Sgt Hulka Uncut

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Archive for category Politics

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.

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.

NASA scientist embraces the Rapture?

Dec 4

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

James Hansen, a top NASA scientist who helped bring attention to the dangers of global warming more than 20 years ago, wants Copenhagen to fail.

That’s right, and from the dude who is like the godfather of climate change science.

His major complaint seems to be that the Danish plan reduces emissions over 40 years, which he says is too long, and we will be in a disaster by then. I tend to agree. However, we will also need to recover from that disaster, and having a long term cut in CO2 emissions will also be part of that solution, in real or in spirit. Let me explain.

James is saying that any cap and trade type ETS, won’t work fast enough and that a straight energy tax is what is required immediately. If I ran the show worldwide, I would agree with him, do that immediately, and stifle all debate as strong as required to maintain my control on power. And believe me, you’d have a shit fight on your hands, taking on all business that use energy worldwide, and the energy intense ones most of all. But I would do it, because I believe fundamentally that James is right, and we are either at or just past the point where we must act to stop anthropogenic climate change. However, I am not ready to go join the rapturists, and unless we find a way to reduce emissions soon, and possibly reverse feedforward loops in climate change, we might not be ok long term, like as a species.

Assuming we have not passed the point of no return with regard to overall average warming, then the major advanced economies (in terms of lower energy intensity, or $/GDP, but high overall emissions) are going to have to cap our emissions and reduce them over time. No question about it. And as they do that, industries in those countries will have to either directly reduce their emissions themselves, or get someone else to do for them, through the only flexible compliance method specifically identified in the Kyoto Agreement, an ETS. They are proven to work, use economic drivers and markets for efficiency, and can be on the whole fair and egalitarian (just as Wall Street can be).

So I hope Copenhagen succeeds, although I don’t like the track record of the politicians anymore than James does. Copenhagen would be a real coup if we could also get some countries to sign up to firm commitments on the real issue, so we can quit worrying about how much CO2 we put out in total.

See, while the spirit of the long-term solution will retain emissions reduction, the functional design of it should be an energy intensity tax (or a mix of energy intensity limits for equipment, facilities, industries, etc.), much like vehicle efficiency standards, which improved the fleet so much in the USA beginning in 1978. Pity they didn’t keep that up. So, what we really need long term is for everyone in the advanced and the developing world to sign up to energy intensity targets. Otherwise they will continue to install more high-CO2 emitting, low energy efficiency crap, like they are doing now. It may surprise you to know that coal fired electricity production not only has the largest installed base (50% of production) but that it is also the fastest growing rate of new plants that are being installed (primarily in China, Russia, India). So, as James is saying, we better get cracking on that, or we will also be in need of a zombie plan even if the big emitters now all achieve fantastic reductions in CO2 emissions.

So what after CPRS?

Dec 2

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

Before a brief note on the pending death of the emissions trading system (ETS) in the Australian Senate, and the implications of that as well as the change in leadership of the opposition in Australia, I first want to provide an update on the climate change fraud post. It is noted today that the head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia has stepped down over the issue of the leaked emails. Good, but let’s hope the authorities continue to pursue any issue of lawbreaking as a result of that affair to the full extent of the law. For those on my side, it does not help our scientific case to take action if we harbour liars, cheats or those who encourage others to such behaviour. This is a particularly pertinent point when debate needs to begin again now toward another election in Australia that will depend largely on winning an argument in the public sphere with a Coalition that is now led by its vocal minority which believes that anthropogenic climate change does not exist.

Despite her hard work, I see the failure to pass a CPRS largely as a result of the failure by the Minister For Climate Change (Penny Wong) in being able to advocate and articulate the issue to the public at large, who would then pressure their elected representatives to take action on the issue, followed by the Greens failure in making the perfect the enemy of the good, as I have discussed in detail previously.

I also see it as a failure on the part of people like me, who have taken the effort over the last 15 years to understand the issue of anthropogenic climate change, decide a position on it, and know some of the solutions, but have failed to lobby hard enough at every opportunity to achieve the goal. This record of my thoughts was begun recently as one means to try to address that failure, in an educational manner. So, I encourage those on any side of the issue to ask me any specific questions and debate me on the merits of your arguments and solutions (if you see a problem).

While we have the science and popular opinion (hearts) on our side, what we need to begin effective action is the minds of the population. We need to detail specifically what an ETS or a simplified carbon tax will cost, and who will pay for it. Because this change isn’t free, and by choice or by coercion, eventually we are going to have to require everyone, as individuals or through their companies, to pay up if we are to address anthropogenic climate change. It is a challenge on the scale of the largest human society has faced, but one I am convinced we could meet, if we so choose. It reminds me of the words of John F Kennedy in 1962.

“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Almost 50 years later, there are hopefully enough of us left to look past our own short term self interest and do something hard.

Carving Up the Cap

Nov 26

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

The discussions are shaping up for Copenhagen, as more countries like the US now are floating actual proposals for cutting their emissions, while other countries like China seem to want to refuse to do anything until those that got us to this point commit to paying their fair share. The arguments seem to be shaping up along these lines: Developing countries want the developed countries to “pay” for the reductions required in CO2 by drastically reducing their emissions from a baseline, as they have been the ones that have benefited from the failure to control emissions in the past. The developed countries are more worried about the rates of increase in CO2 emissions from the developing countries, partly because if the developed nations were to agree to reduce their emissions greatly, those emissions reductions would simply be “eaten up” in a few years by growing emissions from the developed world. The answer to getting any sort of binding agreements in Copenhagen (or later) seems to be in finding the metric to balance out both the developed world and the developing world in doing both.

If we are going to get to where we think we need to go, we need to do something along the lines of limiting average temperature rise to 2C, which translates into something like limiting CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to about 350 parts per million by volume (ppmv). To achieve this balance is going to mean a cap of emissions worldwide, which will be reduced over time to get where we need to go. It is not as simple as just dividing up the contributions to this cap by what contributions are now, which means developed economies get more since they started making the emissions first. We also can’t just divvy up the contributions to the emissions cap on a per capita basis, since that would mean that developed nations would have to reduce their emissions (and lifestyles) to those equivalent to the developing countries. But a balance can be struck, and possibly in ways that may not drive us all into economic ruin.

The US, most of Europe, Japan, Australia and other developed countries should be willing to make very challenging cuts to their 1990 base emissions, and in exchange India, China and the rest of the developing world should be willing to accept limits in their rates of emissions increases, or a limit in their per capita emissions which is lower than that in the developed world. Negotiations should focus on the definitions of developed/developing, and the size of cuts and per capita limits required worldwide to reach the goal. Negotiations can start with the voluntary unilateral cuts and commitments to go farther if others do their bit, as Australia has proposed to do. This is why I have advocated having our CPRS completed before the Copenhagen meeting.

If an international agreement is reached, we can then get on with achieving it, and despite the costs, it won’t have to ruin economies worldwide. I will post in the near future on why I don’t believe the costs will be significant in the overall scheme of things, even if the miniscule chance of the overwhelming scientific opionion proves to be incorrect!

Autopsy of Failure

Nov 24

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Climate Change, Good Ideas, Politics | 4 Comments

[Reprinted from Oct 2009]

Now on to this month’s rant, which might be subtitled “autopsy of failure”. I want to examine the failure of Labor, for basically being themselves in arriving at their current position on climate change legislation, as well as moving it forward to a conclusion. But first, I must return to an earlier target, the Greens, for their act of taking jobs they were either completely unqualified for, or that they never intended to carry out the responsibilities of in the first place, and thereby being frauds.

It all stems from a brief summary of what would be the Greens amendments to the CPRS (as provided by the Environment Manager) of about a week ago:

  • A 40% cut to Aust’s GHG emissions on 1990 base by 2020;
  • A 100% renewable energy target and national gross-feed-in tariff;
  • Enshrined in Aust law a commitment to stabilise global emissions at an atmospheric concentration of 350 parts per million;
  • An emissions trading scheme with no price cap, full permit auctioning, no five-year warnings for business on emissions caps, voluntary offsets included in the caps, agriculture excluded and two yearly reviews;
  • Agriculture to be dealt with under a “green carbon” sequestration plan that would end all clearing of native forests;
  • Compensation for emission-intensive industries based only on their trade exposure, as determined by the Productivity Commission;
  • The axing of fringe benefits tax on inefficient cars and fuel tax credits for mining and forestry; and
  • Energy efficiency upgrades in all Aust homes and businesses.

Now, here’s a shocker. After reading through all the amendments above and having a bit of a think about them all, I could agree to all IN FULL. Even the couple that I find a bit fluffy and more populist than substantive. They are not the same sort of impractical aspirational rubbish we normally get from the greens. Had all of these been available and on the table back in August when the government was telling the Coalition to put up or shut up (and possibly face an early election), the Greens should have been out there with a simple summary of the above and been campaigning on the merits of their position then, rather than just bitching and whining about the target levels back in August, and then bitching and whining about how Labor will do a deal with the Coalition last week. Essentially, they are now whining about the fact that because they failed to follow the process for making amendments, they are not responsible for the fact that their really super ideas are not going to be in the final legislation, and some deal between Labor and the Coalition (possibly, or possibly not including the Devil) will shut them out of the process.

See, the thing is, that laws don’t get passed by some snapperhead having a bright idea in the shower in the morning that he jots down on a recycled serviette over a bran toast and green tea, and then bicycling into the house or senate and saying to his colleagues, “Hey guys, I have this CPRS thing sorted”, after which they have a quick read, all applaud his brilliance and then have the thing all passed through both houses that afternoon before heading out to volunteer at the local animal shelter. The fact is, REAL legislation is passed with lots of work that involves arm twisting, sharp elbows and lining up alliances quite early, and most importantly through a pre-set PROCESS that must be followed. Liberals aren’t allowed to offer vocal “NOs” as a documented set of amendments to legislation, and if the Greens wanted Labor to do a deal with them to do some real good for the environment and sell Australia’s credentials as a green leader in the world, the time to do that passed by in July or August.

It’s a real pity that the good ideas of the Greens will not be included in the CPRS that will eventuate from the negotiations on its finalisation, but it will be their intransigence and failure to follow the process of adopting new legislation that will be at fault. They were the ones that made the “perfect” the enemy of the “good” initially. They failed to participate in the process, leaving the field of play to a competition between an overly pragmatic idea with too many giveaways, and no idea at all. The only good news resulting from the way things have played out in Australia with respect to the CPRS is the potentially looming split between the Coalition on the issue, or perhaps even a split between the Nationals, the Liberals and Liberal Climate Change Deniers.

The Greens should have been inside the tent with Labor, fighting out the points of facts and fairness on the CPRS along with those in business who are getting too much of their way. But unfortunately, they have excluded themselves, are irrelevant to something that should have been their core, and possibly are doomed to the same fate as the Democrats before them.