Breaking Bad

What's Good About It

It's one big compelling bit of television with the slow burn of tension and anxiety. It's very well conceived and executed,right down to the nuance of angled shots and off-kilter compositions, oddball camera moves and exquisite attention to detail. most and best of all, it's incredibly thought-provoking and is a quietly discursive meditation on all manners of things philosophical, sociological moral and ethical, and perhaps even to do with generational demographics.

It has great characters that keep you watching if nothing else but to see what they do next; and really you couldn't ask for more than that from a TV series. The actors keep things very consistent through the series and never have an overstated moment. The dialogue is taut, the vision the series has of New Mexico is austere and yet meticulous, and possibly even loving. It's an excellent production.

What's Bad About It

Sometimes, because it's a TV series it loses focus and chooses to meander into side-stories.  The fly episode in Season 3 was tedious and the episodes about Marie and her kleptomania are a little dull except it offers us an insight that DEA agent and brother-in-law Hank might look the other way for family.

Human relationships come and go with the ease of television plotting when in fact you suspect some of these entries and exits, like Ted Beneke and Jane might have the potential to be even stickier than they end up being. There's a bit of repetition of the same emotional space that plagues some of the characters, for instance Jesse and the various traumas he is subjected to and witnesses, and Skyler's insistent demands that are actually destructive to her own relationship, both get a little monotonous at times.

What's Interesting About It

The main character Walter White essentially starts cooking meth to pay for his medical bills and then provide for his family after his death. This central action comes about because he discovers he has an inoperable lung cancer. So everything Walter does follows on from his prior acknowledgment of his own death. Right off the bat, Walter White is an existential hero, if a little uncertain as to where that leads him.

Yet it's great viewing because everything he does in the first 3 seasons until his cancer situation stabilises, flows out from this prior acknowledgment of his own mortality. There's something of 'Fight Club' in this prior acknowledgement that propels Walt into his journey. It's also interesting from an Australian point of view because if Walt got diagnosed with cancer in Australia in the manner that he does, he could count on medicare to pay for treatment and that would be the end of that.  The fact that the drama spins out as far as it does is so fascinating from this side of the Pacific Ocean.

The Anatomy Of Meth

America is the land of the Western. The bifurcated myth of the law man and the outlaw, both heroic and unrelenting, standing tall in a reified landscape defines so much of America's own cultural concerns. The Western myth has transmogrified into other genres and with it has gone the eternal chase. Some narratives lean on the law while others lean on the outlaw. And just as one law man catches up to one outlaw in on narrative, another area of crime opens up and a outlaw rises.

'Breaking Bad' of course moves right into the territory of methamphetamines with its manufacture, distribution, law enforcement and other assorted details. As it does so, it goes a very long way towards discrediting prohibition, even for a drug like methamphetamines. Together with 'The Wire' and 'Boardwalk Empire', 'Breaking Bad' presents a compelling narrative of how prohibition and the law enforcement that goes with it creates black markets which feed on the vulnerable.

Many people have stood up to have marijuana and THC made legal. But by presenting the meth 'trade' with such detail, 'Breaking Bad' offers us insight into why Prohibition in general is going to be a failed strategy for dealing with drug abuse. Other narcotics such as marijuana and heroin and cocaine are derived from plant materials. The fact that they can be grown makes them like commodities and with great market demand. In one sense, the third world only have to grow these to make the greatest returns on their investment, all thanks to the prohibition regime that seeks to limit the flow of he commodity. If that is the case with something that can be grown, then what about something that can be manufactured in a lab?

Should The Government Be Sitting On Your Pleasure Centre?

The series does a tremendous job of editing and thus juxtaposing the nexus of all manner of recreational drugs in our society. The show rightfully connects the act of lab manufacturing crystal meth with home brewing, and in doing so implicitly points to the meth lab cooks as moonshiners. The only difference being the drug of choice is methamphetamine and not alcohol. The show also draws an interesting line into our acceptance of over the counter pharmaceuticals which can be abused, as well as nicotine which is legal, marihuana which is beginning to cross over out of the shadow of illegality, and gambling which has its own addictive problems.

Steadily and surely, the show demonstrates that there is some fundamental problem with prohibitionist reasoning. If possible harm to our health is the issue, it begs the question why tobacco remains legal and other substances do not. If addiction, and the associated  addictive behaviour is the issue, then we could point to nicotine and tobacco as well as alcohol and caffeine. And caffeine drinks are perfectly legal while there are age restrictions on alcohol and smoking. Heroin is another substance that is heavily controlled by the state when in fact it could help greatly in the medical field as an anaesthetic. We as a society seem to have made this decision to nobble Anaesthetists in favour of removing the spectre of heroin addicts from our society.

