Sgt Hulka Uncut

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Archive for category Climate Change

The Liberals Next Terrible Idea

Feb 21

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Other Topics, Politics | Comments off

The Liberals have announced that if they take government, they will quickly move to sell Medibank Private and use the money to pay off government debt. This is another simple sounding “we are fiscally responsible” proposals from Abbot’s team that is meant to gain them populist support from Joe Six-packs that have to live within their family budget, and therefore see the model easily extrapolated to the government finances. The truth is that the sale of Medibank Private would have almost no effect on government finances, according to all independent experts surveyed, and will lead to the worst effects on the finances of the middle class over the medium to long term of almost any change the government could make.

Currently, competition in health insurers in Australia is very high, with many providers (30) nationally and 5 of them being larger companies, but none of which has a dominant position and all with highly competitive offers characterised by lots of attempts to differentiate form one another through minor tweaks in their plans, and lots and lots of spending on advertising. The Australian health insurance market would be the envy of places like the US with respect to competition, if their consumers were to examine it.

The Liberals have announced the industry is healthy, as well as competitive, so there is no continual need or interest in maintaining its ownership in one of the large health insurance companies. Their earmarking of where the funds raised from the sale would go may have some populist support, but their long term economics are also bad for the public purse. Once again, I think you need to see who is for this type of thing to fully evaluate it. Large health insurance company CEOs, like NIB’s CEO, are all for the sale, and he says that the government has no real role in the industry. He has lots and lots and lots of interest in a possible sale of Medibank, so he is not an independent observer, but his opinion is where the Liberal’s opinion comes directly. I don’t know, but I would suggest that his company so spends as much on lobbyists for its position as it clearly spends on advertising to convince you it has the best deal.

If the sale took place, the Liberals estimate that it would raise about $3.5-4.5 billion dollars in revenue. Independent estimates put the value down closer to the $2 billion dollar mark. But really, neither amount seems like a big deal as far as the government’s budget, or in the wider market of a $1.2 trillion dollar economy (US$1,055 billion[1]). More importantly, it will remove something I will call “the public option”, from the marketplace.

The public option company, Medibank Private, doesn’t exist to dominate the market, pay excessively large salaries to it executives, and even though it makes a tidy $120 million after tax a year, to turn the most fantastic profit, given that it should really be spending the whopping majority of its budget on paying actual medical claims from its subscribers. I mean come on folks, isn’t that what you buy into one for, the catastrophic assistance, along with your glasses and physio? So, if the government is going to allow the silliness of private health insurance to exist, it has to participate. And it has to compete and even spend as much on advertising, on average, as the private insurance companies, and continually try to rebrand its product as better than the others, when all of them are essentially only selling statistics.

If the proposal were to go forward based upon the Liberals winning government at the next election, Medibank would probably be broken into two smaller private companies through IPOs in order to make it look like they will further maximise competition. In fact, the lack of a public option company in the marketplace would (I think) lead to very fast consolidation of these highly competitive medium-sized companies and their tiny brothers. Whatever money is required to be spent in the short term by this all-private marketplace will be spent in order for companies to cannibalise and join with others in order to gain the largest market share possible. Following that, maybe 3 years later, and maybe as many as 10, we will then start to see the kinds of rapid rate rises in premiums that we see in the USA, where a very small number of insurers hold near monopoly power over US consumers.

An essentially not-for-profit supplier is what keeps cost down in health care in Australia, and this is exactly what the “Public Option” is in the debate in the USA over health reform. The public option there has amazingly stable public popularity throughout the acrimonious debate there since August (56% presently and as much as 80% over all the polls in the last 7 months [averaging somewhere in the 60s]), despite a huge amount of disinformation and outright lies by those who oppose health care reform in the USA. Major health care and insurance companies will spend hundreds of millions of US$, maybe even billions, by the time the argument is finished there, to defeat a public option from coming into being.

The bottom line though is this; these companies provide to consumers a service that you cannot live without sometimes, health care. And while I will not oppose those who wish to waste their money doing so, I personally will never voluntarily participate in a system where a private company with a profit motive can sit in judgement over whether I get a specific piece of health care, or not.

[1] CIA World Factbook

Missing the Point

Feb 20

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Climate Change, Politics, Science | Comments off

I read the other day a couple of really good points by a lead climate change scientist (Joseph Romm) that strike a chord with me because of what I have been saying about energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reductions. You can check out all of what he has regularly to say here.

