Making money from carbon using pseudo science ...

“It seems as if … used the money he was paid not to chop down trees... to buy another property next door and chop down trees there instead”.

Thank you to Geoff Thompson and Background Briefing for their podcast “Boom time in carbon farming country”! It is a well-researched exposé of the sleight of hand being put upon the Australian taxpayer by profit-focused businesses who lure gullible land managers in remote rangelands to believe their hype and sales pitch.

It is a rort! Research on the net balance between photosynthesis and respiration - and therefore of carbon - is a field that has been investigated and understood over many decades. And it should not take a brave ABC program to point it out.

It should have been made clear to the government by fearless scientists able to speak their minds at State and Federal levels to prevent such policies from ever being implemented. But governments in Australia have their scientists cowed by a perpetual need to put out their begging bowl for short-term projects that will not embarrass politicians who commonly lack substantial training in science.

As one retired from academic life and with experience in CSIRO, university and State Government research, who used to work in the area of agronomy and soil science, I can attest to the impossibility of getting sensible land management practices adopted by governments. Sadly, in Australia, our governments listen to the latest Pied Pipers instead of seeking out objective facts from its agricultural and land management science agencies. Note the use of the word ‘regenerative’ in the story - it is another Pied Piper phenomenon - restricted mostly to Australia - which promises some mystical perpetual motion if only we become true believers!

It is a tragedy that the evidence from our national research agency CSIRO has always to be put through the “politically acceptable” filter - by a compliant CSIRO management. If only CSIRO’s science budget (and the ABC’s?) was an apolitical fixed percentage of the government’s budget and did not depend on grovelling and compliance by management which ends up compromising the trustworthiness of its scientists (and journalists).