Essay by Eric Worrall
Another carbon offset success story?
Australia’s carbon credits system a failure on global scale, study finds
Researchers find carbon offsets approach, which is supposed to regenerate scrubby outback forests, was not reducing emissions as promised
Adam Morton Climate and environment editor Wed 27 Mar 2024 09.21 AEDT
Australia’s main carbon offsets method is a failure on a global scale and doing little if anything to help address the climate crisis, according to a major new study.
Research by 11 academics found the most popular technique used to create offsets in Australia, known as “human-induced regeneration” and pledged to regenerate scrubby outback forests, had mostly not improved tree cover as promised between about 2015 and 2022.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the nature journal Communications Earth & Environment, analysed 182 projects in arid and semi-desert areas and found forest cover had either barely grown or gone backwards in nearly 80%.
The academics said it meant these projects were therefore not reducing emissions as promised, and polluting companies that bought offsets created through these projects were often not reducing their impact on the climate as they claimed.
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The climate change minister, Chris Bowen told the ABC’s RN Breakfast on Wednesday that a review of the carbon credit scheme that he commissioned from Ian Chubb, a former Australian chief scientist, had backed the integrity of the system.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/27/australias-carbon-credits-system-a-failure-on-global-scale-study-finds
The abstract of the study;
Published: 26 March 2024
Australian human-induced native forest regeneration carbon offset projects have limited impact on changes in woody vegetation cover and carbon removals
Andrew Macintosh, Don Butler, Pablo Larraondo, Megan C. Evans, Dean Ansell, Marie Waschka, Rod Fensham, David Eldridge, David Lindenmayer, Philip Gibbons & Paul Summerfield
Communications Earth & Environment volume 5, Article number: 149 (2024) Cite this article
Abstract
Carbon offsets are a widely used climate policy instrument that can reduce mitigation costs and generate important environmental and social co-benefits. However, they can increase emissions if they lack integrity. We analysed the performance of one of the world’s largest nature-based offset types: human-induced regeneration projects under Australia’s carbon offset scheme. The projects are supposed to involve the human-induced regeneration of permanent even-aged native forests through changes in land management. We analysed 182 projects and found limited evidence of regeneration in credited areas. Changes in woody vegetation cover within the areas that have been credited also largely mirror changes in adjacent comparison areas, outside the projects, suggesting the observable changes are predominantly attributable to factors other than the project activities. The results add to the growing literature highlighting the practical limitations of offsets and the potential for offset schemes to credit abatement that is non-existent, non-additional and potentially impermanent.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01313-x
Obviously the scientists are wrong. Australian Federal Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, the guy who thinks you can store electricity like water, and who regularly claims that investing in renewables will bring down energy prices, assures us of the integrity of carbon offset schemes which rely on trees planted in marginal Aussie outback scrubland thriving and absorbing lots of carbon.
Note: The picture at the top of the article is not as far as I know a carbon offset vegetation regeneration site, just a photogenic example of how dry and harsh the Aussie outback can be.
We should tell them that more C02 causes more rain, which helps trees grow in deserts like Australia, then the trees take up C02 and so less C02. Problem solved! So fire up those coal plants and make electricity!
CO2 makes trees more drought resistant and reduces the aerosol released. Aerosols contribute to could formation. More clouds, more rain. Both are benefits.
We do not have a climate crisis, CO2 is not the control knob for our climate, we are not going to reach a tipping point and suffer irreversible global warming. Wind and solar are not a substitute for fossil fuel and nuclear energy, fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators, build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators and remove all wind and solar from the grid.
Wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and other alternative electrical generation systems have a place, but that place is to augment, not replace.
Too bad they are tearing down the hydroelectric dams in Colorado (?) and killing almost 900,000 salmon in the failed effort to save fish.
Plant growth couldn’t possibly affect emissions from burning fuel. Nor could an “offset” for emissions prevent burning fuel. The ideas are diametrically opposed. Who promised this? And what fool believed it?
What fool, you ask? First name to come to mind is Al Gore and his Kyoto cap and trade scam.
