Sgt Hulka Uncut

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Archive for category Good Ideas

What is a dynamic plug?

Jun 3

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

I have been wanting to post on the BP catastrophe for some time, but had to clear the decks of work first.

What I am going to start with is a proposal for a fix. I reckon if the US government can get a movie director in for ideas on how to plug the well in the short term, perhaps they could use a suggestion from an engineer. I am not sure my fix will work, but I think it has a chance. In another post, I will deal with fixing the bigger issue with BP itself.

OK, so to start, I would try to stop the flow with what I will call a dynamic plug, a valve that will only activate after being inserted deep inside the well, and activated by a column of drilling mud at plug flow (or in a flow regime with a sufficiently high Reynolds number that it the velocity in the cross sectional flow is uniform, literally like a cylindrical plug of liquid coming down the tube)

To build the dynamic plug, I would start with something they have already tried somewhat successfully, the siphon tube. Before they tried the top kill, they stuck a flexible tube down the well bore and were sucking out an amount of the oil flow to pump to the surface. I would do that again, but this time I would attach to the tube a couple of expandable cones to the shaft of the tube, about a metre back from the end of it. It would look like this:
plug collapsed
The front expandable positioning (EP) cone would be flow through mesh, or just a cage that would position the siphon tube in the centre of the well casing. I would expand this when I was ready to make the attempt, after starting to pump mud down the hole, but before the mud reached the dynamic plug assembly, like this:
positioner open
Then, just as the plug flow of mud reached the dynamic plug, the rear expandable cone would be released from its closed position and would snap into place to seal the well and the dense mud flow behind it would hold the well closed until the well could be permanently plugged with cement above the dynamic plug. A tube with an inflatable end (like used in an angioplasty) might also work.
plug open
The key is that the plug it self doesn’t have to be strong enough to stop the flow of oil, but instead ust form the seal for the mass of mud that will hold it in place.

I would insert the tube down the well head through the blow-out preventer (BOP) and far enough into the well that I could pump mud down behind the siphon tube at a fast enough rate that the mud would reach plug flow, and also far enough down the well that the mass of mud behind the dynamic plug would be able to hold in the pressure of the reservoir:
insertion

[Bloom Box], Things which are probably bullshit . . .

Mar 2

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Economics, Good Ideas, Other Topics, Snake Oil | Comments off

. . . as our friends at Hungry Beast say. But hey, nobody does a launch of an 18 year old technology like the yanks. A former NASA scientist (to make it sound more sexy, no doubt) has brought us the trendily named Bloom Box, claiming it to be the big thing after ten years of development. Ah, unfortunately, not.

Oh, he has got a planar design, solid oxide fuel cell in those fridge size boxes, to be sure. The problem is, they aren’t new, having been first begun commercialisation in 1992 by companies such as Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited here in Australia, or UTC in America. These companies actually sell now what this bloke is saying you can have soon for $800k and hopefully for $3000 in a few years. Hell, the Australian company had their piece of kit doing demo work on top of the old office I had in the technology park back in 2000.

I don’t know exactly what CFCL sells their piece of kit at, and to my knowledge they are still only selling them to small companies, with a consumer product to be available “sometime in 2010”. My guess is that CFCL would probably offer their unit at a cost a bit less than what Bloom is saying for a similar sized application for small businesses. The big difference is that if you call CFCL or UTC, they actually have something to install when they take your money.

In my opinion, Bloom’s entrepreneur is most likely a hype merchant so insignificant I won’t even look up his name. My suspicions were raised when I first heard his release where he says he has some “proprietary software” that is the key to his Bloom Box. Uh huh, and mine has magic beans.

According to reputable news agencies on science and technology (National Geographic News), based on the information the company has made public, the Bloom Box technology is not revolutionary. They quote Friedrich Prinz, a fuel cell expert at Stanford University, the design of the Bloom Box appears to be fairly standard and that there was nothing obviously revolutionary about it. “They didn’t reveal any new physics or any new principles, but I don’t think they need to do that,” he said.

Note the end of the professor’s statement. What he means by “they don’t need to do that” is that solid oxide fuel cell technology is exciting and very interesting. It’s essentially “burning” something, but not in the physical sense, more in the chemical sense, through a reactor that can be coated onto thin plates. It’s basically a chemical engineer’s wet dream, so I will go on, or you can do your own research elsewhere. The heart of the fuel cell is a high rate chemical battery that produces the electricity

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell

You feed it the same type of stuff you feed an internal combustion engine (methane and air) and it produces electricity (only in DC form as opposed to AC) and it also produces waste heat you can recover at high temperature for other use (like heating water for your house). But the cost of the fuel cell to manufacture is pretty high, because the methane you use to feed it is just a good source of what you really want to feed it – hydrogen. So you basically have to put a miniature stripper and reformer on the front of the rig. Plus, coating the anodes and cathodes of the reactor and getting them spaced out exactly as you require is expensive assembly work.