The key points I found are:

3) Those who favor taking action are saying: “Because the warming that humans are doing is irreversible and potentially catastrophic, let’s buy some insurance — by investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency and mass transit — because this insurance will also actually make us richer and more secure.” We will import less oil, invent and export more clean-tech products, send fewer dollars overseas to buy oil and, most importantly, diminish the dollars that are sustaining the worst petro-dictators in the world who indirectly fund terrorists and the schools that nurture them.

4) Even if climate change proves less catastrophic than some fear, in a world that is forecast to grow from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion people between now and 2050, more and more of whom will live like Americans, demand for renewable energy and clean water is going to soar. It is obviously going to be the next great global industry.

China, of course, understands that, which is why it is investing heavily in clean-tech, efficiency and high-speed rail. It sees the future trends and is betting on them. Indeed, I suspect China is quietly laughing at us right now. And Iran, Russia, Venezuela and the whole OPEC gang are high-fiving each other. Nothing better serves their interests than to see Americans becoming confused about climate change, and, therefore, less inclined to move toward clean-tech and, therefore, more certain to remain addicted to oil.

What strikes me about these completely true points is that they are unlikely to be challenged by even those most ardent of climate change deniers, not because they are true, but because they have nothing to do with climate change. And that is what is important, because I believe that it is nonsense to be arguing science at this point with the remaining .05% of climate change deniers. What we should be arguing is not whether anthropogenic climate change is real, but rather how bad it will be, and what we can do to ameliorate the worst of the effects and in the meantime do things that are good for many other reasons as well.

If they had a brain in their heads, all the red meat-eating, libertarian, nationalistic xenophobes would be falling over themselves to join the lentil-eating, sandal wearing hippies to change the energy game as soon as possible. Energy independence and emissions reduction go hand in hand, and those who recognise that already are working to own the future. That’s why all the major oil companies are investing in some form of renewable energy, and the world’s users of energy with the greatest rate of increase (China) are doing the same.

Once they own the game, and we all have nowhere else to go for our next major source of power, you can bet they will put all the pressure they can bring to bear on swinging us all away from burning the magic dirt.

Definitions for Stupidity

Feb 20

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Climate Change, Science | Comments off

Weather – the current state of the atmosphere with respect to heat or cold, wetness or dryness, calm or storm, clearness or cloudiness.

Climate – the average course or condition of the weather at a place over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation.

I hate to insult your intelligence if you already had a grasp of the two concepts above, but unfortunately too widely in the news at present, I see a lack of basic understanding of these simple words that needs to be addressed.

See, a couple of interesting things are happening in North America this week. First, two snowstorms have hit the east coast of the USA, dumping an all time record amount of snow on places like Washington DC. At the same time, the Winter Olympics in Vancouver is at risk due to a lack of snow there.

The first item above has been picked up pretty quickly by those who deny climate change to try to show that climate change is all a hoax due to the fact that a single weather event has occurred. The problem the deniers have is apparently a lack of understanding of the terms weather and climate, accompanied by a failure to understand the science of thermodynamics. I can possibly excuse the latter, provided they don’t attempt to attack it simply due to a failure to understand it, but I cannot excuse not level of stupidity that is required to treat the terms weather and climate as interchangeable.

The current weather outside is an example of nothing unless it is joined over a long period of time by similar weather events that form a trend which may then demonstrate something in relation to the climate at a location. To suggest otherwise is analogous to seeing a single bird flying through the air and declaring it as proof that gravity no longer exists.

Furthermore, the increased incidence of big freak snowstorms are exactly the kind of evidence that supports climate change theory. A discussion of climate change and how it will almost certainly manifest itself (thank you again, J Willard) is covered in some detail here (starting in paragraph 7). If you don’t want to read it all, I will summarise for you: heating of the atmosphere due to anthropogenic climate change will manifest itself as greater weather chaos, not as similar changes in weather all over the world.

The example we see at present in North America is an example of greater chaos in weather. Note, however, that nether I or any of the other climate change believers that I know about have made the claim that the lack of snow for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver proves our case for anthropogenic climate change. We haven’t done this because it would not be supported by a reasoned scientific evaluation of the facts. Vancouver is actually a pretty warm and wet area as far as places that receive regular winter snow are concerned. This year’s lack of snow at this time, while regrettable, is not particularly uncommon. Until climate change really kicks in, organisers should probably stick to the continental divide if they want guaranteed dry fluffy snow for their tv events.

So, despite its high profile as an event where we could whip up lots of frenzy and possibly recruit people to our side of the argument, we on the side of science haven’t done so. But you decide for yourself who the fanatics are.

