Sgt Hulka Uncut

uncensored opinion and technical information on stuff

Archive for category Bad Ideas

Obama Forgot The Golden Rules

Jan 28

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

OK, perhaps not the originals. But, in fact, Obama has failed me personally so badly that I have decided to give up on him, and in fact have to ADD a golden rule, which nearly violates a golden rule, so you know it must be serious.

Let’s reiterate the Golden Rules for those who might not have been paying attention until recently, along with some explanation, and to add the necessary:
• Use your head for more than hatrack. Most issues can be sorted out easily if you just use your head and have a think about things as you are moving along. It’s a scalable rule, so if you have a brain that allows you to snort a line of coke off the back of a credit card while doing 140 down the autobahn while reciting Proust to your mistress, and you can think at light speed, then it wont take you any time at all. If your brain moves a bit slower, like most of us, take a short bit of time to come up with something. Long enough that you can make a difference, but not so long that it makes no difference.
• Be an adult. There is a reason for child labour laws, so if you are working with me, please don’t fail this expectation.
• Do something positive and productive. The positive and productive doesn’t necessarily have to look positive and productive in process, but it should be designed and operated with that end.
• Get some balls even if you are a chick. And here we have where Obama has unfortunately required me to make an addition. I didn’t think this needed stating in the beginning, so I left it out. But clearly it needs to be in here, and I will explain below why it means a huge amount to climate change, with a sniff of the world as we know it to boot.
• If you need more rules, be patient and persistent. These start out more as guidance really, but become rules to pass on to speed up development of those who come behind us. Feel free to skip on from here if you are young and impatient. But recognise that change of things, if you are set out to do that, is only achieved in a lasting manner through application of this rule.
• Don’t have too many rules. You really don’t need that many, so if you think you have too many, or no one will live with you anymore, you probably do have too many. Revise as required, but remember, we are here to live life, not waste time making rules for it.

Now, the explanation of what this has to do with climate change. Unfortunately, I have to let you know that I can sometimes predict the future, but pretty much only when it is going to be bad, due to my examination of human nature. Back in August I wrote, “. . . but let’s face it the Democrats are in power there, and they are likely to be too big of pussies to move anything like that through, despite their filibuster-proof majorities. So don’t even expect the US to even get to the climate change issue, and get a bill through both houses and signed into law.” See, there is one thing that is certain about politics in America that many have recognised through the ages: Democrats, when in power, insist on playing by the rules and being fair or even “bipartisan” during their stint running things, despite any previous example set by the other side of politics there. And unfortunately despite all his supposed brilliance and rhetorical gift, Obama appears to have made the mistake of letting the severely compromised leaders in both houses of congress in the US bring him something on all of his legislative agenda rather than leading on anything himself, as if he were elected arbiter in chief instead of commander in chief. His failure to lead on health care, civil rights, economic stimulus, troop withdrawal, closing Guantanamo (shall I go on) etc., means that we certainly will not now see any action out of the US on climate change legislation this year, and I would suggest not even in the single term of this democratic president if trends continue. And this term leads to forever, due to another unfortunate occurance that has occurred synchronistically in the US while they were all looking at which sex clinic Tiger got caught humping Brangelina’s secret love child with John Edwards in.

Last Thursday, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations have exactly equivalent the same constitutional right to free speech as Joe Sixpack. In this case, that right will specifically manifest itself as each and every person (real or legal) being able to spend whatever amount they choose on the candidate of their choice. That’s right, the next time a big bank gets a bug up its arse about a politician and his voting record on the The Banks Don’t Get Absolutely Everything They Want Legislation, they will just heavily sponsor his opponent in the next primary or general election, or probably both. Better if said politician is from a small state politically, like Max Baucus of Montana. He currently whores himself out for about $2 million to the insurance industry, and look what it did for them in the health care debate. He nearly never got it started at all. Unfortunately, too many Americans were looking, so they actually had to get a health care bill out of the Senate Finance Committee that he heads, so waiting in the wings were several other stooges to stall or add unpalatable elements to the bill to make it basically not worth saving, and the real reason why the voters of Massachusetts rejected it and its progenitors by proxy in the election there last week.

So, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that big coal, big oil and even those making cars, road construction, and the electric utilities themselves, will all be going out to buy their own representatives for the next election. Or perhaps just getting off by threatening to oppose politicians in places where they can get them cheap. Imagine rural ignorant Appalachia, where cutting the tops off mountains for coal and dumping the waste downhill still seems like a good idea. The senator from there gets an equal vote with the one that represents the electorates of Harvard or Berkeley at the federal level. And as observed this year like many others, it only takes a couple federal senators to scuttle the efforts of a large majority, especially over an issue as complicated climate change legislation.