However, the real current manufacturers (CFCL and UTC) of solid oxide fuel cells do intend to get their equipment down in cost for home application in the next year. And then let them work the kinks out of the technology at their demonstration plants and then we will see whether I will be buying one for my back yard.

But you know, probably I will anyway just to mess around with it. Either that, or I am starting the home nuclear reactor this year. Besides, all the cool kids will have one. I thought so enough at the depth of the financial crisis that I started buying stock in the company. There’s your free stock tip for the day, for those tuning in that made it this far.

J Willard Gibbs

Feb 20

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

{Originally posted Feb 11}

I’d like to take an opportunity on the day of his birth in 1839 to take some time to celebrate the achievements of a fellow that you likely haven’t heard of, J. Willard Gibbs. Simply put, he is known as the father of modern thermodynamics. J. Williard Gibbs provided the basis upon which virtually all of the science that I use on a daily basis to provide, or attack, arguments on climate change. Pretty much everything to do with climate change comes down to issues of entropy, enthalpy and free energy transfer, along with the second law of thermodynamics, which is called a “law” because it has done its time as a theory for so long and been so well supported by all the empirical evidence collected to date, and by the by work of Gibb’s that it is no longer called a theory. That’s the way science works. If you haven’t noticed by now, I love how science works.

It would be nice to say that J. Willard Gibbs received the recognition that he deserved in his lifetime, and he did receive significant recognition of his peers. In 1901, Gibbs was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London, the peak scientific award of his time, for being “the first to apply the second law of thermodynamics to the exhaustive discussion of the relation between chemical, electrical, and thermal energy and capacity for external work.” This work allowed engineers like me to apply elegant theoretical science to everyday application in things like internal combustion engines, boilers and turbines.

As importantly, Gibbs work is directly connected (by the authors themselves) to the following Nobel Prizes that followed after him:

Johann van der Waals – Physics in 1910 for his equations of state for gases and liquids
Max Planck of Germany – Physics in 1918 his work in quantum mechanics.
William Giauque – Chemistry in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero.
Paul Samuelson – Economics in 1970 for his work on the foundations of economic analysis, in which he explicitly acknowledged the influence of the classical thermodynamic methods of Gibbs.

The general public will likely never know or acknowledge the contribution of J. Willard Gibbs to the things that make their everyday life after the industrial revolution what it is, but I would like to do so today, as I have quietly done every year since I was an undergraduate in chemical engineering and discovered the work of the man. Just one simple beer in his honour, as he probably would have liked, given the simple he led in New Haven, Connecticut for virtually all of his 64 years of life.

No better tribute to Gibbs can be paid than that of another important scientist, so I will leave the last word to him:

“Willard Gibbs is, in my opinion, one of the most original and important creative minds in the field of science America has produced.” – Albert Einstein, physicist

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.

Caveat Emptor Also Applies to Carbon

Jan 23

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

I have also recently been asked by our resident lurker to comment on dodgy providers of carbon dioxide offsets and the pursuit of those making false claims or making fraudulent deals by the consumer watchdog, the ACCC. In reading the summary’s of the cases being made by the ACCC, they seem to be of a couple varieties, including those making false or misleading claims about their offset credits, to those engaged in actual fraud by taking money from clients to buy carbon offset credits and then not doing so.

Whether or not the ACCC will prevail in its cases is uncertain, but my gut feel is that if they take a claim to court, they usually have a pretty good case. However, proving that case in court is another matter, as evidenced by the judgments against the securities watchdog (ASIC) in cases that were widely considered to be very good. One of these cases is a not-for-profit that is apparently making unsupported claims about the superior value of its credits and services. This may be difficult to prove, and more difficult to prove as malicious, given the fairly confusing landscape with regard to environmental claims. The more easy case to prove (the fraud case) is probably already moot as the company is not longer operating and a court has ordered the former directors to buy the credits it failed to previously.

