade or two.
It is these figures that clearly demonstrate that the model fails basic maths and common sense. If the carbon volumes are converted to the actual volume of trees, it means that there would be trees growing on trees!
Carbon density of eucalypt wood is about 0.325 t C/ m3, this means at 2,000 t C ha-1, this is 6,153.84 m3 of wood, say 6,150 m3 per ha. If only half of this could be considered the timber available to the forest sector(exclude branches, litter, rotting wood, stumps), then this wood equates to a volume of logs of about 3,000m3/ha.
Therefore in an average coupe of 50 ha this represents 150,000m3 of log, it means based on the model that two average size coupes will produce over 300,000 m3 of log.
To compare just how big a figure this is, Forestry Tasmania has a legislated requirement to supply the whole of Tasmania’s saw milling industry 300,000 m3 of saw logs each year from the 1.5 million hectares it sustainably manages!
In 2006-07 Forestry Tasmania harvested over 11,500 ha of native forest for a harvest of 301,526 m3 of sawlog, 283,880 m3 veneer and peeler hardwood and 2,136,687 tonnes of pulpwood. By approximating a tonne of pulp to 1.5 cubic metre this would be about 330 m3 per ha or 16,500 m3 per average coupe.
Even The Wilderness Society used a completely different figure of only 225 tonnes pulp wood per hectare, when calculating the impact of the approved pulp mill on Native forests. Even allowing for harvesting residues this is a tiny fraction of the new model’s figures.
The report fails the common sense test but it was published by a reputable university and has been given all the credibility of an independent scientific report by the mainstream media including the ABC.
The Wilderness Society and the ANU chose to release the report to the media rather than first publish it in a scientific journal subject to peer review. Now the report is likely to be used to lobby the United Nation committee that current forest practices degrade the forest. This lobbying attempt is just after their failure to convince UNESCO over wild allegations about the Tasmanian World Heritage Area.
Until the data and the calculations supporting this report have been subject to full independent scrutiny, the reports status must be considered just another claim in the ‘war of words’ on forestry.
Alan Ashbarry
Tasmania
www.tasmaniapulpmill.info
———————-
** The report’s title is rather long: Green Carbon: The role of natural forests in carbon storage
Part 1. A green carbon account of Australia’s south-eastern Eucalypt forests, and policy implications
Authors are: Brendan G. Mackey, Heather Keith, Sandra L. Berry and David B. Lindenmayer
Published by: The Fenner School of Environment & Society, The Australian National University
And you can download it from: http://epress.anu.edu.au/green_carbon/pdf_instructions.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Three things concern me about the Mackey report cleverly analysed here by Alan Ashbury. Firstly it is funded by the Wilderness Society, and the lead author is a Wilderness Society volunteer and the findings (surprise surprise) support the Wildnerness Society’s campaign against timber harvesting in native forests; secondly it appears that the esteemed scientists have been unable to get their basic arithmetic correct, and thirdly the report is published by the Fenner School of the ANU without peer review. This amounts to a shocking blow to the intellectual credibility of the report authors and of the Fenner School at the ANU.
Yorkie
The Wilderness Society helped torture the data until they confess: confess you harm the climate or you (or your budget) ‘re chopped down.
I think I remember seeing a ‘bushfire expert’ on TV saying that bushfires will be more frequent AND more intense, due to climate change. He, and ABC TV, seemed oblivious to the inanity of that remark. In the real world, more frequent bushfire means less fuel means less intense. Now, by any chance, was that Professor Mackey, or Professor Lindenmayer?
I don’t think the report recognises that sawn timber, used for building or furniture, actually sequesters carbon, potentially for centuries. Was that one of the assumptions missed out of the model?
A famous statistician once said “all models are wrong” so it is very likely that this model used for the Wilderness Society by the ANU professor is also wrong.
A quick look at the photos from activists Geoff Law and Rob Blakers and a key reference being a Christine Milne speech, it was perhaps hardly surprising to find that it was funded by the Wilderness Society.
No wonder it argues for a ban on forestry, this is despite the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change’s finding that sustainable forestry mitigates greenhouse gasses.
On reading the report there appears to be a lot of confusion between above ground and below ground carbon and just how well these figures relate to the model.
It also seems that to get the model to work the data resulting from the 2003 bushfires in Victoria and NSW had to be excluded.
As we consign this report to the recycling bin, most would be shocked to know it was printed on foreign rather than Australian paper. The recycled paper was collected in Europe and Canada, de-inked in factory using an unknown energy source and mixed with pulp made in a pulp mill free from elemental chlorine from virgin fibre harvested in tropical south America and other hot spots around the world and all manufactured in Italy, imagine the carbon miles clocked up to use this “80%” recycled foreign paper.