The best guess I can say is that the government would not like us to have fun. The government would not like us to have fun because it might impact on our ability to work and be productive; and the state wants us all to be at maximal productivity because it funds taxes and government and the violence mechanisms. A military and police which, - in a very dark irony - we then use to prosecute and persecute the drug abusers and traffickers.

And all of this has created massive black markets for the banned substances worth somewhere in the order of 800billion dollars globally. Think about that figure. It's enough to wipe out global third world debt several times over. Instead, its swimming through the coffers of drug cartels and tin pot dictators in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The drug trade isn't just killing the end user or the dealers who shoot one another in turf wars. It's robbing the world of the possibility of enough money to keep ever more people in abject poverty.

It raises the fundamental question, why the hell is government sitting on people's pleasure centres? Why is the government so keen to stop people enjoying themselves? The insanity that stems from the prohibitionist position is clearly untenable. There has to be a better solution than what's going on. Unsurprisingly, in the five years that the show has been running, some states in America have now legalised Marijuana. Uruguay has decided to regulate marihuana as other governments regulate tobacco products.

From Desire To Will

Nietzsche famously observed that our 'desire' dessicates into 'will'. It's a seemingly casual throwaway observation except it points out something very peculiar about our endeavours. We start off doing something because we like it, and we want to do it, but at some point we find ourselves doing the same thing under a different kind of emotional engine, one which connects to our will power, more than our desire.

It's fascinating how Walter and Jesse go from a carefree improvised meth lab on a recreational vehicle eventually moving to Gus' industrially designed meth lab, slaving away to produce quantity. For Jesse, the act of cooking meth goes from a fund sideline into a seriously dolorous and tedious *job* robs the glamour of being the outlaw from him. Similarly, once there is an established factory, Walt finds that he has been reduced to being a factory drone churning out product.

The world of 'Breaking Bad' is seemingly full of this kind of joy-sapping transformation, especially for the men. The only character not touched by this ennui is Hank, who remains a DEA detective out of a genuine desire to keep playing cops and robbers into his adult life. For hank, desire does no dessicate, although he is mightily challenged  by a couple of incidents which send him back into a near-infantile state.

The Odyssey And Walter White

Walter and Jesse find themselves in all kinds of interesting trouble, but it occurred to me somewhere late in season 5 that in fact Walter was a man simply trying to get home, and that all these obstacles and threats were things that kept him from home. You can see that across 5 seasons, and going into the final season garbled re-tellings of the Odyssey are scattered in the series.

For instance, his wife Skyler's affair with Ted Beneke echoes the suitors at the door for Penelope. The bombing by Tio that slays Gus leaves Gus temporarily one-eyed before he collapses and dies; thus Gus is shown to be the Cyclops. Jane and her drugs entraps Walter's traveling companion Jesse, so this is the lotus eater episode. The need to slay nine of Mark's trusted men is a metaphorical Scylla and Charybdis moment. The horrible poison massacre at the Cartel boss's house has echoes of the Circe episode.

To date, Walt himself is yet to encounter Calypso so far, but his ever dutiful son is on a search to find the true nature of his father, much as Telemachus goes looking for Odysseus. It's interesting that the echoes of the Odyssey can be found in this series.

Gangsters And Massacres

By the end of Season 5, Walt has made a full journey into the world of hoodlums and crooks. He is no longer in denial that what he is doing is flat out illegal and has very little excuse. Indeed, we're led to an interesting point where we understand that although what prompted Walt into being the meth cook was the cancer, there was a greater, deeper resentment about the world that drives him hard towards this goal.

Just as Michael Corleone spends the better part of the first 'Godfather' movie in denial of his destiny, we come to realise Walt has been holding off this part of himself for a very long time. The great lie that he tells himself through the first 3 seasons is that he no other choice. He actually has a lot of choice - for instance, taking the money from his old colleagues who have now become rich. Instead, he tells them to go fuck themselves, and opts to cook meth. On the balance of things, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that Walt wants the murders and mayhem and the attendant thrills that come with being a criminal, the same way Hank wants to keep being a cop.

