Comments
Dear Sir/Madame,
Michael Duffy (Sydney Morning Herald 19/3) asserts that “green propaganda” and “media bias” is shrouding the (Tasmanian) forestry debate.He does not,however, provide any subtantive evidence for his claim and his own article contains many errors of fact.
Mr Duffy claims that there was wide support of the recent Gunns action to serve a writ aiming to sue 20 individuals and groups to the tune of $6.3 million.
There are nowhere near 10,000 people employed in the timber industry in
Tasmania and many of those who are are not in contentious parts of the industry or are facing job and/or financial loss precisely because of the
Industrialisation of forestry in Tasmania and it’s many attendant problems.I doubt the existence of any appropriately conducted survey of
Timberworkers and forest contractors regarding this litigation (but would love to see it (if it does exist).John Gay is no hero in Tasmania.
It is a fact (and on the public record in Hansard) that high value adding sectors of the timber industry (such as wooden boat builders, who require small volumes of mature specialty timbers such as Celery Top, Huon and King Billy pine, and leatherwood honey producers) are threatened by broadacre clearfelling of biodiverse native forests containing these trees.
Akin to napalm
The extreme wastefulness of industrial conversion forestry (native forest to monoculture pulpwood plantations) sees specialty timbers as ‘by catch’ and destroyed in the so-called “regeneration burns” which are, again, about to pollute Tasmanian skies.
By the way these burns, which are initiated by an incendiary device akin to napalm, do have the appearance of a mushroom cloud. It is estimated that up to 20 million tonnes of biomass are incinerated by these burns each year in Tasmania. Much of it is commercially valuable timber.
It is not widely appreciated that Tasmania harvests approximately 15 times the amount of timber by land area than the rest of Australia.
I am one of the “20 environmentalists” being targetted by Gunns Limited. On behalf of worried members of the Burnie community I spoke up about long expressed (but largely unheeded) concerns regarding the safety of the woodchip piles on the wharf in the midst of their city.The issues raised by the Gunns litigation extend well beyond any Green or left wing agenda and,I agree, they need to be treated with great care, fairness and accuracy in the media.
Mr Duffy has comprehensively failed in all three areas.
Dr Frank Nicklason
West HobartPosted by editor on 30/03/05 at 11:05 PMMonday, 28th March 2005
To: Chris Eden
Environmental Management and Pollution Control Board
DPIWE, Tasmania
CC: John Gledhill, Tasmanian Fire Service; Gunns Ltd; State Fire Management Council of Tasmania; Forest Practices Board. Others
Dear Mr Eden,
I have received no response to the following two emails sent to you last week (6 days ago). It is not an unusual request, for a public servant to be asked to quote the legislation that confirms advice given to a member of the public. Nor is it unreasonable to ask for the Department’s response to the Disability Discrimination Act with respect to such things as the regulation of smoke pollution.
These matters are urgent. We’ve experienced yet another 3 days of smoke pollution since I wrote to you. This is out of a total of 12 days and 10 nights since burnoffs began on 12th March. The level of contqamination is counter to the assertions of the Environmental Protection Policy Review Panel on the “Assessment of the Draft Environment Protection Policy (Air Quality) September 2001”.I quote from their document where the panel states the following in response to the majority of public submissions complaining about forest industry burnoff practices:
“While the Panel appreciates that smoke from forestry burns may only contribute small percentages of woodsmoke pollution to an individual airshed when averaged over an entire year, there may be times during the burning period when some population centres are blanketed by smoke for a few hours to a few days. The impact of planned burning appears to be mainly upon visual amenity. Forestry regeneration burns are visually intrusive as the smoke plume can reach 20,000 feet and create significant quantities of smoke…”
The amount of smoke in our region has far exceeded that described above. I repeat that I have been forced out of home for two nights and two days of (very heavy) smoke inundation.
During the other days and nights of smoke I have had to increase my asthma medication and have had disturbed sleep due to the offensive odour. The doctor at Accident and Emergency in Burnie made it very clear that it is imperative for me to leave home when we are inundated by smoke - as is the case with anyone who suffers from asthma.
And heavy smoke is drifting well over 20,000 feet stated, by the way.It is imperative that the burnoffs now cease for the rest of the year in order to protect community health generally.
(Response from the industry so far: Gunns Ltd have not responded to two phone calls and one email to-date. Forestry Tasmania are asserting they will go ahead with their planned burns in the North West.)
I await your response.
