Perseus, when you put it in that context I can see your point. A difficult situation.

It is not that simple, David. The cutting of a tree is a deemed emission under IPCC rules. And when we started expanding the forest the only seed stock we could buy was Pine. So we collected our own seeds, grew seedlings and only planted in areas where natural regeneration was not successful. So we started with a widely spaced plantation in an assisted regeneration site but that is now classed as a native forest.

And as it has multiple species of differing ages we cannot cut all the trees and replant a plantation because most of the trees are not ready for harvest, even if it was legal to convert native forest to plantation, which it is not.

The IPCC's rules not only impose a tax on all our past carbon sequestration but also all of our future growth. And it is not just us. There are millions of hectares of private native forest that has reclaimed formerly cleared land that are precluded from making any meaningful contribution to carbon management.

In our own case, our forest is capable of absorbing just under 1000 tonnes of CO2 each year in perpetuity as each tree that is cut ends up in a product that lasts longer than it takes the remaining trees and new seedlings to replace it. And when one understands how badly the IPCC has stuffed this up, one can't help wondering what else they have wrong as well.

The presumption that forests are effective carbon sinks while pasture is worthless is simply not true. As Freeman Dyson has been saying for years "It's roots, not shoots".
You will notice that these assertions focus entirely on the biomass above ground level and studiously ignore what is going on below ground.
Given that pine trees in particular tend to toxify the soil beneath them I would be surprised if there were any grounds to discourage the conversion of pine forests into well managed pasture - if we are concerned about total net greenhouse gas emissions.
Dyson and others make the point that while our ignorance of the chemistry of climate remains profound, our ignorance of the relationship between climate and the biosphere is laughable given that governments routinely make pronouncements about carbon sinks and propose to penalise farmers who may well have the potential to totally resolve the perceived "greenhouse" problem.
For some reason politians and bureaucrats love to pick on the agricultural sector and remarkably many in the farming community seem to be more than willing to accept the blame.
Finally, a policy of increasing top-soil depth is a classic "No regrets" policy. Should the whole theory of anthropogenic global warming prove to be without foundation then increasing topsoil will still have been a useful exercise, unlike so many proposals which diminish wealth and wellbeing.
So next time the Minister suggests that forest owners who convert to pasture be required to pay a fine ask him to provide the equation which established the comparitive sequestration of carbon by trees and pasture – including the role of the topsoil and the ongoing replenishment of the pasture's total biomass. If he mentions methane remind him of the recent research which reveals that forests release methane too, and what is the comparitive release of pasture and forest?

Good point, Owen. One can also tell the Minister that the conversion of forest to grassland actually increases the albedo or reflected heat of the landscape and therefore contributes to global cooling.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the IPCC insists on measuring all of the above ground carbon as an emission in the year the land is cleared. Yet, I have stumps on my place that still have their carbon very much intact from being cleared in 1927.

So we have this scam where the climate cretins claim emissions are taking place that will not occur for another 50 years or more while at the same time completely ignoring the cooling effect of the forest removal.

And of course, whenever one has a climate model that is capable of measuring 50 years of emissions before they actually take place, and ignoring the 50 to 500 years of cooling that will result from the clearing, then the model is bound to indicate that the planet is getting warmer.

This is especially so when Land Use Change accounts for 19% of all modelled emissions. It is a classic case of "garbage in, garbage out".

Response to Perseus:

I cannot make much sense of your post. IPCC is the Intergovernmenal Panel on Climate Change. They do not impose taxes. Australia has not ratified Koyoto. Whatever the land clearing rules are in your area, they are a state government matter and I'm not in a position to comment. I don't know much about land clearing, but you seem to be talking about a future carbon trading system.

In terms of the carbon cycle, plantation timber is advantageous. Unlike food crops, the captured carbon is stored as the timbers used to create the built environment. Of course, this is small potatoes compared to transport and energy.