A good way of keeping a serious thread quiet, casting the shadow of Godwin over it! No one knows quite what might happen next, nor what damage to reputation may ensue if one participates. But be ye not alarmed, O ye of little faith.

It is a well known fact that white ants are found where the wood is, because that is what they eat. Consequently, the key to the control and exploitation of white ants is control of their food supply. That is to say, our wood, which they have been pillaging for centuries, eating many of our forebears out of house and home in the process, adding insult to injury by farting all the while while doing so. No more! Its payback time! With the cost of housing what it is, we can no longer afford this 'lebensraum' for termites.

Today, however, the impost of their freeloading is magnified by the fact that what was previously ground-littering deadfall is now required for bio-fuel. Time to lift the game and pick up the sticks. And white ants need a general gouvernement!

All white ants will have to be made to live in special areas. Their population will thus become, relative to that remaining in the wild, concentrated and more manageable in our service. This rounding up will be achieved by collecting all the wood as it falls or dies standing up, and placing it in these special areas which will be containment structures. The white ants will have to go where the food is.

The containment structures will be enclosed with plastic sheeting, to catch all the methane and stop it from going up into the air. Greenhouse gas credits can then continue to be earned.

The white ants themselves are protein. From time to time batches of them can be collected and fed to yabbies and fish farmed near the containment structures, or Konzentrationslageren. These can themselves be made of wood, and replaced when eventually eaten through. Adds a whole new meaning to "Arbeit Macht Frei", doesn't it.

Einsatzgruppen, qvik march!

Question: If a branch falls in the forest and no-one witnesses the event, does it really fall?

Er, sorry Forrest, I was away baiting punter57 (not to mention actually doing, you know, work) and remained blissfully unaware of your final termite solution in the meantime. Godwin had nothing to do with it, though I suppose I must needs query your confidence that it is we humans, and not the termites, who have property rights over deadfall. Seems to me they've been exploiting this particular resource for much longer than us. Their occupation is well-documented by their ancient temples in the woods, so we have no grounds for a presumption of Terra Nullius. We'd better draw up the Native Title legislation very carefully indeed if we want to dispossess them of it.

Nature may well be assisting with the ethnic cleansing that the tongue-in-cheek 'Termitic Final Solution' implies. Have you noticed the extent of regrowth and colonization of Cypress pine (Callitris glauca, and related species) occurring on road reserves and travelling stock routes in inland NSW, and maybe elsewhere? To my mind there is much, much more of it than there ever used to be 40 to 50 years ago. For those unfamiliar with Cypress pine, one of its characteristics is its unpalatability to termites.

This observation, and its implications, merely highlights a general point that I was trying to make with regard to the carbon sequestration aspect of the use of wood as a bio-fuel substitute for fossil fuels, and very specifically liquid fossil fuels. Whether or not wood collected or harvested in the present is able to be immediately processed into woodgas or liquid derivatives is not critically important: such collection and storage itself is a form of sequestration.

The most important aspect of this sequestration is that it interdicts the conversion of deadfall to methane via the agency of the termite population. If I have understood the greenhouse gas concerns correctly, any such interdiction of methane emissions far outweighs the significance of any CO2 contribution to greenhouse emissions that might otherwise result from combustion of the same wood, wood that is in any event a greenhouse neutral fuel as a component in any alleged global warming emissions scenario.

Australia should be immediately moving to adjust any formula of greenhouse or carbon credits used in assessing its standing as a contributor to any global warming to take account of this easily achieved methane interdiction. It can commence (indeed already has at my place) immediately.

It is also to be noted that, in the Australian setting, land use conversion implications are minimal, as most of this wood presently grows on otherwise unfarmed land. This sequestrate, and potential bio-fuel, does not displace any food or other crop. Properly conducted, this collection and harvesting will operate to improve, not degrade, native woodland.

To the woodpile! Pro Ignio Lignis!