Sgt Hulka Uncut

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Archive for category Evil Motherfuckers

Measures of devotion

Feb 22

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Climate Change, Evil Motherfuckers, Good Ideas, Politics, Science | 5 Comments

An update on my post from Monday. Today we find out that Peter H. Gleick, founder and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security is the person that duped the Heartland Institute into releasing a number of its confidential documents regarding its funding and plans to attempt to refute the science of climate change and counter or attack those that believe in the scientific method and the weight of evidence in favour of the arguments regarding anthropogenic climate change.

The links to the above go to the Boards of the two organisations above so that readers can do their own research where it matters, at the top of the organisations. I encourage interested parties to also look further into the funding of both, as that information is as illuminating of the agendas of the two groups as anything published on their websites.

Based on his admission, Peter Gleick will now almost certainly face the full force of the best law money can buy from his adversaries, and the truth is that he should. He obtained the confidential information he released through deception, as he has admitted in his statement published by the Huffington Post. If that is a criminal act, or breaks a civil code, he should be tried, convicted and sentenced appropriately. However, that will not diminish the substance of what he collected, as was covered in my previous post.

In the progress of whatever trial ensues, we will find out for sure which of the documents are real and which are fake, as Heritage has claimed both. But you can’t have it both ways, either the documents are genuine and therefore the alleged theft substantive, or they are fake and there is essentially no case to answer.

Perhaps Peter Gleick wants it that way so that his legal journey is well publicised. If that is the case, it will be a demonstration of one of the only real ways to counter the climate deniers. Because the truth is that the climate deniers are funded by phenomenally rich arseholes and corporations they control, and the likes of the Pacific Institue and DeSmogBlog are funded on a pittance in comparison. The only thing the latter have to provide a balance to the war chest of the evil are the scientific facts being on their side and their devotion to the scientific method. I hope that the measure of devotion that Peter Gleick is demonstrating ends up being worth it to him, and worth all the money that Heritage can scrounge together to fund their side of the story to unfold.

Leaking schadenfreude

Feb 20

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

If you’d like to use the wayback machine, here is an interesting follow up to my post of 30 November 2009 regarding the fake Climategate fiasco.

In the intervening period, three separate investigations have cleared everyone at the University of East Anglia and everyone they were in contact with at other universities of the claim that, “climate scientists had tampered with data to support evidence of global warming.” Furthermore, the investigations pretty much showed exactly what I suspected was going on in my earlier post. So, no conspiracy, no lost data showing climate change isn’t real, and no illegal or unethical acts on the part of climate scientists. But there’s a kicker.

It turns out that leaking of massive amounts of documents can occur to both sides of an issue. And one of those parties (the US Heartland Institute) on the climate change denial side that was party to a number of the FOIA hassling requests to the climate scientists has just had a bunch of its internal documents leaked to the public. And they show some pretty interesting stuff such as:

• the desire to identify and fund science writers to attack Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change reports;
• fundraising and development of communications strategies to counter “warmest” science (because they always have to have a catchy name to call people – actual science would really be sufficient);
• planning to develop school curriculum material to counter an alleged “alarmist perspective” by teachers; and
• lobby against the well known “liberal-bias” to maths*

The Heartland Institute has already admitted the authenticity of the documents while saying that someone purporting to be from the Institute duped someone from there into emailing them to the requestor. See how hard it is to keep a conspiracy a secret, even when one really exists?

Now if we “cui bono” (follow the money) as I am a big fan of, we find that the largest contributors of the Heartland Institute are our friends the Koch Brothers (not pronounced cock, although I understand the confusion) and Altria (tobacco) and Reynolds American (also tobacco). Nice to see where $7.8 million a year comes from. Good thing they don’t waste much of that on information security and will email out lost of confidential stuff to anyone who claims to be a member.

Pity though, that the actual scandal over this revelation will not make even a minor ripple in the mainstream news, as opposed to the fake scandal of before. But the truth is, much of what should be the independent media is also in the pocket of the right wing authoritarians that fund climate change denial.

But for the time being, we can enjoy any little victory that comes.

* OK, I made this last one up in this context, but it’s generally something they believe.

He has got to be paid a lot to be such an arsehole

Mar 14

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Evil Motherfuckers, Good Ideas, Other Topics, Science | 3 Comments

Andrew Bolt* gave a performance so untruthful and offensive on the weekend Insiders, that I really think he has got to be having this shit fed to him and rehearsed beforehand. No one could honestly hold this many stupid views in one head. His positions on the weekend once again included his greenhouse denial schtick, along with saying that the Coalition actually believes his view on the subject and are just faking it with a token effort to allow for a change of subject. He also used the current lie-attack approach with respect to Ross Garnaut. I hesitate to tell you about it, but will risk spreading its use, as I think it is important to be able to identify it when you see it, as it fits into a wider ploy by cultural conservatives and shills of big business. The lies that Dolt was allowed to share included:

• The lie is that there is zero risk to Australia due to the nuclear accidents in Japan caused by the earthquake, and then tsunami.

