Sgt Hulka Uncut

uncensored opinion and technical information on stuff

Archive for category Climate Change

A bit of balance, please

Mar 11

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

A simple search this morning using the words “carbon tax Australia” leads to pretty much all negative positions on this tax. Virtually nothing on the other side (but thank you Wikipedia).

But the real problem is not the tax, or the ETS, or even the alternative direct action approach, but that once again the deniers* have been allowed to sneak back in and present their flawed case along with those who disagree on the proposed way forward on a solution. If you go to the no carbon tax websites that headline a simple search, you will be linked through to the bunko artists, who appear to be a large and reasonable group. But they are not. The reality is that the vast majority of the people who believe in the scientific method, who work in the area of climate science, ocean science, thermodynamics or other related scientific and engineering fields, where the scientific method and the evidence that supports it, believe that anthropogenic climate change is real, and that it will not be positive for humans or the earth. Furthermore, the scientific organisations that they make up, and the peak organisations that represent those organisations, publish peer reviewed findings and recommendations through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

This is the report that you would have heard all the hyped up controversy about a while back, and that a couple figures and a couple paragraphs in a two 800-page reports were incorrect in. Pity they weren’t perfect, but they state the heavily considered opinion of the 99.99%.

Unfortunately, what you get as “balance” in the news coverage remains what I identified above. Bunko artists given 50% of the time to make their case.

Ross Garnaut today said that he believes that public education is the most important thing that has to happen, and that “If there was a deal to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million – required to limit warming to 2 degrees – Australia’s ”fair share” would be a reduction target of 25 per cent.”

So, while we should be discussing the merits of whether the renewable energy targets should be eliminated (no) and whether Australian companies should be able to buy cheaper international permits to meet their obligations (yes), we are still talking about the science as if there is a real debate. Other than this article by Ross in the SMH, and his appearance on ABC2 today, the coverage of the major papers and news has been balanced at least equally to the climate change deniers, and several of the major Newscorp and Fairfax columnists (Piers Ackerman, Miranda Devine, Paul Sheehan and Andrew Bolt) are all active climate change deniers.

Those supported by the scientific method are left to the occasional story by Ross Garnaut or Tim Flannery. Hardly balance where it matters, in swaying public opinion.

Charismatic, reasonable appearing liars get away with it all the time. I lived through Ronald Reagan’s presidency. We all lived through W. The basis of their ideologies have been found to be either wilful misrepresentations, or grossly incorrect. Wealth doesn’t trickle down from the rich, they concentrate it, and war is a lie. But one is viewed as a hero still, and the other isn’t in jail when by all rights he should be. The charismatic people who are playing this lie out again are the same folks who have a vested interest in delay, and who own the media to a large extent.

It is not a fair fight, and as I have said before, the correct argument is falling on deaf ears in a public that has been conditioned by the media that is supporting the lie to have tuned out already. Climate change is so last year’s story. Facts are boring, details are too taxing on the attention span, and the truth requires all of us to modify our behaviour a bit. So fuck that, right?

But in the interest of supporting Ross Garnaut’s call for more education, I will keep on providing my view on the topic. I’d feel guilty otherwise.

* – Unfortunately, when 99.99% of all peer reviewed scientists do not agree with you, you can no longer be called a sceptic, but rather something closer to a person with a mental disease.

How do you reach those who are wilfully ignorant

Mar 8

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

So, it’s been about a week and the Coalition scare mongering campaign over the carbon tax introduction has apparently started to do its expected damage, with the announcement of the Newspoll today that show Labor as being less popular than leaving your kids alone with a Catholic priest at 30% primary support. Nothing much else has happened federally in the last week, so the drop must be mostly due to people who were polled believing the Coalition’s spin, or they believe that if ignored long enough, the climate change issue will go away. In either case, the only way you could believe either of these alternatives to the carbon tax is to be wilfully ignorant.

If you believe that the issue of climate change is going to just go away, then I hope you don’t have any kids. Not because you shouldn’t be allowed to breed, but because I am a nice guy and don’t wish to see the results of your ignorance to be manifested on anyone’s kids.

The other option also requires wilful ignorance, because the detail has been out there for quite a while. You can have a look a the Coalitions direct action policy and my analysis of it from more than a year ago (!), and it clearly shows more than $700 million in spending per year.

This week, Tony Abbott has been out demonising the carbon tax proposal as something that will kill the economy (a lie that I will deal with separately), and putting forward the contention that the direct action policy is (1) better; (2) that no one’s costs will rise; and (3) that it can be implemented with no additional taxes. It’s the life is all ice cream and no pain approach to climate change.

