Their is no conflict of interest between publicly funded university educated opportunistic left wing labor reforming green media scientists working for NGO's "or" the traditional Government public service apart from the social responsible perspective of "truth in application" other wise politics is their underlying main driver and ambition.

Beware the timber industry spin on forests and climate. They have an agenda and that's to make money and maintain the status quo. If you want to know what's really going on, here is a report on "Forests, Carbon & Global Warming" explaining how climate change is likely to affect forests as well as how forest conservation may help mitigate climate change. The report also helps debunk some of the flawed arguments used by logging advocates.
http://tinyurl.com/2n96m5

And here is a slide show clarifying many misconceptions about forests, logging, and carbon:
http://www.slideshare.net/dougoh/forest-carbon-climate-myths-presentation/

According to research released by the World Resource Institute, deforestation not sustainable forestry accounts for emissions of greenhouse gas. In ‘Navigating the numbers’ http://pdf.wri.org/navigating_numbers_chapter17.pdf the institute comments that whilst 18 %of world emissions is attributable to land use, land use change and forestry, less than one percent is attributable to forestry. This is due to the regrowth and new forests balancing product and slash.

There appears to be a deliberate attempt to confuse deforestation with forest silviculture and management.

In an amazing twist, the Wild Country Hub at the ANU also put in a submission to Garnaut Inquiry in January, seven months prior to publication of the Green Carbon report. A draft version of the report was quoted extensively, but this version only had three authors and not four. (Available at http://www.garnautreview.org.au/CA25734E0016A131/pages/submissions#1 )

It also showed that the Carbon Carrying Capacity of production forests were greater on a per hectare basis than those in reserves. This finding has been left out of the final version.

Could it be that such a finding exposes the Wilderness Society propaganda?

The draft report covered 16 million ha of forests, yet the final version only 14.5 million, what happened to the 1.5 million ha of forest, why was it excluded?

Mark Poynter says his article represents the Institute of Foresters of Australia. If he or the IFA wishes to engage in a forestry debate, put your data on the table. The article is just a personal attack. I welcome debate over data and analysis.

Judith Ajani
ANU

to Judith Ajani
To my mind, questioning the integrity of academic process does not constitute a personal attack. Neither does comparing the findings of your report against official government findings re carbon emissions from forestry and land use, but I accept that you may see it differently.

Your demand to 'put data on the table' is ironical given that a major thrust of my article has been about the unwillingness of Macket et al to do just that. As the conclusions in your paper are drawn from the Mackey paper, surely your demand to see data should be directed at them. We at the IFA would certainly love to see their data because then their could actually be a technical debate

This is not the first time that academics from the ANU have put science to one side and sold their soul to the green movement. Judy Clark was regularly trotted out here in WA by the anti-logging brigade, saying that we have all the timber we need coming out of plantations, so let's close the native forest logging industry. What she deceitfully didn't say was that the timber coming from plantations was either exotic softwood used as a structural timber or eastern state's bluegums for wood chip production. The native hardwoods which had supported WA's timber industry for 200 years could not be sourced from plantations.
Just in the last 2 months, we've seen the state's largest export manufacturer of jarrah outdoor furniture sack 180 workers, with another 100 or so to be sacked by Gunns when their Yarloop mill closes soon. Are there jobs in the plantation timber industry to replace these lost jobs? No!
Thanks for a very insightful article, Mark.