Another colleague asked me a week ago about how her organisation could buy offset credits. I explained to her the process of getting an inventory of emissions certified, and also buying certified credits. She didn’t quite understand why both the emitter and the seller of the credits required independent verification, and that got me to thinking that maybe it isn’t all as simple as I think it is. So I backed up, and started over on the basis of the concept of trust. To be truly greenhouse neutral means that I have to trust what your emissions are, and I have to trust that you bought real offsets. That helped clarify it for her. The introduction of the National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) may improve things somewhat by further clarifying what is and what is not genuine reduction in greenhouse gases that can be traded, and doing away with some types of credits that are of debatable validity. But it won’t make things crystal clear in all situations, and the purchase of credits will always require a well informed buyer.

My rule of thumb is to first see if you can tie the credits you want to buy to a clear standard (like the NCOS) with independent verification and oversight by a government accredited program. Then, do a bit more research on the company offering the credits, particularly if they are sourced internationally. A relatively simple internet search can usually tell you a lot. Reputable companies probably have a background and history in some type of environmental work. If you cannot find anything about the company, I would worry a bit. If you can find some information, and it tells you that the head of the company offering the credits was a disqualified horse trainer in Australia that now lives in PNG and once ran Philippine cockfighting ring, I would probably move on to the next one.

Simplicity for Simpletons

Jan 21

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

After a significant hiatus to take some holidays, see a cricket test match and do some billable work, I have returned and want to announce that I am now fully against the implementation of the CPRS in favour of a straight input tax on carbon in fossil fuels. This is not to say that I have become a climate skeptic, nor have I decided that an emissions trading system would not work. However, having examined both the process and results of the Copenhagen summit on climate change, I have now joined the ranks of those who believe that an emissions trading system (ETS) will be too little, too late.

The basic premise of all of the ETS that are currently functioning in the world (and yes they are in fact proven to function) as well as that proposed for Australia under the CPRS legislation, is that you can harness economic market forces to drive emissions down more quickly and efficiently than mandated emissions cuts, or a straight input tax on carbon in fossil fuels. Essentially, all of the ETS are based on the concept of “cap-and-trade” where the government sets an overall emissions cap, and individual entities under the cap can trade amongst themselves in an independently verifiable manner, allowing some to emit more from their operations, if they pay others (through buying excess emissions credits) for the emissions reductions made at the sellers facilities. These ETS, as I have said above do work in fact, but they don’t work in reality, for a number of reasons:

• People Lie – Everywhere that I have seen the attempted introduction of an ETS, I have seen people with a vested interest in not seeing anything done about the basic issue lie about the details of the ETS, its purpose, its effect, or all three. The lies pretty much start on day one of the introduction of the legislation, as they did in my home state of Montana, where the US Congressman Reberg ( a wholly owned subsidiary of the energy lobby) penned an editorial in his local newspaper calling the legislation “Cap and Tax”, and hyping it as a new tax on everything to his base of libertarian minded constituents. That’s how the discussion started from day one. No thoughtful, logical evaluation of the pros and cons of the design, the fairness of the implementation or even the economics and outcome. Nope, it was straight to the third grade name calling, and then downhill from there. A similar welcome accompanied the introduction in Australia, albeit with less juvenile but no less significant misrepresentation from the likes of Senators, Joyce, Minchin or Fielding.

• People are lazy – People get away with the lying identified above primarily because the masses are arses and are typically either too lazy or too stupid to seek out some basic information on the subject and decide for themselves whether they are in favour of an ETS (or even doing something about climate change or not). So, they are swayed by whoever has the most money, the loudest voice, or the sexiest celebrity in forming their opinion.

• Complexity leads to corruption – Any ETS legislation gets a bit complicated, often in an effort to create fairness in implementation, but just as often to buy off enough support of moneyed constituencies, or put in loopholes for those same constituencies. Because of the complexity of these systems, they are even harder for the lazy and uninformed to support, and they often take forever to get through the legislative process and into function. Then after they do get into action, the loopholes and payoffs get exposed by the press who feed on controversy, and their support is further eroded.

Given these truths about the realities of an ETS, I believe it is far more favourable to just go with a simple carbon input tax on all fossil fuels. This will blunt the criticism of the liars who will just want to call it a tax anyway, it is real simple so we should be more easily be able to sell it to the punters who donít want to know too much (and will like the straightforward payback they will be able to see), and wit will be nearly impossible to cheat or get loopholes into the legislation since I could write it in a couple of pages.