J Willard Gibbs

Feb 20

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Climate Change, Good Ideas, Science | Comments off

{Originally posted Feb 11}

I’d like to take an opportunity on the day of his birth in 1839 to take some time to celebrate the achievements of a fellow that you likely haven’t heard of, J. Willard Gibbs. Simply put, he is known as the father of modern thermodynamics. J. Williard Gibbs provided the basis upon which virtually all of the science that I use on a daily basis to provide, or attack, arguments on climate change. Pretty much everything to do with climate change comes down to issues of entropy, enthalpy and free energy transfer, along with the second law of thermodynamics, which is called a “law” because it has done its time as a theory for so long and been so well supported by all the empirical evidence collected to date, and by the by work of Gibb’s that it is no longer called a theory. That’s the way science works. If you haven’t noticed by now, I love how science works.

It would be nice to say that J. Willard Gibbs received the recognition that he deserved in his lifetime, and he did receive significant recognition of his peers. In 1901, Gibbs was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London, the peak scientific award of his time, for being “the first to apply the second law of thermodynamics to the exhaustive discussion of the relation between chemical, electrical, and thermal energy and capacity for external work.” This work allowed engineers like me to apply elegant theoretical science to everyday application in things like internal combustion engines, boilers and turbines.

As importantly, Gibbs work is directly connected (by the authors themselves) to the following Nobel Prizes that followed after him:

Johann van der Waals – Physics in 1910 for his equations of state for gases and liquids
Max Planck of Germany – Physics in 1918 his work in quantum mechanics.
William Giauque – Chemistry in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero.
Paul Samuelson – Economics in 1970 for his work on the foundations of economic analysis, in which he explicitly acknowledged the influence of the classical thermodynamic methods of Gibbs.

The general public will likely never know or acknowledge the contribution of J. Willard Gibbs to the things that make their everyday life after the industrial revolution what it is, but I would like to do so today, as I have quietly done every year since I was an undergraduate in chemical engineering and discovered the work of the man. Just one simple beer in his honour, as he probably would have liked, given the simple he led in New Haven, Connecticut for virtually all of his 64 years of life.

No better tribute to Gibbs can be paid than that of another important scientist, so I will leave the last word to him:

“Willard Gibbs is, in my opinion, one of the most original and important creative minds in the field of science America has produced.” – Albert Einstein, physicist

Odds and Sods

Feb 20

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Climate Change | Comments off

Well, the internet service has been doo doo where I am at presently, so you have been spared a lengthy rant on Miranda Devine based on my read of her column the other day on how we who are on the side of believing in the scientific method are “fanatics”, and we get all the air time from the pinko media. Unfortunately, her opinion is pretty hard to square with the facts, even those from just the last week if you take all the free publicity that Lord Monkton got from the ABC on breakfast, the evening news and the 730 report, not to mention the column inches in support he received from the Sydney Morning Herald (including her own column).

This is a tactic (or unknown pathology) of reactionary conservatives – a strange from of projection where they whine about something they accuse those they don’t agree with while doing the very thing they are accusing their opponents of.

Fortunately, Media Watch did good job of skewering the reactionaries above and their corporate sponsors. But frankly, who watches that?

About as many as listened to Malcolm Turnbull’s logical and reasonable analysis of the CPRS legislation that he intends to cross the floor to support as it comes up for a vote.

It can’t be any good . . .

Feb 4

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Climate Change, Politics | 2 Comments

. . . if the coal industry likes it.

Honestly, look at the facts. There is no realistic plan for addressing climate change that involves verifiable CO2 reductions that will benefit the coal industry. NONE. We must reduce the use of the magic dirt significantly to meet any targets set, and all the other direct action proposed by Tony Abbot is window dressing compared to moving to large-scale electricity production that doesn’t use coal as the fuel.

That’s the short summary of what I think of the Coalition policy that took a year to develop, after they had had a very good look at the proposed CPRS, negotiated in good faith to complete it, then reneged on that agreement.

Here is the link to the Coalition Policy I read.

And here is my more detailed analysis for the not faint of heart:

1. It’s too small, but they are only shooting for the 5% the government will. They say it will do 140 million tons of emissions reduction, and I call the amount required 143 in my previous analysis, but let’s not quibble.

