Geoengineering – that is, deliberately doing things to modify the Earth’s climate – is something that’s come up a
To get the lime, you need to heat limestone, which releases a molecule of CO2 in the process. However, the lime, when added to the ocean, will increase the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2 by two molecules, so the process appears to be a net win even without directly sequestering the process CO2. But they’re also looking at sequestering that too. The heat source for heating the limestone is also under investigation – Shell’s interest is in using stranded natural gas, but Kruger is also examining alternatives like solar furnaces. As you might gather, this is all very preliminary; the discussions on the project website haven’t – to my knowledge – revealed any showstoppers yet.
It’s of course impossible to predict at this stage whether this proposal is technically, environmentally, or economically feasible. You have to wonder about the consequences of dumping billions of tonnes of lime into the world’s oceans. But, like all of these proposals, I also know that the alternative of not geoengineering isn’t looking great either.
It sounds like it would mitigate ocean acidification as well. I am somewhat concerned about ecological impacts on the areas such as the Nullabor plain if there was widespread deployment of this technology though. This is something that will need to be thought through.
I reckon you’d want to worry much more about the ocean where you dump it than the spot you get the limestone from. How the hell is supposed to disperse fast enough? Or would the release be really slow or would it be from hundreds of locations or… or… or…
Seems fucking mad to me. We don’t know much about the full lifecycle of some of our most important ocean resources, and next to diddly-squat about the underlying ecology.
According to one commentator on his site, 3000 trillion kg of limestone will be needed. That’s a lot of digging.
Sure. That’s why Shell are putting money into the topic.
I think we have this debate every time, from two angles. The pro- and anti- AGW crowds have almost mirrored arguments on whether to pursue geoengineering.
I suppose I would say that if it is irresponsible not to pursue decarbonisation, then it’s just as irresponsible not to pursue geoengineering approaches to the problem — oceanic lime as per Robert’s post, oceanic iron seeding, high altitude particulates, or even exotic stuff like fresnel lenses at L1.
It’s not a zero sum game. Investing millions — even billions — into various geoengineering approaches strikes me as a prudent investment. Best to sort out the science now and have a better idea of what will and won’t work, rather than to be screwed in multiple ways come 2050, 2100 etc.
Jacques – you’ll forgive me if I wait and see before accepting that anywhere near enough of that money is going towards testing/understanding/modelling the effects on ocean ecology. There’s always a first time I guess!
FDB — they’re asking for help on the website. Are you an oceanographer? Pitch in! Or if you know someone who is, ask them to look into it.
I think that’s the second part of this project; though I am worried that there may develop a social impetus to continue with it even in the case that some sort of insurmountable deal-breaker is found (eg it causes TV ads to get louder).
Jacques’ point is a good one. A lot of people take the view that it is not enough to find a solution to the problem of climate change, it has to be their preferred solution. All non-preferred solutions, such nuclear power, carbon capture and storage or lime dumping, have to be ruled out before anyone can find out whether they will work.
As far as dispersal goes, one possibility is building some bulk carriers to cruise the world’s oceans and dump the stuff slowly.
We’ve built oil tankers that can carry a million tonnes of crude oil.
When will people learn that this belief in omnipotent human meddling is the cause of so many of our problems and not the cure?
“As far as dispersal goes, one possibility is building some bulk carriers to cruise the world’s oceans and dump the stuff slowly.”
Wow, that’s one cushy gig. Make the upper decks into a resort and flog tickets for the ultimate eco-holiday on…
“The Lime Queen: where a basic holiday is anything but!”
Okay, where do I sign?
Hannah’s dad: I understand the sentiment, but we may have screwed up so badly that it’s beyond the capability of nature to heal itself quick enough. We’ve broken it, we’ve bought it.
FDB: The Lime Queen, the ultimate eco-party rave…just don’t drop any acid
Scientists may have gotten that memo, but please do downplay an entire institutional framework of smart people because it makes you feel wiser.
Its not sentiment Robert, its an understanding of 2 things.
1. The ideological belief that ‘we’ can do anything ‘we’ like to the planet without understanding what we are doing and bugger the [unforseen, or even forseen but ignored] consequences is the root cause of many of our problems.
2. That running down expensive, but lucrative to the vested interest, blind alleys when we should be concentrating on the root causes of the problems is only going to excaberate the problems, not solve them.
We’ve broken it, lets fix it by doing things differently to that which caused the damage in the first place, not continue to drop it from bloody great heights and exclaim “damn, its still broken, oh well at least we pocketed a few hundred million dollars’.
1. The ideology is that nature is a comprehensible system. Complicated and difficult, but ultimately operating according to predictable, deterministic laws. So far that’s been the most successful ideology of its kind, bar none, ever.
