212 Climategate Investigation begins; Glacier scientist admits data not verified

(1) British Parliament commissions Climategate Investigation
(2) Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified
(3) Greens & Labor make deals: Green Left vs Aborigines of Cape York
(4) Riverina red gum forests: not National Park, but sustainable, multiple use
(5) Communities Unite to Fight Green Takeover of Forests
(6) National parks are killing red gum forests
(7) Mark Poynter on the red gum forest debate

(1) British Parliament commissions Climategate Investigation
From: north-pennine rainbows <pennine.rainbows@btinternet.com> Date: 24.01.2010 10:14 PM

As long as this Inquiry doesn't solely  amount to criticism & criminalisation of the good person who leaked the scandal. Kudos to whoever this was is what i say:-)
Kindest to All

http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_technology/s_t_pn14_100122.cfm

Science and Technology Committee Announcement

Session 2009-10

22 January 2010

THE DISCLOSURE OF CLIMATE DATA FROM THE CLIMATIC RESEARCH UNIT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

The Science and Technology Committee today announces an inquiry into the unauthorised publication of data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The Committee has agreed to examine and invite written submissions on three questions:

— What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?

— Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate (see below)?

— How independent are the other two international data sets?

The Committee intends to hold an oral evidence session in March 2010.

Background

On 1 December 2009 Phil Willis, Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, wrote to Professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor of UEA following the considerable press coverage of the data, emails and documents relating to the work of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). The coverage alleged that data may have been manipulated or deleted in order to produce evidence on global warming. On 3 December the UEA announced an Independent Review into the allegations to be headed by Sir Muir Russell.

The Independent Review will:

1. Examine the hacked e-mail exchanges, other relevant e-mail exchanges and any other information held at CRU to determine whether there is any evidence of the manipulation or suppression of data which is at odds with acceptable scientific practice and may therefore call into question any of the research outcomes.

2. Review CRU's policies and practices for acquiring, assembling, subjecting to peer review and disseminating data and research findings, and their compliance or otherwise with best scientific practice.

3. Review CRU's compliance or otherwise with the University's policies and practices regarding requests under the Freedom of Information Act ('the FOIA') and the Environmental Information Regulations ('the EIR') for the release of data.

4. Review and make recommendations as to the appropriate management, governance and security structures for CRU and the security, integrity and release of the data it holds .

Submissions

The Committee invites written submissions from interested parties on the three questions set out above by noon on Wednesday 10 February:

Each submission should:

a) be no more than 3,000 words in length
b)be in Word format (no later than 2003) with as little use of colour or logos as possible
c)have numbered paragraphs
d)include a declaration of interests.

A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to scitechcom@parliament.uk and marked "Climatic Research Unit". An additional paper copy should be sent to:

The Clerk
Science and Technology Committee
House of Commons
7 Millbank
London SW1P 3JA

It would be helpful, for Data Protection purposes, if individuals submitting written evidence send their contact details separately in a covering letter. You should be aware that there may be circumstances in which the House of Commons will be required to communicate information to third parties on request, in order to comply with its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Please supply a postal address so a copy of the Committee's report can be sent to you upon publication.

A guide for written submissions to Select Committees may be found on the parliamentary website at: www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/witguide.htm

Please also note that:

—Material already published elsewhere should not form the basis of a submission, but may be referred to within a proposed memorandum, in which case a hard copy of the published work should be included.

—Memoranda submitted must be kept confidential until published by the Committee, unless publication by the person or organisation submitting it is specifically authorised.

—Once submitted, evidence is the property of the Committee. The Committee normally, though not always, chooses to make public the written evidence it receives, by publishing it on the internet (where it will be searchable), by printing it or by making it available through the Parliamentary Archives. If there is any information you believe to be sensitive you should highlight it and explain what harm you believe would result from its disclosure. The Committee will take this into account in deciding whether to publish or further disclose the evidence.

—Select Committees are unable to investigate individual cases.

Notes to Editors

Media Enquiries: Becky Jones: 020 7219 5693
Committee Website: http://www.parliament.uk/science
Watch committees and parliamentary debates online: www.parliamentlive.tv
Publications/Reports/Reference Material: Copies of all select committee reports are available from the Parliamentary Bookshop (12 Bridge St, Westminster, 020 7219 3890) or the Stationery Office (0845 7023474). Committee reports, press releases, evidence transcripts, Bills; research papers, a directory of MPs, plus Hansard (from 8am daily) and much more, can be found on www.parliament.uk.

