Sgt Hulka Uncut

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Archive for category Good Ideas

Hulka’s tips for public speaking

Jun 11

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

It’s easy to lose a month. Reading what others write and working (or in my case getting paid for writing) sometimes makes it easy to not post anything for a while. I also don’t have much of anything particular to report of interest. But I did get to do one thing fun.

On the 23rd of May I went to the “launch” of the Carbon Neutral program out here in Western Australia. Low Carbon Australia Ltd. (LCA) sponsored a drinks and canapes session in conjunction with an HVAC conference to familiarise organisations out here in the west with their gig. Part of the program was presenting An Mea with our “brick” which is a book sized lucite (that’s polymethyl methacrylate for the chemistry nerds) reproduction of our certification under the National Carbon Offset Program which is administered by LCA. The management of my company decided while I was out of the office the previous week that I would receive the brick on our behalf. I suspected that this was because they read the program and knew that there would be virtually no chance of me screwing up anything or generating some public relations disaster during the time it took me to take possession of the item and stand still for a photo op with the former Federal Environment Minister, Robert Hill. Our reputation was nearly undone by this assumption.

The first thing about these things that you want to know is this. If you ever have to go receive an award and are pretty sure you don’t have to say anything at the event, I highly recommend downing 4 free beers or cocktails in the hour before you are on. That way, you will be in that loose frame of mind somewhere on the scale between ‘I am charismatic’ and ‘I am a genius’, and will therefore be able to effortlessly deal with minor changes to the program. Changes like, for instance, the difference between:

• “Just take the brick, say thank you, and don’t smear the front of it with fingerprints, thereby ruining the photograph”; and,
• Robert Hill saying as he hands you the brick after completely smearing the front up with fingerprints, “Now, you can say a few words”.

Now, stop frame in this little vignette I am painting for you here and imagine the looks on both of the senior management team from my company in the crowd as I gathered my thoughts for a couple minutes worth of impromptu. “Oh fuck” would probably sum it up nicely. Fortunately, being properly medicated and having paid a small amount of attention to Mr. Hill’s previous comments left me well prepared with what to say immediately. I eased the crowd into the Hulka show with 30 seconds of correcting the factual record, nailed them with a joke about the initial carbon price (which will be $23.50 for those of you keeping book), and then gave them about a minute of guerilla marketing on our journey to carbon neutrality and how easy it is before getting off. My last key to public speaking is this: When you first pause to think, “What shall I say next?”, call it a day right then.

Later on, I had a chance to worry the boys again as they saw me and Minister Hill (who by then was just Bob to me) conversing directly over another cold beer (I did say it was an open bar, right?). I started my conversation with Bob by saying “Apparently you didn’t get the memo?” To his perplexed look I provided the explanation that I was given strict instructions from the LCA photographer just before going up to hold the brick by the edges (see photo) so as not ruin the photo, but when I got up there I saw he was pawing the thing like truckosaurus. He laughed but didn’t ask me what I meant. I think Bob doesn’t get much Archer where he hangs out. Pity him.

Tester and Baucus

Apr 7

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

I got a letter from a US Senator and started a conversation with his staff today. Not my Senator of course, as that would technically speaking be the either of the two Senators mentioned in the title. But he is a solid guy with good principles he believes in, so always respond to him. My guys never seem to change their behaviour or address my specific concerns as a result my correspondence with them, so I will let loose on them here. Anyway, the Senator’s staff (because, you know, you are never really talking to a Senator unless you can touch them) wanted to know my thoughts on how do we bring down the deficit, based on his suggestions:

• End the exclusive tax breaks available only to millionaires and billionaires.
• End the subsidies for the highly-profitable oil and gas industries.
• Bring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a responsible end.
• Get our economy back on track – by investing in education and clean energy technology, boosting manufacturing, and keeping families in their homes by fixing the broken housing market.

I responded to him in the positive, as his suggestions are all positive. A refreshing change. And I provided some positive suggestions of my own.

On taxes and corporate subsidies, let’s get back to capitalism and free-market taxation systems. A good business does not need the government to make it, or keep it healthy. So shame on you Exxon, GE, Bank of America, etc., etc., etc. for paying no tax. Businesses are inherently good things, a collection of people (primarily) and other resources for a common good well beyond themselves that make an economic system function. So where those entities are participating in the economic system providing stuff and requiring labour, fantastic. In fact, as entities, they should pay a lower tax rate than a human being. But not no tax at all. So the USA needs to have a serious discussion at some point about addressing ALL tax loopholes that are used by major corporations of ALL types to minimise their tax in a way that smells suspiciously like avoidance.

Then my main point was about the defence budget. The USA will never seriously deal with the national debt if it maintains a military budget that is larger than all other militaries combined. Even at half of the current spend it would still leave a US military that would still be larger than all non-NATO countries. Why the paranoia in the USA about security? Most the yanks I know are the most secure and free people I know on the earth today. Does the USA honestly need to maintain a military that can take on NATO after defeating its real enemies?

Honestly, you can live your principles and keep yourself a lot safer a lot cheaper than maintaining a huge military, and the associated industrial complex to support and feed off of it.

Now you are never going to get a reduction of half, so why not go for something reasonable, like 40%. I expect that a serious discussion/fight over the subject could result in something like a reduction of 25% in the short term, with a ramp down to whatever is reasonable in the future (what, 50% at all times not going to make you feel good enough to sleep at night?). That is still a win as there will be a cut of $225 billion (all military, but not including the black ops budget). How about that for a debt and corresponding interest payment reduction? See, that’s what Americans mean when they tell you they want the government to treat its budget like a family budget. Reduce debt and interest when you can responsibly. But, perhaps it wouldn’t be responsible in the short term to use all that savings to pay off debt today. Perhaps there are some things the USA should move to spend money on in the Senator’s last point that may need to take priority over debt reduction. That $225 billion is supporting a lot of jobs, and the USA will need to shift, retrain and retire a lot of people. Or leave them to their own devices as you tell them the war factories are closing, but that is also a topic for later discussion.

When seriously discussing other cuts, focus the rest of your priorities on the elimination of fraud, waste, redundancy and inefficiency, but realise the diminishing returns of finding these opportunities. Start from the basis that people are generally honest, and companies are by definition amoral.

And for fuck sake don’t go into those serious discussions and offer everything your adversaries want in negotiation straight away, ala the President. Honestly, I don’t know what he is thinking sometimes, and I don’t believe when he has used this tactic previously that it fits into any long term strategy he has to lose tactically but win strategically. If it did, we would be talking about the simple details of a single payer health care system instead of also talking about eliminating Medicare and Medicaid in the USA. You have to go into these fights strongly defending a position based on your principles and fight it out hard. I am much more interested in times such as these to support those that fight the good fight to the end, even if they lose.

Aren’t you?

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?

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.

A bit of balance, please

Mar 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Facts about the carbon tax

Mar 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have a winner!

Mar 1

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

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

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

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?

This year’s idea

Jan 6

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

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

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

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

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

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