2. Like I said, it’s not zero sum. It’s not either/or. We can both work on near-term decarbonisation and invest in geoengineering research. Considering the payoffs and punishments, pursuing both is by far the best strategy.
Jaques do climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, solinization, overfishing, species extinction and several other similar words ring bells with you?
You have a weird concept of ’successful’.
Ummmmm … yeah, except you almost certainly burnt some non-renewable fossil fuel to make the heat, so its not exactly a net win. You don’t get that fossil fuel back.
With all these geoengineering ideas, seems to me what you really need is a self-replicating, self-propagating process, that requires nothing more than sunlight, water and CO2, like, er, plants. Anything else will have such stupendous energy and resource requirements that it will be completely impractical and unaffordable.
carbonsink: yeah, I’m skeptical at the idea of using stranded gas as well.
But there’s a couple of other options – solar furnaces or nuclear power (pebble bed reactors can easily run hot enough). Because you don’t need to convert to electricity, you don’t need a turbine or a generator, and your thermal efficiency goes right up, pushing costs down.
Got yer alternative post title right here.
Hi Robert, thanks for the mention and for hosting a good chat about Cquestrate.
Quite a few people seem to be raising the same questions we’re trying to address via the website – the energy sources, the environmental effects, the locations – in short the practicalities of making something like this feasible.
If anyone could help or even just chuck in the odd suggestion for others to follow up we’d be very grateful. The list of issues we’re looking to address is on the Get Involved page.
FDB – I’ve made a note of the eco-holiday cruise idea. If it gets going I’ll make sure you get a ticket!
And hannah’s dad – I’d agree that prevention is important and Tim Kruger has mentioned the prevention v cure issue on the Cquestrate blog. As for whether this project represents a blind alley or not, part of the reason behind the open source approach is to find out as quickly as possible whether this idea is practicable. If it isn’t – fine, we’ll move on. If it is – great, let’s do something about it. We need to put the work in to find out first though.
Maybe we should try terra-forming on Mars first.
I’m very sceptical of this as a magic bullet, we can make climate change go away type of thing. The transport costs would be huge.
On the other hand, I can see how it could play a small but valuable mitigation role.
You can’t dump too much of the lime in one spot in the ocean. Besides the ecological effect, my understanding is that if the concentration is too high the lime only absorbs one molecule of CO2, so you’ve got a zero net sum (other than the sequestration, which I doubt can work on too large a scale either).
Still, I can imagine that you could have a reasonable sized project producing just enough lime to turn take the waters of the Great Australian Bite to saturation. I don’t know quite how much effect this would have, but maybe it would be enough to offset Australia’s Greenhouse emissions.
Out of prevention and cure, I favour prevention – more genuine clean zero emissions energy. Drastic cures often have unforeseen consequences. Just look at the Cane Toads saga – the cure was eventually much worse than the problem.
The other issue with geoengineering schemes like this one, which has probably been mentioned here before, is the moral hazard issue. A perception that there may be some sort of cheap geoengineering solution risks a lower amount of mitigation. I see geoengineering schemes complementing mitigation as a method of avoiding feedbacks and tipping points and so on.
Unfortunately policymakers haven’t even addressed no brainers like residential energy efficiency measures like thermal insulation and low emission forms of water heating, let alone some sort of carbon price.
Yes, and we could have a price on carbon this year if they went for a simple tax. Now it looks like 2010 at the earliest, and the price will be determined by the cap on emissions. There is every chance the cap will be too high – given the Rudd and Wong’s CPRS Greenpaper ignores two of Garnauts key recommendations (no free permits, cash payments to polluters, and no subsidies – or tax concessions) for fuel.
We have now climate emergency, and very little action to address it.
The latest bad news is Giant chunks break off Canadian ice shelf despite the recent onslaught of apparently reenergised climate change denialists? Is it an approaching full moon?
Peterc, the first reporting period for the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 is between July 2008 and July 2009. It would be very straightforward to put a tax on the next period, or perhaps even on this period. No need to determine how an ETS will work for the next 50 years. The information gained from applying a carbon tax would be very useful for determining how a carbon price signal could work in the long term, and we would be reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.
Antibiotics, vaccines for polio, smallpox, diptheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A and B and numerous other diseases; epidemiology, X-ray diagnosis, industrial production of vitamins, antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, blood banks, tissue typing, heart surgery, safe contraceptives, medical insulin.
That’s one field in one century. I guess I do have a weird concept of successful, what with people’s lives being saved and enriched by not being crippled for life.
What has that list got to do with environmental studies and geoengineering?