2. The main focus of the policy is a thing called the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), which comprises 80% of the $3.2 billion to be spent over 4 years. Companies (with restrictions in the Policy steering finance to the largest projects at the largest companies) will bid for money out of the ERF for their abatement or emissions reduction projects to be funded. It will focus a significant amount of money on the least efficient old power plants, which smacks to me of rewarding these companies for holding out with the crappiest old technology the longest. Hardly my idea of incentivising the positive. The ERF will allow companies to trade in reductions of their emissions voluntarily, so it still has an ETS built into it, and is based on the already functioning NGERS compliance program. So, the claims of less bureaucracy and no ETS are complete distortions of reality.

3. The coalition has earmarked 61% of the emissions reduction under the ERF to abatement projects in the soil carbon area. Remember, this is the bio-char technology that they were hyping early on for sequestration of lots of carbon. It is an untested technology with uncertain success and unknown other consequences. So, for the folks who want to question the science of climate change in the first place, it seems a bit too much blind faith for my taste, but what the hell, lets put some research money into ramping it up I say.

4. It has some fantastic populist stuff in it that no one can be against, but that will have little effect or shows no stretch-target goal setting. Plant 20 million tees in the cities – who could disagree. A million homes with solar panels – great idea, but why so few? Clean energy hubs – wow, now that sounds futuristic, it’s got to be a great idea. Research on algal fuels – since I mentioned that two days ago (item 7), you know you have my vote!

5. it is entirely funded with federal tax revenue. No sources of new funding are proposed, and no elimination of current projects to free up funding are identified. So, it is an entirely unfunded program that will require drawing on federal support, and we know where they get their cash, don’t we?

6. It saves the Greenhouse Friendly™ (GF) Program that was to be killed off by Labor! This is a fantastic bit of grandstanding that is a complete distortion of fact. The fact is the GF program has already been included in the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) that will be administered by the Australian Carbon Trust, a private company set up to do just that, and the details of the NCOS are pretty much exactly the same as the GF program, and the government has made transition from GF to NCOS hassle free and low cost. Hold on, I thought the Coalition were the folks who were supposed to be into privatising government programs? Are they planning on abandoning this work that has already been done?

7. The paper complains heavily (honestly, over half of the 30 pages is just a write up of the opposition to the CPRS we have already heard) about how an emissions trading system (ETS) results in unnecessary “churn” of money that is bad. But how exactly Tony, as I thought all the capitalists were onboard with growing GDP? As I see it, isn’t that what an economic instrument to cause emissions reductions is all about? I trade emissions reductions at my clean operating plant to you operating your dirty plant so that neither of us has to shut down tomorrow, we get an emissions reduction overall, and we delay the capital cost of implementation of other newer technology? Who gives a rats whether the GDP goes up with a bunch of these trades? Maybe Glenn Stevens, but then I reckon Glenn is a pretty cluey bloke who will probably factor in the introduction of a mew commodity market into his thinking when setting fiscal policy for the country in the year that it is introduced. He will probably let inflation go to 3.4% that year instead of the regular 2.5% before he starts ratcheting up interest rates to address the “inflation” caused by the trading of carbon credits on the countries GDP.

8. It’s a policy that allows business as usual, then trade if you decide to sign up and get free money to fix your old plant. Then if your efficiency goes down later after you got the free money, you will get penalised. But the penalties will be negotiated out with business later, and new entrants to the market will have to meet “best practice” which is not defined.

The analogy I draw is pirates in Somalia. Who here thinks the best approach is to go to the pirates and say, “Hey fellas, all this pirating you are doing is really harshing my buzz. So how about I pay you to learn a new trade and if you do that you don’t have to pay me back, and if you do go back to pirating, we will negotiate a financial penalty together. Plus, any new kids of yours that want to get a job when they grow up can’t get into piracy, but they can go into drug running or something else that meets a definition of best practice employment that we will also work out later.” Anyone?

Therefore, from the observations above, I do not think this proposal from the Coalition contains sufficient quantity of the simple kind of direct action that I think that governments alone exist to do.

I can propose an alternative approach that exceeds the test of simplicity proposed by the Coalition, is honest, and contains direct action to begin addressing energy efficiency, energy efficiency, energy efficiency, and then climate change.

How about instead of bribing people to do the right thing, we do a straight carbon input tax, and we take $3.2 billion dollars of the money raised to go the old crappy coal power plants and convert as many of them as possible to natural gas. The companies can either pay us in stock for our capital injection, which we can sell on the open market later when our investment of public dollars proves to be good business, or they can take the money as a loan on favourable terms (say 50 basis points lower than the average of the rate the 4 major banks would charge a small business).