This is where wilful ignorance comes in, because you don’t need to be Paul Krugman to recognise that if a government is going to spend more than $700 million a year in picking winners in the emissions reduction area through paying for the abatement out of the federal budget, and they aren’y going to raise taxes to fund that spending, then clearly budget cuts in other areas are going to have to pay for them. The cuts are likely to come in areas that the Coalition does not approve of, so expect to see funding for things like public schools, public transport, public health care and pretty much anything with a public in it to get a cut in the next Coalition-prepared budget. And if you rely on any of those public things that get cut, your costs to replace them will go up.

Its a pity that honesty doesn’t poll well, because a carbon tax is simple, direct and honest (even if I let people lie and call it a tax). Once again, here is how it works:

• Government makes anyone who is a major emitter of CO2-equivalent (CO2-e) gases pay for each ton of those emissions annually;
• They eat those costs, or pass them on to the buyers of their goods or services (probably the latter);
• The government uses some of the money raised to support long term shifts to alternative energy sources through research, low interest loans and other incentive programs; and
• The government returns any left over money to the taxpayers to offset their rise in cost (if any).

You may not like it, but a carbon tax is at least honest and will do what it says it will.

If I had any control over the situation, I would also apply the tax to all significant imports to the country that have high CO2-e intensity to address issues of major industries here that face significantly rising costs that large polluters elsewhere do not have to pay. That way, I can use local law to also influence behaviours of foreigners who want to sell their stuff in my market. Now that’s what I call effective tax policy.

The real enemy

Mar 2

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Economics, Evil Motherfuckers, Other Topics | Comments off

So, I am talking to my buddy Otto the other day, and he’s got a libertarian streak significantly wider than my own, and we are talking about the public service (PS) union issue in Wisconsin, USA. And during the conversation, I conceded that it might be the case that the unions had been given something ‘above and beyond’ by the state over the years and that those in the private sector (union or individual) do not get. That they are the new “welfare queens” of the Republicans and tea-partiers.

So, I went and did some more research, and I found it that this is factually not the case, and more. The fact in Wisconsin is that out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin’ s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers. Union members negotiate a total compensation packages that includes salary, pension contributions, and their health care plan. They could take it all in salary, or defer some salary to get the other two. Either way, it’s their money.

Let’s repeat that: All the so-called “employer contributions” made by the state to pensions come out of an overall compensation package negotiated by the PS employees collectively which includes salary, pension and other benefits. Furthermore, the fact is that overall compensation packages for PS employees are the same or lower than those in the private sector. The salary portion of their compensation, in particular, is about 25% below, on average, comparable positions in the private sector. That’s where, at other times, we get the impression that people in the PS don’t get paid that much, but they have easier jobs (a misconception that can be addressed elsewhere).

The lie that is being spun is that these PS employees are getting a “gift” of public money by those who want to rouse your basal tea-party sentiment. The truth is the money in the PS pensions is THEIR money as deferred payment. Of course we all know that saving salary money for the future as deferred payments is evil, right? Those public employees and their unions are so evil and irresponsible, I bet they caused the whole global financial crisis.

To be honest, from my perspective, the only mistake the people in the unions made is taking deferred salary that is not identified as such by an employer that guarantees it – you can’t get it back if no one knows it’s yours.

As Paul Krugman puts it, “Public sector workers are not, on average, grossly overpaid compared with the private sector — period. You can fiddle at the edges of this conclusion, but it’s just not possible to conclude, based on any honest assessment of the data, that schoolteachers are the new welfare queens.”

But there is actually more to the story, as there always is with Krugman, and why I have gone back to read so much of his old stuff. The real problem we aren’t being told from the media in the US is worse, The current problem with public (and possibly private) pensions is that they are all pretty much all “at risk” these days as well. Gone are the days when pensions were put in rock solid low interest things like government bonds. No, today those funds are in the stock market. Yeah, that same stock market that crashed when the greedy bankers sold really bad collateralised debt to unwary or greedy investors who were also mostly bankers. Have a look at this graph from Krugman that shows what pension funds would be worth with simple interest, and what they are actually worth as a result of the GFC.

Screen shot 2011-03-02 at 10.27.25 AM

In a perfect world, the folks at Goldman, Citi, BofA and Wells Fargo that caused the whole fucking problem in the first place should be made the fund managers at these public pensions as indentured servants until such time as the pensions are back to where they would be if they made nothing more than the long term bond rate.