(2) Glacier scientist: I knew data hadn't been verified

From: north-pennine rainbows <pennine.rainbows@btinternet.com> Date: 24.01.2010 08:47 PM

By David Rose
Last updated at 12:54 AM on 24th January 2010

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-knew-data-verified.html

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

 Chilling error: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035

Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furore over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.

According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.

The claim that Himalayan glaciers are set to disappear by 2035 rests on two 1999 magazine interviews with glaciologist Syed Hasnain, which were then recycled without any further investigation in a 2005 report by the environmental campaign group WWF.

It was this report that Dr Lal and his team cited as their source.

The WWF article also contained a basic error in its arithmetic. A claim that one glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 134 metres a year should in fact have said 23 metres – the authors had divided the total loss measured over 121 years by 21, not 121.

Last Friday, the WWF website posted a humiliating statement recognising the claim as ‘unsound’, and saying it ‘regrets any confusion caused’.

Dr Lal said: ‘We knew the WWF report with the 2035 date was “grey literature” [material not published in a peer-reviewed journal]. But it was never picked up by any of the authors in our working group, nor by any of the more than 500 external reviewers, by the governments to which it was sent, or by the final IPCC review editors.’

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.

Professor Graham Cogley, a glacier expert at Trent University in Canada, who began to raise doubts in scientific circles last year, said the claim multiplies the rate at which glaciers have been seen to melt by a factor of about 25.

‘My educated guess is that there will be somewhat less ice in 2035 than there is now,’ he said.

‘But there is no way the glaciers will be close to disappearing. It doesn’t seem to me that exaggerating the problem’s seriousness is going to help solve it.’

One of the problems bedevilling Himalayan glacier research is a lack of reliable data. But an authoritative report published last November by the Indian government said: ‘Himalayan glaciers have not in any way exhibited, especially in recent years, an abnormal annual retreat.’

When this report was issued, Raj Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, denounced it as ‘voodoo science’.

Having been forced to apologise over the 2035 claim, Dr Pachauri blamed Dr Lal, saying his team had failed to apply IPCC procedures.

It was an accusation rebutted angrily by Dr Lal. ‘We as authors followed them to the letter,’ he said. ‘Had we received information that undermined the claim, we would have included it.’

However, an analysis of those 500-plus formal review comments, to be published tomorrow by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the new body founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, suggests that when reviewers did raise issues that called the claim into question, Dr Lal and his colleagues simply ignored them.

For example, Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University, suggested that their draft did not mention that Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram range are growing rapidly, citing a paper published in the influential journal Nature.

In their response, the IPCC authors said, bizarrely, that they were ‘unable to get hold of the suggested references’, but would ‘consider’ this in their final version. They failed to do so.

The Japanese government commented that the draft did not clarify what it meant by stating that the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing by 2035 was ‘very high’. ‘What is the confidence level?’ it asked.

The authors’ response said ‘appropriate revisions and editing made’. But the final version was identical to their draft.

Last week, Professor Georg Kaser, a glacier expert from Austria, who was lead author of a different chapter in the IPCC report, said when he became aware of the 2035 claim a few months before the report was published, he wrote to Dr Lal, urging him to withdraw it as patently untrue.

Dr Lal claimed he never received this letter. ‘He didn’t contact me or any of the other authors of the chapter,’ he said.

The damage to the IPCC’s reputation, already tarnished by last year’s ‘Warmergate’ leaked email scandal, is likely to be considerable.

Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, said the affair suggested the IPCC review process was ‘skewed by a bias towards alarmist assessments’.

Environmentalist Alton Byers said the panel’s credibility had been damaged. ‘They’ve done sloppy work,’ he said. ‘We need better research on the ground, not unreliable predictions derived from computer models.’

Last night, Dr Pachauri defended the IPCC, saying it was wrong to generalise based on a single mistake. ‘Our procedure is robust,’ he added.

(3) Greens & Labor make deals: Green Left vs Aborigines of Cape York
From: Charles F Moreira <moreira_charles@yahoo.com.sg> Date: 23.01.2010 10:16 AM

> Labor connives with green alliance to control indigenous growth
> Noel Pearson

There's also jobs and salaries for the office bearers, directors and staff of such non-governmental organisations.

Last year, a friend of mine who needed a job badly found work with a company which specialised in collecting donations on thestreet to the World Wildlife Fund in Malaysia, in return for commissions to them andtheir field staff.

The field promoters are on straight commission and have to meet weekly quotas.