The prison massacre of the 9 guys who worked for Mike, then is a distant echo of the 'Saint Valentine Day Massacre' as well as the big massacre at the end of 'the Godfather'.

Oil Stories

Which Peak Are We Climbing?

Around 2008, the big story was peak oil. The production of crude was going to peak, and that spelt a contracted future for energy for our civilization. since then, the world has gotten on to this business of fracking and as ugly as it may seem, it has changed the equation of our future consumption of oil as energy.

Heck, I admit: I was one of the people taken in by the Peak Oil argument - but only because the person who first introduced me to the notion had very good facts and figures. Of course, if you take a static snapshot of where we are and extrapolate, you ca imagine all kinds of scenarios. Neither he nor I imagined that fracking would come along, back in 2005-2006.

In that light I want to draw attention to a couple of articles worth getting your head around. The first is this one which discusses oil and gas in the context of a 'commodities supercycle'.

After eight years, the Oil Drum is closing down, giving up the long struggle to alert us all to ‘‘peak oil’’ and the dangers of an energy crunch. The theme has gone out of fashion, eclipsed by shale and US fracking.

The demise of Britain’s leading website for oil dissidents has been seized on by critics as an admission that peak oil is a Malthusian myth. It comes amid a spate of reports from global banks announcing the death of the commodity supercycle, slain by creative technology.

Yet if you stand back, it is hardly evident that the world is again enjoying an abundant supply of cheap energy, metals, or food. Commodity prices have held up remarkably well, given that we are in a global trade depression of sorts.

The eurozone is in the longest unbroken recession since the 1930s, with industrial production 13 per cent below the pre-Lehman peak. Growth in the US has averaged 1.1 per cent over the last three quarters as it grapples with the most drastic fiscal tightening since the Korean War.

Russia and Brazil have ground to a near halt. China’s growth is near zero on a GDP deflator basis. Oil imports were down 1.4 per cent in June from a year earlier. Imports of iron ore were down 9.1 per cent.

It all adds up to a prostrate global economy, yet Brent crude oil is still trading at $US106. There is no comparison with the collapse to $US11 in 1998. The CRB commodities index remains three times higher than a decade ago.

You might conclude that the supercycle is in rude good health given what has been thrown at it. A new Eos report by the American Geophysical Union, Peak Oil and Energy Independence: Myth and Reality, argues that global crude output has been stuck on a plateau near 75 million barrels per day (bpd) since 2005 despite enticing returns.

The way the article couches it, it seems the immediacy of peak oil is temporarily delayed, thanks to the development of fracking, which will stave off peak production of fossil fuels in general for a generation. It's pretty begrudging about the technological development aspect of what has led to the fracking business. The fact is, that a technological breakthrough came along and solved the problem of peak oil by changing the mode of our harvesting of fuel and energy. This is very much in line with Schumpeter's observations about a creative destruction of value, as well as why to date, the Malthusian crunch has not come about.

The other article is this one in the Economist which covers the possibility that our demand for oil may be peaking, so future demand for crude oil may be nothing like the extrapolation of the Malthusian alarmists.

The other great change is in automotive technology. Rapid advances in engine and vehicle design also threaten oil’s dominance. Foremost is the efficiency of the internal-combustion engine itself. Petrol and diesel engines are becoming ever more frugal. The materials used to make cars are getting lighter and stronger. The growing popularity of electric and hybrid cars, as well as vehicles powered by natural gas or hydrogen fuel cells, will also have an effect on demand for oil. Analysts at Citi, a bank, calculate that if the fuel-efficiency of cars and trucks improves by an average of 2.5% a year it will be enough to constrain oil demand; they predict that a peak of less than 92m b/d will come in the next few years. Ricardo, a big automotive engineer, has come to a similar conclusion.

Not surprisingly, the oil “supermajors” and the IEA disagree. They point out that most of the emerging world has a long way to go before it owns as many cars, or drives as many miles per head, as America.

But it would be foolish to extrapolate from the rich world’s past to booming Asia’s future. The sort of environmental policies that are reducing the thirst for fuel in Europe and America by imposing ever-tougher fuel-efficiency standards on vehicles are also being adopted in the emerging economies. China recently introduced its own set of fuel-economy measures. If, as a result of its determination to reduce its dependence on imported oil, the regime imposes policies designed to “leapfrog” the country’s transport system to hybrids, oil demand will come under even more pressure.

