Sgt Hulka Uncut

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Archive for category International

Getting the word out there

Apr 5

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

The one minute introduction to Synaptor is now available here

My company is a part owner of Synaptor, and we supplied the technical HSE backing to the IP in its products.

If you want to try the App on your iPhone or iPad it is a free download on the iTunes store. Also Android “soon” apparently. I would be appreciative of any feedback you have on the theory or application of the tool, or (as it turns out) your particular use for the tool beyond its original intention. A consultant in QLD is using it to keep a “live” hazard register on multiple sites that change every few months. My office manager keeps our whole hazards and effects register on it. I want to see some environmental ngo use it to make observations to keep tabs on big oil or big banks somewhere in the world.

But what it really does is lead you through an excellent HSE observation, if you need help. But of course a useful observation is really based on the conversation rather than a technical argument. And the truth is, lots of people don’t have a good technique (or recognise one they do have) and need to learn how to identify what works and what doesn’t. We will have a training course streaming through another App that is coming soon that will handle training records and competency matrix related tasks, as well as deliver the training content (if you don’t want to keep any records) for free. We intend to keep building tools to assist with the implementation of ISO compliant HSE Management systems and deliver them for free, or next to nothing, until we take over the world apparently. But I don’t lead that company.

I keep the fires on in the boring old HSE consulting business to make sure we don’t starve before that little startup goes.

Transplant is likely a misnomer

Mar 26

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

I understand that Dick Cheney’s operation has opened up the debate about whether he got special treatment or moved up the donors list.

I can tell you that while he may have used influence to get the kids heart (probably with lots of his blood while you are there), he certainly deserved it more than most on the list because he didn’t have one to begin with.

The Dogs of War

Mar 13

Posted by Sgt Hulka in International | Comments off

I didn’t comment on these instances individually, but based on the latest one, I feel compelled to. Marines pissing on their kills, burning Korans out of negligence, and now a killing spree by a US Army sergeant all serve to reinforce a point I have made verbally over a number of years, but now will put into writing: It is a large mistake to use a military force to serve as “peacekeepers” or policemen in the role they have been forced into by NATO and other Commonwealth forces in the past 20 years.

Whether or not we have a role in the next 2 years (or 20) in Afganistan is a separate issue, but there is no legitimate role for the military there, even the military police with some training in the area of how a civilian police force is meant to work. Having spent time in the US Army myself (also as a military policeman), I have great respect for what the troops can do, and I am proud of their work as a military force, despite the occasional situations which are appalling, or even those that seem appalling if you are not in the field with them.

See, most of the people doing the work in the military are pretty young, typically in their early 20s. They are very highly trained in their roles (all of which are related to warfare) and each and every one of them is trained in basic combat arms, and (hopefully) conditioned well to do their job in a time of warfare. But primarily, they are young, trained to kill efficiently and controlled more by their hormones than their wisdom. And while we may want to have “surgical” airstrikes, precision special ops and excellent intelligence that allows us to avoid all civilian deaths, the truth is, that isn’t what is going to happen in practice, nor is it really planned for by the bulk of the forces. War is still primarily about killing your enemies and taking and occupying their land until the shooting stops from their side, and when the shooting starts, every battle is about yourself and your comrades closest to you. Based on this, the circumstances are so absurd and out of the ordinary from normal experience that we honestly should expect situations to match.

That doesn’t mean that we should not attempt to avoid war crimes, or that we should cover them up when they occur. I would council in every way I thought effective all troops that reported to me to follow the rules of war and would support full prosecution and punishment of those guilty of crimes during wartime. But I would not to expect them to not occur, especially when the troops are exposed to years of stressful situations, in an environment where they seemingly have no friends, and atrocities (from their perspective) are committed upon them. Honestly, try to put yourself in the situation of the troops in Afganistan, or even Iraq. The use of roadside bombs (IEDs) and suicide bombers on what are essentially sitting targets is a significant part of the modus operandi of the opposition in these wars. I don’t condone it, but I certainly understand how these situations happen.

Every situation is different, and there isn’t enough information available to fully judge this latest occurrence, but each time a new atrocity occurs, I find myself first thinking these days that we have to get our boys the fuck out of there. They cannot do enough man-days of good to overcome the bad (and the bad that will be done in a PR and political sense) that can be done by one guy with a gun, regardless of how he got there.

An honest discussion on tax

Apr 19

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

Tax, as it is said, is the price we pay for civilisation. So as we begin the shouting, gnashing of teeth and get deluged with millions of dollars in advertising over whether a carbon tax here in Australia is going to destroy our economy or not, it would be nice to have an honest conversation for a change. I found a little bit of that honesty when I was reading Paul Krugman again the other day, between the lines of the point he was trying to make.

