What a pile of half truths and spin. The equivalent of 5500t CO2/ha is only possible in the densest forests but Mooney abuses the perverted "Kyoto Ugly" accounting rule that deems all the carbon in a tree to be emitted at the moment the tree is cut.

Yet, the stump and major root systems can remain intact for more than 80 years. Stumps in my own forest date from 1923. And the wood in the old homestead is still storing that carbon in a stable form from the same period.

But not all the wood ends up in houses, I hear you say? Well, yes, but I also have fence posts of the same vintage and much of the harvest slash from that time was burned in cool, winter, fuel reduction burns that converted much of the wood carbon to charcoal. And provided the EPA doesn't burn us out with a hot fire, that carbon will remain stable for a thousand years.

And even the wood that goes to woodchip (the bent stems) is not emitted as Mooney would have us believe. Recent research on a Sydney landfill found newsprint that was essentially unchanged, carbon intact, after 60 years in the ground, and capable of lasting centuries.

So the claim that the carbon in a forest is all emitted at harvest time is ludicrous. As is the claim that the volume of the subsequent regrowth will never remedy the supposed emissions from the first harvest. This regrowth is generally taking place BEFORE most of the original carbon has broken down so it is clearly IN CARBON SURPLUS.

But even this is only part of the whole truth. For the original old growth forest was essentially in carbon balance. The growth rates of old trees are very low compared to young ones and what little carbon storage is taking place is offset by carbon emissions from the decay of those trees. So the act of harvesting a tree goes a long way to minimising these natural emissions, making room for human emissions.

The only thing certain with competing claims about lagged uptake and release of CO2 in forests is that a whole bunch of people all want to be paid. As far as I'm concerned what the forested countries are demanding is blackmail. The correct approach is a/ give them nothing b/confiscate timber from those countries.

I'll throw in another variable, namely that I'm convinced trees bring rain so that clear felling eventually brings local drought. Yet I'm not sure that a mature forest in carbon equilibrium can't be quickly replanted (without burning) by fast growing seedlings. Tough on critters though. Another curly one is global climate change so the presumed amounts of carbon capture may never happen.

It will be interesting to see how the next PM deals with all of this. I would err on the side of disbelief of extravagant claims.

Why, oh why, can't people listen! Unless you control world population, all these efforts to control global warming will be completely in vain. If you are a starving third world farmer faced with the need to burn some forest to feed his family, do you think he is going to be concerned about global warming? Unfortunately, the only issue that unites George Bush, the Pope, and the muslim world is that NOTHING must be done to limit world population.

Remember the famous latin aphorism:

Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit.

(A wise man does not urinate into the breeze.)

It is really quite tragic that the environmental movement's uncompromising drive to achieve total 'preservation' of forests (that is so evident in Will Mooney's article) is actually counterproductive to sensible environmental outcomes.

Perseus has adequately articulated the reality that sustainable timber harvesting creates a net surplus of carbon storage by putting evermore wood products into the community, whilst at the same time creating space in the forest to grow new trees that store more carbon.

The environmental damage done by reducing timber production is illustrated by what has occurred in WA. Where once its public Jarrah forests produced up to 250,000 railway sleepers per year, they now produce none. The state's rail infrastructure is being upgraded using steel and concrete sleepers. These store no carbon and have high carbon emissions in their manufacture - steel manufacture emits 350 times more carbon than wood, and concrete 6 - 8 times more - is this a good environmental outcome?

The central premise of Mooney's thesis is that Australia's old forests - if left alone - will store carbon forever. In reality the Australian landscape is naturally subject to periodic fire that will eventually release stored forest carbon. So, it is impossible to 'preserve' Australian forests as carbon stores. In fact, trying to do this by creating evermore parks devoid of human management is demonstrably increasing the severity and frequency of fire through inability to manage fuel loads. Biodiversity and water values are suffering tremendously as a result - something that most 'environmentalists' ignore by concentrating their efforts against logging.

The major 'crime' of the environmental movement is its ongoing campaign to portray managed harvesting and regeneration of forests as practiced in Australia as being akin to deforestation in developing countries where forests are converted to an agricultural land-use. If these campaigns bear fruit they will be tragically counterproductive.