Left unchecked, this Supreme Court decision, that I unfortunately have to agree with given this narrow case upon which it is based, could lead to corporatocracy there very easy logical progression. And yes it is a word. I didn’t know it was real either until the other day, so do your reading. I read a few elections ago that the average US senate seat cost $40 million to win. Expect to see that go up an order of magnitude in 10 years.

Of course it doesn’t have to be that way. But can we expect the US government led by this president to make significant modification to the fundament issues of the definition of a person as applied to a corporation, or the donation transparency rules, or public financing of campaigns, that would be required to be enforced to allow the population there to have a true and functioning democracy? What do you expect from a democracy that cannot even provide affordable, universal preventative health care to its entire population?

I expect nothing if any congress is left to its own devices. Congress has always needed leadership from someone with balls. Balls to actually lead, by setting a direction and an objective, and herding, coercing and twisting arms to get the congress to move in that direction. W may have been and intellectual philistine and led by weird voices in his head, but he had the balls to say “This is where we are going”. And the moron got most everything he wanted with a congress not from his own party. Leading begins at the beginning, not by arriving like a superhero at the end to save the day. We read about leaders in history books and superheros in comics for a reason.

So, I guess I am not sure this guy has any balls to go with his intellect and oratory skills. Pity, as he looked like the real deal 18 months ago before all his goals went under the bus so he could get along with everybody in Washington.

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.

The smoking gun of climate fraud?

Nov 30

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

I am all for a good conspiracy theory to pass the time, but mostly due to the fact that they are a good read, rather than that they lead to a fundamentally modified understanding of reality. The latest from the climate sceptics is that they believe to have uncovered a vast conspiracy on the left to falsify science in order to win the argument on climate change. They site mass volume of hacked emails from the University of East Anglia in England, one of the centres where climate change research is being carried out, and a participant in the IPCC. Now, like all good conspiracy theories, it starts out with some kernels of fact and possibly even the smoking-gun of fraud.

According to the best news report of the substance with regard to the issue in the American Academy for Advancement of Science (publishers of the peer-reviewed journal Science) the facts are that the Director of the Climate Research Unit there asked other scientists to delete data that might be the subject of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. But why would they do such a thing? Well further examination of the emails shows that the motivation was, that ,“. . . colleagues feared that releasing information would draw them deeper into disputes with amateur scientists, who would use it to create new controversies and cut into their research time.”

Now, while I could understand the motive, if say, I had to argue science with a demonstrable moron such as Steven Fielding on a repetitive basis. However, deleting information subject to a FOIA request is against the law, so regardless of the motive, one or more people at the University of East Anglia could face some heat and possibly prosecution. And good thing when they do. Just as I would want someone like Dick Cheney to face the music if we could prove he lied, I don’t want liars and obfuscators on my team. The rules are the rules and they apply to all.

That being said, there is no proof in all these hacked emails that any of the people who were asked by others from England to delete files or data aver did so, and coordinating such a mass deletion across countries, institutions and by other scientists would leave a trail, even if it were attempted. In fact, the hack that resulted in the release of the information was very possibly caused by one of the scientists asked to do something improper instead leaked a bunch of the information. That is, unless Occam’s Razor wins out, because in fact one of the scientists left their email and data wide open to the outside world by including their password in their email address. And let’s face it, you aren’t going to run a very good conspiracy with people like that involved.

So basically, despite an inappropriate (or possibly illegal) request by one person, there no evidence in the information released that there was a multi-organisational, worldwide conspiracy to modify data, carry out false modelling, or alter the peer-reviewed system of the IPCC for arriving at their conclusions on climate change.

The rules of science are that one sound data set can prove all the science before it wrong. Unfortunately for the climate change sceptics, this is not that data set, and for the time being, I will stick with the peer-reviewed science on the side that demonstrates anthropogenic climate change as being real and a problem. Anyone still with me?

For an amusing side of this story, watch as the chaos over the Coalition leadership plays itself out this week. I venture to guess that Fielding, Minchin, Abbott or other climate change sceptics will attempt to use the smoking gun they think they now have to win the argument. They will continue to attempt to tear the other side down, but they will find no bullets in their gun, and they are not be able to offer a substantive alternative explanation of the scientific data we all can agree on. And eventually, their logic on the CPRS will also collapse, either this week, or during the double dissolution election to follow.