Well may I expect Al Gore, John Kerry, Leonardo DiCaprio et al will be screaming STOP THIEF, FRAUD,and demanding back every last carbon credit payment – typically 14 bucks more or less, spent to clean up (co2wise) for flying half way around the world.in a private 747.
You left off a few notables. I’ll leave it to the reader’s interest to expand the list.
My understanding is that the wildlands mismanagement is justified on the basis of “carbon storage”. Some of the bush normally burns regularly, and fire suppression usually leads to much larger and more intense fires.
Yep, that is also my theory. Completely pointless of course, and hazardous, but name a green scheme which doesn’t hurt people somehow.
US has John Kerry.
Australia has Nigel Bow-wow.
Which is the most gormlessly stupid and ignorant.???
… who knows !!
The entire membership of the UK House of Parliament.
Michael Mann?
“Australia’s main carbon offsets method is a failure on a global scale and doing little if anything to help address the climate crisis”
Poor little Adam Morton. The climate crisis in his head just can’t take reality.
Can’t just plant a tree need to architect land to increase water storage. Work from the edges inward. Need to find hardy grasses, shrubs and ground cover. Interested in what they tried. Government so probably tried to plant willows.
I read “Dune” too :-). The problem with trying to erode the desert from the edges is the extreme variability of the seasons, which would work to undo progress – just when you thought you were making progress, an extreme dry spell would kill everything and undo all your work.
Making these schemes work would be easier if the inland was wetter. There have been various schemes discussed to try to make the Aussie inland more habitable, such as the Bradfield Scheme, a 1938 scheme to divert major rivers inland to increase moisture in the interior. There is a lot of water in the tropical far North which currently runs into the sea, which could potentially be diverted into more arid regions.
Interestingly this year has been quite wet. We published an article recently, scientists claimed record high local ocean temperatures had counteracted the El Nino drying, and given us an unexpectedly wet Summer, with lots of moisture penetration into the arid inland.
If this is correct, global warming might give Australia a wet climate.
“global warming might give Australia a wet climate.”
I’ll just have to hunt down the right edible mushroom species to grow in my lawn…
… in the Hunter region !!
Not at all sure about the edibility of the current crop.
I thought there was a lot of moisture in the atmosphere from Hunga Tonga. That was the reason they gave for the rains where I live.
Hunga Tonga went into the ozone layer, well above the clouds. Still 3-4 more years, per NASA, before that water returns to terra firma.
Yes. It was more the volcanic debris/dust/gases effect rather than the ‘water’
If you skim the nature study, seems they are trying to turn grazing land into forests and measuring woody material. Not the desert in the picture. A savanna is a productive eco system so that’s dumb. If it’s rotational grazed it will hold a lot more carbon in the ground. As you graze the land the plants drop roots and sequester carbon. Didn’t see soil measures in the study just woody mass. The animals will add moisture and fertilizer.
“Carbon offsets are a widely used climate policy instrument that can reduce mitigation costs…”
Do we have an example that provides evidence of this?
The States of Victoria and Tasmania used to have a vibrant, much-needed forestry industry, for building materials and papers. A subsidiarey of my employer company used to be one of the Big Three foresters and paper makers, so sitting in on their monthly management meetings gave my insights.
A succession of state governments, mostly left-leaning ones, slowly strangled the industry, to the absurd extent that in the winter, people with fireplaces are forbidden to harvest roadside dead wood. The industry is now effectively non-existent. The root cause of its demise was a mind set like the “noble savage” concept and its related “back to Nature” thoughts.
Now, we import construction materials like timber for housing frames. We import our paper. We no longer derive income from export of wood chips made from leftovers.
This reduction of forestry is likely to be a major factor in the reported failure of the CO2 decarbonisation by added tree growth theory.
Never mind, there are signs that the voting public has had enough. People like foresters and paper makers, put out of work, can be expected to be a little peeved and likely to reflect this stupid regulatory imposition at the ballot box. The rejection has started.
