Mark thanks for exposing the influence of the Wild country Hub of the Australian National University on this report to the Climate Change committee.
It is extremely disappointing that the Government’s advice is being restricted to the view of Professor Mackey and his fellow wild country activist academics. This is a mistake that has already been done in the final report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review that states on page 165 “Mackey et al. estimate that the eucalypt forests of south-eastern Australian could remove about 136 M t CO2-e per year (on average) for the next 100 years. This estimate is premised on several key assumptions, including cessation of logging and controlled burning over the 14.5 million hectare study area.”

This estimate is based on Greens senator Christine Milne’s philosophy that our forests are a carbon bank, and totally ignores wild fire. Such a fallacy is shown in the subsequent article published by the PNAS that claimed the carbon findings were based on E. regnans forest in the O’Shannassy catchment of Victoria’s Central Highlands, 53 sites within a 13,000-ha catchment.

But the PNAS publication also states “In February 2009, extensive areas of the O’Shannassy Catchment and elsewhere in the Central Highlands of Victoria were burned in a major conflagration”. An event most of us know as the tragic Black Saturday bushfires that not only destroyed the forests but many human lives and families.

Surely it is time that experts not associated with the Greens or their splinter groups be invited to brief the ALP and the non green members of the minority government.

Perhaps it is also time that the ANU academics get a lesson in the difference between deforestation and forestry as the PNAS paper starts with “Deforestation currently accounts for _18% of global carbon emissions ... Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) is now recognized as a critical component of climate change mitigation.

Forestry (harvesting and regeneration) is a long term carbon sink, with timber products able to both store carbon and substitute for other material with a larger carbon footprint.

Bonmott

What can I say? You must despair at the latest opinion poling. It seems 65% of us have consensus that global warming is no longer an urgent issue.

Does that make most of us stupid or a rump of 35% of you people who are ignoring the current extreme cooling event more stupid.

You used to claim a consensus of scientists reckoned the world was warming because of risoing average warming temperatures and that we should join you lot because of a consensus of opinion of those few scientists and that was in the days when 65% believed in global warming as an urgent issue.

I wonder how many of those consensually enlightened scientists still cling to the consensual dogma in view of the hard evidence of the current climate temperatures and their effect on average temperatures? Oh and I think they will all understand mathematic's and averages. Watch the stats on falling average temperatures ... a cornerstone of the claims of global warming!

And you dare to call me a denier and stupid.

Yep that's consistant with you deniers of reality.

Oh I've seen the argument about melting ice and moving of the gulf and other currents causing cooling.

That is perfectly correct but the problem you face with that quaint claim is to explain why that situation has occurred before, many times... particularly before the current rise in emissions of CO2.

Cheers Bonmott

Oh and Bonmott

Please tell me that lighting a fire lowers temperatures...

hahahahah