The most amazing thing to me of all, looking from the outside in at the US at present, is that the media seems to be characterising the issue relating to the fiscal crises in the states (and federally) as a battle of priority between the unions and the regular taxpayers, with their newly installed tea party inspired paymasters. The middle class (every one of the people in the union in this story) is not ripping off the state. The banks and rich arseholes that brought the global financial crisis on, then got government support to get through it, and are now paying massive bonuses to those same arseholes are the problem. So, the poor and middle class ought to quit being pitted against one another, and start making the rich see some consequences of their failure.

Facts about the carbon tax

Mar 1

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Climate Change, Economics, Good Ideas, Politics | 1 Comment

Right, so I have heard a lot of the political hubbub following the announcement, and I have heard the opposition’s position on it, and I have even done some informal polling of my own to canvas views, so I had better make a comment on the carbon tax. It’s my preferred option, if you have been checking in regularly, and if it goes through, also possibly the first time I have ever predicted the future where it wasn’t something bad.

The Coalition’s position, put forward formally by Malcolm Turnbull (who has just got to be loving life having to carry this bag of shit), is that their proposed direct action proposal will be better, but that he personally favours the ETS. So, basically, they got nothing. And all they want to do is scream about the election lie of not having a carbon tax prior to the last election. A furphy.

Here’s the facts. Three blockages by the Coalition with the assistance of the Greens in the last parliament meant that labour wasn’t going to get its ETS up without a pound of flesh to the Greens, and that cost is a fixed price sooner, hence the carbon tax. Julia Gillard made the promise of no carbon tax prior to the last election, based on a Labor government ruling in its own right, not as a minority government. So, while we all like to call all politicians liars, the truth is that promise was null and void when she didn’t win the election outright.

So take that as a lesson Coalition (including you Malcolm): If you go too far to the right (climate change denial) and block something by any means (roll your leader and renege on a deal), then you sometimes end up getting something you like even less when your previous conspirator joins your enemy.

My position on a carbon tax has been stated before. To summarise, its far less elegant a solution that an ETS, but also more transparent and less easy to corrupt. The Coalition’s only substantive complaint so far has been that the proposed carbon tax is low on detail, so here are some more boring facts about the carbon tax, functionally.

It will have a short-term fixed price to allow the parties who believe in climate change [Multi-Party Climate Change Committee (MCCC)] to defer a final decision on a 2020 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target for three to five years, in which time they hope to have another international agreement on targets to replace Kyoto, which expires in 2012.

The price will remain fixed for three-to-five years until, and unless, a review recommends moving to an ETS. Once the shift to an ETS occurs, the market will set the price of a ton of CO2. At that time, Australia’s emissions will be capped and controlled by Australia according to the international agreement, through the use of emissions trading in Australia (which will undoubtedly look a lot like the CPRS) or other model like that passed in California late last year, since we failed to get ours up first here in Australia. Barring the achievement of an international agreement, Australia will most likely try to pursue a regional agreement, linked to others already being formed, or start our own closer to home.

Under a carbon tax, business would have some certainty but no comfort. They will not know a limit on how much they can emit, but they will know the exact cost of their emissions for the next 3-5 years.

More importantly, the fixed price carbon tax will give certainty to energy consumers and renewable energy investors, about the exact cost of carbon pollution. Electricity providers, fuel providers and anyone else included in the program will undoubtedly pass on their costs to users, so we can actually see if our electricity bill is going to go up $300 a year.

Then, based on what industries actually do with the cost applied to them, we can then start arguing over what government can do with the actual of tax it will have raised each year, that should amount to about $5 billion, assuming a price of $15/ton CO2e and including the emissions from energy, industrial processes and waste, but excluding land clearing and agriculture (for now).

Depending on what the company (or people) are willing to do to change their emissions profile, we can discuss how are we going to assist losers (coal industry) in moving to the clean energy economy, while avoiding getting the government involved in picking winners and losers and letting market forces set the price over time.

Would I be interested in using some of the tax raised to provide low interest loans to those in the coal industry convert over to gas? Probably. Would I be interested in doing the same for companies that want to invest capital in large scale renewables? Possibly. What about supporting Bluescope Steel in making green steel here, or also applying a carbon tax to competing imports? I’d consider it. But would I be interested in direct funding of projects to capture CO2 from burning coal and see if we can sequester it in the ground or other Rube Goldberg device? No fucking way. But hey, even if there aren’t that many great ideas to assist in the shift to a greener economy, we could just return the tax to the 9 million households in Australia to the tune of $555 per household per year to help them afford the higher costs that will be passed on to them. Households that use more energy (or are wasteful) might not get their costs all covered, but those that are more efficient could be net winners after the tax. The bottom line, let’s not be too scared by the economic horror stories that will be peddled out by the same people who don’t believe climate change is happening.

You can also start to look at the upside. The Climate Institute report released this week also shows that, “Australia has largely untapped energy resources in geothermal, large scale solar, bio-energy, hydro, wind and natural gas.” Work in these areas will create these new employment opportunities out to 2030:

NSW: Close to 7,000 new power sector jobs
Queensland: Close to 6,300 new power sector jobs
Victoria: Over 6,800 new power sector jobs
South Australia: Close to 2,700 new power sector jobs
Western Australia: Over 3,500 new power sector jobs

Now, lets see how that compares to my previous analysis of jobs that would be lost working in the coal industry if we got off burning the magic dirt. Well, not too bad, actually, considering my prediction was based on a 97.5% reduction in coal burning, whereas the Climate Institute only predicted a clean energy usage target of 43%. Anyway, they predicted a growth of 26,100 jobs nationally (many in regional areas) which isn’t that far off half of my prediction (23,500) of the jobs lost by eliminating all burning of coal for electricity.

So, net jobs is about a wash, and the jobs gained are jobs just as good as those they replace, not low paid crappy service work. And as I have said before, don’t try to scare me with job losses. We have just gone through the second worst recession in history with massive job losses, and the world did not collapse. If dirty jobs need to be lost, they should be, even if they aren’t immediately replaced.

We have a winner!

Mar 1

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

It took a while, by my buddy Otto finally brought in the first of what I expect to see a lot more of in the next 10 years provided I keep compiling them.

Check out this excellent article from Mike Tidwell on his zombie plan. Then look up some of his other very good stuff.

Another freak of weather makes freaks commonplace

Feb 2

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Climate Change | Comments off

She’s a Cat5 now and its going to be a long night in Cairns. Bigger than Tracy and stronger than Larry.

Brought on by climate change?
Yasi

Just saying.

However, the government response prior to this disaster has been excellent and even innovative, I’ll say. Extra trains with $20 fares to assist evacuation of the expected area, along with other traditional preparations. Communication has also been good so far, with strong, unambiguous messages from Bligh. Looks like somebody has been working on their zombie plans. Nice work Qld SES.

Update on yesterday

Feb 1

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

Lets just add to the list above both Syria [21.7, mil. republic (french/islamic law), Jun 00] and Jordan [24.3, const. monarchy (french/islamic law), Feb 99]. Reports are circulating that home grown advocates in both of these locations are attempting to organise uprisings. In reality both of these places have had much older governments (’70 in the case of Syria and ‘53 in jordan). I am not sure if I lived in either of these places I would try it on were I a democracy advocate just yet. Syria is a very scary place, and the Jordanian king seems pretty popular. In fact all the monarchies in the gulf are likely to see much change as this wave of popular democracy crests and falls back, unless a couple more on my list roll their governments. Barring that, the monarchies in general have done a pretty good job of spreading around wealth and opportunity in their countries to keep the population less engaged in talk of regime change. I mean, I would be quite shocked if Sultan Al Qaboos went down in Oman.

So shock me world. Knock my socks off. Roll, say, 3 or more countries leadership over in places like Egypt, Yemen and Egypt or Israel. And then really surprise me by seeing the USA support democratic change, for a change, 22 years after the cold war ended, instead of playing “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. But why Israel in the list above? Its not an islamic, and its already a democracy.

Well, when Egypt falls, Israel will lose the only direct contact through Mubarak to the peace deal that Egypt took a chance on. It cost Sadat his life, but I am not sure how much the rest of the Egyptian population is committed to the deal. Israel will have a short window for greater peace once they need to establish ties with a new government in Egypt, and I am not sure the current one can do it. It might be time for the government to fall in Israel as well, so that a new one with a clear mandate for peace negotiations is in charge. If they settle well quickly with Egypt, they then have a chance to do something more urgent with the Palestinians. Provided, of course, that the USA applies further pressure in support of democratic movements once again.

But that would be dreaming, wouldn’t it?

Tie together the following . . .

Jan 31

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Economics, Evil Motherfuckers, International, Politics | Comments off

Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, the GFC, old regimes and a high youth population.

Screen shot 2011-01-31 at 11.31.44 AM

The first four are easy by geography. I have added Australia to the table for comparison. All the middle eastern countries are also all religious societies where the rule of law is also religious. What is likely less well known, or I haven’t heard much about recently, is how much stress the GFC has put on these governments, but I suspect it is significant. No merchant can see all their customers go broke and not feel some repercussion. All have incredibly “old” governments of between 21 and 31 years of age. And because religion so influences the daily lives of people in these countries with the traditional roles reinforced, all the countries have a high birth rate and low median age. All of the kids in these countries have never known any other government.

And you know how it is with kids, they rebel. They also have access to the internet, and see what is happening on the streets in Iran last year, and Tunisia this year, and they use it to organise on the street near their home. And old, corrupt regimes try to repress them. Hopefully, the government in Egypt won’t go too far, as Iran did, and use violence and fear to try to scare the republicans back into their box. But frankly, what else does the Eqyptian government know? It has been using fear of violence (or actual violence) to keep its people down for a long time. Hosni Mubarak isn’t necessarily an evil man, but he has been at a minimum cooperating with evil. How else do you explain the Muslim Brotherhood’s showing in the last election, where popular leaders were not even returned to parliament in their home electorates? And Egypt is also well known to have participated with elements of the US government in rendition and torture.

I suggest that perhaps the economic stress that has been felt by all in the world of buyers and sellers of things in the last couple years has been the straw that broke the back of the fear of acting out recently in the middle east. If the government that the young see as oppressing their freedoms socially and politically can no longer protect them from economic pain, then they begin to feel as if they have little to lose and will hit the streets without much additional provocation.

But the basic problem is the failure by the leaders of all these states to embrace the meaning of the word “republic” in the second half of all these theocratic republics. Trying to hand over power to your son in a republic doesn’t really do it. Neither does stealing from the national wealth and enriching yourself and your cronies. Torture and capricious punishment of the population is right out. Basically, you have to be willing to listen to dissent in the media and even on the streets without becoming a tyrant if you want to survive in a republic. If you want to do more than survive, you have to let go of fear and let the others participate in the republic, even when their ideas are shit. The bottom line is: If you aren’t ready to turn the government over to the other pack of idiots on occasion, without worrying about whether you will ever get it back again, then you aren’t really a democracy, or a republic for that matter.

A point on the floods

Jan 18

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

I note that 2010 has been reported to be the second hottest year on record after 2005, and that 9 of the top 10 hottest years on record start with a 2. I also note as we watch the floods in Victoria (a couple 1 in 200 yr events) immediately following the major floods in Queensland with their massive losses and areas covered that are bigger than many countries, which are proceeded by major floods in 2010 in the USA, Europe and Pakistan, that there is a direct tie-in to climate change.

Remember, climate change isn’t about the weather, to which I would include these individual events. But climate change is about shifts in weather patterns such as la nina and el nino, that do lead to localised weather events which are extreme. Remember that the heating of the planet by a couple degrees isn’t likely to be manifested as a uniform rise everywhere. It is far more likely to manifest itself like any system that more heat is added to, through the addition of more chaos. Think of a pot of boiling water that moves and mixes itself more and more rapidly until it boils. The previous example of this I noted that appear to be on the increase are cyclones (hurricanes).

Another effect of the rise in temperature is the carrying capacity of air to hold water. All gases can contain more water vapour as they rise in temperature. This larger mass of water is then available to be removed from the air in localised events (torrential rains) as have been tied to all of the flooding events identified above. Clearly, lots of additional water has been stored in the atmosphere in 2005 as compared to cooler years, and this year it has been triggered to fall in large amounts, through the otherwise normal patterns driven by the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) of la nina and el nino.

The patterns here in Australia tend to mean we have no “average” weather, but instead have periods of drought followed by periods of flood, with this years floods breaking what is about a 9 year drought most everywhere. The only difference in this year’s rains are the extreme volumes of them over almost the whole country. So, while I think the patterns are normal, I suggest that the volumes of rain that have caused the floods we have this year may be a local sign of a global problem of climate change.

This year’s idea

Jan 6

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

Not my idea, of course. I am not really the big idea kinda guy. Big ideas are why I hang around guys like my mate Sean and Steve. I’m more the “how the hell are we going to do that” kinda guy. But I read a good idea that you can find out more about here when I was catching up on what my professional organisation is up to this year.

They solicited ideas from about 100,000 people to get 7,000 ideas from which to choose, and then selected this one:

“Make it so people in developing communities can use agricultural waste they produce for energy for cooking and heating.”

A very good idea. So I am going to see what I can come up with this year to do that. I will start with some research on the places where the solution could be applied through the partners in the program, Engineers Without Borders. I will first try to see what kind of waste characterisation they have, along with the volumes of waste produced to assess them as a fuel source. Then I need some data on fuel requirements for, say 200 L of hot water per person per day. Then some pretreatment options and a process for conversion, design, sizing, economics and a bunch of other stuff. I will post what I find out as I go.