PeterC: sure, prevention is better than cure, but the fact is we haven’t had prevention for 20 years, and we’re not likely to get enough of it over the next 20. I fully agree on the need to study the effects of this very carefully before doing anything. However, unlike the cane toad, at least this isn’t self-replicating!
With regards to moral hazard, also a good point, but I think that a) I’m not sure major emitters are going to act sensibly, regardless of the existence of schemes like these, and b) I’m not sure that even the strongest feasible action to reduce emissions is going to be enough.
So . . er what do the whales reckon?
Who it was? I forget. He who ploughed tonnnes salt into the fields of his opponents. Completely fucked the soil, couldn’t grow a thing for over a hundred years.
Caroline, that’s a good question.
However, one of the other effects of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere is that it’s like tipping billions of tonnes of acid into the oceans. As well as absorbing more CO2, this proposal counteracts that effect.
So it’s possible that this ia a net win for marine life, though obviously a lot more work needs to be done to find out.
From she, who has an antiquated notion that salt, by and large, be a thing of the sea and lime (by and large) ends up anyway, being a thing of the land.
Apologies for my incoherence. Must be the eclipse. Is there not something we can do to stop it? (the eclipse that is, my incoherence is unstoppable, even geo engineering cannae save me).
I have to agree with Jacques in that it’s not an either/or question. Even if all anthropogenic greenhouse emissions stopped today, there’s a fair chance that the greenhouse gasses already emitted would take us past tipping points and engage positive feedbacks (melting of the Siberian permafrost, for example), resulting in dangerous climate change.
We really need to be investing in mitigation.
That said, our understanding of how proposals like this (and iron seeding) would affect the ocean eco-system needs billions of dollars of research investment before we could even consider the logistics of it…
Robert #17:
Yeah, but we’re going to be flat out building wind, solar, geothermal and possibly nukes to generate low-carbon electricity. Are we really going to have the time, money and resources to build new infrastructure to cook limestone as well?
Sorry I just don’t buy it. There are two possible outcomes for humanity:
1. We’ll accelerate towards the cliff until the biosphere becomes so degraded it limits our abilty to grow.
2. Technological breakthroughs and resource depletion combine to make clean energy cheaper than dirty fossil energy.
We make joke about Bolt, and the Libs, but they’re right about one point: if China doesn’t change its ways we’re screwed, and they’re showing absolutely no sign of changing. Yes Australia (and all other nations) should play their part and reduce emissions, but even a world where all the developed nations are making genuine progress on reducing emissions, its entirely conceivable that China, India, Russia and other developing nations may continue on their merry way.
In a word, yes.
The energy sector is a very small fraction of the world economy. Compared to the reorgnanization towards military production that occurred in WWII, the economic transformation required here is comparatively small.
“3 trillion kilogrammes” isn’t so bad when you think of it as “3 billion tonnes”.
“3 billion tonnes” isn’t so daunting when you think of it as “3,000 one million tonne ore carriers”.
And that isn’t too depressing when you think of it as “50 trips each by 60 one million tonne ore carriers”.
Of course, you will need an awful lot of bulldozers…
Why don’t we just let the reefs die. They’re limestone aren’t they?
Caroline
Romans, Carthage, North Africa. The Romans salted the fields afetre sacking and burning Carthage to stop them rebuilding.
Terrorforming
Roger, they didn’t actually “salt” the fields. As the Romans considered salt a valuable commodity (currency, in fact) they’d have hardly used it as a defoliant.
The major act of terraforming the Romans did wasn’t to the Carthaginians’ land, but to the Carthaginians themselves.
Hmmm, I stand corrected. Urban myth invented in the last couple of centuries.
Spaniards did it apparently
Nobody expects …
Yeah, the salt story is a myth, as Liam points out. But it rings true because the Romans, when people didn’t submit politely like they were meant to, tended to be pretty brutal. Julius Caesar was personally responsible for the sale of millions of men, women and children into slavery after his conquests of further Gaul.
It turns out that indirectly, this is an argument in favour of researching geoengineering.
If we don’t research it fully, then we don’t know the risks. So on the face it sounds like a cheap and easy fix. 50 years down the track China freaks out and starts doing things off its own bat, shooting sulphur-bearing rockets and dumping lime at sea. Perhaps this was a bad idea, but we didn’t know.
If, on the other hand, the science is fully developed and explored, then all nations have more options on the table for negotiation and a better idea of what can and can’t be done. Which might prevent China going off on its own.
Its also a bit of an assumption that all countries would be worse off with global warming. What do we do with those countries that happily produce CO2, perhaps deliberately increase it, in the knowledge that warmer conditions will help them?
#42 Please, please tell me that you are joking.
