At the United Nations climate conference in Bali last year delegates agreed to include forest conservation in future discussions on a new global warming treaty. If adopted, REDD (Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation) means that the value of carbon in intact forests can be realized in carbon accounting.
Environmentalists see REDD as a useful vehicle for encouraging conservation of rainforests in the Congo, the Amazon and Asia.
This new resource has been termed “Green carbon” to be distinguished from grey carbon in fossil fuels, blue carbon in the oceans and atmosphere, and brown carbon in industrialized forests. There is of course really no real colour difference and the colour is merely a metaphor. [1]
The Green Carbon agenda received more scientific support last week with a major paper in Nature. Entitled ‘Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks’.[2] The paper reports that in forests between 15 and 800 years of age, net ecosystem productivity (the net carbon balance of the forest including soils) is usually positive and this demonstrates that old-growth forests can continue to accumulate carbon, contrary to the long-standing view that they are carbon neutral.
The Kyoto Protocol (Marrakesh Accord) definition of a forest makes no distinction between a natural forest and a plantation.
Under the Kyoto Protocol definition, a “forest” is: A minimum area of land of 0.05 hectares with tree crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of more than 10 per cent with trees with the potential to reach a minimum height of 2 metres at maturity in situ. It includes (i) young stands of natural regeneration; (ii) all plantations which have yet to reach a crown density of 10-30 per cent or tree height of 2-5 metres; (iii) areas normally forming part of the forest area which are temporarily unstocked as a result of human intervention such as harvesting or natural causes but which are expected to revert to forest.
International negotiations on REDD are still continuing and were high on the agenda at the Accra climate change meeting . However, is REDD all green? What will happen at Copenhagen in 2009? A number of international environmental groups raised alarm bells at the Accra meeting, claiming that allowing developed countries to purchase REDD credits would absolve them of responsibility for reducing industrial emissions at home. Some groups proposed setting firm targets for industrial emissions reductions, which could not be substituted by REDD credits. Others feared that a REDD mechanism would exclude and threaten indigenous communities and serve as an excuse for land grabbing, or endanger sovereignty in rainforest nations.
And, for Australian pastoralists, a key question is whether savanna woodland thickening be considered in the discussions, and if so – is it REDD or rangeland degradation?
Luke Walker
Brisbane, Australia
*******************
[1] Alan Ashbarry has critiqued the concept of Green Carbon in a piece published at this blog on August 11, 2008, entitled: A Critical Review of ‘Green Carbon: The Role of Natural Forests in Carbon Storage’
[2] Old-growth Forests as Global Carbon Sinks, by Sebastiaan Luyssaert, E. -Detlef Schulze, Annett Börner, Alexander Knohl, Dominik Hessenmöller, Beverly E. Law, Philippe Ciais & John Grace, Nature 455, 213-215 (11 September 2008)
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
“Environmentalists see REDD as a useful vehicle for encouraging conservation of rainforests in the Congo, the Amazon and Asia…”
To justify this conservation on that basis would be to recruit lies for an allegedly worthy cause. You see some people trying it on with nuclear power. Actually thats what kicked off the whole science fraud scandal as Louis pointed out. Margaret Thatcher, not so much lying, but promoting these anti-CO2-oddballs as a way of recruiting support for nuclear power.
But nuclear power can justify itself. And she was promoting people who were against nuclear power and any sort of power that was actually cost-effective. They will be against wind where and when it becomes cost-effective also. And solar. They will always find and excuse. They came out against hydro-electric after all.
If preserving some of these jungles is a worthy deal independent of this anti-CO2-racket then that ought to be justfiable for non-CO2 reasons as well.
“Environmentalists see REDD as a useful vehicle for encouraging conservation of rainforests in the Congo, the Amazon and Asia.”
I call this “RIDING THE LYING TIGER”
Its a vanity that people have that they think they can recruit untruthzs for worthy purposes. But once you get on that tiger, you might hold on to his ears tight and imagine you can stear him by pulling one ear one way or another while you are holding on tight. But it cannot be done.
The tendency is to lose control of the tiger. No-one ought to assume that they can ride the lying tiger.
The whole accounting system of “creative carbon credits” is a nightmare of unfathomable proportions.