He all of a sudden became a great proponent of the "perils" of global "warming" and had been put through indoctrination sessions.

I know of operations of such companies, not only in fund raising but also in selling merchandise door to door on the streets and I told himthat I had little regard for such companies and that the role of carbon in global "warming" was in question.

Anyway, within a month or so, he had some issues with the management of the company and left. Fortunately for him he has found a much better job as a legal advisor with an investment firm.

The point though is that the sweat and toil of the street fund raisers, paid or otherwise, helps pay the salaries of the executives and management of these NGOS, pressure groups, civil society organisations and whatever.

While I was in Canada, I noticed how the Native Canadians resented the intrusion of ecologist and environmentalist groups into issues such as forest conservation allegedly in support of the natives.

That said, I do not at all support nor endorse unregulated exploitation of the land and resources of wilderness areas but in some cases such as described below, they could be making an issue out of nothing to serve some agenda other than what's stated.

(4) Riverina red gum forests: not National Park, but sustainable, multiple use

http://www.quadrant.org.au/

NSW RIVER RED GUM FORESTS:

Max Rheese and AEF member Peter Newman met with NSW Environment Minister, Frank Sartor, Natural Resources Commissioner, John Williams and Ms Sally Barnes from the National Parks and Wildlife Service in Deniliquin last week to discuss the NRC recommendations for the Riverina red gum forests.  In a nutshell, the NRC has reacted to the water stressed forest's condition by suggesting the removal of the timber industry from most of the forest and turning them into national parks.  A series of detailed questions seeking the basis of the NRC recommendations were put to the minister, most of which he and his staff could not answer.  The communities of the Riverina along with other AEF members, Doug and Elaine Rowe, Fay and Ken O'Brien, Jennifer Marohasy, Robert Brown MLC and Vic Eddy will continue to advocate sustainable, multiple use of the forests to ensure active management and the long term health of the forests.  A 2007 government funded study found the most degraded stretch of red gum forest along the Murray River was located in the 49 year old Hattah-Kulkyne National Park. And they want more of the same! ==
Why is it that people who call themselves ‘ conservationists’, who live in the city with their green ideology think that they are the only people who love the bush, the country and the red gum forests.

Bob Carr’s Opinion Piece in the Sydney Morning Herald 24/7/09 which is nothing more than an emotive and selective presentation of reasons to create more national parks in Riverina forests, is enough to make one physically ill when the effect of national parks on rural people is considered.

Mr Carr infers that only those who want to lock up state forests into national parks appreciate their beauty.

Forest workers consider themselves some of the most fortunate people in this country to be able to spend each day in such magnificent surrounds. They work under very strict government legislation to make sure the forests remain healthy and sustainable. People who work with these trees are very much aware that although beautiful, an invasive species like the River Redgum requires active management for the forest to remain viable.

The best areas of red gum forests are those that have been actively managed by controlled grazing and selective timber harvesting, such as Barmah forest, as opposed to forests that have been ‘locked up’ and are now biodiversity deserts because of over-crowding with too many stems per hectare.

It is interesting to note Mr. Carr’s comment that in some stretches 75 per cent of trees are dead or dying " this is indeed true! What he fails to also convey is the fact that these trees are located in the Hattah- Kulkyne and Murray Sunset National Parks as disclosed in a 2007 CSIRO study. History shows us red gum forests that are passively managed are doomed to failure and the most degraded red gum forests are those located in national parks.

The Rivers and Red Gum Environment Alliance has based its recommendations for the future of red gum forests on science and fact rather than emotion and ideology, an extremely important difference if these great trees are truly to be conserved for future generations.

What science and evidence may we ask does Mr. Carr base his call for new national parks on or is it just that he likes the idea?

The link below is an interview with Bob Carr on ABC World Today.

This interview includes comment by Carmel Flint from the National Parks Association who was arrested in a forest blockade near Deniliquin whilst interfering with legal timber harvesting operations.

How ironic is it that at the time Ms. Flint and Friends of the Earth were blockading timber harvesting in Deniliquin, which was being implemented under world’s best practice regime, Jamie Durie, well known landscape gardener and Greenpeace were in Sydney lobbying for a ban to be put in place restricting the import of timber from S.E. Asia where it is harvested illegally. Well done Jamie and Greenpeace!

Which would you rather Carmel, desecration of forests being harvested illegally or forests being harvested under world’s best practice. You can’t ban both imports of illegally harvested timber and locally produced timber and still provide timber and paper products to the Australian community.