Basically, our policies and technological advances are working to constrain our demand for oil. It seems there will be enough of these to match the decline in production of oil with a decline in demand. I imagine this sits really badly with my friends in the environmental movement who have been praying and hoping for peak oil to crash our technological civilisation once and for all. I chalk all this up to Schumpeter and his creative destruction of values as well as the Kurzweil vision of a Technological Singularity. Collectively, we seem to be accelerating to a point of development, not slowing down. Calling this cargo-ism seems to be just as ideologically motivated as the sort of people who wanted peak oil to cripple our civilisation.

Certainly, this is an interesting vision of the near future:

The biggest impact of declining demand could be geopolitical. Oil underpins Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy. The Kremlin will find it more difficult to impose its will on the country if its main source of patronage is diminished. The Saudi princes have relied on a high oil price to balance their budgets while paying for lavish social programmes to placate the restless young generation that has taken to the streets elsewhere. Their huge financial reserves can plug the gap for a while; but if the oil flows into the kingdom’s coffers less readily, buying off the opposition will be harder and the chances of upheaval greater. And if America is heading towards shale-powered energy self-sufficiency, it is unlikely to be as indulgent in future towards the Arab allies it propped up in the past. In its rise, oil has fuelled many conflicts. It may continue to do so as it falls. For all that, most people will welcome the change.

If this indeed comes to pass, the world is going to be a very different place to the 'Peak Oil' scenario.

Carbon Price Banter

Finally Something In Place

We know the story: Kevin Rudd swept to power in 2007 with the promise of an ETS. He decided to negotiate one with the Coalition, finding common cause with his counterpart Malcolm Turnbull, which led to the demise of both men as leaders. Julia Gillard became Prime Minister having buried both the ETs and Kevin Rudd, went to the polls promising not to price carbon. Tony Abbott did worse, he supported the ETS, then in the expediency of his leadership challenge opposed it and buried Malcolm Turnbull. Both went to the polls and the electorate were so disenchanted, it resulted in the hung parliament. So off they went talking to the cross bench independents and the lonce Greens MP who negotiated the carbon price back on to the agenda, - which made Julia Gillard a 'liar'  but that was the price of keeping office. Tony Abbott's been running around siding with the loonies and climate change deniers drumming up a fear campaign, while the Greens and independents negotiated with the ALP to get this legislation.

And that's how we got the second-best policy according to Petr Hartcher.

For Gillard, carbon pricing is the reform she didn't want. She proposed the vacuous "citizen's assembly" as a way of killing carbon pricing. She has negotiated this tax not because she believes in it but because it was the price of bringing the Greens and independents together in support of her minority government.
Brown decided to block Rudd's emissions trading scheme in the Senate to hold out for a more ambitious one, then bewailed the government's failure to reform carbon pricing. He is now supporting Gillard's second-best scheme in an effort to salvage something from nothing.

And Abbott once urged the opposition to support the Rudd scheme in the interests of expediency, and then, as leader, opposed it in the same cause.

Even so, industry leaders thought he should have negotiated the terms of the carbon tax with Gillard. This would have reduced the power of the Greens and made it more business friendly. Instead, he pursued his populist oppositionism and left Gillard to deal with the Greens.

And there's the crux of the biscuit for the industrial lobbies that opposed the carbon tax along with Tony Abbott this time through. In a game of double or nothing, they doubled down on the side of not having any kind of policy on carbon in this country but badly misread the prevailing winds. If Julia Gillard's only reason for being PM was that she negotiated *something* with the independents and Greens, then they should have been awake to the probability that this time, the thing was going through. The greater irony is of course is that had the last one gone through, it might have been a bit better for the industry lobbies.They really misread the public mood, which has resulted in this legislation.

The funny thing is that this was on the cards ever since the hung Parliament election last year and when Julia Gillard announced she would price carbon as a result of her deals. It's amazing such a poliy got through in a hung Parliament, but maybe sometimes that is what it takes to get change.

Phil Coorey writes the Greens had to compromise greatly too.

The Greens complained last time abut the lack of restrictions on polluters to stop them buying permits overseas, enabling them to keep polluting at home. This scheme has restrictions but they do little more than pay lip service to the concern.

The CPRS was to start with a fixed price of $10 for a year before turning into an emissions trading scheme with an estimated starting price of $26. This scheme will start as a fixed price of $23, indexed upwards for three years, and has a floor. The government claims it will be a net lower carbon price over the first three years.