All NSW 'old growth' is already 'protected' from logging, as is virtually all Victorian 'old growth' since November 2006. The objectivity of so-called 'expert' Prof. Brendan Mackey is also questionable given his Directorship of The Wilderness Society's Wild Country Reserach and Policy Hub.

In their rush to quickly dismiss this article Perseus and MWPOYNTER seem to have entirely missed the point which was that preservation of Australia's forests would be an act of good faith for global climate politics, not a total panacea.

Environmentalists do not seek to achieve "total preservation" of all forest. But they do seek to ensure useful preservation of ancient, bio-diverse forests which are very effective storehouses of carbon. These forests may not store carbon forever. But when climate scientists warn of immanent impacts from global warming, securing their carbon storage value now makes sense.

The author rightly, points out that when an old growth ecosystem is logged, and managed on subsequent 80 year rotations, the carbon storage CAPACITY of that area of forest is significantly reduced. There is plenty or research to back that up (see Dean, C. et al. Growth Modeling of E. regnans for Carbon Accounting at the Landscape Scale. 2003). There is also plenty of research to show that logging a natural mature forest and replacing it with managed forest, leads to massive carbon losses to the atmosphere (Tree farms won't halt climate change. New Scientist, October 2002. Schulze E. et al. Science, September, 2000).

American research also suggests that, even when carbon storage in wood products is factored in, conversion of mature forests to managed regrowth leads to accelerated carbon loss to the atmosphere (Harmon, M. et al. Science, February, 1990.).

The main reason for this loss of carbon storage is that the new managed forests is not allowed to grow as old as the original natural forest. This is a simple fact that the logging industry and its associates refuse to admit.

While Australia's old forests may not be threatened with "deforestation", they do face degradation from a woodchip oriented industry which is desperate to shield itself from the realities of global warming

Perhaps the reason that WA doesn't produce rilway sleepers any more is that they have chopped down all the Jarrah forests.

The other serious error in Mooney's logic is the focus on the difference between the storage capacity of a regrowth site vs the storage capacity of an old growth site. If the carbon from the old growth site is now safely stored in a house, a railway sleeper, a good book or newsprint in a landfill it is still not being emitted as CO2. It is still stable carbon that has simply been relocated to another, actually superior place of storage.

This is the classic green technique of limiting the argument to only include "convenient facts". But what they carefully avoid mentioning is the fact that while the total carbon in storage in a regrowth forest may be lower than an old growth forest, the regrowth forest is growing much faster than the old growth ever did. Indeed, the main reason why the regrowth forest grows so vigorously is that the tree density is maintained at less than saturation level so each tree can thrive, in the same way children thrive in small classrooms.

More importantly, during the century after the original harvest, the regrowth will be thinned and harvested a number of times and the total volume of carbon absorbed and stored in timber products will far exceed the volume of carbon in the original forest.

The key obligation of forest managers in a carbon constrained world is to maximise the long term storage of carbon, be it in the forest or in a house. But once again, the greens have been exposed for highly selective, and deliberately deceptive, treatment of the facts and a failure to even recognise the practicalities of that obligation.

And lets not be fooled by any claims that the intention is to provide leadership by example. What they really mean is they want a symbolic, futile and ultimately very expensive sacrifice to their perverted new religion.

Ah, Perseus,

You are right but you are unjust in your criticism of conservationists as demanding sacrifices for a 'religion'.

There are good reasons to want old-growth forest preserved, most importantly for biodiversity and microclimate reasons (rainfall and groundwater quality) but also for greenhouse gas levels.

Land-use *change* is one of the major sources of emissions and clearing forest for any purpose is going to release more or less greenhouse gases. Soils beneath old-growth forest contain enormous amounts of carbon and once they are cleared this storage will often collapse, perhaps never to recover. Much of it will be emitted as high-GWP methane. Clearing old-growth rainforest for pasture is disastrous and unfortunately still commonplace.

A forest managed as your replanted one is (or could be), for sustainable forestry, does indeed have the benefits you claim. Depending on the type and age of the tree the *rate* at which they draw CO2 from the atmosphere for sequestration changes, peaking when the trees are halfway to maturity.