Here’s how a simple carbon tax would work. First we figure out how much we need to tax our dirtiest fuel (coal) in order to make it the same price as the cleanest fuel (solar). Then, on that basis, we set a carbon tax for all hydrocarbon based fuels on the basis of an assay of how much carbon they contain in relation to coal. The tax on coal will be very high, oil less, gas significantly less, hydro, wind and solar nothing. All of the tax will be applied at the first point of sale of the fuel so there will be no chance to escape the tax man, and there will be no double taxing. All of the money will come in to the federal government that already has the infrastructure and resources to collect the taxes (it’s one of the only things governments are really good at, after all) so administrative costs will be low. All of the tax revenue generated will be redistributed evenly on a per-household basis (not a per person basis, so we don’t encourage overpopulation). Heavy users of energy will pay the most, and everyone will benefit on an egalitarian basis. Want to drive a Hummer and feel good about it? Go ahead, you will have paid for the fuel tax. Want to feel great about the purchase of that solar panel? You can too!

The price of virtually everything will go up, it’s true, since everything is pretty much manufactured and transported now with one fossil fuel or other. But that’s OK, since every household will also be getting a big payment every year as their portion of the return on the tax, and eventually less carbon intensive energy sources will be the norm. This will also allow every household to budget (if they want to) each year and directly see what their energy inputs are, and compare that to the amount they get back from the carbon tax. With people being able to examine the data more directly for their own household (if they choose to look), there will be great incentives for the smart to become more fuel efficient. And I always like incentivising the smart.

What the short term future might be

Dec 10

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

This is a reply to a comment from yesterday, as I wanted to add a couple of figures to explain my position better.

Thanks for continuing to participate, Otto.

My answer is that we will supply current demand load of electricity as we phase out coal rapidly by taking no options off the table in every country, and having a frank and open exchange of ideas about the overall cost/benefit of our electric power generation means. The discussion will be different in each country, but I will give you an example based on Australia to make my point.

But let’s not even talk about the means by which we will generate power, until we first talk about how we efficiently use the power we are generating now, and take whatever incentivised approaches we can to shift people and processes to more energy efficient operation. I am talking about boring old insulation, HVAC balancing, upgrades of lines, transformers, switch and “smart grid” technologies. As we begin that, we then should begin the design, siting and planning for the transitional power plants, and more speculative R&D on the long term power plants.

For example, I believe here in Australia, we should we should have the hard argument about going from 80% coal (the first figure) to something more like 44% gas (we have bucket loads of it), 25% nuclear, and a mix of other renewables (20%) over the next 10 years, as shown in the second figure. This is an aggressive target, and as I said should be combined with the even more aggressive push in energy efficiency.

2010:

Screen shot 2009-12-10 at 2.30.07 PM

2020:

Screen shot 2009-12-10 at 2.30.19 PM

That is why I think the major thrust of your argument is technically incorrect when you say there is only one thing that can do it, and you are far oversimplifying the argument if you say that all the other sources of energies combined cannot meet our current and future demand requirements. You should have some evidence to support this argument in the USA, if you conclude that only nuclear energy can address your situation.

And note the fatalism in your argument that “we cannot wait until the renewable technologies mature”. Mate, these technologies ARE mature. They work, they have achieved thermodynamic efficiencies that equal or exceed that of the internal combustion engine, and if I switched your place over to a couple of them, you would be surprised how reliable they would run your place, even when you need to keep the big screen tv in the fallout shelter, the weapons store and the underground water purification system running at the same time. However, if what you mean by mature is that they need to cost what the magic dirt does, then that isn’t going to happen. And why should it really? Coal is the false economy, and renewables technologies will never “mature” by falling in cost until there is guaranteed installed base to justify economy of scale in manufacturing, installation and maintenance. By believing only in one answer, you are participating in killing off the others.

While I don’t buy your argument about only nuclear being the solution, your solution could be partly correct. I think that we will have to operate with a significant potion of our electricity supplied by nuclear all over the world, wherever it makes the most appropriate sense. But only for about the lifetime of one plant, which might be closer to 20 years. Then we phase out nuclear and all the other bridging fuels that we can.

In the next five years worldwide, we need to be spending lots of time, money and resources in designing and implementing the energy efficiency improvements that we know already exist (anyone smell a big jobs stimulus package here?) right when we need it, and also possibly in doing some regulation of personal behaviour (maybe even some draconian regulation), but I will open up a heated argument on at a later date.

Join me in the future?

Dec 9

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

I want to discuss a couple of questions I have had that have been bubbling away in my head for a long while. So, in no particular order, what are we going to do about coal?, and what are going to happen with jobs in a future low carbon emitting world?