(5) Communities Unite to Fight Green Takeover of Forests

http://www.rrgea.org/?file=home&smid=1

A recent illegal forest blockade by extreme green activists has united Riverina communities, determined to protect the management of their forests and their quality of life.

Alliance to co-ordinate campaign to protect red gum forests

A well attended meeting of stakeholder groups in Deniliquin on July 14th 2009 agreed unanimously to unite in the fight to protect the on-going sustainable management of red gum forests and local communities.

Deniliquin, Berrigan, Wakool, Murray and Balranald councils attended the meeting to speak for their communities. John Williams, member for Murray Darling and Robert Brown Upper House MLC [pictured on right] addressed the meeting and supported the objective of the Alliance to retain multiple use forests open to all.

Various recreational groups were in attendance representing over 40,000 NSW residents from all over the state who visit the area regularly.

A number of actions were decided at the meeting to make the state and federal governments aware of the deep seated opposition in local communities to further regulation in the forests.

Speakers pointed to a 2007 CSIRO study of the Murray River red gum forests which showed the most degraded stretches of river, where 75% of the trees were dead or dying, were located in long established national parks.

Others highlighted that the NSW forests in best condition were those selectively harvested over a long period of time.

The meeting was told that the 2400 page Environmental Impact Study released on June 1st 2009 supported the current active management of forests by Forests NSW.

The community, shires, industry, recreational groups and the Alliance supported the current regulations that complied with the 'wise use' principles of the international RAMSAR convention on wetlands.

Alliance chairman, Peter Newman urged all Alliance members to help with fundraising and joining community groups to the Alliance for the long fight ahead.

A well attended meeting of stakeholder groups in Deniliquin on July 14th 2009 agreed unanimously to unite in the fight to protect the on-going sustainable management of red gum forests and local communities.

Deniliquin, Berrigan, Wakool, Murray and Balranald councils attended the meeting to speak for their communities. John Williams, member for Murray Darling and Robert Brown Upper House MLC [pictured on right] addressed the meeting and supported the objective of the Alliance to retain multiple use forests open to all.

Various recreational groups were in attendance representing over 40,000 NSW residents from all over the state who visit the area regularly.

A number of actions were decided at the meeting to make the state and federal governments aware of the deep seated opposition in local communities to further regulation in the forests.

Speakers pointed to a 2007 CSIRO study of the Murray River red gum forests which showed the most degraded stretches of river, where 75% of the trees were dead or dying, were located in long established national parks.

Others highlighted that the NSW forests in best condition were those selectively harvested over a long period of time.

The meeting was told that the 2400 page Environmental Impact Study released on June 1st 2009 supported the current active management of forests by Forests NSW.

The community, shires, industry, recreational groups and the Alliance supported the current regulations that complied with the 'wise use' principles of the international RAMSAR convention on wetlands.

Alliance chairman, Peter Newman urged all Alliance members to help with fundraising and joining community groups to the Alliance for the long fight ahead. ==

Victorian Government Conceals Scientific Advice Supporting Controlled Grazing in Barmah Forest......who the bloody hell do they think they are?

We laugh at Sir Humphrey Appleby and his colleagues in the BBC comedy ‘Yes Prime Minister’ but the disturbing fact is that bureaucratic mismanagement is so much closer to the truth than we imagine.

Again, the Victorian government and their bureaucratic minions have managed to make a decision for the people, about the people without actually listening to the people.

Mistrust and frustration ran deep in the people of the Barmah community in late 2008 after their proposal for limited short term grazing on Barmah Island, to reduce the fire risk to Barmah township was rejected by the Department of Sustainability and Environment.

Early in 2009 the Rivers and Redgum Environment Alliance requested DSE to provide them with the briefing notes to the Minister for the Environment regarding the communities view on controlled cattle grazing in the Barmah forest. DSE would not supply this information.

The information was subsequently released to RRGEA under the Freedom of Information law in March 2009 and has confirmed suspicions that no serious consideration was ever given to reducing fuel loads in the Barmah forest.

Freedom of Information details supplied show that DSE and PV staff acknowledged the arguments put forward by the Alliance that limited cattle grazing on Barmah Island would have offered some fire protection to the Barmah community.

These briefing notes also show that the community proposal regarding grazing in the forest was not conveyed to the minister in any form nor was he made aware of the community concerns. DSE did not support the introduction of cattle to reduce the fire risk although they acknowledged in their report that grazing would offer benefits from an ecological and fire protection perspective.

