DOIC Member "Gets It"

Mark Dangerfield is a member of the DOIC – the Government’s Domestic Offset Integrity Committee. He is an experienced forest project developer. He also speaks sense about soil carbon, in an article in climate Spectator in September, before he was appointed:
“There is a consensus among climate scientists that the net greenhouse gas emission reductions we must achieve to keep warming below dangerous levels cannot happen without the agricultural sector. They are right, it can’t.“There are three reasons for this assertion. The first is that emission reductions from energy efficiency, mitigation and renewable projects will struggle to keep pace with ever-growing emissions from global energy demand. Mitigation projects in energy sectors will slow emission rates but leave legacy emissions in the atmosphere.
“The second reason follows from a need to deal with this legacy. Smart agricultural and forestry practices can suck back CO2 and store it in vegetation and soil – so-called biosequestration. In Australia the sequestration potential in agriculture alone is 100 million tonnes of CO2 emissions (CO2e) per annum, or a quarter of Australian anthropogenic emissions with the bonus that soil with more carbon in it is far better for production that soil with less.”
“The third reason, and the big one, is land clearing…” He advocates ‘Improved Forestry management’ – actively maintaining carbon stocks in stands of trees as they revolve through a lifecycle to harvesting. We believe that arrangement could form part of an integrated farm carbon plan, in the right circmstances.