Then, we spend an equivalent amount on upgrade of the power distribution systems throughout Australia on a priority basis.

Then we pass some simple regulations to be overseen by the consumer watchdog (ACCC) that prevents any consumer product that uses electricity which doesn’t meet a basic energy efficiency test from being sold in Australia.

Then, lets do all the ice cream and puppies direct action in the Coalition plan, but lets have good stretch targets, like a solar hot water, solar electric or a fuel cell system on half of Australia’s 8 million homes by 2015. We can use some of the money from the carbon input tax to subsidies this, before we send the rest of the money back to families to pay their higher power bills.

If we do the above, we will significantly exceed the 5% target in truly simple (not even a whiff of an ETS in my plan) and honest way. All of what I want to do costs some money up front, but pays off significantly over time in a compound manner.

Getting to 95%

Feb 4

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Climate Change, Good Ideas, Politics | Comments off

Our resident lurker has asked what I think of the 5% target that is the current state of play for the CPRS, now that the 19 or so countries have put forth their voluntary commitments, including a couple, India and China, that have proposed “intensity” cuts rather than caps on emissions. Remember how I said these types of caps are important in conjunction? So it s a start, but too little too late, I think.

As I have said before, the failure to reach a verifiable cap based on the limit required to keep temperature rise to less than 2°C, is a significant failing. It leads to backsliding in complying with previous agreements (Kyoto), as in the case of Canada, and then it also leads countries like Australia to adopt wimpy targets like the 5% number.

However, as I have said before as well, the number is not so important as is the process by which you will regulate and meet whatever number is set. And setting some number demonstrates leadership. I note in particular that the voluntary cap put forth by the USA (4%) is almost equivalent to the Australian value, when looked at on a similar basis of 1990. Did our value taken to COP15 have an impact on them setting theirs, I don’t know. But it does get you to thinking.

The key going forward is demonstrating leadership for Australia, because we are going it alone, in a sense. We must do what we know is right, whether it be on an energy efficiency, cost or emissions reduction basis. America can not be looked to for leadership on this issue, and will not look after Australia’s interest if they do lead.

So, getting our process in place to meet the 5% target is what is important. We have NGERS and can do an accurate audit of emissions as we wish, so now we just need to decide how to meet our target. As stated recently, I now favour a direct carbon input tax on all fuels. An ETS is only my fallback position, if industry and individuals can demonstrate sufficient intelligence to use one to gain the efficiencies of it without corrupting it horribly.

But back to the number itself. There is one very funny thing about the low number. I believe it to be such a low target, that it could be reached by the direct action measures identified by Tony Abbot. So, it poses a unique political problem for a government that failed to get the CPRS through before. I still blame the Greens for a lot of that failure too, but the government is in government, so they own it.

Equal Time For This?

Feb 2

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Climate Change, Politics, Science | Comments off

It annoys me greatly when I see things like I have witnessed today. When unsupportable fairly tales get equal time with established science. Today, we got the double blow of Lord Throckmorton (or whatever) with his climate change road show. And if that bit of snake oil salesman wasn’t enough, we then also get the corporate shill Paul Sheehan providing a supporting argument on the SMH today. Well, I don’t have time today to sort these two out separately, so I shall address them jointly.

Gentlemen, you are either phenomenally ignorant of the scientific method, or purposely promoting disinformation voluntarily or under corporate compulsion. Your motives are your own, and I will not comment on them, but I will take specific issue to Sheehan’s written words, since they adopt several of the Lord Christopher Monckton’s arguments.

If you want to read the short version, just stop with Paul’s beginning:

“[all of these facts] . . . are either true or backed by scientific opinion. All can also be hotly contested.”

No Paul, they can’t. That’s what makes them facts, you moron. As the saying goes, we are all allowed our own arguments, but there are only one set of facts.

However, I will continue and move onto the detailed specifics for those who have some time, and give a shit. I know there are very few of you, and probably fewer every day as we are inflicted with more and more drivel on this subject that should have been (and was) decided at least ten years ago to the bright, and to the rest of the world’s scientists in the intervening period. What we are left with is significantly less than 1% of the scientists who could withstand any peer review whatsoever who deny the anthropogenic climate change we have begun. And they use poor journalists and mainstream opinion spewers to provide winners like these 10 “facts conveniently brushed over by the global warming fanatics”:

1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.

Hmmmn, now while I so wish this was true, I think I am going to have to see at least some shred of evidence to back this one up. None? No? Well sorry, then I think I will go with what the people at Polar Bears International, since they pretty much spend their whole time studying them and have answered this exact question, and unfortunately they don’t think so.