Yours faithfully
Brenda J Rosser
West Calder Road
Wynyard
Tasmania—Original Message——-
From: BJ Rosser
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 10:30 AM
Subject: Burnoffs Exempt from Environmental Law
Tuesday, 22nd March 2005
To:
Mr Chris Eden
Environmental Management and Pollution Control Board
DPIWE, Tasmania
Dear Mr Eden
Could you please provide the name of the person who provided this information. It appears to be at odds with the Forest Practices Code 2000 - Section F3, page 95. Refers to environmental legislation when it comes to SMOKE noise and dust from forestry operations.
Could you also please clarify the legal means by which the forestry industry is let off the hook (quoting exemption statements in regulations, Acts of Parliament etc)?
Yours faithfully
Brenda RosserPosted by editor on 31/03/05 at 12:05 AM[d]oublespeak is dishonest and dangerous ... [it] uses language to smuggle uncomfortable ideas into comfortable minds. The Nazi regime were masters of it. Many government’s today are enthusiastic imitators.”
[Julian Burnside On Doublespeak, 7/3/05, ]http://crikey.com.au/articles/2005/03/007-0001-4567.html]Today’s Mercury newspaper carries a defence of Forestry Tasmania’s practice of firing up “regeneration” burns across Tasmania during the last of our warm, still Autumn days. [31/3, p5: ]http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12706517%5E3462,00.html]
But what exactly is being “regenerated” by these burns, I ask?
The intensity of the “regeneration” burn kills all living things in the coupe - all insects, flora and fauna are incinerated, leaving nothing alive to compete with the non-native plantation to be established on the site.
After the non native trees are planted out, any native tree or plant that attempts to “regenerate” is sprayed with herbicide, any native animal that returns to the site is killed with 1080 poison and the insects cop regular applications of insecticide.
It seems obvious that these burn-offs regenerate nothing.
The “regeneration” label has been carefully crafted to smuggle the uncomfortable reality of this practice into the comfortable minds of those who would object if they found out what’s actually happening.
Yours,
Jason LovellPosted by Jason Lovell on 01/04/05 at 01:49 AMTALK ABOUT GLOBAL DIMMING (ABC Four Corners)
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2005/s1325819.htmI believe Dr Frank Nicklason’s was spot on with his opinion of Michael Duffy’s failure (see above).
Here is some more of Duffy on Global Warming:
Why being green is good camouflage
The Daily Telegraph - Australia | February 19, 2005 | Michael Duffy“The truth is we have no control over global warming, and in any case it’s not a problem at all.”
“The second problem is that temperatures have not risen along with industrialisation over the past 200 years.”
“Another major problem is that a small rise in temperature could be a good thing, whatever the cause. It could increase agricultural productivity and reduce energy requirements (for heating) in many places.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1351276/posts
Does Duffy live on this Planet?
Does he actually think that there will be no problems from the human race (amongst other things), burning almost the entire massive reserve of fossil fuels built up over billions of years of this Planet’s evolution in the speck of time that it is happening?
Gordon Craven
Posted by Gordon Craven on 01/04/05 at 04:09 AMA modern war with drip-toch and Helicopter against Rainforest succession, is ‘Clearfell & burn’, the ‘Final Solution’ (‘Endlösung’) or more like the ‘fire-stick method’, a ancient forest management techniques used by Tasmanian Aborigines.
Who wants to be study war against nature?
The facts speak for themself, how many young Australians want to be foresters?
Come on spin-doctors tell us the trend and reality of imports.Posted by Frank Strie on 01/04/05 at 04:21 AMI can tell you what’s being ‘regenerated’ by these burns Jason.
Gunn’s Profits!!Posted by Simon Rolfe on 01/04/05 at 06:39 AM31/3/2005
Editor
Dear Sir,How dare the officers of Forestry Tas. tell the alarmed and choking populace, that the mighty fire bomb assisted clean up fires are simple regeneration burns.
It is nothing about healthy forest regeneration by firing. It is about wiping the remains of the trashed native forests out of existence ready for artificial planting of single plantation species sustained by chemicals and poisoning. Just how much more blatantly insulting, misleading and arrogant does the chip industry rhetoric get?
Yours sincerely.
Helen Tait
W. LauncestonPosted by Helen Tait on 01/04/05 at 04:42 PMNow it’s Greens under the beds. Michael Duffy’s vengeful article “Greenery is Shrouding Debate” looks as if it was lifted straight from the TCA or NAFI website.
The claims Duffy makes in his opening paragraph alone are so ludicrous and full of reds-under-the-bed-like paranoia that if you replaced the word ‘Green’ with ‘communist’ you could easily think you were reading some of discredited anti-communist 1950’s US senator Joe Mcarthy work.
Just as a post-war US feared communism might control the world, Duffy fears greens are controlling the media. It’s hard to take this article seriously at all except that it was published in one of the country’s leading newspapers.
“The Green spirit of our times”.
What the hell does that mean?Duffy’s article relies on exploiting people’s fears of greens’ ideas.
Now the Greens have infiltrated the media! The greens are everywhere!As Frank Nicklason stated, Duffy doesn’t provide any substantive evidence for his claims and the article contains many errors of fact.
The Mcarthyist’s reds-under-the-bed movement of 1950s didn’t either.
Indeed, I’m surprised Duffy didn’t suggest that we institute of a House of Un-Tasmanian activities committee. Duffy could sit with the Premier, John Gay, Greg Farrell and Barry Chipman and they could blacklist green-sympathisers. We could even televise the hearings!
Posted by Rick Pilkington on 02/04/05 at 01:54 AMhttp://www.cfa-international.org
http://www.cfa-international.org/cfanews/cfnewssept03.pdf
Commonwealth Forestry Association
LEGAL & ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS
The name of the charity is the Commonwealth Forestry Association
The objective of the Commonwealth Forestry Association is to promote good management, and the use and conservation of forests and forest lands throughout the world.
Plantations are here to stay
Few forest-related issues generate more heated disagreement than commercial eucalypt, acacia, pine, and poplar plantations.
Proponents argue that fast-growing tree plantations offer a sustainable source of wood to meet the growing global demand for paper and other products.
They also claim plantations generate substantial employment, reduce global warming and protect watersheds, and take pressure off natural forests.Opponents disagree with these claims.
They say plantations will dry up water supplies, degrade the soil, and fall victim to pests and diseases. They deny that plantations will help protect natural forests or provide many jobs.
In fact, the opponents maintain that companies often destroy natural forests to grow plantations and displace small farmers and local communities, and they strongly object to calling these plantations “forests”.The issue is key because fast-growing tree plantations and global demand for paper are both increasing rapidly. There are some ten million hectares of commercial fast-growing tree plantations and the area is increasing by about one million hectares each year. FAO predicts that global paper consumption will be 80% higher in 2010 than it was in 1990.
To sort out fact from fiction about the plantation controversy,
CIFOR, WWF, IUCN, and Forest Trends have just published
“Fast-Wood Forestry, Myths and Realities” by Christian Cossalter and Charlie Pye Smith.
It concludes that fast-growing plantations:• often but not always replace natural forest;
• only take pressure off natural forest in special circumstances;
• sometimes improve biodiversity in degraded areas;
• use more water than lower vegetation, but that is only a problem in dry areas;
• are not as susceptible to pests and diseases as sometimes argued;
• generally degrade the soil less than commercial agricultural crops;
• can do relatively little to reduce global warming;
• provide fewer jobs than claimed by proponents;
• have frequently been associated with conflicts; and
• should generally not be subsidized with public funds.
The authors are convinced that fast-growing commercial tree plantations are here to stay. The real issue is how to manage them better. No, eucalypts and acacias are unlikely to eat your children or turn your region into a desert. But there is still a lot that could be done to improve plantations.
from CHRISTIAN COSSALTER and CHARLIE PYE SMITH, CIFOR
(See also “Planted Forests"in CFN No.21 of June 2003)
Frank StriePosted by editor on 02/04/05 at 11:45 PMLooks like forestry burnoffs in Tasmania are inhibiting our rain ... if we assume rain comes from clouds, of course:
NASA research shows heavy smoke ‘chokes’ clouds
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/7359
Using data from NASA’s Aqua satellite, agency scientists found heavy smoke from burning vegetation inhibits cloud formation. The research suggests the cooling of global climate by pollutant particles, called “aerosols,” may be smaller than previously estimated. During the August-October 2002 burning season in South America’s Amazon River basin, scientists observed cloud cover decreased from about 40 percent in clean-air conditions to zero in smoky air.Until recently, scientists thought aerosols such as smoke particles mainly served to cool the planet by shading the surface, either directly, by reflecting sunlight back toward space, or indirectly, by making clouds more reflective. Certain aerosols make clouds’ droplets smaller and more numerous, thereby making the clouds more reflective while reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the surface.
However, this new study proves smoke aerosols have a “semi-direct” effect on climate, causing a reduction in cloud cover and warming the surface. In the morning, smoke absorbs incoming solar radiation and heats the atmosphere while cooling the surface. Since there is less upward transport of warmth and moisture in such conditions, clouds are less likely to form. Then, in the afternoon, since there is less cloud cover, more sunlight passes through the atmosphere and warms the surface.
“This instantaneous warming is important and can dramatically affect the people and the Amazonian ecosystem,” said Ilan Koren, research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Koren is lead author of a paper in the current issue of Science. Using Aqua data, Koren and his NASA co-authors measured the total amount of light reflected through the top of the atmosphere. From those data they determined how much area was covered by clouds and how much by smoke. They also estimated the smoke’s “optical thickness,” a measure of how much sunlight the smoke prevented from traveling down through a column of atmosphere.
The team found the smoke and clouds together would ordinarily reflect solar energy equal to one 28-watt light bulb per square meter back up into space (i.e., a cooling effect). With the reduction in cloud cover, however, solar energy equal to one eight-watt light bulb per square meter is absorbed within Earth’s climate system (i.e., a warming effect).
The team consulted other weather data to make sure the differences in cloud patterns were not due to regional differences in meteorology. Once team members proved the meteorological conditions were the same in the smoky regions as they were in the cloudy regions, they knew the smoke had to be the reason average cloud cover dropped from 40 percent to zero in the presence of heavy smoke.
“We used to think of smoke mainly as a reflector, reflecting sunlight back to space, but here we show that, due to absorption, it chokes off cloud formation,” Koren said.
According to Koren, smoke inhibition of cloud formation is not unique to the Amazon area. His team has seen similar examples in other parts of the world, including over parts of Africa during the burning season, and over Canada during major boreal forest wildfires. When added up over the entire globe, the warming influence of smoke and other absorbing aerosols suggests the global cooling influence of these particles is much smaller than current models predict.
Smoke and aerosol inhibition of cloud formation was first proposed in two previous NASA studies based upon results of computer model experiments. However, this study documents the first time this effect of smoke on clouds has been measured in Earth’s environment. The research was funded by NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise. The Enterprise is dedicated to understanding the Earth as an integrated system and applying Earth system science to improve predication of climate, weather and natural hazards using the unique vantage point of space.
From NASA
Brenda Rosser
Posted by editor on 03/04/05 at 12:09 AMSunday 3rd April 2005, 2:03 AM
Attention Mr John Gledhill
Tasmanian Fire Chief
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
and
Forestry Tasmania, via Brenton Jansen
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
and
Chris Eden, Pollution Contact Officer, DPIWE
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
and Chris Mitchell,Forest Practices Board,Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
State Fire Management Council and others
Dear Messrs Gledhill, Eden, Jansen, Mitchell
URGENT. Please respond to this email ASAP. [How many emails have you received and not responded to to-date?].
This is the third night I have been forced out of bed due to lack of breath from the very heavy smoke inundation in my home at West Calder. I have phoned the hospital to try to find out whether driving the 39 kilometres into town will provide needed respite from the smoke. The response from the staff member was that the air was smoky there as well.
I phoned the OOO Fire number and was informed that Forestry Tasmania are burning off under a Permit (from your Fire Service) in conditions of EXTREME DRY and HIGH WIND SPEEDS! These fires are 7 kilometres to the West of our house. And this is happening during the same 24 hour period when fires are out of control in the North West and South of the state!
I have asked Mr Chris Eden from DPIWE to answer critical questions in relation to forestry burnoffs and received no response, despite posing these questions twice. This is now the third time.
Are you a law unto yourselves?! Do you hold yourself accountable to any principle - legal or otherwise?
I’m asking you all the SAME questions posed in the copy of the email sent to Eden, Gledhill and the Forest Practices Board below. Please answer them.
I’m also insisting that the burnoffs STOP once and for all. This is necessary to protect human health and the environment and to satisfy the federal Disability Discrimination Act, the Fire Regulation in Tasmania, the Forest Practices Code and (no doubt) other pieces of legislation.
Please act with the integrity the public have a right to expect from public SERVANTS. Stop endangering lives and put out the fires now.
Yours faithfully,
Brenda Rosser
West Calder
Wynyard Tasmania 7325PS: Attached for your urgent attention a study by NASA indicating the heavy smoke from forestry burnoffs is preventing cloud formation and thus, RAIN.
Posted by editor on 04/04/05 at 03:55 AMThe Editor
The MercuryDark clouds over Tasmania’s future
Last week (Tuesday 29th) I found myself on Bruny Island. It was magical, a quintessentially Tasmanian day.We’d just had a barbecue for lunch – sausages and flathead caught that morning, our kids and their mates were playing under a crystal clear Autumnal sky.
As we looked West a sparkling D’Entrecasteaux Channel lay before us its waters disturbed only by the award winning Peppermint Bay catamaran, a few yachts and some boats tending the salmon farm, the produce of which is rapidly becoming known around the world.
Above this idyll rose a mushroom cloud fuelled by burning forest.
It was wrong and out of place.
It struck me what we were seeing was a metaphor. The future lay before us – clean, young and fresh.
It is a future people in crowded cities around the world crave. The word Tasmania conjures up to them mystery, remoteness, wild places. It is to them a place somehow clean, creative and above all else different when so much is the same.
It is a bolt-hole in an ever shrinking world.
This future will have value beyond our wildest dreams for our children and our children’s children. It is their birthright.
Yet towering over all of this was a past and a present dark, corrupted and threatening.
I made a promise to myself as I watched the mushroom cloud grow - I will not allow the future to be stolen from our children.
Gerard Castles
Mt StuartPosted by editor on 06/04/05 at 05:38 AMThe Editor
Sunday TasmanianI congratulate Simon Bevilacqua and Sunday Tasmanian for “Alarm bells over plantations”.
I have long considered the use of plantation monocultures as ‘carbon sinks’ for trading purposes to be a fraud. A fraud in which Canberra is entirely complicit. In the light of facts presented in your article, it is clear that both the State and Federal governments are ignoring scientific evidence (from the CSIRO no less) to continue a massively destructive deception on the people of Tasmania.
It has been clear to me for several years that ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ used by government and its advisors to justify plantations as carbon sinks for trading purposes have carefully ignored the downsides.
They have ignored the negatives, including the burning of fossil fuel energy to ‘harvest’ natural forests, the massive carbon loss brought about by so-called regeneration burns, the fact that short cycle harvest of plantation monocultures never allows a recovery of these losses, the energy loss of subsequent harvests and burns.
On top of this, there are the losses to biodiversity, environmental amenity and sustainability. There is the toxic chemical contamination of Tasmania’s water supplies, along with the summer time drying out of our water catchments by water hungry e nitens. The list of negatives is mind boggling.
It staggers me that the man whose studies appear to highlight the negatives involved in hot burn ‘regeneration’ fires is in charge of, and is attempting to justify the program that fouls the autumn skies of Tasmania.
Who benefits from this scam? Is it the Australian people, whose taxes are being used to provide a massive subsidy to the promoters of this scheme?
Is it the Tasmanian people, who are witness to a rush by the forest industry triumvirate - the State Government, Forestry Tasmania and Gunns Ltd - to convert the vast bulk of this state’s natural, biodiverse forests into chemically dependent monocultures?
Or is it the industry giant, Gunns Ltd that has the power to have the government and Forestry Tasmania do its bidding?
What we are witnessing today is a massive plunder of Tasmania and much of what makes it a very special part of this planet, for the short-term benefit of one corporation and its shareholders. What we witness to now is a frantic rush to convert the maximum possible amount of our forests into woodchips for (primarily) Japan.
Gunns Ltd is totally dependent on cashflow from woodchips for its survival. This explains why Forestry cannot tact on the evidence produced by its own officers.
We should all contemplate the fact that highly populated Japan is at least 70 per cent forest. Cutting down a tree in Japan is a heinous crime.
Most ordinary Japanese cannot believe we are so stupid as to allow our beautiful forests to be destroyed to provide them with cartons, toilet paper and tissues!
Can you believe it?
Paul de Burgh-Day
LorinnaPosted by editor on 06/04/05 at 05:59 AMMonopolies are seen to be a problem everywhere except here, where it seems the government worships them.
Monopolies, like Gunns, can manipulate the price paid for timber to their own advantage as well as set the pace and areas for logging because the government has no choice…their policies have allowed no other industries to participate in getting benefits from our forests.
If competition policy has any meaning it should be applied in Tasmania…how else do we protect the public?
Posted by Joe Frayn on 14/04/05 at 01:51 AM