When it finally works it’s way through the system [the bowels of the earth] it will make the current financial meltdown look like a Sunday School picnic.
A consequence of removing old growth forests is the removal of well established native wildlife habitat.
The world does not suffer from a shortage of flora but native fauna is being extinguished rapidly and OG forests are one of their last places of refuge.
What I mean to emphasise is that our flora bank can re-establish forests any time with a bunch of volunteers.
You can’t do that with fauna.
I was in another city (Auckland) yesterday, and visited the zoo. The orang-utan keeper was handing out leaflets about palm oil. According to this, rainforests are being cleared for palm oil plantations, and this is threatening the natural habitat of orang-utans. Fair enough.
But then I read “Deforestation also… fuels global warming”, and I had the same thought as Graeme Bird’s. Why can’t they stick to the facts, and allow their argument to stand on its own merits, without clutching at vaporous straws?
By the way, I also noted that Auckland Airport is now providing priority parking for hybrid vehicles. Not sure whether this is a trend elsewhere but it was the first time I had seen such. Plus I picked up a magazine – ‘Men’s Health’ I think it was called, which contained an article about #1 tactics of getting the girl of your dreams into bed is to demonstrate how you are reducing yor flamin’ carbon footprint. (I’m not kidding!) So I’d had a gutsful of all this carry-on by the time I got home.
It amazes me that Luke and self titled green groups can link either of the papers to REDD. The reduction of emissions from Deforestation and Degradation is in the developing countries of the tropics. This can be seen from Al Gore’s World Resources Institute and the FAO map of forests under threat of DD; a summary can be accessed at http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/yahoo_site_admin/
assets/docs/Greenhouse_tas.119212413.pdf
Instead of directing scarce resources to combating real REDD, the two papers provide ammunition to local green groups to demand a cessation of the use of these mature and over mature forests in the developed world.
The Letter to Nature is about Boreal Forests and Temperate forests of the Northern Hemisphere, very different ecology and disturbance regimes from the ANU’s study on Australian Eucalypt forests.
However the letter to the editor unlike the ANU paper included detailed calculations and information on the construction of their model, where as the ANU paper advises:
“A technical paper that details the source data, the methods used and the full results is being prepared for a scientific journal.” I wonder if Nature would have published the ANU work without a model, as there is a major difference between the two on relation to the Carbon content of the forest:
The International research found “a possible upper limit somewhere between 500 and 700 tC /ha (equivalent to 1,400 to 1,800 cubic metres of wood per hectare); these high-biomass forests were located in the Pacific Northwest USA”
Where as the ANU paper estimates the highest biomass carbon stocks, with an “average of more than 1200 t C/ ha and maximum of over 2000 t C/ ha”, in the forests of high political value of SE Australia.
Rather than be distracted by the claims of both papers, resources must be allocated based on the finding of working group 3 the IPCC 4th Assessment that found:
“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.”
The key is focusing on implementing this sustainable forestry in the tropical developing countries rather than arguing about forests that are already sustainably managed.
Cinders it amazes me that self styled industry immune response system read too much into my post (somewhat edited by Jen) other than a report into ongoing “developments” in the carbon sequestration agenda. A move perhaps to “wall to wall” accounting. Indeed there is a mood among the developed nations to wipe green and brown carbon off the agenda – too complex – and simply go after fossil fuels.
The debate will be held regardless. Everything is up for re-negotiation at Copenhagen. So it behoves you guys to get as much factual material into that discussion as possible.
A key assertion made by Mackey is that clearing of an old growth forest for an initial clearing and then harvest cycle is a higher net emission than an old growth system left intact.
Of course one could attempt to engage the ANU researchers in a discussion?
According the WRI, Deforestation accounts for about 20% of global CO2 emissions. While estimates of the cost of addressing REDD in tropical developing countries vary, Sir Nicholas Stern has estimated that an annual investment in the order of $10-15 billion would be needed to halve the rate of global deforestation.
Australia told the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Climate Change Convention that it considers that REDD will be most effectively and sustainably addressed through market-based mechanisms. Although REDD may be one of the most cost-effective means to reduce emissions in the short term, the scale of resources required is beyond the means of governments alone. We must find a way to facilitate the involvement of the private sector in REDD, with a premium placed on developing mechanisms that are credible and sustainable.