See, you can get most anyone who will accept the scientific method to buy into the need to take action on anthropogenic climate change. And to fix the problem, I don’t see any way burning coal for fuel is going to work going forward, due to the huge rate of emissions in relation to the energy that can be produced. But when you talk about eliminating the vast majority of all the jobs in the industries of coal mining, shipping, and burning for fuel, you are talking about a lot of disruption. I see these as key issues that are locked together in the short and long-term. In achieving a low carbon future, we also need to attempt to limit damage to people’s current livelihood, while we at the same time entice them to a better one.

We need to have an answer for where we are going to employ people who leave the coal industry, and what sort of short-term safety net we will put in place to assist those effected, if Australia as a nation decide to make big cuts in our emissions rapidly, and at least start to satisfy the goals of the scientist greenies on the left. Because crap though they may be as a political party, their goals are closer to what are required than anyone on the right of politics, I suggest.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume we are to make cuts in CO2 emissions that are deeper than currently proposed, and more rapidly than currently proposed in the draft legislation in front of the Australian Parliament. We can save all the planet for our grandkids, great, but right now, the issue is jobs, and who is going to gain them and who is required to lose them in the near to mid-term.

Let’s first look at the losers. As I have said, there are going to have to be massive amounts of job losses in coal mining, some in shipping, and almost all those currently in coal burning. Below are some numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics from August 2009:

• 40,800 persons in Coal Mining (full and part time)
• 6,600 persons in Coal and Petroleum Product Manufacturing (full and part time)
• 31,400 persons in exploration and mining support services
• 10,706,500 persons employed in today (full and part time)

Also, just for later discussion:

• 2,200 persons in electricity, gas and water services
• 55,200 persons in electricity supply

If every one of the 47,400 persons in the coal mining and coal products manufacturing industries were to lose their job, we would need to re-employ 0.44% of working population in Australia. That is a conservative number, since we know that not all of them would lose their jobs, and some of them are actually employed in petroleum refineries and not coking coal plants. But that is the direct severity of how bad the problem could be. How many people involved in shipping coal to the ports and power plants, and shipping coal overseas, would lose their jobs? I am not sure, as the statistics I have are not broken down well enough. But lets say half of the 31,400 persons in the exploration and mining support services area were put out of work. This is probably a conservative estimate, since coal doesn’t make up half of the mass of the minerals that are explored for and mined in Australia.

In the power generation area, I don’t think that there is a good argument that any people will be put out of work, because the electricity demand will continue (and in fact grow), and the persons required to operate and maintain power generation facilities should be roughly similar, regardless of the type. But let’s assume that we do lose 80% of those jobs too, based on the coal usage fraction of our electricity generation. Yes, we are that addicted to burning the magic dirt.

So all up, we have just under 1% of the working population will lose their jobs. And if you told me that we were going to suffer an additional 1% unemployment in a year, or six months or even a month, it would be a challenge, but not an insurmountable one, for either our society or our economy. And the reality is, we couldn’t lose all those coal plants and replace them with anything else in less than about 10-15 years. We are talking about 80% of our generating capacity, after all.

Then, remember, all those people need not be out of work long, and they don’t all have to go take low paying jobs at McDonalds either. To replace 80% of our generating capacity is going to create so many jobs, it will make the stimulus effort last year look like a bake at a school fete. By my estimate, those jobs will include:

• R&D work for renewables that can be installed in the next 10-20 years;
• Energy efficiency equipment and materials manufacturing;
• Energy efficiency designers and installers;
• Designers of new plants and equipment to deliver power over the mid term (nuclear, gas, geothermal, wind, solar, etc.);
• Manufacturers of equipment to generate power; and
• Construction supervision and labour to build all this new infrastructure.

Of the above, I suggest that all but the semi-skilled installers of the energy efficiency equipment and some of the construction labourers will have jobs that are equally as valuable as the mining, trucking and shipping jobs that will be lost. However, having a job is not all, and we need to consider the disruption of the migrations that may be caused from places like Musswellbrook, NSW. It should be government policy to provide a safety net in the form of re-training, relocation and direct unemployment relief to workers displaced by the conversion away from coal burning.

That is, provided we don’t have to face any arguments based on the reasoning that just because a grandfather was a coal miner and a father was a coal miner, that somehow the son has some sort of mystical right to be a coal miner. There are many communities that have been built around the industries of salt, whale oil, steam engines and asbestos that are all relegated to history, and coal is going there too, whether you like it or not.