Today, the already febrile nature of federal politics will increase to that of an election campaign, with Gillard and Abbott locked in a fight to the death. The Greens and the government can ill-afford to bicker.

Either way, the Greens' policy purity of two years ago has gone. Like Labor, the minor party could not afford to fail to reach a deal this time. It's called compromise.
Welcome to political reality.

It seems in the final wash up, the Greens didn't come close to getting everything they wanted, and that perhaps this is a good thing for industrial Australia. After the last time through, it raised serious questions as to what on earth the Greens were doing in parliament if they couldn't get some kind of carbon trading scheme up and running. So it seems this round of negotiations was indeed a last ditch effort to salvage something from a real political opportunity with their names carved in to it. It was do or die for the Greens as much as the ALP.

Why Are You In Politics, Tony?

Which brings me to Mr. Abbott, who made a laughable speech after the Prime Minister made her speech. He said taxation was bad. I laughed out loud because if taxation per se was bad, then the Liberal Governments he was part of did a lot of bad things - like introduce the GST. There is no way taxation in of itself is 'bad' - it depends on the tax policy and this why policies get debated (like, d'uh Tony). So it seems it's quite appropriate to point out that had Mr.Abbott done some negotiating instead of fear-mongering in the public arena, they might have gotten something that better suited their perceived constituency of big business.

I guess he decided it was better to play the political game than to wrestle policy - which he already seems to choose every time - but just this once it seems he missed an opportunity to do something worthwhile and participate in a historic decision. Instead he's going to go down as the clown who went jumping around playing politics in the polls while an important legislation worked through Parliament with nary an input from his party.

The polls might suggest he's way ahead of Julia Gillard right now, but once this thing goes through, he's going to look weak and powerless for not being able to stop it. All this talk of repealing it is not going to help his cause at the next election when the pricing will already be in place. So really, what the hell are you doing in politics, Mr. Abbott?

What Prof. Ross Garnaut Has To Say About The Carbon Price

And The Charcoal On The Wall Says...

Pleiades sent me this link today. Professor Ross Garnaut had a few words to say about the way the big end of town is conducting itself in the carbon pricing debate.

Garnaut takes particular aim at BCA chairman Graham Bradley, Bluescope Steel chairman Graeme Kraehe and AWU boss Paul Howes, as well as BHP Billiton chairman Jac Nasser. He accuses them of elevating the cause of narrow business interests over the national interest.

He is also nauseated by the claims of the mining industry and its “hue and cry” against a market-based carbon price. He notes that the huge amount of money flowing into the country for the mining boom is displacing investment, and jobs, elsewhere in the country – a situation that is rarely appreciated in public debate. He accuses Bluescope and the AWU, who have been among the loudest opponents, of using the carbon price as a “scapegoat  …to duck the consequences of the resources boom.”

He reserves special condemnation for the BCA, the peak business lobby group, which has been riven by internal dissent over a carbon price, including from many members who do not accept the science of climate change. Just this week the BCA has recommended a starting carbon price of just $10 a tonne, and asked that most emissions-intensive industries be shielded completely from the carbon price – a proposal that has since been echoed by the Australian Industry Group.

Garnaut recalls the BCA’s rejection of a consumption tax at Bob Hawke’s National Taxation Summit in 1985 – the first “big outing” for the then newly formed council. “What emerged that day in Parliament House was a lesson in how vested interests can make the perfect the enemy of the good. In overreaching for an ideal outcome for themselves if not for the community, the business Council destroyed a central pillar of tax reform for two decades. They shot themselves squarely in the foot, with the country as collateral damage.”

Now, Garnaut says, the BCA has “returned to old type” in discussions about climate change policy. He recalls an anecdote about a visit to China by BCA chairman Graham Bradley in April this year, with a delegation led by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. “During high-level discussions with senior government and business leaders, Mr Bradley said that the Business Council would not support any carbon tax that would ‘discourage investment’ in Australia. And there should be no carbon tax on natural gas,” Garnaut writes.

But Garnaut says this approach has no logic. “There can be no carbon pricing without structural change. Structural change removes some jobs and discourages some investment. It is not logical to be in favour of a market-based mechanism for reducing emissions, as the (BCA) professes to be, and simultaneously be against a carbon price that discourages any investment. It would be as illogical as favouring productivity-raising reform but being against any policy change that discourages any investment.”

So take that, Business Council of Australia! There's more in that link, so do have a read.

