The 100 million hectares NET land cleared comes from
the 2006 State of Environment report … about 25 for crops, a similar
number for managed pastures, a couple of million for plantations, In
round memorable figures we have cleared 30 million for people and plants
and 70 million for livestock.

The issue of temperate land albedo is complex and as far as I recall, the effect
you are talking about has only been shown at fairly high latitudes where
snow cover was replaced by more dark trees. I haven’t read any
such studies that would apply to somewhere like Australia … has anybody
else seen anything? Back in the 80s when Hansen did his first studies on
climate sensitivity, he only worried about permanent ice/snow cover and
got a pretty good answer. So I’m guessing that the albedo difference between
Brigalow and deforested Brigalow in Southern Qld will be small change.

Just a couple of questions,

you said “we live on…..2 million hectares out of the total of 100 million cleared since white arrival”. Just wondering if you could provide me with a source for this (could come in handy for future study)?

Also, do you think the emphasis here should mostly be on the importance of tropical reforestation? As far as I’ve heard (and this could very well be wrong) in some temperate zones a reduction in albedo from reforestation can actually be greater than the carbon sink potential, meaning a greater contribution to warming from these areas.

What is needed,urgently,is a determined effort to reduce carbon emissions by replacing the offending energy sources,primarily coal,with nonpolluting generators regardless of what any other nation is doing.

Even in my wildest,most optimistic dreams I can’t see this happening given the sort of vermin who hold power in Australia.

Unsurprisingly FOTE and Environment Victoria have acclaimed the Brumby initiative as a breakthrough. They fail to see the effect is higher power bills for little if any CO2 reduction.

There are also some very basic rules of logic not followed in offset programs because carbon trading does not involve trades of carbon. Virtually all schemes don’t change the carbon inventory of the seller (business, state or country) and instead only transfer some kind of obligation unit or an assurance that some kind of reduction or removal has taken place.

Unfortunately the buyers typically claim that they have reduced their emissions as a result (rather than merely acknoweledging that they have influenced a reduction by others) so there is massive double counting via this pathway.

Of course if we just regard sellers as being outside a scheme and exempt from their own carbon accounting and carbon liabilities without any adjustment of sector emissions in state or national reporting then we can kid ourselves about the extent of our achievements, but the atmospheric record will eventually say otherwise.

Until carbon accounting is undertaken in a financial like manner on the greenhouse gas emissions (changing the greenhouse account of both the buyer and the seller), then carbon offset schemes should be clarified as donations only, not a method to reduce emissions of a buyer.

Such accounting may also serve to identify the issues that Geoff raises as well, in that some if a land area has already incurred such a carbon debt, then that needs to be taken into account before greenhouse removals are sold to others.

If the gubmints want to go down this path then I’m serious about negative carbon credits. When a patch of land that has earned credits succumbs to drought, fire or dieback then the credit should be disallowed and the money repaid. That would be a first I believe. After all the intention was that it would keep on sucking up CO2 for decades at least. The problem seems to be that before the ink is dry on any carbon mitigation scheme the lobbyists want to turn it to their advantage.

If indeed offset scams are part and parcel of any carbon pricing scheme then maybe a tougher approach is needed. An example would be a portfolio standard of max 50 grams of CO2 per kwh requirement (50kg/Mwh) from the first day, not because the generator is ‘capture ready’ or has offsets.

The hot “air” which is coming out of both ends of the body politic is a major hazard in itself.

It’s disappointing that the Wentworth Group haven’t applied more critical thinking. They would seem to have the ear of the Liberal Party and perhaps Penny Wong. I was surprised when Ross Garnaut said that frequent burning of subtropical savanna will biosequester more carbon than otherwise. It’s just what Big Coal wants to hear; play with matches, get cows to fart less or move around more then coal burning isn’t so much of a problem. Since politicians are now enamored with the idea perhaps we need to bring in ‘reverse offsets’. That is if something screws up the carbon traders have to refund the money.

I believe some 180 Federal bureaucrats were made idle by the demise of the ETS. Setting baselines and measuring cow farts will now give them something to do.