One way of encouraging private sector involvement is including people from the industry that is currently involved in sustainable forest management to be involved in future talks on carbon sequestration in forests and timber products as suggested.
Luke: I had a few questions for Cinders and Co during the week like how many log loads pass through Hobart via Macquarie Street per week and why are lots of empty trucks travelling northside of the Derwent River towards the mill at Boyer from Dromedary but in the end I thought better of it. However I did work out sea level must be still rising going by what I saw at New Norfolk, Huonville and around Sorell from the air both ways. The high water mark is creeping up everywhere.
When asking local folks why horse hay is currently $10 per bail now, I got an unexpected but immediate response, “climate change”. Apparently there is very little grass growth despite everything looking very green and not enough rain over a long period for the usual summer harvest. Going by the Mercury I reckon the majority of rural Tasmanians are sliding away from expecting great harvests across a range of industries and are more woried about maintaining their State Government during these times of big chainge. Unfortunatly a lot Tasmanian industry is not locally owned.
For the tourist apples remain the greatest treat when collected from the roadside booth despite all the hullabaloo about forest industries and carbon accounting for a greener environment. BTW I declined to offset my trip thinking that place is still full of knotty wood between those taller native forest trees.
I’ve twice now deleted inflamatory and off-topic comments from this thread by TC. If they persist I will close the thread.
Cinders
“According the WRI, Deforestation accounts for about 20% of global CO2 emissions.”
Where is this number published on the web.
Cheers
Gavin
“When asking local folk why horse hay is currently $10 a bale…I get ….. blah blah blah …. climate change.”
Ask a horse!
What sort of crap is that! Everytime I’ve picked up <$10 hay (and I presume you mean lucerne) my horses snuffle
through it like it’s
the second rate stuff it is and reject up to half of it!
So my experience is the $15+ bale is the one they want to eat.
Also this time of the year, amazing fact coming up, there ain’t much pasture out there, hello, just been through winter!
The locals saw you coming and fed you what you wanted to hear!
It’s no big deal to pay $18-$20 a bale, for top quality horse hay.
Now road side apples, I agree.
WJP; I hardly had time to go right into hay prices except my daughter who has been on the block for a while says they have trippled but its easy to find the real story. Besides farmers everywhere aren’t fools.
“Bale out could be the final straw -DANIELLE McKAY
August 29, 2008 12:00am
In a dramatic show of the depths of despair emerging from a crippling drought, more than 40 southern Tasmanian farmers lined up at Oatlands yesterday for a helping hand from their northern mates.
Tragically, 25 were turned away”
http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,24260298-3462,00.html.
and
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/200809/s2368927.htm
What Cinders and Co need to do right now is re calculate their forest harvests likewise
“Rather than be distracted by the claims of both papers, resources must be allocated based on the finding of working group 3 the IPCC 4th Assessment that found:………”
You are going to come unstuck promoting these vultures as justification for anything. This is such a bad strategy to try and use their own words against the scourge that these people are part of.
In doing so you are giving a tawdry bunch of liars and madmen some sort of standing and respect.
Luke,
Is that definition of what defines a forest correct.?
The 0.05 of a Ha is only 500 square metres, and only 10% of that needs to have trees on it, ie 50 sqm .
So 50 sqm is a Forest !!!
I have to wonder how good a ‘carbon sink’ a forest can be if its trees are left to fall spontaneously and rot in place–sending the carbon right back to where it came from.
Shouldn’t the carbon credits go to loggers instead?
Speaking of which, shouldn’t farmers who don’t leave their crops to rot in the fields, but instead, convert the carbon into more ‘fixed’ configurations–such as food–get a nice piece of this action?
They get paid little enough for producing food. Farmers might be willing to be gang-greens if they were offered a place at trough, alongside the Playstation(R) climate modelers.
OK Luke
A question that has long puzzled me:
Is there any useful (as against emotive) definition of “old growth” ? A time scale, perhaps ?
It’s a critical point, since it goes to the point of how “old growth” is defined.
