What will the fires do to our greenhouse gas emissions?
Australia has relied very heavily on the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector to pretend we are even going close to making some headway in decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions.
In fact, the latest greenhouse gas emissions data claims that LULUCF emissions have decreased by 110.5 per cent since 1990 and, just this year, accounted “for a net sink equivalent to 3.5 per cent of Australia’s national inventory” in the year to March 2019.
We started claiming net reductions from the LULUCF sector in the September quarter of 2014.
The latest State of the Forests report states that “The net increase in forest area over the period 2011 to 2016 was 3.9 million hectares.”
That sounds good except we just lost over 1 million hectares in a few days and, from what I can gather, that won’t be considered.
The Focus on Land Sector Estimates fact sheet states that “These estimates of forest change attempt to abstract from temporary factors affecting area of forest cover including from fire and cyclical climatic effects.”
What does that mean?
Are we assuming that everything that has died from drought and fires will all come back quickly and so we just pretend they are still providing a net sink? Do we not count the emissions from the burning of over 1 million hectares of forest and grassland?
From the outset, Australia has been manipulative and dishonest. We insisted that we be allowed to include LULUCF data and deliberately chose base years with very high land clearing rates (1990 and 2005). We insisted we be allowed to increase emissions and then, when we didn’t increase them as much as we had insisted we must, we are now wanting to subtract the difference between how bad we could have been and how bad we were, from how bad we are now.
We then embarked on the ridiculous Emissions Reduction Fund where we pay farmers who say they won’t clear a bit of land if we pay them not to. Or we pay them to replant trees which then die in the drought – or the floods or the cyclones or the fires. But the government claims the reductions anyway, not caring if they are actually delivered or if anyone was ever going to clear that land in the first place.
Yet, in the ultimate irony, it is we people who have fought to preserve some areas of native bush and to have unique areas declared national parks who are being blamed for the devastation ripping across NSW and Queensland.
Here’s a tip for Craig Kelly, Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan, Michael McCormack, Angus Taylor and the other fuckwits sitting on the Treasury benches – it’s CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING you morons and your obsession with fossil fuels is what is causing it.
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18 comments
Login here Register hereThat photo of Morrison swooning over a piece of coal in parliament will not age well.
He’s such an idiot.
The image of Barnaby Joyce’s reaction where I was convinced he was about to wet himself with laughter filled me with contempt.
Yes, I considered using it. That Malcolm Turnbull allowed it to happen, along with a lot else he allowed to happen, shows what a weak leader he was. But Morrison was the idiot who did it and he is now in charge. Oy vey!
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQIiTGxNm3gD_-x3ZQpEtPMQWJ2lPzKh0leLt6ZZ6OuHaSEJ5sA
Barnaby Joyce is a LUSH and should be ignored.
How can you say that Phil?
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcTFiImZvCwoYbq-CiLorrlSE7JboOpgWOc0A-99GxWqhAKRPSNc
And that’s him at work.
A political maxim to be learnt from Barnaby Joyce and Donald Trump (via Bill Barr). Get in early. Set the agenda. Create the (uneven) playing field. Consume the political oxygen. Set the stage. Just as Barr did with the Muller Report. And we know the result of that. It was game, set and match before the starter said ‘go’. The Russian interference accusation was dead in the water. Too easy.
In the case of Joyce, he (outrageously) attributed the deaths of two constituents to their (supposed) Green credentials. He got in early. Greens are poison. Why, their polices even kill their own. Sure he apologised afterwards. Made a mistake and all that. Didn’t mean it. So sorry. Mis-spoke. Please forgive. Worse still, (from a political perspective), his ‘explanation’ was accepted, explained and excused by Craig Emerson on The Drum. You know who Craig is – one of the two who reviewed the Labor campaign. Unbelievable! And this was the person who accused Shorten of gross political ineptitude. (Don’t be surprised if Emerson gets the odd contract or two from the LNP. After all – he’s earned it.)
Morrison wins because he knows how to operate politically.
MN,
If you want an hilarious example of exactly what you are saying about Barnaby, google Barnaby Joyce dams October 11.
You’ll find his article in The Land, The Armidale Express, South Coast Register, Mudgee Guardian, The Wimerra-Mail Times, The Examiner, The Standard, The Irrigator, Kiama Independent, Merimbula News Weekly, The Avon Valley Advocate, Bombala Times, The Scone Advocate, Illawarra Mercury, Katherine Times, Dungog Chronicle, Oberon Review……there are a shit load more and I am sick of it.
He bombards all country newspapers who all faithfully reproduce whatever drivel he has written so when you travel around the countryside, EVERYONE will say “yeah I heard that too”.