All of the above commentators seem happy to rely on data from research funded by the forest industries. I guess that forest industry funding is above reproach. Do you think perhaps your claim that research at Australia’s national university is suspect is a little desperate?
Way to go, Indigo! I was waiting for the “I disagree with the results, so I will attack the integrity of the scientist” defense. You didn’t let me down.
California is the poster child of ‘if you don’t cut the forest, you are building fuel for fire season’.
Add on the daft proposition that forest fires should be separated into “natural causes” and “human caused”, with the first being allowed to burn helter skelter, and the later being the only type that should be extinguished.
That’s the sort of policy you get when Wilderness Societies write law.
data from research funded by the forest industries
??
Australian Greenhouse Office, CRC for Greenhouse Accounting are NOT funded by the timber industry.
Try again.
The only good thing one can say about this ‘report’ is that it reveals the blatantly partisan and underlying lack of scientific rigour exhibited by co-author David Lindenmayer.
For to have attached his professional standing to such a conspicuously unscientific piece of Wilderness Society pamphleteering as this must also draw attention to the character and scale of the ideology embodied in his earlier works on nest hollows that have had such a large and pernicious influence on forestry codes of practise.
By converting pulp tonnage to M3 we get real data harvesting of 4,239,000 m3 of all wood products each year in Tasmania which, if these clowns were right, could be harvested from only 2291 hectares or 1/5th of the area harvested by forestry Tas.
Isn’t it curious how a bunch of marginal academic scrubbers in Canberra, with a model no less, can find five times more carbon than the guys who are actually in the forest, actually in the business of growing and selling carbon?
More illuminating is their quaint notion that the forest will absorb more carbon in perpetuity if it is left alone rather than harvested. This betrays such a manifest ignorance of forest ecology that these authors should be struck off from any formal forest policy process.
And please correct me if I am mistaken but is there any doubt that the failure to provide the data sets and methodology at the time of releasing the report is the unmistakeable MO of the fraudster?
I would like to invite both Mr Mackey and Mr Lindenmayer to present their missing “technical paper” at the next AEF conference, conveniently taking place in Canberra.
The Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU does not have funding from the forest industries to my knowledge, but if it was offered I would expect them to accept. Furthermore, if they then produced a non-refereed report blatantly supporting logging of old growth forests (in order to maximise carbon capture), I would not be surprised. Indeed my suspicions would be confirmed….this is an acaedemic institution that has sold its soul for a mess of pottage, staffed by “scientists for hire”. The concept of universities and research institutions (like CSIRO) providing independent intellectual leadership seem to be a thing of the long distant past.
Indigo, if this was an academic paper in a scientific journal, accepted after peer review scrutiny, providing data and the complex equations to arrive at its conclusion, then who funded it would not be a significant issue. The data and the science could be debated.
However the report’s authors have chosen a media release of their report, accompanied by a glossy brochure style report with dramatic photos and key quotes. The funding entity, the Wilderness Society has also chosen to issue media releases and a ‘media friendly’ summary of the report at the same time. The Wilderness society and the Greens political party have demanded urgent and immediate action based upon the report.
Due to these choices by the ANU and the Wilderness Society, it is perfectly legitimate to link the two and the report’s findings. The report author’s claim that a early version of their paper was written for the Bali Climate conference, held in December last year, attended by both Brendan Mackey and Greens Senator Christine Milne as the Wilderness Society nominee to the IUCN.
The Wilderness society in its web summary of the Bali Conference and ‘Green Carbon’ claimed: “The scientific paper from which this summary was prepared is currently being peer reviewed for publication”.
The ABC told its audience that the research took ten years. Surely there must have been sufficient time to submit and have reviewed an academic paper that included the data?
The other funding twist is that the report acknowledges “These analyses also drew on data and models developed as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage grant, LP0455163.”
According to the Australian Research Council this grant to the ANU, and its sponsoring partner the Wilderness Society, was worth in 2004: $90,000; 2005: $155,000; 2006: $130,000; 2007 : $65,000 of tax payer’s funds. Surely enough reason to be open and transparent with the data.
Just one correction to my post above. I asked, “Isn’t it curious how a bunch of marginal academic scrubbers in Canberra, with a model no less, can find five times more carbon than the guys who are actually in the forest, actually in the business of growing and selling carbon?”
But the reality is that the authors are not contesting the volume harvested so they are claiming that all this new carbon volume is in the non-harvested category. They are claiming the ratio of commercial wood carbon to all other carbon is not 1 to 1 but, rather, 1 to 10.