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.

Are we not men?

Nov 24

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

[reprinted from August 2009]

In a previous article, I touched on an issue about which the Coalition in Australia has coalesced, namely taking a wait and see attitude to Climate Change, based on what comes out of the USA. I got to thinking about this issue further this morning when I watching on ABC Breakfast the speculation about whether or not Nathan Rees may see a coup in the near future. A name of a woman was dropped as someone up and coming in the Labor Party, and then quickly dismissed by the ABC commentators as still having a US accent, so unlikely to be acceptable. This was accepted without dispute by all those she was engaged in conversation with, and included no discussions of the substance of any positions held by the woman. And I got to thinking, hell that’s stupid, but its probably right, even I wouldn’t trust me on first impressions, given my accent. And it dawned on me that there is a third issue why the Coalition position on the CPRS is a loser, even amongst the Nationals.

Basically, why would we as Australians accept that anything the USA would produce programatically would be good for Australia? Do they have a history of doing things in Australia’s interest, particularly when it may be in conflict with their own self interest? On tariffs, subsidies and any number of other trade issues, nope. In my 15 years an Australian citizen alone, I have see the US dump steel, wheat, and other commodities into world markets and significantly damage Australia industries at the time. Hell, W even signed into law a major subsidy for their steel industry right after the Australians were the first to commit troops to an Afghanistan effort – BEFORE EVEN BEING ASKED TO DO SO! This is also the mob that tried to come gut our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in their last round of  trade negotiations with Australia. Hey, far be it from me to be a US basher, but there’s no way I trust these arseholes with defining my CPRS.

Remember also that the US is likely to produce nothing in the next sitting session of their Congress. They are currently heavily distracted with health care, and whether to require all their citizens to get health insurance coverage through the same private health companies that have been ripping them off, denying them treatment, and putting the US in a position where it pays twice as much as the next major industrialised country for health care per capita, but is raked by the UN 37th in health care performance (proudly next to Costa Rica). Of course their Congress and President could pass a strong government run public option for health care and demand that pharmaceutical companies negotiate on price with a large public entity, but let’s face it the Democrats are in power there, and they are likely to be too big of pussies to move anything like that through, despite their filibuster-proof majorities. So don’t even expect the US to even get to the climate change issue, and get a bill through both houses and signed into law. Remember, they are several years behind us in the legislative effort, and even we haven’t got our well discussed and heavily negotiated CPRS through yet. If we wait for the Yanks it will be another lost opportunity, and by the time we get around to it, we will be selling summer timeshares in the Antarctic.

Finally (and potentially most importantly), what are we, f**king sheep? We have to wait around for the Yanks to move on this because they are smarter than us? or more determined to make a difference? or perhaps maybe more morally and ethically prone to leadership than we as Australians are? Sure they represent the bulk of the problem on an emissions basis, and if they, China and India don’t make some moves, it will make stuff-all difference what we as Australians do.

But the fact is, we are smart enough, we do know how to develop and run a CPRS trading scheme that will set a real market for carbon emissions, and begin to internalise the cost of those emissions. And the country I embraced the culture of when I signed up is also brave enough to show some leadership and ignore the lies and doomsayers about the new economy. Sean shared a interesting article from the ACF that exposes some corporate lies in relation to the NGERS/CPRS reporting in relation to what those same companies are telling their shareholders. It’s a worthwhile read for investors as well as those interested in the CPRS.

An example of bad science and a direct response

Nov 24

Posted by Sgt Hulka in Bad Ideas, Climate Change, Science | 1 Comment

[reprinted from June 2009]

So, to start off things, I would like to take on climate change denial, and those who participate in it. Here in Australia, it all started with Senator Fielding’s trip last winter to the USA to attend a climate change sceptics conference, and his return to Australian senate with the arguments he is putting forward, including the “10-year cooling period”. NOw that we approach the approval of a CPRS in summer, others have picked up the banner of denying the basic science, like Nick Minchin, but lets give Senator Fielding his due, as the provenance of his opinion is useful the examination of the argument.