I don’t think people who voted for the LNP quite understand that their reassuringly Christian leader, ever ready to mug for the cameras, is of the Pentecostal brand of Christianity. This means that he believes everything that happens is God’s Will, and to actually interfere with it is a deadly sin. Thus apocalyptic fires = God’s will. Worse, doing anything to ameliorate them is sinful, though you can feel sorry for the people who are hurt along the way and send them thoughts and prayers. You and I may wonder why his God, having gifted us with intelligence, conscious will, and a knowledge of history expects us to be so passive in the face of natural challenges but to a Pentecostal Christian it’s all very clear. It’s the beginning of the End-times. The Rapture awaits them. Can’t happen soon enough. Talk about the entitled elite!
@Kaye Lee: It is all part of his continuing campaign to dislodge Mick Muck from the nat$ leadership. Well, it is difficult to keep two families on one politicians income alone.
Perhaps the optimum solution is to refer to Barnyard Joke by his present correct titles; Adulterer-in-Chief, representative of the nat$ in New England or self-serving apologist for the foreign owned mine corporations.
Then of course, tamworth women supporting adultery support nat$ & we all get screwed.
Well said Kaye. My favourite is the mural that Ad Astra used of Morrison holding his precious (lump of coal) above the rising water.
Yeah Presser#1, that is the scary thing about Morrison, his beliefs. Like America’s Pence, the religious right.
Care needs to be taken when attributing emissions to bushfires. The best arguments for serious action on our carbon footprint are the most factual – and there is no shortage. The regrowth after bushfires and drought does take up CO2 in similar amounts; I don’t think bushfires can be considered a net CO2 source in and of themselves but rather it is any enduring change to vegetation such as forest turned to grassland, grassland turned to desert – including extensive clearing in the name of future fire hazard reduction – that will have enduring emissions and climate consequences.
Blaming Environmentalists for preventing hazard reduction burning (so much for not politicising the issue) is not supported by facts but a lot of rural Australians have been primed by decades of anti-environmentalist rhetoric to take it as fact without checking. I suspect people who have moved to rural locations and lack experience and confidence in use of fire and take the regulations around fire permits and their requirements (not driven by environmentalists) seriously are, according to the likes of Mr Joyce, seen as “greenies” whether they identify and vote Green or not or whether they appreciate the role of fire for land management and hazard reduction or not.
In the Gympie times on Tuesday in their Facebook page quotes, “ bloody greens, killing thousands of koalas,” that was the uniformed consensus. Turdoch strikes again plus these people are as dumb as dog shit.
The people who stupidly vote now for the nationals are the descendents of those for voted country party, the party of liars, spivs, crooks, distorters, manipulators, takers of any graft and corruption in bounties, tariffs, incentives, concessions, schemes, payola in everything. It is the one party that began without a shred of positivity, of morals and ethics, of decency. It was merely a pustular swelling on politics agin the city types. They wanted to continue the abuse, malpractice, rape of the land, with pests, pestilences, bad practices, making this nation far worse than it should be. Current poxheaded nonthinking is the curse of the rural poor, who do not realise the treachery of the national nong leadership which only embraces agribusiness filth, mining filth, foreign coration control filth and B Joyce’s filth. Dairy families are betrayed, and others will follow, while ex leaders of the Anderson type cash in with treachery and bumboy mentality.
Australia spends billions planting trees – then wipes out carbon gains by bulldozing them
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/17/australia-spends-billions-planting-trees-then-wipes-out-carbon-gains-by-bulldozing-them
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
And in the mean time, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits.
The planet has sequestration processes and is equipped to cater for natural greenhouses gas emissions like volcanoes, fires and ‘farting’. Even xstian bible lovers concede god created these processes but will not concede man can interfere, eveb with freewill. ^#^#^$@#& catch 22 has nothing on the bible boys and their women.
The trick is to convince these people that fossil fuel burning is interfering with his process. As an atheist, I have no problems rationalising that if a billion white people got rich on fossil then 6.5 billion must get rich on the power provided by renewables. Unfortunately my logic that god provides sun, wind and tides is not accepted by xristians who see giving up on coal as our concession to the xxxxs and as joyce’s disgusting observation shows xxxxs are loathed and feared by lnp voters and thought unconscionable by some laborites.
ps
Spot on Presser, indoctrinated jesuit boys like joyce, hockey, pynenut and the rabbott and the ordinary global warming deniers pell-boys are bad enough but pence and scummo are cold secretive and unforgiving.
Albo get active.
Coming from a different trajectory, it is actually a question I’ve asked myself given the size of the burn. Add it to the fires in SE Asia and the Amazon and you hope a few scientists have their shoes and socks off for a few searching calculations.
If so, a problem, we must pray that msm does NOT succeed in yet another attempt to cover up the facts.
Just caught Kaye Lee and land clearing. You HAVE to wonder, after a while, the greedy animals..