Forest harvesting for timber preserves most of the carbon in the wood. When wood is pulped, at best 60% of the carbon remains in the product paper (the rest may be burned or may rot, resulting in methane emissions). If the land is replanted with trees, the carbon in the soil (and even the stumps and roots, if left in the ground and the soil is relatively dry) will mostly be preserved as well.

As I understand it, most historical land-clearing in Australia has been for agricultural purposes and such land has rarely been replanted, though some has reverted naturally to second-rate forest. To this day, land-clearing in Queensland (and until recently in northern NSW) still involves burning off the cut scrub, not building houses with it or printing newspapers on it.

I'd love to see details of this "Kyoto ugly accounting" that penalises sustainable forestry as harshly as agricultural clearing; I was not previously aware of it. This certainly sounds like a regrettable oversight to me.

Thanks for recognising the important distinction between cyclical forest growth and harvesting in perpetuity and forest removal for changes of use, xoddam. The failure of the IPCC to make this distinction is much worse than a mere oversight. It is a systematic exclusion of one of the most contributive carbon management options we have.

This one shortsighted decision, to deem all wood carbon to be emitted the moment the tree is cut, absolves Rupert Murdoch, and the entire world newsprint publishing industry, of any responsibility for the massive carbon emissions that can take place if newsprint is not dealt with properly.

It absolves property developers of any responsibility for their decisions to demolish "inconvenient" but carbon stable buildings. And it effectively absolves anyone who actually takes a decision that will convert stable wood carbon into an emission from responsibility for that decision.

The IPCC does not recognise the existing vast volumes of stable carbon in houses, landfills, books etc as being carbon that is capable of being emitted if it is not cared for properly. They sidestep the issue by pretending that it has already been emitted.

And that means a local council can sign off on a re-development that involves the destruction of entire suburbs, that will emit thousands of tonnes of CO2, and not only pay no carbon tax, but avoid the need to even record the emission.

It has been a few years since I was in the official loop advising the AGO on carbon accounting matters so may need a little time to find you the proper links so you can see for yourself. As with so much of this sort of stuff, the principle sounds fine but the devil is in the detail.

But this is the kind of stuff we will be stuck with if Rudd wins and he signs the blank cheque called Kyoto.

Re: Comments by "tellthetruth"
Symbolically preserving our forests for the sake of global climate politics would be just silly . As most of the world's wood still comes from natural forests, what would happen if everyone followed our lead? Well, plantations would be quickly exhausted and there would be increased demand for environmentally less-friendly substitutes that emit far more carbon in their manufacture. Hardly a good outcome.

The best example that Australia can give to developing countries is demonstrating that strongly regulated and balanced management of forests can both conserve biodiversity and satisfy community values in a way that contributes to reducing global warming. This is what we already do. Yet, campaigns against current forest management continue despite the reality that all our current and future wood production will occur in just a net 6% portion of Australia's public forests, and that 96% of public 'old growth' forests will never be harvested.

Given these statistics, I can only conclude that conflict over forests continues because it is about total preservation. Anyone who believes that the environmental movement does not want total preservation should read the formal forest policies of The Wilderness Society and the ACF.

The deficiency of current research about forest harvesting and carbon emissions is that it considers only specific sites rather than the whole wood production forest. Sustainable harvesting on a whole-of-forest scale is achieved by matching the annual harvest volume with the annual volume growth over the whole forest. If this is achieved, there is no net removal of carbon from the system as it is being accrued in wood and soils in other areas that are as yet unharvested or are regrowing after earlier harvesting. This is a simple concept, yet it seems that researchers have yet to look at it this way.

No forest - whether used for wood production or 'preserved' in a national park - is guaranteed to attain 'old growth' status due to fire. In terms of capturing carbon, maintaining some forests at a younger age is better because old forests grow slower and eventually stop growing as they decline.

Nice try Billie, but take a trip to WA and see the Jarrah for yourself. It occurs in a continuous belt in the SW corner from just north of Perth to near Albany. Its distribution east is limited by rainfall and geology.