So lets get this straight. Mackay and Lindenmayer claim there is 8 times more non-commercial carbon in our forests than the people who actually manage those forests.
And they have made such a claim without providing the technical data that would substantiate the claim.
So where does that leave us?
A totally unsubstantiated 8 fold exaggeration of carbon stock that must still be there after harvest if it was not transported to either a mill or a ship. And this huge missing volume is completely emitted, presumably by fire, just after harvest.
And this gets even curiouser. If it is not visible to the timber workers after they have harvested the coupe then it can only be carbon that is underground. But if it is underground then it is hardly likely to burn very well, if at all. So it will remain there long after the site has been regenerated.
But wait. If the site has been regenerated and a new forest is growing there then why would the behaviour of this soil carbon be any different to that of soil carbon in the original forest?
Remember, this huge volume of new non-commercial carbon is not attached to living trees because the foresters have already counted that portion. So this new carbon volume can only be in dead wood under the soil. And if it is dead wood then it is already slowly rotting and emitting its CO2. And the presence of new growing trees will not change that rate of emission from the buried dead wood.
I must say that this is very impressive Carbon, indeed.
It apparently cannot be harvested by people who’s job depends on how much carbon they harvest.
It has apparently not been detected earlier by people who’s job depends on their capacity to identify and measure carbon.
It is apparently emitted during and after harvesting takes place but it is apparently not above ground where it would be burned because if it was, the foresters would have recognised it as carbon and accounted for it.
It is apparently not part of the pre-existing living trees below ground because that part has already been counted and is in proper proportion to the above ground carbon.
And this Carbon apparently changes its emission characteristics once the unconnected living trees above it are replaced by new unconnected living trees.
I guess we will just have to call this stuff “Scarlet Pimpernel Carbon” because, as the Baroness Orczy might have said, “We seek him here, we seek him there, those Gonzo Greens seek him everywhere, Is he in Heaven? – Is he out harm’in? That damned, elusive Pimpernel Carbon”. (with emphasis on the Pimp).
I really think someone more with more eminence than me should present the material assembled by Alan etc and present it to the Vice-Chancellor of the ANU – forcing him to consider the issues raised and reply. If they don’t know about it, they can’t so anything about it.
I laughed when I saw the ABC TV piece and even louder when Virginia Young popped up on cue. Appalling.
At least I will say this for the ANU report it vindicates the former Minister for Forests, Eric Abetz.
The Minister was telling the Senate back in November 2006 just how forest industry was playing its role in reducing CO2 and how Australian plantation and native forests are carbon sinks, absorbing 44 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. (I suppose that 132 million after the 3 times finding)
When he was rudely interrupted by Senator Brown of the Greens, who claimed that scientific studies show that old forests store more greenhouse gases— and that the then Minister was misleading the Senate.
Well now the ANU report claims that old growth forests do not contain the highest amount of carbon in biomass, but this occurs in regrowth.
“Highest biomass occurs in stands with two or three age cohorts of overstorey trees and rejuvenated understorey trees, which have resulted from partial stand-replacing wildfires.” (Page 28)
Just who is misleading who about all this green and brown carbon? Will Senator Abetz receive an apology?
Gosh, so a partial stand replacing fire produces growth conditions in the remaining forest that maximises carbon storage but a partial stand replacing harvest does the opposite? “They seek him here, they seek him there ..”
Forget the Vice-Chancellor, he is obviously a known associate of low life “campus trash”. Far better to make the relevant ministerial and departmental staffers aware of the issues (but only once) and then flip the metre on the class action for negligence. Just let it tick away for a decade, record all the foreseeable detriment, and then take the f@#$%rs down, big time. And just before they cash in their superannuation. Their indemnity from prosecution does not extend to acts done negligently or unlawfully.
The Wilderness Society in releasing this report appears to have carefully selected the media that got first access to the ANU authors. Yet the media usually pride themselves on independence and fearless questioning to ensure credibility. Yet for a Chief reporter with News Corporation, the article head lines were “Research reveal a wilderness wonder”, and the ABC devoted at least seperate stories across radio, television and on line, at least one of these reports even repeated the inaccurate claims of the “talent” without question. Did you notice how the report’s “Of the 14.5 million ha of eucalypt forest … (which is about half of Australia’s remaining eucalypt forests),” became “BRENDAN MACKEY: We looked at half of Australia’s remaining forests” on AM, with the ABC reporter concluding “About half of Australia’s forests have been cleared” a statement that would breach the ABC’s code of practice as it is not accurate!
Why do the media insist on an arm chair ride, when the report raises many real questions that should be asked by a fair and independent media.
Sorry missed a word, Thats at least SIX seperate ABC stories; AM, Lateline, Radio Australia, two on line and ABC science.