I now fear people who plead “The government has to do something about it”, the fundamental old myth that people are now rejecting because governments are mostly doing more harm than good. Geoff S
Where I lived about 30 years ago, our landcare group and the local community service clubs used to do roadside firewood collections in autumn to stock up pensioners, disadvantaged, unemployed and disabled folks firewood supplies for the coming winter.
Then the greenies and the shire council made roadside dead wood collection illegal.
They pointed us to regional state forest coups that were now set up for this purpose.
When we went there, the fallen trees that we were supposed to section up into firewood logs still had green leaves on their branches and sap dripping from every contusion.
Mostly stringybark that would be ready to burn in a fireplace in about 4 years time.
in Vic with council permits you can get 3 6×4 trailer loads of wood but ONLY on side roads. anything with a white line is vic roads and verboten so all the fallen branches trees there sit n rot and block access to BURN off or slash the 6ft high phalaris n other grasses that grow there. gtees some really big and fast roadside fires every yr
Yes the roadside buildup of fallen branches etc acts like a wick that bushfire fronts race along to spread the fires faster.
Paid indulgences did not work real well for the medieval western Christian church. See their role in the reformation.
No reason they should work now.
Yes. The Climate
priestslawyers love this sort obscure and meaningless gifts from the great god Carbon.Australian Outback Carbon Offset Tree Planting really sucks, but not CO2.
Is the sign language women in the video calling Chris Bowen a wanker?
Is the sign language woman in the video calling Chris Bowen a tosser?
(MOD: Apologies for using the other word, please delete if required – thanks)
One problem with this simplistic approach is the many tree species will not allow seedlings to germinate and grow within a particular perimeter of the parent. This can be seen with various eucalyptus species. The parent tree has in ways “poisoned” the ground for seedling of its type to grow in that perimeter.
Many years ago, in the dark days of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government here in OZ, there was tree planting exercise where you could plant trees and claim a level of climate credits.
I looked into this as I had land that would be useful to just plant trees in. It was slightly salty land, and had at a depth of about 6 – 8 feet a water table of again slightly brackish/salt water. This was close to the sea so closer to diluted salt water.
On checking this development, I discovered that the system require only certain trees were going to be acceptable to plant. They had a set of defined tree species. None of these would survive the ground conditions I had. Also seedlings if they had been “suitable” came from areas different and thus not ‘climatised’ to where I was.
I ended u growing my own seedlings from seeds from local trees and they grew. But it meant I had to frill 2 ft diameter holes to the water table, fill them with quality soil and plant the seedlings. I plant much less that I would have using the governments “system”.
Simply wrong trees, as per government, so no return. Expensive.
At least I had trees and shade for my horses.
One of the big problems in the NSW Western Division in the 1980s was scrubby regrowth.
Then, SEPP46 wouldn’t allow the scrub to be cleared.
It was a major problem for grazing. Perhaps the feral goats have subsequently sorted it out to a certain extent.
There was certainly a lot of scrub between Broken Hill and about Cobar when we came through that way a few years ago.
I was in Cobar briefly a few months ago, the scrub is back, and a crazy number of goats – wore out the brakes stamping on them to avoid the wildlife. The lamb kebab from the popular Cobar Afghani kebab van tasted suspiciously like my uncle’s goat stew, but it was delicious so I didn’t complain. Eventually the weather will turn and everything will die back.
How much fossil fuel energy goes into the preparation and execution of planting a tree in the outback vs. how much CO2 do these trees take out of the atmosphere? You have to harvest seeds or saplings, grow them, fertilize them and then transport and plant them in the outback. That sounds like a lot of work requiring equipment and trucks. Maybe planting a tree in your yard would be better than driving it miles out into the outback.
First question to ask, “Are the trees being planted suitable for the eco-system in which they are being planted?”. If the answer is “no” then don’t plant them there. Second question, “Who is advocating this program and what are their political affiliations?”. If they resist answering this question do not implement this program.
If, according to Chris Bowen, “the rain doesn’t always fall” in the outback, does he have any plans to bring water from the coast to the outback to water his trees?
There are several articles that have been published about the scandals in the carbon offset business, such as in the Amazon, where the claims for credit to not match reality.
Must be those models need their knobs tweaked.