Adrian – not really. I don’t think the science is completely clear, but some countries where its currently very cold (say near the artic) may benefit from better crop yields which given predicted much lower crop yields in other areas would be a great export for them.
To sequestrate the carbon dioxide from the combustion of a carbon-containing fuel using this process, you need 8.34 g of calcium carbonate for every gram of carbon in the fuel – so, if you consider coal, for example, which is about 70% carbon by mass, then you need 5.84 tonnes of limestone mined per tonne of coal mined, to make it carbon neutral. (This is assuming you can only capture one mol of CO2 per mol of limestone, since you need to capture the mol of carbon dioxide you’ve got released when calcining the limestone.)
Mining 5 or 6 tonnes of limestone for every tonne of coal mined seems like an enormous scale – it’s just not practical to see this making any real reductions in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. At least, that’s the way it seems to me.
Maybe we would be better to focus on using the clean solar energy, nuclear energy, and the other clean energy that we’ve been discussing to generate energy directly, instead of coal and fossil fuels.
Luke: to repeat a point made earlier – what if that’s not enough?
Thanks Roger. I thought it was later. In England. Oh well. Not exactly relevant–just came to mind.
Robert its a fairly obvious question, I would have thought, indeed the first question that should be asked.
Chris (a different one), the one I would worry about is Russia. Before they joined Kyoto their scientists told the Govt that they would be better off with a bit of global warming. At the time they were concerned to look like good world citizens in the hope of being able to join the World Trade Organisation. The way they lock up successful capitalists they don’t like and use gas supply to exert political pressure on other states they are further than ever from WTO membership and it’s possible they don’t any longer care.
There was an interesting program on Background Briefing recently entitled The climate engineers (transcript available) contemplating amongst other things the possibility of unilateral action by one country. In other words, who twiddles the knobs and how do we decide the settings?
Robert notes that:
You also have to wonder why obvious proposals like saving the world’s forests aren’t being adopted more seriously. There are unknown consequences with some of these wacky geoengineering ideas, and yet the forests are already there, waiting to be saved. So why don’t we just do it?
Nicholas Stern (p.24) suggests rich countries should be donating US$15 billion per annum to reduce deforestation. Prince Charles has made the point that this amount “is less than half of one per cent of the $3,500 billion the world spends on insurance every year”.
Australia is contributing $200 million between now and 2012, that’s around $50 million per year. However, Australia’s international forests initiative was launched early last year, before all the recognition of the importance of forests that subsequently came along with APEC and the UN climate change meeting in Bali. Now that the importance of forests is receiving more acknowledgment, surely it makes sense to increase funding?
Norway has promised to contribute US$500 million per year. And Germany is also doing its bit.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has just launched an international fund that aims to raise $21 billion over the next 13 years to fight deforestation in the Amazon. Strategic Affairs Minister Roberto Mangabeira Unger noted: “There’s a real problem of deforestation that’s of great interest to the world, and some countries have decided to step up to the plate and help us solve it.”
There’s so much talk about climate change in Australia…and so little action.
Much is made of the fact that, by some definitions of measurement, Australia is currently one of the world’s highest per capita emitters (even though our overall global emissions are small). Here’s something we can do NOW to partly assuage our high per capita emissions. We can “step up to the plate” and contribute more towards protecting the world’s forests for the good of us all.
The Jakarta Post recently published my letter about the potential of a new “beneficial industry”, the rainforest preservation industry. If more countries contributed funding to protect the world’s forests this could be “win/win” for everybody.
The International Forest Carbon Initiative website notes that “global deforestation of about 13 million hectares per year results in approximately 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.”
If this rate of deforestation continues over the next four years to 2012, that’s another 52 million hectares of forest that will disappear, as well as the extra emissions and other environmental damage.
While geoengineering solutions require much more consideration and investigation, we can take action to tackle the problem of deforestation NOW.
Back at 9 hannah’s dad said:
At 26 Jacques gave a long list of medical discoveries, which I see as part of the problem along with improved public health (sanitation etc) and food production.
If we want nature to cure itself the solution is very difficult. If we just reduce our net emissions to zero we’ve already got enough carbon in the air to lift the temperature a few more degrees and probably raise sea levels by about 25 meters, according to the paleoclimate record.
So we need to get the CO2 concentration down to about 280ppm by taking carbon out of the air.
I heard on the radio the other day that 97% of animal mass on earth is us and animals which are there for our benefit. Not sure whether that included the fish.
The problem is that we are the major factor in nature now as the top line predator and the destroyer of habitats. If we want nature to take over we’d need to cull our species down to a few million or whatever it takes so that we nestle back into nature.
With geoengineering at least we can think about the impact of what we do before we do it. Not thinking about it got us where we are today.