The Charcoal Writing Is On The Wall

Cate Blanchett stumped for the cause of a carbon price and got a ripping from the Murdoch press. What followed was an admission by Dick Smith that he agreed with Blanchett but was too 'gutless' to front up for his beliefs for he feared exactly the sort of treatment Blanchett was receiving from the Murdoch press. Dick Smith even pointed to Murdoch's own words about climate change and implored the employer of these institutional climate change deniers. to come back and set them straight. Barnaby Joyce charged that Blanchett was unfit to comment as she was rich. Adam Bandt pointed out that so was Gina Rinehart and that it didn't stop her from campaigning for her own personal gain. Blanchett at least is campaigning for the common good - an important distinction.

Since then it's been a bit of a free for all.

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, did not overplay Blanchett's involvement, saying she was as entitled as anybody else to have her voice heard on the issue.
Mr Abbott dismissed her as a celebrity who was out of touch. ''You do not give special weight to celebrities,'' he said. ''You do not give special weight to people who live half the year in Hollywood where there is no carbon tax.''

That last bit is a bit (pardon the pun) rich. It points to a deeply undemocratic vein in Tony Abbott's political outlook but I won't go into that too much. Barnaby Joyce's denunciations too reveal a largely patriarchal anxiety wherein he is acutely aware that the beauty bias runs against him. If he had to stump up next to Cate Blanchett, he can't win because she is far better looking, better known and liked.

Still, it's this patriarchal libertarian leave-me-alone-to-do-as-I-will entitlement of bloke-ishness that seems to glavanise around the political end of the carbon price debate; and it's the school-marmish restraint of women like Julia Gillard and Cate Blanchett who are arguiing strongly for restraint of carbon emissions and a means of setting price point to discourage excessive emissions. No wonder the barbecue-loving blokes are going flipper and tongs at Cate Blanchett, ad hominem.

Well this is not about Cate Blanchett's right to side with the Carbon Price. It's about where the debate will ultimately go, and should go.

The Carbon Price debate is going to crash over the line with a lot of screaming rhetoric, but in the end the big end of town knows it needs to be done, and that if the discussions go past 1 July, it will be the Greens who will control the debate in the Upper House. This would suggest that it is incumbent upon the Coalition to represent the big end of town and secure the best deal they can out of the wounded Labor party before they both get taken hostage by the Greens - but no, it's Tony Abbott at the helm.

It's not just me saying it.

Abbott's whole “big new tax” campaign shuns acknowledgment of the real point, as does his alleged alternative strategy of paying farmers to bury carbon. It has worked in scaring voters and perhaps raised the hopes of a few gullible cockies, but it's also created investment uncertainty and is contributing to wobbly consumer confidence.
Keep shouting that the Government is taking Australia down the drain, that our macro economic policy is a total failure, and some people will be silly enough to believe it. The mindless simplification of budget policy into “surplus good, deficit bad” has been effectively debunked by Ross Gittins but don't expect most of the media to understand it.

But the ructions of the past week within the Liberal Party might indicate the very people who gave Abbott the job somewhat by default (remember that Joe Hockey didn't stand) are beginning to realise there are limits to Total Opposition. More pragmatically, they know Labor is so on the nose, the Liberal Party can afford to be seen to have some principles again.

Labor presently thinks Tony Abbott is the best thing going for it. If they can implement their Malaysian boat people solution, their (rather simplistic) hope is that a very mild carbon tax then proves to be a non-issue upon implementation, leaving Abbott as the attack dog without a bone to worry.

Tony Abbott and his climate-change denying cohorts are an embarrassment.

Peak Oil Is Knocking

Today's Peak Oil Article

Here it is.

Peak oil is forcing its way to the top of the agenda with stark warnings from the International Energy Agency and others repeated on ABC radio and television this week, after an investigation by the Catalyst program.
Following up a similar program she made in 2005, journalist Jonica Newby gained a rare interview with the IEA chief economist, Fatih Birol, who said crude oil production peaked in 2006 and, in veiled terms, added governments should have started working seriously on the problem a decade ago and warned of the threat of more oil wars.

Whereas five years ago the agency expected total production - including oil from deep-sea drilling and unconventional sources such as tar sands - could rise to 120 million barrels a day by 2030, the agency now expects production will reach only 96 million barrels. And Birol reckons there are no guarantees it can be brought out of the ground in a timely fashion.

''Existing fields are declining so sharply that in order to stay where we are in terms of production levels, in the next 25 years we have to find and develop four new Saudi Arabias. That is a huge challenge.''