I am still curious to know how much carbon is currently locked up in timber products in Australia, e.g. buildings, furniture, railway sleepers, fence posts etc. As a small example, I have a jarrah floor, which must contain a few tonnes of carbon. What if the timber industry had not created these products? Would the carbon be up there, ‘polluting’?
Perhaps the timber industry should do some research along these lines, and then we can all claim domestic, or farm carbon credits for the tonnage we have sequestered.
Green Davey Gam Esq.
Research by the Forest Wood Products Research Development Corporation (now Forest & Wood Products Australia) determined that wood products in Australia store more than 230 million tonnes of carbon. So buying a wooden desk rather than an aluminum one you are storing carbon.
A summary of that research is available in a PDF document at http://www.fwprdc.org.au/content/pdfs/new%20pdfs/FWPA_CarbonBro%2008_WEB.pdf
They also found that Australia’s forest store 10.5 billion tonnes of carbon (excluding soil Carbon)
The National Carbon Accounting System also has a detailed report on the methodology used to estimate carbon in wood products and is available from the Department of Climate Change web site. This published document and the research that back it up, will hopefully allow carbon in wood products to count under the replacement of the Kyoto protocol, at the moment the default assumption is that all carbon is emitted at time of harvest.
Even so, Al Gore’s World Resource Institute estimates that for managed forests the uptake of carbon by regrowth equates to the timber products plus slash. E.g. no net emissions from forest management, the WRI publishes a small brochure on the subject that includes diagrams that have been reproduced by Sir Nicholas Stern, but totally ignored by the Wilderness Society and the ANU report.
The WRI explanation is at http://pdf.wri.org/navigating_numbers_chapter17.pdf
Not only does the wood in your floor constitute an important carbon sink, Davey, the decision to harvest the tree delivered three other very important ecological services.
First, it took wood that was about to spend the next 100 years rotting away (and emitting its CO2) and transformed it into a product that will be completely stable for the next 100 years or more. It will not even begin to emit CO2 by the time it would have completely emitted its CO2 if left in the forest.
The act of harvesting has postponed part of the huge natural CO2 emissions from rotting forests and hence, has made room in the natural carbon budget for emissions from human sources.
Secondly, the harvesting of the tree your floor came from has made room in the forest for younger trees to grow and absorb the same amount of carbon that was removed. Nature abhors a vacuum and a forest, naturally, abhors a carbon vacuum and responds by filling that gap with the same amount as went missing.
Thirdly, in both cases above, a well managed forest is capable of responding in full over a shorter period than the natural process it replaced. Put simply, a single seedling may take 80 years to grow to the same size as the sawlog that was harvested but in a well managed forest there may be 3 to 6 adolescent trees that have been waiting in the big trees shadow. And as they rush to fill the gap they can re-absorb the removed volume of carbon in as little as 15 years.
At this point half of these trees will need to be removed, perhaps as poles etc, which will allow the remaining ones to continue their rapid carbon absorption, again achieving full carbon recovery in as little as 15 years.
So all up, within the next 100 critical years for carbon management, we get a 100% prevention of a natural emission that makes room for some of your petrol emissions. We also get a 100% re-absorption of the carbon that was stored in your floor as the first trees regrow. And we then get a cumulative absorption and storage of another 200% to 400% as additional carbon is stored in poles etc from the harvested regrowth trees.
In carbon accounting terms there are few other jobs that can deliver the scale and extent of these outcomes. Yet, it is the green movement, chanting their mantras to climate jihad, that are actively campaigning to put an end to these jobs at the very point in history when they are needed most.
The wilderness society and their shonkademic mates at ANU are either extremely ignorant or deep down they don’t believe we are in carbon crisis at all. For shutting down your most contributive option is hardly the action of a serious problem solver.
See the Landholders Institute submission on carbon trading at http://ianmott.blogspot.com/2007/04/landholders-submission-on-carbon.html
Thanks Cinders and Ian,
So I am not barking mad. I will buy more wooden furniture. Score card for Professors Mackey and Lindenmayer:
Grammar: satisfecit
Rhetoric: cum laude
Logic: misere
You’re welcome, Davey. Of course, the other major consideration is the substitution effect of wood vs other materials. If the other option available to you was steel or alumina then your choice of wood will save a great deal more carbon.
Once again, it is the WWF/ACF/Wilderness sickos that are trying to eliminate the most contributive option, leaving the most carbon intensive options to dominate the market place.
Cinders might have access to the comparative carbon in cement, steel and alumina. It is mindblowing that the greens are promoting policy that boosts emissions at the expense of a carbon beneficial option, wood.