Malcolm it’s a “forest” in quotes. Includes savanna woodlands and isolated remnants as well as tall closed forest and rainforest. Essentially they’re trying to define some identifiable (probably through remote sensing techniques for verification) areas of trees with sufficient above ground biomass to of interest for carbon accounting in land clearing.
All these definitions are the subject of intense negotiations by committees of nations who are suspicious that the other is doing a swifty, so yes the definition may look like a camel.
It’s a working definition to identify areas of land with enough trees worth doing the carbon accounting for.
I’m not defending the definition.
Andrew – the answer depends on the lifetime of timber products made from the forestry. Which there is substantial discussion about. It’s a question of net accumulation.
Mackey’s contention is that the situation is like page 16 here http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/94799/Green-carbon-presentation.pdf
So the lifetime net balance from the old growth is asserted to be greater. Doesn’t allow for any accumulation of wood products through.
ianl – as I understand it “old growth” would have trees that have reached their maximum age – perhaps hundreds of years old. A diverse structure of plants. Lack of uniformity perhaps. And ecologists might suggest a higher level of biodiversity.
Undisturbed might be tricky to add in as there are always some disturbances – droughts, fires, storm damage, natural tree death – and many systems that people think are pristine may have had some harvests in the past.
But yea – systems where there are many trees are very old at their species maturity.
Louis, The estimated percentage is 18% or 20% dependent on the publication, but this has been rounded to about 20% in my post. It is based upon a paper by R. A. Houghton, The Woods Hole Research Center: Revised estimates of the annual net flux of carbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use and land management 1850–2000, Tellus (2003), 55B, 378–390.
A good summary of the numbers being used for deforestation is the World Resources Institute at http://pdf.wri.org/navigating_numbers_chapter17.pdf
The Stern review also uses 18% and a similar diagram to the WRI publication pages sections 25.1 and 25.2 on pages 537/8.
As Graeme Bird suggests these numbers should be used with caution. The Navigating the numbers chapter states:
“The IPCC estimates that, during the 1990s, global LUCF emissions averaged 1.6 gigatons (GtC) per year ±0.8 GtC. The 1.6 GtC figure amounts to 20 percent of global CO2 emissions.”
Page 3 of the WRI summary graphically shows both the uncertainty and the countries where deforestation is greatest.
Luke
I understand the process and realise you were quoting someone elses document, but 50sqmetres is so ridicously small to be of any value.
It makes one wonder about the level of commonsense being applied to the rest of it.That was all.
Agree – but I suspect it’s policy speak code to what degree of satellite accuracy they expect mapping to and whether you might want to encourage planting of woodlots.
Given these sorts of things are “negotiated” / “fought over” by committees with vested interests – arriving at a camel or an aardvark as a solution is always possible. i.e. sort of works but weird
Luke,
as usual, you and other “Gubmint needs to manage it” types completely ignore human nature and what ALWAYS results from Gubmint management. That is, corruption and MISmanagement.
Good luck with your utopia. It WILL go the way of Communism and all others.
Moronic kooky-kat.
So if the majority of trees have reached their maximum age, it’s not so much a “forest” as a mausoleum
A sort of arboreal God’s waiting room.
So we preserve forests that are on death row and harvest those yet to reach their prime. The fisherman’s code in reverse.
Ianl’s description of a dying old growth forest is very graphic, and perhaps we should examine its definition. It is a term used in the forest debate and is the title of the paper under discussion.
Old growth forests are often equated with high levels of biodiversity, but this is not always the case. In the temperate zones they can be low in terms of number of plant and animal species, while some modified natural or semi-natural forests and forests bordering agricultural areas may provide additional habitats and thus more species.
The Nature paper itself puts an age to the concept of ‘Old Growth’: “Our NEP estimates suggest that forests 200 years old and above.”
But then they refer to the UN FAO use of “Primary Forest” to calculate the Carbon locked up. Yet Primary forests are defined as “forests of native species, in which there are no clearly visible indications of human activity and ecological processes are not significantly disturbed’.
Clearly primary forest can contain forest of all age classes; however the paper uses the total area of primary forest to estimate carbon in old growth.
There is similar confusion in the green claims; the battle front in Southern Tasmania is the 18% of the Weld Valley outside the WHA reserve that contains some old forests managed for research and special timber production as well as regrowth from 1934 bushfire managed for timber production, yet there is almost a permanent protest about these 70 year old forests.