But let’s not dwell on the negative. The low carbon future has so many positives going for it, it should be a no-brainer to get society to go along, even those now working in coal. So, I challenge any real people out there working in the coal industry to call me on my facts if they are wrong, test my logic, and help refute or improve my argument. Because it is an argument I feel we must win, and now. And also recognise this: While people may face some uncertainty and disruption over the move away from coal, there are some legal persons (companies) that have a vested interest in using that disruption to real persons in an effort to thwart any attempts to reduce the activity of those companies, even though the change is in the best interest of all the real persons. We should expect that, as those legal persons are sociopathic by design.

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.

Process, Not Completeness

Nov 24

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

[reprinted from July 2009]

“Process, Not Completeness” is the theme for the next discussion about climate change that I want to take up, and this time, I am unfortunately going to have to get stuck into those who I would normally plan to have as allies in the fight to begin addressing climate change, The Greens. But I suppose I should have suspected that  they would fail me now, since they suffer from what many who are too philosophical in their approach as politicians do, by letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

You see, there is a lot of debate about the science of climate change, even amongst those who are convinced that there is a problem, it has an anthropogenic cause and it is a problem we can do something about. The point in the debate that the Greens make is that the emissions reductions under the proposed CPRS system are far too low, and the 5% and 15% targets provided by the government proposal will not solve the problem (with respect to Australia’s contributions) and the cuts should be much deeper. Without deep cuts in emissions in the CPRS they will not support the bill at all in the Senate. They point to the modelling of temperature rise and its correlation to CO2 parts per million in the atmosphere and they are possibly right, but by this point in their argument it doesn’t make much difference, as only me and a few other dweebs who want to investigate their claims in full and develop expertise in the subject matter are listening. And by making their position an all or nothing proposition, they are making the perfect (assuming their argument about targets is correct) the enemy of the good. Without Greens support, the government will be forced to negotiate with the real freaks in the Senate (I’m looking right at you, Steve), or delay or gut the legislation by making substantive changes the Coalition would require. Australia will suffer as a result, as I will detail further later, under a system that is modelled or implemented after the USA gets involved in climate change. But make no mistake, the USA and other large powerful nations will get involved in implementing a process worldwide to address climate change, and Australia will not get a fair say in that system by following the lead of the USA, as proposed by some.

So, the time to act is now, in my opinion, and a smart Green, that really wanted to have some early positive effect not only on the environment itself, but also on achieving an outcome that is in the national interest of Australia, would adopt a position that embraced the process of the CPRS, while maintaining their strong assertion that the targets need to be adjusted in the future. The process is the good in this discussion. The process by which we cap, trade, acquit and monitor emissions in our country is much more important than the actual targets. Think of the process as a big machine, not unlike the GST system implemented by the first Howard government. The targets in the CPRS are not unlike the rate of the GST, in that we don’t know exactly all the effects of it on the overall tax system, and we may find the need to adjust the rate in the future to meet our tax needs to run government. But setting the rate initially is not the important part when compared with the process of collecting it, holding it, and divvying it up, or just feeding it into general revenue of the government. Same with the CPRS, where the important parts are whether we have a cap and trade, an issue and trade, or a straight tax on carbon emissions. The discussion and decision to go with a cap and trade system has been well established over the last 10 years by those focusing on the subject that also recognise there is a problem to solve. I agree that it is the most appropriate model to use for Australia, and am interested in seeing it come into action to start to make a real difference (as far as we can make as Australia goes) in halting the rise of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and beginning their reduction.

Under the system, the government sets the cap based on international agreements to limit CO2 emissions, and the permit acquitting system and trading system are the means by which we verify and administer that cap, and set the price for permits, respectively. The three interlocking processes are a sound means of  administering our international commitments, and the targets set carry over into the cap of the permit system, and will then directly effect the price of emissions permits. And a new commodity will be traded all over the world, like wheat orange juice or pork bellies. Will the systems be a little complicated and possibly need adjustment moving forward in order to serve their purpose and achieve the stated goals, including adjusting of the CO2 target levels – likely “YES”. But will waiting to develop and implement these processes further help to make any targets harder to achieve, fail to demonstrate leadership, and fail to protect Australia’s interests in the discussions – unfortunately “YES” again.

So lets get the process in place now, set a good example for those who follow us, and make sure that we have our interests built into the systems, rather than wait and hope the yanks treat us benevolently. Because being a puppy to W worked out so well for us in foreign affairs when Howard was running things, didn’t it?