Josephus,

"Mud requires a carbon furnace for creating bricks or cement; or straw which is insect prone nor weight bearing and builds at ground floor only."

Not so, mud construction requires no fire, the bricks are sun dried nor is the binding material subject to insect attack. 5,000 year old bricks are evidence of that, the stuff also lasts!!

The largest mud brick buildings are several stories high and I took part in a mud brick project (mainly as a mud stomper) in the Hunter Valley; the house is two storey and as an earth covered and grassed roof. The grass is kept trimmed by hoisting a goat up for a few hours each day.
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"The Great Mosque of Djenné is a large banco or adobe building that is considered by many architects to be one of the greatest achievements of the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Djenn%C3%A9

Height is 16 metres.

You have forgotten paper which is made from wood and also stores carbon.

But once again the greens has stopped this.

579 Welcome back.
But ah do you know much about out timber?
Sorry bloke it appears not my home so the last man in the roof said is the best quality hard wood he ever saw.
I in the year 1974 helped pull our of the sea hard wood pilings, from Terigal Beach it was as new, missed the orgy said to be taking place at the ALP conference round the corner.
Australian hard wood is world class and grown in places all around the world.
Habit of mine when working on the road was to walk in to state roadside land and plant Black Bean tree seeds, a soft wood but world class many are a joy to see today.
This country STILL can grow both hard wood and rain forest timber.
In fact putting both a price on it and a law demanding more is grown than used we can save our forests.
Here is the reason I say greens stop conservation.
SM in this thread is quite right, in fact without the greens tainting the issue both majors can make timber one truly renewable industry.
Over coming the uninformed and greens is harder than actualy doing it.

And surely it should go without saying that trees suck CO2 out of the atmosphere ? Why this antipathy to trees ? Amazing.

I recall President Reagan was also hostile on trees, why I don't know. Maybe because birds sit up in them and sh!t on you, is that it ?

Across the North, where our largest rivers (by volume of water) pour out into the sea, vast areas of managed forests of furniture-timber trees, with regular cool-burns, would do wonders for global warming reduction, isn't that so ? Not to mention the employment of northern Aboriginal communities, forever, especially if they also managed the saw-mills and took the profits.

Or is that all missing the point of bringing down Westernism and capitalism by any means ?

Joe

Radiata pine is not going to be replaced with hardwood ever.
Builders are not going back to hammers.
Pine is far to easy to work with.
Hardwood would push the price of housing through the roof.
Over time hardwood KD's itself, and is difficult to recycle.
Far to much wastage / tree. It would have to be machined on the spot to make cartage viable.
Hardwood only good for fence posts, and furniture,
There are to many reasons for not giving away pine.

Belly, "Australian hard wood is world class and grown in places all around the world"

From the gum trees that recover desert in the US and Israel to the Sassafras that is grown in Ireland.

I believe it was Sassafras that was used for the chamferboard cladding and floors of a Fifties 'English-Revivalist Colonial' house I had some years ago.

What is also interesting is that previously, builders used to discard all hardwood except the white-ant proof species. There must be something in that because I have done voluntary work on the old ex-WW2 army huts used by charities, Scouts, Guides, Red Cross and the like and particularly noticed that where left un-maintained for decades and with a bit of moisture about to encourage them, the white-ants only attacked a few door surrounds and the odd piece here and there, leaving the remaining hardwood frame alone. The white-ant species in the areas concerned are otherwise very tenacious and destructive.

I'd like to see Tasmania compete in the niche luxury timber speedboat and cruiser market. Our more durable fit-out (mechanical, tanks etc) can compete with Asia. However the Greens' idiotic extremism is losing the craftsmen and industry that built beautiful vessels out of Celery Top for example.