Information supplied to the minister contradicts the departments own studies and Forestry NSW studies on ecological grazing in the forest. It is interesting to note that these departmental studies supporting grazing in the forest have been removed from the DSE website.

DSE clearly recognised the fire risk in the forest in early summer (some grass and weed species reaching a height of 1.4m) when teams of DSE staff descended on the forest to repair tracks and re-establish a fire break on the north side of Barmah township. This was their response when threatened with legal action by the local community for not adequately addressing fire issues prior to the fire season. DSE failed to notify the minister of this risk in their briefing urging him to ban controlled cattle grazing in the forest.

The briefing notes to the minister, in the community’s view are a manifestation of a pre-determined agenda to see cattle excluded from the forest no matter what fire or ecological benefits may result from seasonal grazing.

(6) National parks are killing red gum forests

By Ken O'Brien - posted Wednesday, 7 October 2009

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9533&page=0

In 2005, the New South Wales government purchased Yanga Station, near Balranald in southwest NSW, in order to reserve as national park about 17,000ha of red gum forest, including 150km of river frontage on the Murrumbidgee River. The NSW government paid more than $35 million to turn this property into a national park.

Up until 2005, the red gums on this property were managed on a sustainable basis for the production of sawlogs. Management and operations were supervised by a forester with more than 40 years’ professional experience in both government and private forestry; all codes and regulations applying to this forest were complied with and protection requirements exceeded to ensure a healthy growing forest.

Bob Carr, then Premier of NSW, commended the owners and managers of this property for the excellent care of the forest while the Department of Environment openly expressed the excellent condition of the forest and the environmental values. Most of all the trees were healthy and growing, despite the prolonged drought.
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The forest supported a local mill and many jobs in Balranald and the surrounding area. The timber provided employment on a sustainable basis and the livelihood of numerous families. The property paid rates to the Wakool Shire. Most businesses in Balranald had a dependency on Yanga and the people who were directly employed.

And the beautiful red gum forests were healthy and sustainable.

Now at a cost of more than $35 million to NSW taxpayers, that has all been brought to an abrupt halt. All the jobs have gone, business is struggling and the community is suffering.

Previous water management works have been abandoned and specially provided “environmental flows” are allowed to just run off and be wasted.

Yanga now rates as one of the biggest “tree kills” on a single property since white settlement and since native vegetation legislation. It is too easy to blame this situation on the drought. There are hundreds of thousands of dead and dying red gums on Yanga right now, more than 60 per cent of the forest is dead. And the government responsible sits on its hands claiming that this is “conservation”.

Green ideologies and government agency mismanagement, under green policies, have killed this forest. Other managed red gum forests are healthy and growing, despite the drought. Across the river and in stark contrast to Yanga, a healthy, well-managed private forest continues to be managed for timber production and it has not received any special “environmental flows”.

Twenty tax-paying jobs in Balranald have been replaced with six tax-funded jobs from other towns.

Bob Carr said 50,000 tourists per year would fix all this! After four years, one small camping area has been established, yet the forest remains padlocked.

Millions of dollars have been spent on a big shed and homestead renovations, materials are brought in from other areas and a few jobs from other towns have been created. But the trees are still dying.

The NSW Department of Environment and the National Parks Service have made it very clear that local communities and jobs do not count. Their interest is only a national green agenda where country towns and small businesses are not relevant. ...

(7) Mark Poynter on the red gum forest debate
http://www.theage.com.au/business/as-red-gum-forests-turn-green-20090101-78ku.html

As red gum forests turn green

MARK POYNTER January 2, 2009

THIS week, Premier John Brumby announced that his Government had "taken action to protect the Murray and the ancient red gum forests that exist along its stretches" by creating four new national parks in northern Victoria.

Mr Brumby said climate change and drought meant the river red gums were in trouble and "we have to take action to protect this precious heritage".

To put this announcement into perspective, it is impossible to "protect" either the Murray or its associated forests without the restoration of higher rainfall and the initiation of substantial water management reforms, neither of which is achieved by declaring national parks. Further, while our red gum forests contain a scattering of older trees, they are far from "ancient", with most having been logged and regenerated at least once over the past 150 years.

However, the majority of red gum forests are in poor health because of a combination of the drought and the progressive regulation of river flows since the 1930s to develop irrigated agriculture.

River regulation has overturned the natural frequency, timing and extent of flooding that has sustained the red gum forests and wetlands for thousands of years. Climate change might be implicated in current low rainfalls but it is a minor influence compared with the human impact of modified catchment and river management.