• The lie that the Greens will just use this as a beat up so they can stymie the development of nuclear power

• The lie is that Ross Garnaut is not credible to listen to for any reason on the climate change issue, as he is only an economist, and not a climate scientist, and he is paid by the government for his views.

The lies fit into a broader tactic by the cultural conservatives of doing something really shitty, then accusing you of it, falsely and in a pre-emtory manner, to hide their “crime”. They did it to Tim Flannery a couple weeks ago on Q&A, and I’ve heard it from another Coalition climate change denier a week before that.

And Dolt does it here again. Because this time, he used one lie to sell another. While attacking Ross Garnaut’s credibility on one issue, he used Ziggy Switkowski, who has not worked in the nuclear power industry ever to my knowledge, and while very involved with ANSTO as a director, his degree in nuclear physics has got to be 35 years old. After getting his business degree at Harvard, he served in series of company management roles, including Telstra. There is also the fact that he is a big proponent of nuclear power in Australia. Why shouldnt he be, as he was appointed by the Howard Government to look into the nuclear power issue. But hey, not that it is such a bad thing. As I have said before, there is a role for nuclear power in getting us off the magic dirt. Ziggy isn’t a bad guy, and I think he is smart and does have credibility on his issues.

Just like Ross Garnaut does. But Dolt smears Ross as a paid government lackey, and treats a distinguished, professor, diplomat, researcher and company chairman as if he was a one trick pony. And the funny thing about this smear is that it exposes the stupidity of Dolt. Having an economist study climate change and report on its effects is precisely the person to have do it on behalf of the government. You want to have a dispassionate and non-partisan person evaluate the cause and effects that can also apply the scientific method.

But the deniers first act these days is to now say that any scientist on your side of an argument has no credibility, as his field is not exactly climate science. This is a vile and disingenuous strawman of an argument and needs to be exposed. They have no basis upon which to be supported by a consistent theory and evidence in science, so they attack all science itself. Tim Flannery is just a geologist. By that measure, we have no reason to believe Isaac Newton, a farmer who was trained as a mathematician.

But then the bastard went on. Dolt also downplayed the significance of a nuclear incident on the 200,000 evacuated, in the hundreds of those exposed to heightened radiation, some needing treatment, and the potential future risk (at the time on Sunday morning) by saying we should be worrying about the missing. How about we worry about them all, you fucking moron. How about we make a serious effort to address the probable meltdown of two nuclear reactors at about 8 effected by the quakes and tsunami while we also mobilise in the millions people to find the wounded, bury the dead and start to rebuild their lives. Andrew Bolt abused the suffering of one effected people to make his point (a lie, I remind you) about another. He is the worst of humans and should be forced to go work on the recovery and containment effort directly at the site of the nuclear plant where the hydrogen explosion took place on Sunday morning, with his wife and kids (if he has any) living in a nice camp trailer across the street.

So basically, let’s leave this idiot behind, and work into some facts about the reactors in Japan, figure out where we are at, and put together evidence for the future. How about that? Right, well the first thing we want to do is understand what we are dealing with here through some research. Then we will put some facts into context and see where to go from there.

The first thing to understand is that the reactors that have released radioactive caesium and have had to have radioactive steam vented from them (indicators of a probable meltdown) are boiling water reactors (BWR) from the 1970s. Wiki says:

“The family of nuclear reactors known as light water reactors (LWR), cooled and moderated using ordinary water, tend to be simpler and cheaper to build than other types of nuclear reactor; due to these factors, they make up the vast majority of civil nuclear reactors and naval propulsion reactors in service throughout the world as of 2009. LWRs can be subdivided into three categories – pressurized water reactors (PWRs), boiling water reactors (BWRs), and supercritical water reactors (SWRs). Various agencies of the United States Federal Government were responsible for the initial development of the PWR and BWR.”