The graph in the Professor’s post shows overall government revenues as a percent of GDP for a number of countries, as below:
Screen shot 2011-04-19 at 3.21.49 PM
The key point that he was trying to make is what a low-tax country the USA is, in comparison to all the current demonising of all government and taxes that the right is trying to do there again. But the point it made to me is not the red bar for the USA, but the one below it. See, the truth is that Australia, even with our single-payer health system, uniform funding for schools out of general revenue (not property tax), and generally more social welfare than in the USA, actually do it all for less money than the USA on a normalised basis. Now how does that work?

Well, I haven’t finished my research yet, but I have a big feeling that the first big difference has to be that we don’t lie to ourselves as much. See, Americans have a great constitution, and a bill of rights, and pretty universal voting rights. But they got all those things long ago and haven’t really used them much since, that I think they have become complacent and still believe they have a functioning democracy. The truth is, the political system and public discourse through media in the US are so dominated by moneyed interests, that they virtually never have an honest conversation about serious issues like the role of government and what it costs (tax). Ever since I remember first having a political discussion in relation to the presidential primary between Bush I and Reagan, I have heard continually in virtually every discussion about the issue the fake truism that the US is taxed too highly. The discussion is pretty much always handled very simplistically and centres around rates. And it is easy to swing opinion to the side of the fake truism with the majority of people who draw a paycheck from an employer. They understand it: take your gross salary, multiply it by the rate and thats the tax the government gets from you. But what they don’t work through is the way most companies, and wealthy people do their tax with deductions, special tax subsidies, losses that can be carried forward and the different treatment of earned and unearned income. When you factor those things in that make up a huge portion of the US tax code, the result are absurdities such as those below as compiled by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT):
bernie-sanders-corporate-tax-4001
See, only suckers really pay the full 30% rate for corporations. The same is true for individuals paying tax, which is why the US can end up collecting so little revenue as a portion of GDP.

So, when I hear yesterday here in Australia that the government is now at 31% support, and that 60% of people now oppose a carbon tax, I wonder if we in Australia are also now buying into the sort of lies that have worked their “magic” in the USA. The truth is, we are also a very low tax country. The truth is that the carbon tax is going to have very little impact on the economy in Australia, and will also be made more fair to lower income households through the compensation already announced. We will even then still be able to afford to fund good things, and provide some relief to companies that are energy intensive and exposed to international trade.

And even though I generally support unions, if the unions here in Australia require that not one job be lost in order to address climate change, then its time for them to get honest with themselves as well. The truth is jobs digging up and burning the magic dirt have to go, and it won’t be a bad thing unless your only goal is to maintain the status quo.

At some point everyone needs to ask themselves, “What is my civilisation worth?”.

OK, I am starting to have some questions of my own

Mar 17

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Economics, Good Ideas, International, Other Topics, Science | Comments off

No news may be good news for a bit, but after a while if there is no news (information) you start to wonder if people are keeping bad things from you. Certainly that is what the Japanese people are expressing on TV and with their feet as they start to proactively evacuate totally. TEPCO does not have a great record about being open and forthright in it communications about incidents. The ominous sign is the still the evacuation of the plants, with only 50 staff remaining, where 1000 once worked, and perhaps this is why the people in Tokyo who can are voting with their feet.

Yesterday, US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu (a real smart guy with tons of credibility) told Congress: “If workers have to be permanently evacuated from the site it is unclear if the damage can be effectively contained.” Unfortunately, that is true. I know that if I was managing an emergency situation at an industrial facility during a persistent fire and chemical spill, I would need a lot more than 50 guys to regain control of the situation.

So, significant questions need to be directly asked by journalists now. The first has got to be cooling. What precisely are they doing with the cores of these three reactors? Do all three have a continuous flow of water, what is the temperature down to at present, and are they ensuring capacity and supply of coolant in redundant forms yet on each reactor. Is #4 at cold shutdown? The spent fuel rods in #4 reactor building have also clearly lost their cooling bath, as fires re-ignite there daily, and steam is almost always coming out of the building. How much and how long were these spent fuel rods dry, what is their temperature at present, and are we supplying coolant flow to them yet?

Clearly, reactors that have triple redundant cooling systems that can lose pumping and liquid supply lines at every line of defence during earthquakes and the resulting tsunamis have got to go. I mean if they can build an earthquake proof container for a little patch of sun on earth, then surely we can build water-proof containment systems for our backup pumps, earthquake-proof piping as much as possible (segmenting in solid sections?, flexible connections?) and provide quick reconnection facilities on standby for re-establishing cooling, monitoring, and electrical and mechanical control?

And if we can’t make these plants catastrophe proof, then we can’t build more. Let’s completely convert over to electricity supply bridging only with gas and fuel we can grow (but not eat) on the way to solar, wind, wave, geothermal (I mean fuck, the world ain’t running out of that on the ring of fire) as fast as possible, regardless of the cost. And I don’t say that lightly. I don’t mean regardless of the cost, so let’s let the big corporations rip off the whole program of conversion over to renewables, and control the energy game at the end of the transition.

I mean that whatever it costs to convert over to renewables on a macroeconomic scale, let’s pay it, and the sooner the better. You need research money to finish up the conversion of a useful scientific invention into a renewable power source at the home or industrial level? You got it. You need capital to take your electric plant off coal and onto gas? Here’s a low interest loan. Are you a massive power user (steel) that if given enough capital at low cost could become a power producer, and make your business carbon-proof from dirty international competition? I’ve got some cash for you too. However, each of you had better spend the money on what you said you will, and stay out of corruption and theft with my money, because I will be watching. In fact, your project accountant will actually be employed by me. Work for you, take all instructions from you, but I pay the salary, and get monthly reports form him/her. That’s all the oversight I need.

But there is a decision to be made, and it is as old as democracy itself. What is government’s role? Because only government’s (and maybe Warren Buffett) have the money and credit to accomplish a massive conversion to renewables. If you don’t want to do that, by doing the kind of things I outline above, then I guess we have to head back to find out if there is anything more I can do to make the nuclear plants safe from incident, and the waste safe for eternity.

And finally, I have a long-term question. As time goes on, I am wondering if there is no way to catalyse chemically a nuclear reaction, and is there such a thing as an intrinsically safe nuclear reactor?

Update on yesterday

Mar 15

Posted by Sgt Hulka in International, Other Topics, Science | Comments off

As this drama still plays out in Japan, I have continued to do research on the subject, and the information available from actual experts supports the facts presented by me yesterday. The IAEA provides more support for what I provided.

That the nuclear incident is still occurring, and not abating as yet also supports my evaluation on what a complete loser Dolt is.

The final update I want to make is that it is highly inappropriate to compare this incident to the incident at Chernobyl. They are completely different reactor designs, have completely different containment systems and were managed completely differently. So it will be very seldom when a comparison to Chernobyl will be appropriate to the situation in Japan.

In the washup of all this, we may decide to reduce or eliminate the use of nuclear power worldwide. But let’s do it on a reasoned evaluation of the facts, and not emotionally.

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.

I bet the Vatican runs on coal

Apr 15

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

The cost of producing power by burning coal is currently the cheapest of any fuel if you look strictly at material cost per heat unit.

But unfortunately, it needs to be examined more holistically, based on recent evidence in combination with my previous research. Currently, coal burners for power production are not required to internalise the costs of things such as:

HSE Performance and possible criminal prosecution
Our Australian coal companies have nothing to do with the recent coal mining disaster in the USA. But keep in mind that our coal producers have to compete with the likes of Massey Energy Company, and we know they all compete on keeping “operating” costs low. In the case of Massey, the deaths of 29 workers in early April were likely the result of the cost containment efforts of Massey in the areas of installing necessary HSE controls and even in paying fines in full and on time. The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration has issued more than $900,000 in fines for the Upper Big Branch mine in the past year, according to federal data compiled by Bloomberg News. Massey is appealing more than $250,000 of the largest fines, among them one in January for ventilation systems that are supposed to prevent the buildup of methane gas and coal dust that can cause explosions, like the one in the current incident. Massey has a history of disputing U.S. findings of safety violations at its mines, including one in Virginia in where 25 people were killed in 1970, records show. Of $1.77 million in safety-related fines that the Mine Safety and Health Administration lodged against the Upper Big Branch mine since 2006, Massey has paid $364,886, or 20 percent, according to agency data.

Note that someone does pay theses cost avoided by Massey at present however, the government and families of those killed.

Great Barrier Reef grounding
This month in Australia, we also have another unintended impact of the coal sales, with the grounding of the coal ship, Shen Neng 1. Whatever the outcome of the court case, the evidence this far is damning. This boat was off course in a no-go zone, and had no responsible pilot on board to guide it on a correct path through a part of one of the great wonders of the world. In the period it was stuck and hung up on the reef, dragging in the current, then anchored and moving in the current on the reef until it could be refloated. It spilled only a few tons of its 900 tons of oil on board, but it also left behind a large amount of its anti-fouling paint on the reef as it went. And anti fouling paint is one of nature’s quiet killers. I won’t go into great detail, but please look into these yourself through your favourite scientific search engine. This paint contains chemicals that can kill instantly, and are also what are called endocrine disruptors when exposed to chronically, so they also leave behind negative mutations.

Financial damages include all emergency response costs, damage protection and clean-up costs, as well as log-term monitoring and repair of environmental damage from the direct impacts of the ship, and the poisons it left behind. Coal traffic out of the Rockhampton loader that this ship departed from are projected to increase 67% this year, all of which should be directed by competent pilots from AMSA, in my opinion.

I wonder if the cost of coal fully incorporates these types of charges, as well as the cost of the court case itself, as I don’t see wind or solar generators ever being in a similar circumstance, product liability-wise.

Health issues in the Hunter Valley
Then, as of Monday, the drumbeat continued, as the ABC’s Four Corners program began an examination of the health effects of the open cut coal mining in the Hunter Valley. The program detailed a number of acute and chronic cases of asthma and related respiratory ailments suffered by residents in and around Singleton, as well as possibly identifying a cancer cluster. But we will know more about that as the government completes a study, that it refused to do until the day after the Four Corners story broke. Up until now, it has been one GP doing a study on his own.

Whether a full study reveals an acute or chronic health problem from the mining activity or not, who pays? The government and communities currently assume all health costs, as far as I can see.

Energy efficiency and greenhouse implications
The very important issues above are possibly reasons alone for discontinuing the burning of the magic dirt from making electricity. But then let’s not forget last week’s “dead” issues, energy efficiency and greenhouse emissions. The public may be tired of hearing about it and want to move on, but the facts remain. Burning coal for fuel is the most inefficient means of making power with respect to waste emissions and thermodynamic power losses.

Just because we can dig it out of the ground for what appears near to free, doesn’t mean it is. If you also agree that the costs of doing the changeover from all or part of our coal burning is not as expensive as predicted by doomsayers, then the arguments for not getting off coal ourselves, and slapping a great big carbon excise tax on any that we do sell overseas, start to make a lot of sense. Just as big rich countries have the right to tie their financial aid to poor countries efforts to adopt climate change goals, so should we cause heavy users of our coal to internalise the full costs of using the product in order to advance their economies.

Why the yanks are unreliable partners on climate change

Mar 9

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

If you want a good reason why Australia should and must think for ourselves and act for ourselves on climate change, look no further than a current court ruling from America:

“Nine judges of the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will rehear a climate change nuisance case bought by Hurricane Katrina victims”

Now don’t get me wrong, I have sympathy for the plaintiffs, a large group of Mississippi residents, many of whom are likely lower middle class. They probably lots most of what they physically owned in Katrina, and the preparation and response to that natural disaster could have been far better, I think most reasonable people could agree. But unless the court is actually taking the case in order to set a precedent so that later cases can be won on their merits, I don’t see why they would rehear the arguments on this. This is because the plaintiffs have argued that emissions from the operations of several energy and chemical companies have contributed to global warming, causing a rise in sea levels and adding to Hurricane Katrina’s ferocity.

The merits of the argument, while seemingly logical, do not take into account the chaos generated by the global warming phenomenon, and so tying the emissions of any one company directly to any specific hurricane, or its path or ferocity, is not logical. You cannot make extremely specific predictions (or tie causality) to individual weather events based on general input of CO2. Who is to say who’s CO2 emissions pushed the cycle of hurricane ferocity or frequency to a worse position, or into a positive feedback loop? No one can, at this point. General emissions of CO2 drive average temperature rises in the atmosphere and higher moisture content in the air, and higher ocean levels that in some areas can exacerbate local weather events. But problems (like hurricanes) don’t manifest themselves as averages, they come as extremes, and they come as chaos. No one can reliably predict the occurrence of, or path of a hurricane or tornado, any more than we can predict an earthquake.

Second, the issue of Katrina’s ferocity is of issue. The claim is that the higher sea levels gave support to Katrina’s ferocity leading to the damages sustained, because at the end of the story, that’s where they want to go, right? The money. They (and their litigators) want to make a whole bunch of money out of this disaster, and being able to establish that the severity of damage is worse than otherwise would have been is key to their argument. Katrina was a Category 3 when it made landfall in Louisiana, making it the 6th strongest hurricane in the Atlantic history. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but only in the top 20% of recorded storms. So, making the case that it was particularly ferocious is a bit tough. And while tying the worst of the damage to the storm surge has some validity, one could argue that the particular path had as much to do with the severity of the storm surge as sea level rise.

But all of this is just the detail. The real problem to me seems to be the fact that these people have to attempt to get through expensive tort what they should be getting through reasonable regulation. And virtually any regulation seems to be anathema to the Americans. Unless we in Australia, and the rest of the world, want to become a place where suing someone is the means by which we primarily gain social justice, then we should proceed to get ourselves in order with respect to climate change legislation, so that in addition to the savings on energy efficiency alone, we can also say that we aren’t the major source of the problem, and we won’t be a good target to sue.