Given the current political imperative to act on climate change, it is understandable that the Government had to be seen to do something. However, its plan to rebadge large areas of existing parks, reserves and state forests as "national park" is little more than a symbolic gesture. It will undoubtedly deliver political kudos from "green" voters, but will ultimately foster worse outcomes than did the previous mix of public land tenures that balanced conservation needs with human use.

Under that regime, 73 per cent of the region's public lands were already managed primarily for conservation. A portion of state forest — about 15 per cent of the region's gross area of mixed forest and wetland (about a third of the red gum stands) — was available for sustainable timber production and seasonal cattle grazing.

It is from these activities that the forests will be "saved" in the eyes of an electorate that has been misled by years of misinformation into believing that these activities were uncontrolled and rapacious across the whole forest.

The impact of the new national parks will be felt most keenly by the red gum timber industry, which will be denied access to 75 per cent of the portion of forest that was previously available to it. This will damage those local communities in which the industry generates income and partial and full employment (both direct and indirect) for reportedly hundreds of people.

The Government will provide a $4.5 million "assistance package" for affected timber workers, including potential retraining for tourism and park management positions. Although this may have some short-term or seasonal benefit, most of these positions are likely to be a poor substitute for the sustainable, long-term employment that was available in the timber industry. This is a tragic outcome given the current financial crisis.

The view that the industry was declining anyway due to reduced forest growth needs to be considered in the context of deliberate distortions of poor-quality growth data and the largely ignored benefit of planned improvements to water management. While there was an obvious need to revise the sustainable yield, any reduction to the annual timber harvest would have been minor when measured against the loss caused by simply denying access to most of the formerly available forests.

Probably the most lamentable aspect of this episode is that it perpetuates society's confused attitudes to natural resource use and environmental conservation. These have been fostered by decades of "green" activism that has studiously ignored critical concepts such as proportionality, perspective, and consequence, to advocate a belief that only total exclusion of human use can "save" the environment.

This confusion is evident in a recent Newspoll survey of 1200 Australians in which 56 per cent agreed that we should be using more wood because it was more environmentally friendly than alternative materials, but about the same number of these same respondents also believed that cutting down trees was bad for the environment.

Red gum timber is one of our most attractive and durable timbers and is in demand for high-quality furniture and the renovation of heritage structures (e.g. the Port of Echuca) and buildings, as well as new public infrastructure (e.g. Southern Cross Station). The new national parks will reduce the Victorian industry's red gum output by 80 per cent. Similarly, unnecessary decisions to "save" other forest types around the country have drastically reduced the availability of other high-quality hardwoods such as jarrah and ironbark. These species generally grow poorly in plantations that in any case would take decades to mature even if they had been planted.

The Newspoll survey also found that 85 per cent of us believe we should not import more wood. Yet, by forcibly reducing production from our own sustainably managed forests, we are increasingly importing rainforest hardwoods such as merbau and meranti from developing countries where environmental controls are poor and corruption is rampant. About $400 million of our annual wood product imports have suspicious origins and are believed to be helping to drive tropical deforestation, which is responsible for about 20 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

The Newspoll survey also found that Australians understand that wood products are far better at mitigating climate change than any other material, and more than five times better than concrete. Yet, the Victorian Government's decision to create more national parks will further consign our railways to a reliance on concrete sleepers, whose manufacture involves six times more greenhouse emissions than do their wooden counterparts. Victoria's red gum sawmillers currently have a contract to supply 290,000 sleepers to rail authorities that will presumably now be met by concrete.

The incongruities don't stop there:

? We want to improve forest health, yet national parks reduce management flexibility and exclude self-funded management tools that could control weeds (grazing) and alleviate moisture stress (selective harvesting and thinning).

? We want to protect forests from fire, yet national parks reduce income and employment within those rural communities from which volunteer firefighters come.

? We want local communities to have stewardship over adjacent public lands, yet national parks generally exclude or restrict many traditional uses.

? We want to limit urban expansion, but the unwarranted downsizing or loss of viable industries makes it ever more difficult to live in rural Australia. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said recently he did not want to live in a country that did not make things any more. Yet we already have to import hardwood despite being ranked fifth in the world for per capita forest (mostly hardwood) cover. The forced downsizing of Victoria's red gum industry continues the disturbing trend for Australia to absolve itself of responsibility for its hearty consumption of wood products. Until state governments develop the integrity to consider environmental issues on their merits rather than in terms of their short-term political currency, we will continue to suffer poor environmental and social outcomes. Mark Poynter is a member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia.