I agree that Indonesian demand for payment to refrain from deforestation (home of cuddly orang utans) is essentially blackmail. They should conserve the forests to avoid a large carbon debit, perhaps as assessed by satellite surveillance. They shoot themselves in the foot by razing those forests. In any case Australia cannot excuse burning more coal because CO2 absorption by standing tropical forest won't increase.

My fear with temperate old growth forest such as in Tasmania is that it will get too fragmented and will dry out. I believe large stands not only self seed but create their own rain clouds. Kiln made charcoal from plantation wood subsequently plowed back into the soil (after using the gas and heat) might be another way of locking up carbon apart from high value wood products.

An article from the forestry lobby demanding to continue their practices despite making their forecasts using flawed science on too small a survey population, over too short a time frame.

In primary school we learnt about the transpiration cycle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpiration, that theory hasn't changed, we have deforested Victoria and wonder of wonders we face climatic change of receiving 2/3 of our existing rainfall.

Leongatha used to receive over 80 inches rain per year , it now recieves 40 inches of rain.
Melbourne was 30 inches is now 20 inches

The Australian "Environment" Foundation---another one dimensional IPA clone full of the usual lies and short sighted and short term thinking, set up to counter and discredit the environmental movement altogether.

Yet another "expert" who wants to lead people to believe that forests are just collections of trees and resources of carbon.

Either you respect life and the ecology in which we all live or you don't. By deliberately destroying the habitat of Australia's unique flora and fauna we are slowly chipping away at that which is most important to our long term viability, biodiversity.

The author of this work clearly doesn't see a forest as a place where biodiversity can grow and survive, but as a resource which humans should harvest and the more the merrier. Unlike the propaganda spread around, this kind of thinking will ultimately undermine our future security.

But as long as someone stands up today and says "what about the jobs" it will all continue and make it harder and harder over the years for others who don't work in "old-growth forestry" to get jobs and ultimately threaten their own (as you need others to demand what your produce) as our ecology slowly flat-lines.

Mark Poynter's article would be fine and reasonable if it weren't based on the blatant misrepresentation of Australia's native forest logging industry as a wood production industry, as he did in a very similar article in the Age business section the other day.

Poynter must come clean and acknowledge that only 5% of the carbon from logging in Australia actually ends up in long-lived wood products such as furniture and building materials.

The vast majority is chipped and pulped for paper, much of which ends up being released as CO2 and methane into the atmosphere after just a few years. The remainder is burnt or decays as part of the forestry operation.

That is, fully 95% of the carbon from logging operations in Australia is emitted immediately or within a few short years. Only 5% remains in the long-lived wood products that Poynter is spinning madly.

Now is there any credibility left at all in his article?

Tim Hollo - some points in response to your criticism:
Your 5% figure is suspicous, but agree that solid timber products are the minor component of production compared with paper products. This is largely dictated by the growth characteristcs of Australian eucalypts and the high standards required for solid timber products.

The best analogy I can think of is the beef industry which exists to produce meat for human consumption, but in fact produces far greater quantities of offal, bone, and fat for pet food and fertiliser, and hide for leather. Yet it is still the beef industry. Most mining is the same - the targeted mineral is mixed with huge volumes of rock.

Paper products have been misrepresented as a virtual carbon emission by the environmental movement for some time. In reality, a substantial quantity remains in service for decades - think books, files, boxes. Further to that, around 48% of Australian paper products are recycled, and finally, at the end of its service life can be effectively stored in landfills where recent studies show it can remain virtually intact for as long as 20 - 30 years. So carbon transferred from trees into paper products is far from an automatic emission within a few short years.

Also, as the article pointed out under a sustainable harvesting regime, emissions from waste are being simultaneously recaptured in other parts of the forest so there is no net carbon emission.

Spinning madly? What's your solution Tim - perhaps greater use of steel and concrete and more tropical timber imports?