So as not to confuse anyone, radioactive caesium (Caesium-137) has a half-life of about 30 years, decays by beta emission to barium-137, which is also radioactive (gamma ray emitter) with a half-life of 2.55 minutes. Beta emitters aren’t as big a deal as far as health goes immediately, provided you aren’t too close to a concentrated emission source, but they area chronic health problem generator (cancer) if you consume them. However, gamma radiation is real bad in an acute sense, and this is the radiation that kills people in nuclear blasts and through radiation sickness in months after one. So, once again, the risk posed is an additional cancer causing element that you might be exposed to by ingesting or inhaling radioactive particles from a burning or venting nuclear plant. We have a definite chronic health problem, and a vector by which it is getting into the environment. So, the risk is not zero here in Australia, or anywhere.

Now, how close are we to real real bad in Japan. For that, we have to go back to the engineering of the plants. We now need to know how bad the meltdown is, and whether secondary containment has been broken. I have to get a bit techy again for a moment, so bear with me. In the BWR, the nuclear reaction is used to directly produce steam to run a turbine to make electricity. The nuclear reactor runs on the fission reaction of radioactive uranium, and the control rods used in the reactor control the rate at which the uranium decay reaction occurs. Pull the control rods back – faster. Push them all the way in – very slow. Lose control of the rods, and you lose control of the reaction, and things get as hot as the sun on that little patch of earth. BWR also use a lot of circulating water to control the reaction rate and keep the temperature down while the steam is generated. Lose control of the cooling water, and you can get too hot and lose control of the control rods, and then you go down that bad chain of events again. So, plants like in Japan have double and triple duplicate systems to move cooling water around in a reactor in an emergency. They also have containment systems, with the reactor itself being contained within a 2 metre thick pre-stressed, steel-reinforced, air-tight concrete dome. This is inside a building that also serves as containment. Hydrogen that got broken down from water in the reactor in Japan during this current incident leaked into and then exploded inside the second building that we all saw on tv. You know it is a hydrogen explosion because of the fast shock wave that proceeded the debris of the building being ejected and the lack of fire afterwards.

What we now need to do is find out how the core is. If it’s a melted ball of fuel and rods that doesn’t function at all, then the cleanup may require entombment. If the core was shut down well enough that it still operates as a functioning unit, but was only seriously overheated, the cleanup may be “only” recovering it, cooling it down as far as possible, and salvaging the bits that can be reused. It all depends on the state in which the shutdown got to prior to emergency cooling water loss, how hot the core got, and how much nuclear material melted and where it was finally contained as a solid mass again. We shall see, based on the facts that emerge.

Then, at that time, we will start to debate what the root causes were that led us to this point, whether we knew we might get here before in the evaluation of this plant from 1971 over the years, and the soundness of the logic of having 53 of these facilities in Japan, right on the edge of the ring of fire in seismic terms. Certainly looking at the photos already, we can see that the nuclear plant at Fukushima took the earthquake and tsunami better than the surrounding infrastructure.

Before:
Screen shot 2011-03-14 at 10.22.00 AM

After:
Screen shot 2011-03-14 at 10.22.13 AM
The problem appears to be that while the civil infrastructure held up well, the electrics, piping and backup generation capacities were knocked out by the duel disaster. In most likelihood, the core concrete containment structure was not cracked by the earthquake. But as I said we shall see.

I hear as I upload this that there is another 3 m tsunami headed for NE Japan, and there has been another explosion at Fukushima just now, meaning we now have 2 reactors where this has occurred.

Lets hope those civil engineers got their shit very right, and the cooling water is not lost this time.

But don’t take my word for it, do some research of your own, as I am just a chemical engineer.

* – I am just going to call him Dolt for short now, since it sums him up accurately, and he doesn’t deserve a full human name in my world.

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.

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.

The Case For Nationalisation

Jun 4

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Evil Motherfuckers, Other Topics | 3 Comments

Right, so now that I have tried to add something positive to the situation in an attempt to stop the BP leak, I think it is now time to begin to examine consequences for the company itself based on what we know already. My conclusion may seem extreme to some, but I am joined already in arriving at the point I will get to by respected figures such as Robert Reich, the former Labour Secretary in the US.

First, I want to lay out what has been established from sworn testimony before the US Congress to this point with regard to the BP catastrophe. More details will come out in the multiple incident investigations that are ongoing, but there are some serious findings already, including:

1. There is evidence that the blow-out preventer (BOP):
• Hydraulic lines to control valves were known to have been leaking;
• Its shear valve was not rated as strong enough to cut all the tubular that was sent through it;
• A battery was missing from the control panel onboard the rig that powered control for a third type of cut-off valve on the BOP, a dead man valve;
• The drawings onboard the Deepwater Horizon did not match the actual system on the sea floor as it had been modified, and no updates had been provided to the rig; and finally,
• The breakaway riser didn’t, causing further damage as it tipped over.

2. In addition, the Deepwater Horizon did not have an emergency response plan that covered this type of disaster, because it got the requirement for doing an EIA waived by the Bush administration’s agency (MMS) that has been proven in court to be criminally corrupted by energy/mining lobbyists at the time.

3. There were other identified potential failings and conflicts in the emergency notification and response on the rig as the immediate disaster unfolded there. But I won’t even go into those to make my point at this time.

4. Add to the above the facts we know about the safety and environmental record of BP North America:

• In 2005, 15 people were killed and injured 170 in an explosion and fire at the Texas City Refinery. Two years later safety folks in the US (OSHA) fined BP $20 million for failing to act to correct the deficiencies cited in the investigation of the Texas City disaster. Last year, OSHA fined BP another $87 million at the Texas City refinery and their other refinery in Ohio got a fine of $3 million. Once again, BP had failed to correct known deficiencies that led to the Texas City disaster, as well as many other serious risks.

• In the past 3 years, the two refineries of BP in the USA own 97% of what OSHA classes as egregious health and safety violations, including what are known as wilful violations. Those are the ones where you know something could kill someone, but you let it them go ahead and do it anyway.

• In 2006, after attempting to hide the fact for a while, BP admitted to a 270,000-gallon crude oil spill from its Prudhoe Bay pipeline that spread over 2 acres of the Alaskan tundra. They got a $20 million fine for that one from the EPA.

Now, I work in the oil E&P industry, and before that I worked in refineries and chemical and manufacturing factories. And I have worked that whole time in the technical environmental and safety areas. So, I have an opinion on the above. BP is all about cutting costs. It’s cost savings program in Texas City rubbed up against its HSE management system and spontaneously combusted to cause that disaster. It says so right in the Baker Report on the subject. It’s cost saving maintenance program in Prudhoe Bay failed to detect and repair the leak in its pipeline there, causing that spill. There is evidence that it treats EPA and OSHA fines as a lower cost option of doing business than actually correcting its failures to protect workers and the environment. And there is evidence to suggest that it pressures it contractors to save money by skipping essential controls. Like the control tests on its cement plug that Halliburton was installing in the Macondo well that were ignored, even though they showed non-conformances in differential pressure. Like the heated argument the head of the rig (OIM) and the lead BP representative on the rig were reported to have had about the drilling program the night before the Macondo blowout.

I have always respected the opinions I have heard from Robert Reich, and he reckons that due to the above facts, that BP should be put into receivership by the US government, as if it was becoming bankrupt. He cites the similar thing that was done with failed banks and trading houses in the recent global financial crisis. But I think Robert misses the point.

I reckon BP should instead be nationalised by the US government because it has lost its license to operate. I highlight the term, because BP can have various licenses from government agencies to carry out activities, but what I mean by license to operate is the more general right given to it by society in general if it agrees to play along with the general laws, precedents and societal norms of the yanks. And I think it is time for Barack Obama to invite the head of BP, Tony Hayward, to the White House and let him know that BP had lost its license to operate anywhere in the USA, meaning:

• All BP assets operating in the territory of the USA would be immediately nationalised, and become owned by the US government;
• These assets would be sold off as soon as possible to any qualified bidder that wished to buy them in the USA;
• The US government would use the proceeds of the sale of all BP assets to clean up the damage of the oil spills, wrecked lives and wrecked livelihoods of its victims; and,
• Any remaining funds would be forwarded to BP in the UK.

This would be followed in my version of how it goes by, “Now fuck off out of my office and out of my country, Tony. You are persona non grata”.

See, while I agree with Robert Reich that this spill could kill BP through bankruptcy, I’m not certain we can rely on that, and it definitely needs killing. It needs to be told, and a message needs to be sent out to any other corporation (bank, miner, whatever) that you can lose your license to operate in a democratic society, and you have crossed the line of acceptable behaviour to all the inhabitants of the USA (including its plants and animals) far too many times.

Why we hate BP

Jun 4

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

Update on my post from yesterday is as follows. I have submitted my suggestion to BP through the process defined by them. However, they made it so difficult and bureaucratic, that I nearly gave up.

First, they wouldn’t allow anything but a US phone number in their electronic form, and with all the bells and whistles they had turned on it, it couldn’t be read by anything other than the latest version of acrobat.

Second, their form assumed I wanted to sell them something, despite being named a suggestion form. There were boxes for me to give all kinds of details on the parts or service I had, but no space for just a free form dump of the free and constructive suggestion I had.

So, I hacked their electronic form, got the email addy they could have just posted online, and now I will just sit back and “Wait for a response on your suggestion from BP, as we have received over 4000 and each will take some time to technically review”.

OK, thanks I will do that, you evil cocks