WHETHER it is calling the carbon market a sham, accusing producers of gaming the system or simply saying large-scale carbon sequestration can’t be done – some scientists have taken aim at anyone making money from carbon.
It is a hard campaign to understand, as for decades many of those same scientists have been pushing for industry and governments to invest in technology that improves production and sequesters carbon.
While they are entitled to their opinions about the way it is legislated, a failure to put those opinions into perspective has resulted in the carbon industry being paralysed by a lack of direction and producers confused about their role in a changing economy.
The situation was demonstrated with an article on the ABC website last week, which led with a scientist who was doubtful of the ability of agricultural soils to become a carbon sink in the long-term.
It was followed by a series of social media comments from producers and industry figures implying that if the scientists say it can’t be done then it can’t be done.
The point many missed with the article was that it quoted two other scientists who were relatively positive about the role of the carbon market going forward.
Another point is that the scientists are only one part of this story.
As Swiss scientist Peer Ederer recently pointed out to Beef Central, the role of scientists is to inform policy with evidence – rather than setting the entire policy themselves.
That is difficult in the case of the carbon market, as scientific evidence aligning management practices to carbon sequestration over long periods of time is extremely limited – the work has largely not been done.
In a lot of ways, the role of the carbon market is to build that evidence base by incentivising producers to take the data, change the practices and make some money if they are successful. The early adopters are taking a pioneering-type role.
But producers and carbon aggregators making money from carbon seems to be one of the big reservations of the carbon critics.
The carbon aggregators have copped the brunt of these criticisms and have been labelled as “sharks” and “ticket clippers” in media interviews without challenge and doubt has been cast on whether they would stay in the industry after the pay day has come.
AgCarbon Central has heard the stories of producers entering into lengthy carbon contracts that take land out of production and leave behind weeds, pests and fire hazards.
It must be said that the carbon industry has also attracted people who have had long careers in agriculture and has been embraced by families who have been on the land for generations.
Putting the “net” in “net zero”
Sustained campaigns from scientists and activists have pushed Governments down the line of committing to limit the impact of human-caused climate change, through global efforts like the Paris Agreement.
The holy grail of these efforts appears to be “net zero emissions”. Meaning that they can’t get to zero emissions and they need some form of increased sequestration to offset those emissions and create a “net” number of zero emissions.
You could say that agricultural land is putting the “net” in net zero.
If the Australian Government is serious about reaching its “net zero” target, or its other targets, then it needs to get the settings right for the agricultural to play its part in making the net reductions. Both sides of Government have gone down the line of incentivising producers by creating a mechanism for them to earn an extra income.
Central to most of the carbon projects is maintaining groundcover and promoting vegetation growth – even when the country is in raging drought.
As Federal commodities forecaster ABARES pointed out in its latest update, cash-flow on livestock properties is an issue – with rising input costs, fluctuating commodity prices and high interest rates. Industry has been identifying cash-flow as an issue for years.
Some have suggested that producers should keep their carbon credits to offset their own methane emissions from livestock, which makes it hard to see anyone other than producers paying the bill.
So, if cash-flow is an issue, producers are paying to gather the data needed to reach these targets and are committing to long-term management programs to increase carbon sequestration – it is hard to see why they should not have a financial incentive.
Well said Eric.
It is easy for people who have nothing on the line to snipe from the sidelines.
Those who are on the field and making the real world commitments deserve a far greater hearing in this discussion.
Compared to the rigour of Australia’s soil carbon methodologies and the scale of results, most of the “science” is based on models and/or outdated techniques applied to outdated management systems on a very small scale.
Nailed it, Terry! Well said. Eric too. I have been disheartened and annoyed by some of the articles I have read recently in various Victorian Department of Agriculture publications such as Sheep Notes, etc, in which the authors have said exactly what Eric is pointing out.
So many varied ‘beliefs’ around soil carbon – a saviour, ineffective, still-to-be-determined….
Whatever brings human activities closer to balanced existence with Nature will provide environmental stability for the next ten generations.
Learning about traditional (older than 200 years) ecological systems provides essential information as to how we need to adopt practices which enhance all life. When this wealth of information is our baseline, we learn how many species and ecosystems are missing due to chemicals, clearing, habitat destruction and other forms of ‘modern technology’
Keep mimicking Natural systems without destructive interventions and the miracles keep happening.