Brian – yes I found that program very interesting. In the end I think it may be simpler and easier just to compensate the countries who would otherwise benefit from global warming.
That sounds reasonable on its face.
But again I need to point out that these are not mutually exclusive options and it would pay to investigate all approaches.
After you mate.
Will again point out (as Jacques and others have said) –
Geo-eng is not mutually exclusive. A more subtle argument is whether it diverts resources attention away from the more important of reducing emissions overall.
An extra point about geo-eng is that it is unilateral action. ie. if China, Russia and India don’t come on board, then the EU, US and the rest of us could start doing this stuff and stabilize C02 concentrations. so unless you want to start some serious sanctions or bombing chinese coal power stations – geo-eng might be our only option.
another few points –
Vladimir Putin reputedly said that a few degrees warming wouldn’t hurt Russia all that much.
We shouldn’t be too quick to always blame China for two reasons:
1) Total emissions over past 100 years – US and EU still way above China on per captia basis. so who bears the responsiblity for cleaning up?
2) 25% of China’s emissions can be attributed to the production of export goods (mostly to the US and EU). In fact China’s emissions from exports was higher than Japan’s overall emissions. see here
For information, here’s the link to the Breaking the Climate Deadlock briefing papers, including papers on Solar Energy, Biofuels, Carbon Capture and Storage, and Nuclear Power.
Elizabeth, in principle I completely agree with you. It has been pointed out (can’t recall quite where) that the cheapest offsets, in term of dollars per tonne of CO2 –e, is in avoided deforestation, which can be costed at just a few dollars per tonne, far cheaper than most discussed figures for taxes etc.
The practical problems however are manifold. Much deforestation is illegal anyway, conducted either with corrupt government involvement or well away from the regulatory sphere. Adding more money to this pot of corruption will be very unlikely to get you anywhere verifiably or credibly, most of it will be spent on bribery and guns.
Secondly, most deforestation occurs for a purpose, albeit a short-term, unsustainable one. We need to offer forest dwellers development alternatives (and good governance) so they can practice more sustainable agriculture, rather than just buy their forests in a very colonialist manner. While countries (including Australia) have a desire for super-cheap rainforest timbers (google Woolworths select tissue paper, Asia Pulp and Paper and the Sumatran tiger), who can blame the suppliers?
wilful, Elizabeth, I heard a BBC report on the Brazil decision to beef up measures to save the Amazon. They interviewed someone who was campaigning in the front line, or near it.
The actual front line, according to him, is a lawless place where decisions are made at the point of a gun. Not surprisingly he was sceptical as to whether the Lula government were truly serious about solving the problem. We’ll know them by their works, I guess.
Peter Wood @25
Yes, I agree that it would be very straightforward to put a tax on the next NGER period, or immediately. This would driver real action on reducing emissions rather than 2 years of company PR and lobbying to get exclusions, cash handouts and other special treatment (as per the LNG industry and Qantas). Wong & co have opened Pandora’s box by flagging the 20% of free permits. The advantage of the tax is that it can be tweaked up or down as required. And the CPRS will be lame if they end up with a carbon price of around $20 per tonne, which is indicated.
On the issue of forests, protecting them as existing carbon stores makes good sense, both overseas and in Australia, However, vested interests that make windfall profits from logging them (and flogging woodchips + some timber) will fight this tooth and nail.
If the logging companies had to pay a reasonable carbon price (say $50 per tonne) then the forests would probably be protected. But don’t hold your breath waiting for this to happen.
Jacques and Michael
I’m not suggesting these are mutually exclusive options. However…
I know there are a lot of difficulties associated with saving the rainforests, but I think with political will at the highest level these can be addressed. Perhaps I’m being hopelessly optimistic and idealistic, but what have we got to lose by trying to get action on this.
We can try to save the forests NOW. And this is certainly a more preferable option to something like dumping sulphur into the upper atmosphere
Brian, do you think we should try and save the rainforests?
Think about the impact on the world if the rainforests are totally destroyed. The loss of biodiversity, the impact on indigenous people. Who knows what the long-term effects might be.
Think about the negative effect on your desired ppm figure…
Wilful and Peterc, thanks for your comments, will get back to you later with a response.
The objections to this research are
1) ideological: the natural state of the planet is biased in favor of human life so don’t touch it
2) we don’t know enough about this so let’s not do the research
3) but what about my favorite solution: listen to me.
None of these positions is worth much.
If CC rolls out as it threatens to – then we will need to be clinical in our execution.
Elizabeth, avoiding rainforest destruction amd other low hanging fruit seem preferable to the geoengineering schemes that I have seen so far. While more research in geoengineering is very important (including better quantifications of risks and costs), we now desperately need to address political barriers to mitigation.