2. US President Barack Obama supports building nuclear power plants.

Whoopdeedoo! And so do I, Paul. What is your point? Are you saying it is a wholly and totally bad thing to consider every alternative in a risk-based approach when addressing climate change? I don’t even know why this inconvenient fact is in your list, because there are a number of climate change scientists that would be happy to pay it any amount of attention you want anytime. Maybe you just threw this in because you needed to make up the numbers.

3. The Copenhagen climate conference descended into farce. The low point of the gridlock and posturing at Copenhagen came with the appearance by the socialist dictator of Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez . . .

No, I would say the low point came when everyone realised on the first day that the organisers didn’t even plan the amount of tickets they issued based on the space they were using, and risked everything from a minor safety to a major security incident. After that, I wasn’t really expecting much, and I can say the same for the greenies I know. But here again, I don’t think I could call this in any way overlooked, as I remember seeing it on the news multiple times.

4. The reputation of the chief United Nations scientist on global warming is in disrepair.

Once again, no facts supplied. Just unsupported assertions with no references provided. My five minute research on this online through typically reliable sources provides me with no evidence to support the slander put forth by Sheehan. Talk about playing the man and not the ball.

5. The supposed scientific consensus of the IPCC has been challenged by numerous distinguished scientists.

The body of scientific work has been around for something like 30 years when people I know of decided that this might be an issue, following not long after the theory that was around when I was a boy suggested that the world might be going into a new ice age. The science moved on and even I published my first paper on the issue in ’99. The body of evidence upon which the science is based has been around forever. It is based on planetary physics, thermodynamics, chemistry and the application of industry through economics. It is not simple, and it is subject to some criticism (as that is the nature of science), but it remains solid and supported by the vast overwhelming number of credible scientists.

6. The politicisation of science leads to a heavy price being paid in poor countries. After Western environmentalists succeeded in banning or suppressing the use of the pesticide DDT, the rate of death by malaria rose into the millions. Some scholars estimate the death toll at 20 million or more, most of them children.

This one is so bad, I had to repeat it in full. “Some scholars”? Honestly, that’s what passes for a credible citation these days? For the record, those pesky kids who determined that the banning of DDT was causing a number of the bird species to go extinct, and demonstrating the basis of disruption of the reproductive cycle of animals through concentration of poisons through the food chain was a seminal piece of work (Silent Spring), that has withstood scientific scrutiny since its publication in 1962, despite a highly paid and aggressive disinformation campaign by the chemical industry for 10 years before DDT was banned. Humans have since, if you haven’t noticed, not gone extinct to malaria in any of the locations where it exists, and the birds were demonstrably going that way. Malaria also becomes resistant to drugs and poisons, so it would surely be as bad with or without DDT use.

7. The biofuels industry has exacerbated world hunger.

Aha, we finally have the start of something that is a bad idea and has not had nearly enough light shined on it, mainly because people still waste so much time debating if there is a climate change issue. But the idea of plant-based biofuels was attempted for the right reasons, even though it does end up driving food prices up and is not going to be a major long-term solution. But you can’t blame people for trying. Unless, of course, you have better examples of what you have tried. The thought that we might grow our own fuel is not dead either, but should be more focused on things like bacteria, and not food crops turned into ethanol.

8. The Kyoto Protocol has proved meaningless.

It may seem meaningless to those who don’t agree with the motives, good science, or common sense. But that does not make it overlooked, particularly since Paul and the sceptics still want to discuss it, and its being meaningless is not an established fact by a long shot. That global emissions have gone up since its 1990 is not in dispute, but the argument that emissions would of gone up more, and at a greater rate could easily be made, if one wanted to speculate. But why bother? Their argument is meaningless and doesn’t require any other response.

9. The United Nations global carbon emissions reduction target is a massively costly mirage.

I don’t even know what this one means, to be honest, but man it sure sounds good as an emotive statement without anything to support it at all. It is just hanging there in the article, as if dropping it so casually by itself lends itself to its credibility.

Unfortunately Paul, its also completely bullshit. To suggest emissions reductions are a mirage that cannot be reached shows no faith in the engineers of the world (forget the pure scientists), and the costs have been debated by me amongst others as not being as bad as you think. But of course we publish our math, data and assumptions, and that doesn’t really play as sexy as a one liner by a know-nothing on the subject like Sheehan.