Thanks for this article Eric. You make two important points. Firstly that there are members of the scientific community who are optimistic about the potential to manage pasture fed beef systems to increase the amount of carbon that gets stored in soils.
And secondly, science is an important part of the overall policy discussion on soil carbon, but not the only part. In my view, many of the articles appearing in the peer reviewed literature are setting out to prove what can’t be done in building soil carbon, as opposed to examining opportunities to grow healthier soils that remove large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
As a carbon project aggregator I have had many labels that align with your market description (although sharks and ticket clipper is the very polite language version!). Next year marks the 10 year anniversary of the first soil carbon project to be registered in Australia. While things may have taken longer than originally anticipated, my prediction is that there will be 1,000 soil carbon projects registered in Australia before this anniversary milestone.
As more and more projects start issuing credits, I can easily see a future where the applied science breakthroughs driven from such widespread participation will accelerate 10 times the project uptake in half the time. In that world, the frontier question for the soil science community will be whether Australian soils can have too much carbon put back into them.
I’d like to see the names of the scientists criticising sequestration. Could they be the same ones who “discovered ” that ruminant emit methane, thus launching a whole new industry of seaweed additives and other concepts, when really, the amount if methane emitted from coal mining and suburban tips, which are NOT natural sources of methane, for dead.
Maybe these scientists are so precious about their “finds” or the funds from them, that they don’t want to know about natural solutions.
Yes interesting article – it seems many of the scientists voicing their opinions are of the old school and are simply saying it cant be done because they are not up todate with the science of sequestration – many still teach that carbon can only be sequestered by the addition of a maximum of 10% of the actual growth of plant biomass above ground (ie 500kg DM C sequestered from 5,000kg of growth). however these people have no knowledge of the liquid carbon pathway, exudation via plant roots, microbiology, VAM, glomalin etc. In fact, carbon sequestration can have an exponential growth in the right circumstances. And complaining about more sequestration from more rainfall and less from lower rainfall years is a given. The whole negative argument shows how fearful those few scientists are about losing their status, when proven wrong.
Great article. The lack of curiosity demonstrated by the academic community confounds me. When you grasp the economic and environmental impact of just 1% change in carbon stocks across our landscape, it’s simply enormous. Surely if we put our hearts and minds to this, we can do it. Look at the big picture people. This is important work and we need to pull in the same direction.
It is hard to get past the fact that the whole carbon industry is based on the lie that Carbon Dioxide is bad for the environment. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the increased Co2 levels have enabled over two million square kilometres more green leaf area compared to the beginning of the 2000s. Crop yields have increased by 15% due to increased Co2.
The climate alarmists say carbon is bad but from a farmers perspective increasing organic carbon levels in our soils is a smart management decision with every additional gram of carbon increasing the soils water holding capacity by eight grams.
Geologically the worlds Co2 levels are at an historical low, over the past 140m years Co2 levels have been falling from 2,500ppm, if they fell to 150ppm all plant life would become extinct along with all land animals.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have themselves conceded that the warming effect of each additional molecule of Co2 released into the atmosphere decreases logarithmically. This explains why there was no runaway greenhouse warming when our planet had Co2 concentrations of 20 times today’s. There is nothing in the IPCC reports which speak to apocalyptic outcomes or ‘tipping points’ from the increased concentration of an essential trace element, these are media fuelled scare campaigns.
george why is the world getting hotter
Get the credible science done before embarking on some of the dubious schemes.
Don’t blame the scientists they don’t set the policies.
Hi Ron, I am not blaming the scientists for the current state of affairs. Just saying that the opinions being shared by some scientists are exactly that, opinions. And that they are only one opinion of many, which is not being reflected in public discussion. Editor
Good article Eric. Always enjoy your opinion on carbon.
In my opinion, every new industry faces scepticism, especially if it involves government and hot button issues like carbon.
There’s always two sides to a story and both sides of the soil carbon story seem to be getting closer to a middle ground… I.e “it does work, but it can vary substantially due to several complex reasons”.
Time will tell but so far it is working.