Australia’s contributions to avoided deforestation may be a good carrot, and if successful, could be replicated elsewhere. I do see two barriers to their effectiveness, which I believe require complementary measures.
One is the issue of corruption and poor governance that wilful and PeterC mentioned. Australia could contribute to addressing this barrier by properly regulating imports of forestry products. If other countries follow suit then this would make a difference. If we decide to not restrict inappropriate forest product imports because of the possibility that other countries may still import those products then we are effectively deciding to be free riders in a prisoners dilemma.
Another barrier is the fact that emissions from forest degradation (sometimes called forest management) are not included in greenhouse gas accounting under the Kyoto protocol. If a forest is logged but replaced with another ‘Kyoto forest’ then the emissions do not have to be accounted for under the Kyoto accounting rules. This is a massive loophole and means that emissions from most native forest logging in Australia are not accounted for. It is very important that the next international agreement includes emissions from forest degradation, and probably also grazeland degradation. Also, we could probably also learn much from dealing with issues of poor governance that are contributing to loss of forest habitat in Australia.
Elizabeth, I think we should go further than that> On a global basis land use, mostly forestry and land clearing, account for about 18% of all emissions. I think we should turn that around into a negative number, so that we are drawing down carbon.
Peter Wood’s last para on forestry in Australia is a little bit wrong. Australia didn’t sign up to the bit on managed forests in 1997, for a variety of good reasons, such as absolutely no knowledge of what was happening, and no rules for bushfires. We did (wrongfully) sign up to the bit on avoiding deforestation, creating credits for stopping stuff in Queensland that should have stopped a long time ago, and allowing Howard to correctly but immorally claim that we were within Kyoto limits, even though it was an accounting trick.
But for managed forests (and all Australian forests have been managed since before history), timber harvesting is, across the landscape, overall a net sink. While emissions are not counted under Kyoto rules (well they are for the diesel-powered machinery), neither is the sequestered carbon in the long-lived timber products. All forests are regrown and within our lifetimes a regrowth forest contains as much carbon as it had before harvest.
It is extremely likely that as part of our carbon rationed future we will see more harvesting of native forests in many places.
Some places will have less, particularly old growth, because while harvesting there is still a net sink eventually, the short term losses are high and it takes far longer to recoup the emitted carbon. (Also, wet old growth forest is a net GHG emitter. It contains a LOT of carbon, which should not be disturbed, but it is emitting methane while it sits there).
For regrowth forests (which are far more prevalent, for a number of ), the maths is pretty clear and simple and the carbon sequestration gains are quite clear. This is without even considering life cycle comparisons – if you don’t have timber you have concrete or steel.
The only real thing that affects the carbon balance meaningfully is bushfires. We’re going to lose a LOT of carbon to the atmosphere through increased fire frequency. This is yet another feedback mechanism that the climate models don’t grapple with.
Bushfires of course mean less old growth and less regrowth for the timber industry, and less resilience for forest dependent biodiversity. A disaster all round. Add that to temperature changes meaning less regeneration, and there may well not be any forests in Australia in 100 years time.
For those interested in Forests and their ability to be sinks:
Lateline tonight will include the launch of the ‘Green Carbon Report’ by ANU Professor Brendan Mackey. This report highlights the underaccounting of carbon stored in native forests in Victoria and Tasmania by State and Federal Governments.
The report said logging resulted in more than a 40 percent reduction in long-term carbon compared with unlogged forests.
The scientists said that preventing further deforestation of southeast Australia’s eucalypt forests was the equivalent of preventing emissions of 460 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year for the next 100 years. Allowing logged forests to regrow to their natural carbon storage capactiy would avoid emissions of 136 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year for the next 100 years – about 25 percent of Australia’s total emissions in 2005.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP255954.htm
Definitely one to watch.
Although Brendan Mackey isn’t the last word in this, he’s done some good science. Failed to incorporate some very valid criticism, but within the box he’s constructed, valid.
Ah, I just read the Reuters alert. It’s a media release and probably misreported so I wont savage it, but it’s severely wrong on a number of accounts.
Also, it doesn’t seem to reflect new science, merely a few studies that Mackey et al did several years ago. Was hoping for more. Still, that may be a misrepresentation, reserve judgement until after I’ve seen it.
One thing is clear, is that not much is clear. There’s too little research from all sides to really be definitive.
The report is here:
Mackey, B., Keith, H., Berry, S. and Lindenmayer, D., Green carbon : the role of natural forests in carbon storage. Part 1, A green carbon account of Australia’s south-eastern Eucalypt forest, and policy implications. ANU E Press, 2008.