10. Kevin Rudd’s political bluff on emissions trading has been exposed.

Here again, we have this presented as an undisputable fact hot off the pen of Paul Sheehan. But where is your evidence Paul? If Kevin Rudd wanted to pull off a bluff of doing something on emissions trading, imagine the conspiracy he would have had to create. Virtually all of Labor and a large portion of the Liberals, as well as the Greens and the non-bonkers independents are on the side of believing the science and doing something. The bulk of the emissions trading process as it exists comes from the Howard government. So let’s not characterise those of us on the reasonable side of the argument as fanatics. That’s called projecting.

Obama Forgot The Golden Rules

Jan 28

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Climate Change, Politics | Comments off

OK, perhaps not the originals. But, in fact, Obama has failed me personally so badly that I have decided to give up on him, and in fact have to ADD a golden rule, which nearly violates a golden rule, so you know it must be serious.

Let’s reiterate the Golden Rules for those who might not have been paying attention until recently, along with some explanation, and to add the necessary:
• Use your head for more than hatrack. Most issues can be sorted out easily if you just use your head and have a think about things as you are moving along. It’s a scalable rule, so if you have a brain that allows you to snort a line of coke off the back of a credit card while doing 140 down the autobahn while reciting Proust to your mistress, and you can think at light speed, then it wont take you any time at all. If your brain moves a bit slower, like most of us, take a short bit of time to come up with something. Long enough that you can make a difference, but not so long that it makes no difference.
• Be an adult. There is a reason for child labour laws, so if you are working with me, please don’t fail this expectation.
• Do something positive and productive. The positive and productive doesn’t necessarily have to look positive and productive in process, but it should be designed and operated with that end.
• Get some balls even if you are a chick. And here we have where Obama has unfortunately required me to make an addition. I didn’t think this needed stating in the beginning, so I left it out. But clearly it needs to be in here, and I will explain below why it means a huge amount to climate change, with a sniff of the world as we know it to boot.
• If you need more rules, be patient and persistent. These start out more as guidance really, but become rules to pass on to speed up development of those who come behind us. Feel free to skip on from here if you are young and impatient. But recognise that change of things, if you are set out to do that, is only achieved in a lasting manner through application of this rule.
• Don’t have too many rules. You really don’t need that many, so if you think you have too many, or no one will live with you anymore, you probably do have too many. Revise as required, but remember, we are here to live life, not waste time making rules for it.

Now, the explanation of what this has to do with climate change. Unfortunately, I have to let you know that I can sometimes predict the future, but pretty much only when it is going to be bad, due to my examination of human nature. Back in August I wrote, “. . . but let’s face it the Democrats are in power there, and they are likely to be too big of pussies to move anything like that through, despite their filibuster-proof majorities. So don’t even expect the US to even get to the climate change issue, and get a bill through both houses and signed into law.” See, there is one thing that is certain about politics in America that many have recognised through the ages: Democrats, when in power, insist on playing by the rules and being fair or even “bipartisan” during their stint running things, despite any previous example set by the other side of politics there. And unfortunately despite all his supposed brilliance and rhetorical gift, Obama appears to have made the mistake of letting the severely compromised leaders in both houses of congress in the US bring him something on all of his legislative agenda rather than leading on anything himself, as if he were elected arbiter in chief instead of commander in chief. His failure to lead on health care, civil rights, economic stimulus, troop withdrawal, closing Guantanamo (shall I go on) etc., means that we certainly will not now see any action out of the US on climate change legislation this year, and I would suggest not even in the single term of this democratic president if trends continue. And this term leads to forever, due to another unfortunate occurance that has occurred synchronistically in the US while they were all looking at which sex clinic Tiger got caught humping Brangelina’s secret love child with John Edwards in.

Last Thursday, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations have exactly equivalent the same constitutional right to free speech as Joe Sixpack. In this case, that right will specifically manifest itself as each and every person (real or legal) being able to spend whatever amount they choose on the candidate of their choice. That’s right, the next time a big bank gets a bug up its arse about a politician and his voting record on the The Banks Don’t Get Absolutely Everything They Want Legislation, they will just heavily sponsor his opponent in the next primary or general election, or probably both. Better if said politician is from a small state politically, like Max Baucus of Montana. He currently whores himself out for about $2 million to the insurance industry, and look what it did for them in the health care debate. He nearly never got it started at all. Unfortunately, too many Americans were looking, so they actually had to get a health care bill out of the Senate Finance Committee that he heads, so waiting in the wings were several other stooges to stall or add unpalatable elements to the bill to make it basically not worth saving, and the real reason why the voters of Massachusetts rejected it and its progenitors by proxy in the election there last week.

So, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that big coal, big oil and even those making cars, road construction, and the electric utilities themselves, will all be going out to buy their own representatives for the next election. Or perhaps just getting off by threatening to oppose politicians in places where they can get them cheap. Imagine rural ignorant Appalachia, where cutting the tops off mountains for coal and dumping the waste downhill still seems like a good idea. The senator from there gets an equal vote with the one that represents the electorates of Harvard or Berkeley at the federal level. And as observed this year like many others, it only takes a couple federal senators to scuttle the efforts of a large majority, especially over an issue as complicated climate change legislation.

Left unchecked, this Supreme Court decision, that I unfortunately have to agree with given this narrow case upon which it is based, could lead to corporatocracy there very easy logical progression. And yes it is a word. I didn’t know it was real either until the other day, so do your reading. I read a few elections ago that the average US senate seat cost $40 million to win. Expect to see that go up an order of magnitude in 10 years.

Of course it doesn’t have to be that way. But can we expect the US government led by this president to make significant modification to the fundament issues of the definition of a person as applied to a corporation, or the donation transparency rules, or public financing of campaigns, that would be required to be enforced to allow the population there to have a true and functioning democracy? What do you expect from a democracy that cannot even provide affordable, universal preventative health care to its entire population?

I expect nothing if any congress is left to its own devices. Congress has always needed leadership from someone with balls. Balls to actually lead, by setting a direction and an objective, and herding, coercing and twisting arms to get the congress to move in that direction. W may have been and intellectual philistine and led by weird voices in his head, but he had the balls to say “This is where we are going”. And the moron got most everything he wanted with a congress not from his own party. Leading begins at the beginning, not by arriving like a superhero at the end to save the day. We read about leaders in history books and superheros in comics for a reason.

So, I guess I am not sure this guy has any balls to go with his intellect and oratory skills. Pity, as he looked like the real deal 18 months ago before all his goals went under the bus so he could get along with everybody in Washington.

Caveat Emptor Also Applies to Carbon

Jan 23

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Climate Change, Economics, Good Ideas | Comments off

I have also recently been asked by our resident lurker to comment on dodgy providers of carbon dioxide offsets and the pursuit of those making false claims or making fraudulent deals by the consumer watchdog, the ACCC. In reading the summary’s of the cases being made by the ACCC, they seem to be of a couple varieties, including those making false or misleading claims about their offset credits, to those engaged in actual fraud by taking money from clients to buy carbon offset credits and then not doing so.

Whether or not the ACCC will prevail in its cases is uncertain, but my gut feel is that if they take a claim to court, they usually have a pretty good case. However, proving that case in court is another matter, as evidenced by the judgments against the securities watchdog (ASIC) in cases that were widely considered to be very good. One of these cases is a not-for-profit that is apparently making unsupported claims about the superior value of its credits and services. This may be difficult to prove, and more difficult to prove as malicious, given the fairly confusing landscape with regard to environmental claims. The more easy case to prove (the fraud case) is probably already moot as the company is not longer operating and a court has ordered the former directors to buy the credits it failed to previously.

Another colleague asked me a week ago about how her organisation could buy offset credits. I explained to her the process of getting an inventory of emissions certified, and also buying certified credits. She didn’t quite understand why both the emitter and the seller of the credits required independent verification, and that got me to thinking that maybe it isn’t all as simple as I think it is. So I backed up, and started over on the basis of the concept of trust. To be truly greenhouse neutral means that I have to trust what your emissions are, and I have to trust that you bought real offsets. That helped clarify it for her. The introduction of the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) may improve things somewhat by further clarifying what is and what is not genuine reduction in greenhouse gases that can be traded, and doing away with some types of credits that are of debatable validity. But it won’t make things crystal clear in all situations, and the purchase of credits will always require a well informed buyer.

My rule of thumb is to first see if you can tie the credits you want to buy to a clear standard (like the NCOS) with independent verification and oversight by a government accredited program. Then, do a bit more research on the company offering the credits, particularly if they are sourced internationally. A relatively simple internet search can usually tell you a lot. Reputable companies probably have a background and history in some type of environmental work. If you cannot find anything about the company, I would worry a bit. If you can find some information, and it tells you that the head of the company offering the credits was a disqualified horse trainer in Australia that now lives in PNG and once ran Philippine cockfighting ring, I would probably move on to the next one.