Maybe the drone in the next cubicle was supposed to study climate change impacts, but he left and didn't tell anybody. An article in the West (Australia) contains the embarrassing story: Logging of WA native forests will have to be reduced in response to worsening climate change but nothing is likely to happen for six years because of a lack of scientific data, Conservation Commission chairman John Bailey has said. Conservationists and scientists said it was not acceptable that the research had not been done and action was not under way because climate change had been in mainstream planning and management for at least 20 years. Associate Professor Bailey said the impact of climate change on sustainable logging rates would be a focus of the mid-term review of the 2004-2013 Forest Management Plan due by the end of the year.
While he believed changes would be needed, it was not likely that enough solid information would be available to alter the existing plan and changes would instead be put in the next plan due in 2014. It was not imperative that logging alterations were made any earlier because the slow growth rate of jarrah and karri meant climate impacts would not be felt for 50-100 years. “I suspect that there will be too many uncertainties and too little need to act immediately but I suspect there will be increasing need and an increasing quality of science to be able to do that for the next plan,” he said...Photo of a jarrah tree by Gnangarra (Wikimedia Commons)
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