The Greens Institute has attempted to define it: “Old growth forests contain trees aged 200-300 years plus.” in its 2007 publication Forests: vital for climate protection.
The accepted definition within Australia is the one developed by the “Janis” criteria to establish comprehensive adequate and representative reserves of our forests undertaken a decade ago.
All figures reported by the National and state governments and resultant policy decisions use this definition.
The definition is:
“Old-growth forest is ecologically mature forest where the effects of disturbances are now negligible.”
Gee it’s lucky humanity came along – forests wouldn’t have survived.
Why not cap human beings at 35 years too. Why let them reach old age – same argument.
The weakness in most discussions about Australian ‘old growth’ forests as carbon sinks is pretty much always ignoring the inevitable role of fire in the Australian landscape.
Simply putting aside these old forests in parks and reserves and expecting them to store carbon forever is simply denying nature. The icon old ash forests of SE Australia which were targetted in the ANU Green Carbon paper can only be renewed by fire or logging, otherwise they will die and revert to climax vegetation smaller scrub or rainforest trees that store far less carbon.
On the other hand when they burn as many areas did in 2003 and 2006/07 they release massive amounts of carbon. The notion that they can store carbon in perpetuity should not be entertained, but nevertheless continues to be used as a lever against the timber industry which at least transfers carbon out of the forest into far more secure storage in the community, although admittedly many products may not be especially long-lived.
I go away for a few days and boy blunder slips in a post for a few days free ride.
The so-called “paper” is nothing more than a review of literature covering “estimates”. The abstract only indicated an “increase” in carbon storage but gives no indication of volumes or scale. But that didn’t stop the clowns from making a blanket statement about preventing “any” or all disturbance in OG forest, and by implication, any forest over 15 years old.
At which point my bull$hit canary fell off his perch, again.
For a start, all of “the literature” has continued with this absurd notion that a tree, once cut, produces intantaneous emissions. But tell that to the 80 year old tree stumps that are still holding most of their carbon all over my high rainfall/high wood rot prone property.
And anyone who could make such a statement about the prevention of any disturbance without first considering what the wood has actually been used for (ie long term storage in houses or good books) betrays either their ignorance of the issue or their callous disregard for the truth.
For example, if the entire wood volume of an old growth forest was dumped at the bottom of the sea where it will remain in situ for centuries, then a continual cycle of regrowth and harvest for other long term uses will be overwhelmingly more carbon contributive than leaving the original forest to take 700 years to add a mere 70 extra tonnes of carbon.
Once again we have conclusions being drawn, and then flogged by the scumnoscenti, without any test of significance or relevance of the information.
What rot!
Ian; you need to think disolved oxygen then come up with natural rates of oxidation for your wood at the bottom of the the sea before hammering our canary to the post.
one link I looked at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V6M-4DDR7WY-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ffd6b60639676699935fd0a2444c2200
Gavin off on a tangent again. Sounds coherent to the gullible but fails the test of reality. How deep was the Elizabethan warship “Mary Rose” and how much of the carbon was still intact after 400 years? A damned $hitload of it, in fact.
Meanwhile back at the key issue. Old growth might just be barely carbon positive if left alone but this does not negate the fact that this forest involves very large emissions which can be postponed and even prevented.
And it does not negate the fact that the growth rate of these forests, while sufficient to off-set the emissions from decay, are still only a fraction of their potential. The overwhelming majority of the trees are senescent and therefore grow at a very slow pace.
The proper management of forests, and the logical option if there really was an urgent need to capture carbon, would be to intercept the wood before it begins to decay and place it in a form and location that limits further decay and stores carbon for the long term.
This interception will also capture the carbon before the growth rate of the tree has declined thereby maintaining a high rate of carbon capture by the forest in perpetuity.
It is a physical and mathematical absurdity to suggest that maintaining decay rates and maintaining slow growth rates constitutes the best method of storing carbon in perpetuity.
The storage of harvested wood carbon in house and other human forms is far superior to so called “natural” processes that provide no quarantine from decay at all.