I encourage everyone to check into the background of the folks who hosted the conference that so decided the worldview of Senator Fielding on climate change, the Heartlands Institute. This a conservative/libertarian foundation that attempts to influence public policy in the USA, and is funded by politically conservative foundations such as the Castle Rock Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. They also received a total of $560,000 from ExxonMobil Corporation between 1998 and 2005, until ExxonMobil was exposed and has since backed away on its position as a climate change denier. Now I don’t think I am going out on a limb here to say that the folks identified above have a pretty large interest in maintaining the status quo on energy policy and emissions that could be affected by taking any significant action to reduce anthropogenic emissions that are linked to climate change. So, I am just saying, consider the source. Senator Fielding came home repeating the talking points of the group so well that I think it also might be good to take a good look at his finance disclosure report to the senate this year to see if he brought home something more valuable from the USA than just his new arguments to delay action on the CPRS.

But for the sake of argument, let’s just take the arguments on their face value. The two that I want to focus on are the link of atmospheric temperature rise to anthropogenic activities, and the rise (or lack thereof) of temperatures globally in the last 10 years. Senator Fielding claimed that the question of the connection between climate change and human activities is not established, and he further claims that there have been no significant rises in temperatures in the last 10 years.

First, with respect to the link between the heating of the atmosphere (note I don’t say temperature rise) and anthropogenic (or man-made) activities, the argument is that there has been no scientific link established between human activities and atmospheric temperature rise. Resolving this question is a complicated one, since it both involves a lot of science, and it is also susceptible to fraud more easily. For instance, if one side of the argument tends to use science in a deceptive way, such as through overuse of short term data, or presenting one piece of information as if it has more weight than the preponderance of other scientific evidence. This type of “science” could easily sway an unsuspecting or uninformed reader, and unfortunately that is exactly what the climate change sceptic crowd resorts to. And keep in mind, we are talking about a few hundred sceptics at most. Senator Fielding (and now Senator Minchin and others) repeat the Heartlands Institute’s claim that there are hundreds of scientists that disagree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the facts of climate change. Despite the fact that about 10% of the scientists identified by Heartlands Institute as supporting their cause in fact deny the claim and disassociate themselves from the organisation, the number claimed is only 500, or something like 450 once you throw out the actual fraud.

Let’s contrast that with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is made up of hundreds of scientist that represent thousands of scientists, selected from their peak bodies in their respective countries and representing either the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) or the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The IPCC bases its assessments on peer reviewed and published scientific literature. They have been in operation for just over 20 years, and let me tell you as a follower for a long time that they argue over scientific points comprehensively and that if you can get this group to agree on anything, I would call it a pretty dead set certainty. The IPCC finally established after arguing about if for ten years, that there has been a statistically significant increase in atmospheric the major greenhouse gas [carbon dioxide (CO2)] over the last 10,000 years, with the vast majority of that increase (>90%) occurring since 1900, coinciding with the start of the worldwide industrial revolution. They have further established a statistically significant correlation between the emissions of CO2 and anthropogenic activities, predominantly agriculture and fossil fuel use. They have established with near certainty that global temperatures are rising on average, the atmosphere is holding and releasing rapidly more water, that ice sheets in Greenland and the North Pole are shrinking, and that more intense and longer droughts are being experienced. The latter finding, while disturbing, is also reassuring to me personally as I also predicted they would come to this conclusion in January 2000, based on the evidence available to that time in my article in the journal The Environmental Engineer. So this peer-reviewed group of really smart guys argued for 10 more years after I had made up my mind on the subject, being only a guy who knows a few things. That’s how much scientific due diligence the IPCC represents!

Now, while I generally embrace my own inner anarchist, and fear the tyranny of the masses politically, on this issue I am afraid I do not believe in giving equal airtime to listening to the point of view of idiots like Senator Fielding, as opposed to the preponderance of actual scientific evidence to the contrary. My only sincere wish is that if he is proved wrong, that we could sacrifice the habitat owned by him or a member of his genetic pool for every polar bear that goes extinct and doesn’t get a say in the matter. And in fairness, if I am wrong, he may choose the punishment for me.