Thanks for the link.
Good on you Brian (#64)!
Glad you’re starting to see things through “the prism of the forest”…
Yes, thanks for the link Peter
Some quotes from the Executive Summary and Concluding Comments: Green carbon : the role of natural forests in carbon storage. Part 1, A green carbon account of Australia’s south-eastern Eucalypt forest, and policy implications.
EXCELLENT !
Regarding logging forests – doesn’t it depend on what you end up doing with the wood? If it turns into paper and is discarded fairly quickly then I can understand that the carbon is released back into the environment. But if you turn it into good quality furniture, or building materials, won’t the carbon be locked up for several decades if not much longer? And now the freshly logged area is available for new trees to suck up lots more carbon.
Chris, about 2% of the wood from logged native forests ends up as “appearance grade” timber. Around 80 to 85% ends up a woodchips (Vicforests figures). A lot of this would go to packaging and end up as carbon emissions.
Also, a large amount of the carbon biomass is burnt when they burn the logged areas for “regeneration”. This includes bark, branches, leaves, humus and leaf litter, and understorey plants.
Mackey also makes the point that leaving forests already logged to regenerate and regain a maximum carbon content – is preferable to logging them again like plantations – which results in more carbon emissions.
Good to see some real science brought to bear on this topic.
Some interesting and compelling information in the paper:
* Eucalypt forests of south-east Australia – stretching from Queensland through NSW and Victoria and into Tasmania – store the equivalent of 25.5 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates such forests held 217 tonnes of carbon per hectare, but the ANU report found Australia’s forests stored an average of 640 tonnes per hectare.
In some areas, forests stored 2000 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
Seems like it is a “no brainer” to protect these immense carbon stores – both in Australia and worldwide – as the cheapest and quickest form of emissions abatement we have.
I haven’t had time to read those links, Peter W, but I have a question Peterc, or anyone, might like to answer. If you ignore the magnificence of those old growth forests, their habitat value for animal life etc and consider them just as a rational carbon sink project, surely it would be more prudent to cut the old trees down, turn them into biochar and plough them into the ground where they would stimulate more growth of vegetation. They’d be safe from forest fires there.
Also the regrowth and the enhanced growth from biochar treated soil would surely draw down more carbon than the increase in the growth of mature forests, which would be minimal, wouldn’t it?
I’m in favour of keeping old forests, but I’m wondering about the validity of the arguments we can use to do so.
Well yes Brian, that would be a geoengineering approach that would reduce atmospheric carbon. It’s a bit “we had to destroy the village to save it” approach however.\
Note enough time now to chat about the Mackey et al publication. But it’s not science, it’s propaganda, basically worthless. Merely a repeat of his earlier research, which bears no relation to real forests or forestry. Surprised Lindenmayer put his name to it.
have a look at the acknowledgements, see who funded it.
Wilful
What do you think about this statement?
http://epress.anu.edu.au/green_carbon/pdf/conclusion.pdf
Elizabeth, totally agree. I’ve stated earlier in this thread and elsewhere that I think forests in Australia and internationally are a really important part of response to CC, one of our few opportunities for carbon sinks. But anything we do has to be well-informed. Mackey has provided a small bit of new info (less than he thinks he has) and has deliberately ignored a mass of other info in trying to provide so-called ‘policy advice’. He’s closed his eyes to a variety of other facts – fire, process emissions, long-term sequestration, socio-economic factors, etc. If our own academics can get it so wrong even here in Australia, then the risks of getting it wrong elsewhere are manifoldly greater.
Au contraire Wilful – I think Mackey et al have specifically addressed long-term sequestration and the scientific basis for their findings. Your other points are unclear to me. Not sure who you think “he has ignored”.
Just because you don’t like the facts or they don’t fit your paradigm doesn’t make them false. Keep an open mind.
Brian, I agree with Wilful that chopping down and burying trees would be counterproductive – and would actually liberate carbon.
If you add up the biodiversity, water production, climate change refugia, carbon sequestration and nice places to visit factors that forests have then they are clearly worth protecting for everyone to enjoy, rather then them being plundered by a very small proportion of the population for commercial gain and climate risk.
Peterc, all I’m saying is that from a strict carbon accounting POV it may be better to cut the trees down and bury them. Certainly there would be a certain amount of carbon emitted in the process, but surely that would be more than replaced if you grew trees where they had just been cut.
That doesn’t mean I’d recommend doing it, just that I’d use different arguments, as you and wilful have.
The fact that they store more than previously thought is important, clearly, especially if the land use changes.