AustinP - some comments in response:
Perhaps you don't understand that 94% of Australia's public native forests are already contained in national parks, some other form of conservation reserve, or are simply unsuited to wood production. So your comments about leading people down the path to more harvesting - 'the more the merrier' as you put it - is just not going to happen.

When I read a post like yours I wonder who the real conservationists are - romanticists who simply advocate leaving it to look after itself, or those pragmatists who accept the now massive human pressures on natural systems and endeavour to find ways of managing them in ways that can conserve biodiversity.

We in the developed world have overwhelming technological and political advantages that can enable us to conserve and manage natural resources. The real problems are in the developing world, but I guess its easier for activists to campaign close to home.

Well thought out and written article.
Congratulations.

Mark, fair point about the beef industry, but I would argue it is similarly represented as 'beef' rather than offal to make people more comfortable with the industry. Mining, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish - the extraneous rock is not a product for sale. It is only the minerals themselves which are integral to the industry.

As far as the Australian logging industry goes, chips and pulp are the vast bulk of the product, not long-lived wood products. So basing your entire article on the latter is misrepresentative.

Yes, some paper is for long-term use, but the bulk is single use and only 50% or so is recycled.

As to the solution? I would have thought it was obvious. Simply stop logging activities in old growth forests. You won't find me protesting against a sustainably managed plantation industry. The greenhouse impact of such are negligible to positive, if done well. It is the logging, degrading and conversion of mature, old-growth forests which is the greenhouse nightmare.

Re: Tim Hollo's last comment
Plantations are not answer because, although we have plenty of softwood (radiata pine), we have none that produce the same solid hardwood obtained from native forests. Even the few eucalypt plantations that are producing solid hardwood, are producing a timber that is not as durable or decorative as what can be obtained from nf. Consequently we are importing substantial quantities of timber and manaufactured wood products derived from tropical rainforests - much of it from illegal logging. But this is another topic.

Your asserion that it is all about stopping 'old growth' logging because this is the 'greenhouse nightmare' is opbviously not a widely held view amongst anti-logging activists. They are continuing to camapaign using your 'greenhouse' arguement in places like NSW and WA where old growth harvesting has been prohibited since 2001

Similarly in Victoria, the Wilderness Society have mouthed the same rhetoric in campaigns to stop the small amount of harvesting that occurs in 68 yo regrowth in Melbourne's catchments. There is also an on-going campaign to close Victoria's red gum industry which harvests no 'old growth'. Similarly, the timber industries in the Otways and the Wombat Forests were closed after concerted campaigns despite their being no old growth harvesting - and old growth harvesting was effectively ended in East Gippsland last year - but still the protests continue. According to your reasoning, these industries had no greenhouse issues which I would obviously concur with.

Finally, the major point of the article was to point out that Australian forestry bears no resemblence to tropical deforestation. I think it has done this quite well and clarified the situation that Christine Milne and Bob Brown (and others) are trying to blur.

Some facts about the paper industry that need to be considered:

-Recycling of paper in the developed world is between 70-75%, and recyled paper is an actively traded product.

-The majority of the rest is shipped into land fill where some of it decays, but much of it remains as carbon trapped. (a large portion of carbon waste in land fills will take thousands of years to degrade)

While old growth forests are a store of carbon, their mass tends to remain constant and overall have no impact on the CO2 whereas managed forests slowly reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere even if it is only 5%.

Well said Mark!
As a Tasmanian forester I get fed up with the misinformation that is spread about our industry. If only the likes of Christine Milne would take the time to understand forestry from a foresters perspective. Perhaps she needs to remember that the first Forestry Department in Tasmania was headed up by the "Conservator of Forests". It was for some of the very reasons that get raised now for stopping timber harvesting that this organisation came into being. This was back in 1920 and we are now harvesting wood from the second and third rotation from the same forests they set out to conserve.
Things have come a long way since then. We know a lot more about the science of tree growing and yes we do cut more, but we are better at growing it back too. I for one want to make sure our forests are there in perpetuity and if foresters do their job properly they will be!
Let's put some effort into those places where it isn't happening.