For the second argument about the last 10 years of average temperatures, Senator Fielding advertised his engineering qualification and how he is open to reasonable arguments based on science. Apparently Senator Minchin and several other rubes bought into Steve’s apparent reasonableness. Now, I cannot verify the type of degree he got from RMIT back in ‘83, but as his experience working as an engineer was with Hewlett Packard, NEC and Siemens, I can only assume that he got an electrical engineering degree. If this is the case, perhaps he skipped the thermodynamics electives that would serve him well at this point. Whether he skipped it, or slept through it, let’s take Senator Fielding (and anyone else currently holding a climate change is a hoax type opinion) back to school on a couple of items from heat transfer, enthalpy and entropy. Hold on, now I can tell I am losing you. See, this is where it gets a bit complicated for those that don’t want to get degrees in science, and people can get bored and switch off, but stay with me a minute and I can simplify the science a lot for those wanting to stay somewhat blissfully uninformed. There are a number of places energy can go when it is absorbed and held by a body such as the earth as that body is going out of balance and releasing less heat back into the galaxy as opposed to what it is taking in. One place is sensible temperature rises in the atmosphere, oceans and land, the evidence that the deniers point to. Another is into the internal enthalpy of the molecules that make up all the various substances of the atmosphere, oceans and land. The third (and my personal favourite) is entropy, or the state of disorder of the body. Entropy is the weird cousin of the other two ways energy can be stored in a body, and it expresses itself as chaos. So, despite the fact that I don’t agree with Senator Fielding’s examination* of the last 10 years of temperature data (since he conveniently ignores the Antarctic land surface temperature findings of the IPCC), of equal importance is that his argument also ignores the solid evidence of both increases in both enthalpy and entropy. I will continue.

When you add heat to substance, you raise its enthalpy and see sensible temperature rises, but not necessarily immediately. Because, sometimes, things soak up a lot of heat before their temperature starts to rise measurably. Take water for instance, if you add heat to water and get it to 100°C, you then have to add a whole lot of heat to it to get it to 101°C, because it has to change in to water vapour, a gas. A similar thing happens if you want to get ice from 0°C to 1°C, where it exists as water. Since the IPCC has undeniably established both a larger quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere now as opposed to the past, and that ice sheets are becoming smaller at the poles, clearly heat is being built up to cause these effects, and neither the atmosphere or the ice sheets need show a rise in temperature to prove the point. Even mainstream media now finds the break up of previously “permanent” ice at both poles to be so obvious that it can be reported, along with the drowning of polar bears that live on the ice.

Seeing that increases of entropy have occurred is trickier, since there is no such thing as an entropy meter, but increases in entropy are nonetheless evident. When energy gets added to a system and it increases entropy, you expect things to become more chaotic. There are a number of examples I could point to, but the chaos evident in rolling and more intense droughts isn’t that exciting and easy to see, so let’s look at hurricanes, as they are one of the most interesting forms of climate chaos to your average punter. For this, I am going to go with data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who keeps a comprehensive and independently verifiable list of all hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific (called cyclones) since 1872. These are rated in their records as Category 1 to Category 5 types, with Category 5 being the most severe. In this set of records, there are no Category 5 hurricanes reported before the 1920s, and there is evidence of these storms becoming both more fierce and more frequent. For example, if you examine the 30 year period in the 50s through the 70s (Period 1) in comparison with the period of the 80’s through 2010 (Period 2, even given that we still have one year to go) you can see that the total number of hurricanes in the Pacific and Atlantic in Period 1 was 16 and the total in Period 2 was 24 (50% more) with 15 of these occurring in the last 10 years. Furthermore, the number of these storms with sustained winds greater than 280 km/hr in period 1 was 5, and 11 are present in Period 2 (220% more), with 5 of them occurring in the last 10 years. In fact, there are so many Category 5 hurricanes in the recent past, that a Category 6 has now been proposed for use, and Category 1 hurricanes will in the future just be referred to as “a bit of a blow”.

Right, so anyone who has made it to this point should be well aware of a couple of things:

1. The IPCC is a reputable body that has, beyond a reasonable doubt, established that greenhouse gas emissions as a result of human activity are resulting in a change to the climate of the earth, which they suspect will be a bad thing.

2. Senator Steve Fielding is an idiot that should not be given any further attention on the subject of climate change, and possibly be required to hand back his engineering degree, or at least never be allowed to speak of it again without the risk of being sued for defamation by the RMIT.

3. All others that have bought into the arguments of Senator Steve Fielding on the issue of climate change are either rubes, or possibly shills for those that will lose in the short term as we work toward making some necessary changes to address climate change.

3. I can beat an issue to death if required.

* – I attribute the examination to Senator Fielding, although his examination of the issue was apparently as thorough as his viewing of one presentation at this conference, a good chat with a couple of the delegates, and collection of their talking points. He was moste forceful in presenting these talking points back here in Australia and was miffed at being given very little attention by the Obama administration to his point of view when he tried to meet with them in Washington. Perhaps they did their research and gave proportionate importance to a person who was elected on 2% primary vote.