Mackey was on the radio yesterday morning.
wilful,
It seems that there is two issues here, firstly should Australia account for emissions from forest management? Secondly, if we do, does harvesting native forests increase or decrease greenhouse gas emissions?
Does your comment #78 mean that you agree that we should account for forest management?
I’m sure I’ll have more to say on the second issue, but it seems to me that the science from Mackey et al looks good.
peter, yes Australia should account for forest management. Not yet, more research needed, but soon enough.
Full accounting I am very confident will show that native forest harvesting is overall about square, maybe a bit positive as a sink.
Mackey et al have measured some wet old growth forest (years ago, and previously published) and said “look, this is three times as much as the accounting rulebook says”. Yep, actually everyone already thought that, but thanks for confirming it anyway. No one was actually thinking that the average for forests across Australia told us anything about a particular.
Where they get truly deluded is in their arrogant policy advice. They seem to suggest all forest will become old growth if you take away harvesting, and they say that processing emissions aren’t counted, and they deliberately ignore fire, and they badly generalise wet, highly productive forests to drier forests, and they refuse to count sequestered carbon.
Yes, it is quite clear that all wet old growth forests in Australia currently being logged (Tasmania, Victoria and NSW) should therefore be immediately protected.
But so far, Garnaut is silent on this and the resultant logging, greenhouse gas emissions and habitat/biodiversity losses continue at full steam ahead.
Another critical point made in the report is that already logged forest should be left to regain its full carbon storage – which would take 150 years or more. Treating our native forests as pseudo plantations is clearly not appropriate, yet this is the status quo which needs to be challenged.
This article summarises the issue: [green carbon]
Peterc, I think we should have learnt our lessons from the last two threads about forestry not to square off against each other. We both think we know where the other is coming from, we wont agree on anything much to do with the management of forests, we both think we know more than the other one on this issue. Lets just ignore each other, OK?
On e last cheap shot from me: referencing yourself via your wiki greenlivingpedia and pretending it’s authoritative and independent, aint going to cut no dice.
Wilful, it’s a wiki article, not pretending to be anything other than that. You can edit it too if you wish – feel free to add any relevant content to it with references; but please stay away from unsubstantiated opinion.
As per my previous post – I find it encouraging that we appear to have a little common ground – on the need to protect wet old growth forests at least.
Given that tackling deforestation is going to be on top of the agenda in Copenhagen (now only 10 months away), this isn’t a good look for Australia…
Re my comment # 86
Here are some quotes from a follow-up article I found on-line in today’s Australian: Ministers pass buck on biodiesel imports
So, I wonder who is going to sort out this shambles before Copenhagen?
It’s all very well winning Brownie points by ratifying Kyoto, but being complicit in tropical rainforest destruction is going to tarnish the halo considerably…
Thanks Elizabeth.
Well, biofuels (alone) just ain’t the answer to our prayers, are they? The whole picture – and finding practical remedies – is very complicated.
At last it seems we humans really are reaching our “Limits to Growth”. Thank you Donella Meadows et al. We read your warnings, and passed on quickly to other topics.
Ambigulous,
Re your reference to Limits to Growth and Donella Meadows, (Club of Rome) etc.
I remember being rather annoyed at Ross Garnaut’s off-hand dismissal of the Club of Rome with his reference to “their ill-fated prophecy about limits to growth in the early 1970s…” in his Draft Report. (Garnaut Draft Report, p. 29).
How can Garnaut rationalise his “born again conservationist” persona with this statement?:
Can Garnaut really believe there is no end to “the increase in human consumption of goods and services”?
Here’s a quote from an abstract of Limits to Growth:
Re the comment “But virtually no one will argue that material growth on this planet can go on forever”. Ah, if only that were true… (And if only people had listened and taken notice back in 1972…) I think there are many people (e.g. Garnaut) who seem to think that growth is limitless. A case of wishful thinking? But, really, we have to be practical. In addition to consumption in the developed world, the continuing growth of the human population, particularly in developing countries, is impacting severely on the general environment
(I’ve already made many arguments about population growth on various Larvatus Prodeo threads, e.g. Penny, Peter, Marn and the Professor (see from # 18 onwards) and Modelling says: do a deal, and make it a good one (see from # 23 onwards). I also refer to Garnaut’s worrying adoption of Contraction and Convergence in my comments on those LP threads.)
For those people interested in an up to date analysis of Limits to Growth, check out this paper by the CSIRO’s Graham Turner: A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality
In his paper, Turner refers to the “effectiveness of the many false criticisms attempting to discredit the LtG”. (p. 37) (My emphasis)
Turner concludes:
I wonder if it’s time for Professor Garnaut (and others) to have a rethink about his optimistic ideas on limitless growth, on the endless increase in human consumption of goods and services?