And the sequential accumulation of more rapidly grown carbon will take only one or two cycles to exceed the total accumulation over many centuries under so called “natural’ conditions.
The greens have a simple choice. If we really do have a carbon crisis then there is no excuse for not managing forests for maximum carbon sequestration over the whole value chain.
If there is no such thing as a carbon crisis then they are free to indulge their highly carbon inefficient whimsies for decaying forests full of slowly growing, slowly dying trees.
They can’t have both.
Another example of the complete intellectual bankruptcy of the IPCC and their CSIRO running dogs is the systematic abuse of the definition of “forest”.
This definition outlines a minimum threshhold of 10% canopy etc but fails to adjust for the actual condition of natural forests in particular rainfall bands.
So we get farmers in 2000mm rainfall zones, where natural canopy cover was 90%+, having their cleared grazing paddocks with 10% shade trees being wrongly defined as a forest.
And once it is defined as a forest, and deemed to have existed prior to 1990, then any expansion of that forest, to 20%, 60% or right back to the original 90%, is deemed to be “natural” and part of a process “already in train” and therefore unable to attract carbon credits.
To their credit, the Queensland DNRM recognised this issue by listing a “normal extent” for each regional ecosystem and then defined the vegetation as “remnant” if the canopy achieved 50% of this extent.
But to their eternal damnation, they then completely abused this process by listing these “normal extents” at substantially lower levels than are currently exhibited by that same vegetation on those very sites.
So we now have a situation where regrowth vegetation is listed as “remnant” when the canopy is more than double the officially designated “normal extent”. And partial clearing activities that merely reduce the canopy cover back to or just below the official “normal extent” are detected by satellite scan and reported as remnant destruction.
Farmers who have maintained widely spaced shade trees in lawfully cleared paddocks are having their paddocks classed as remnant when a good season of seedling growth increases the apparent canopy over the falsely understated “normal extent” level.
They do this by applying a definition of “normal height” that is not based on the height normally achieved by the original forest but by an average of the trees on the site itself, regardless of their growth stage. They compound this criminal conspiracy by falsely excluding the original paddock trees on the basis that they are “emergent”, a type only found in rainforests, not eucalypt woodlands.
To apply a single, 10% canopy test to every forest type from closed forest to 10% open woodland is a gross and inexcusable abuse of power by way of its total unreasonableness.
And to use that test in a way that assumes that any subsequent increase in canopy is “natural” and without any human input or intent is an abuse of power.
And to use that test in a way that assumes that any reduction in canopy is environmentally adverse, human induced destruction of a natural habitat is an equal abuse of power.
Ahem Ian Mott:
An awful lot of old growth forest tree thingys I’ve encountered seem to attract termites. You know methane belching bludgers who wouldn’t recognise an ETS if you shoved one up their cloacae.
Just how good is an old growth forest as a carbon sink when every tree is potentially on the menu!
And for the record, summer wildfires also have the habit of ignoring proposed ETS guidelines!
Spot on, WJP. From my experience just about every tree older than 40 years in my forest already has a pipe full of mud, air and termites going right up the middle of it. And that means that the entire length of the trunk has an internal face exposed to the major sources of carbon emission, wood decay and termites.
Remove that wood and place it in a house and it is protected from decay by both a roof and paint, and it is protected from termites by both physical barriers and chemical treatment.
Interestingly, about the only way a forest could be modelled to have the volume of carbon being claimed by the WWF funded shonkademics is if they have wrongly assumed that there are no hollows up the middle of old growth trees.
Fat chance.
Spot on, WJP. From my experience just about every tree older than 40 years in my forest already has a pipe full of mud, air and termites going right up the middle of it. And that means that the entire length of the trunk has an internal face exposed to the major sources of carbon emission, wood decay and termites.
Remove that wood and place it in a house and it is protected from decay by both a roof and paint, and it is protected from termites by both physical barriers and chemical treatment.
Interestingly, about the only way a forest could be modelled to have the volume of carbon being claimed by the WWF funded shonkademics is if they have wrongly assumed that there are no hollows up the middle of old growth trees. Fat chance.
“They seek it here, they seek it there, those greenies seek it everywhere.
Are they lying, or just alarmin?
About cursed, elusive, Pimpernel Carbon”.