If you're unsure of the general outline of the argument for Peak Oil, here's the helpful Wikipedia entry with the usual caveats about Wikipedia. Even the mighty Russian fields peaked in 2007 according to Wikipedia. If you want to read in more depth, here's a cool link.

Anyway, back to the article:

Desperately needed, of course, is a policy to tackle both peak oil and climate change at the same time.
Last year the think tank Beyond Zero Emissions, with Melbourne University's Energy Research Institute, published its Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan, which shook things up by calling for investment of $37 billion a year to switch the whole country over to 100 per cent renewable energy within a decade. The plan included enough installed energy capacity to power all our transport needs.

Beyond Zero has assembled a team of scientists, engineers and planners working pro bono on a fully costed, national transport plan that will take in three streams: city passenger and public transport, freight, and intercity transport and high-speed rail.

Workshops are under way, drafts are circulating and the report is due out by the end of the year.
The executive director, Matthew Wright, says the opportunity for Australia is there to invest in new, climate-friendly transport infrastructure and avoid spending on high-priced oil imports, which Beyond Zero estimates could exceed $50 billion a year by 2015. ''That's what I call a great big tax,'' says Wright.

That should be the take home message for now. our politicians are barely on the edge of the crux of the problem, and they're whipping up the wrong frenzy. Somewhere in the midterm, our dependence on oil could cripple our economy when it becomes impossible to move things around this country without oil. It's on the cards, it's part of the complex problem that gives rise to the need to prepare infrastructure for alternative energy sources. If one thing could contribute to the popping of the Australian Property Bubble, it would be the rising cost of oil.If people value the investment value of their houses, they might consider moving to alternative energies faster, not slower; and in turn stop whinging about the Carbon pricing because that is the mechanism by which the technology will be funded.

Fail Safe Part II

Aeschylus Was His Name...

I've been arguing a lot about the inferences that can be drawn from the Fukushima plant going into meltdown and a category 6 disaster in the wake of 12m high waves as well as a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. What I find most annoying is the group of anti-nuclear types citing that given the failure of Fukushima, it conclusively proves nuclear power should never be used. I've pointed out that there is an epistemological problem with risk management in my previous post here.

The people saying that Fukushima proves nuclear power plants cannot be safe are ignoring the freakishness of events that befell the plant to send it into its current condition. And this is is what I have for you.

Aeschylus was a playwright. He famously - and apocryphally - died when he was sitting in a forest reading a book when he was hit on the head with a turtle that was dropped by an eagle.

It's exactly that sort of freakishness that led to the events at Fukushima; the off the charts unlikelihood of a series of events overcoming all the fail safes. So if we were going to argue that Fukushima does indeed *prove* nuclear power is an unacceptable risk, then we have to draw the same inference and say that the death of Aeschylus proves sitting in the forest reading a book is an unacceptable risk.

People sit in the forests all the time. They don't get killed by eagles dropping turtles. There are around 2000 reactors around the planet safely supplying power, day in, day out. If we use Fukushima as the yardstick and make all nuclear power generation unacceptable, it would be like making Aeschylus' death the reason why we can't sit and read books in a forest. It's like taking the most outlier statistical abnormality and claiming it should occupy the middle.

Again, I'm not pro-nukes. I find radio-activity and human error and fallibility to be frightening risks. But I can't stand listening to people expressing their fears of nuclear power using the Fukushima disaster as the conclusive reason why we should stop all nuclear power stations. It's the worst kind of opportunism and it is inherently unscientific.

Fail Safe

Acts of God And Risk

I've been pondering the issue of nuclear power in light of the Fukushima crisis, and I have to say the problems of how things got to this point are so complicated that it's impossible to pin the blame on any one thing. The Fukushima plant was designed with earthquakes and tsunami threats in mind. They set the bar for earthquakes at 8.0 or so which was the magnitude of the quake in Tokyo, 1923. The tsunami threat was set for waves that were 6m high. In reality, what brought Fukushima undone was a 9.0 earthquake that unleashed 1500 times more energy than the 1995 Kobe quake, and a tsunami that was 12m high. In both instances, the spec the plant had to withstand was much larger than anything in recent record.

And there's crux number one. How far back would one have to go to fin the maximum threat, and how much more redundancy would one have to add on top? Even if they had added 20% to the largest threat recorded, the plant would have been built to 8.4 magnitude and 7.2m high waves. The unforeseen is by definition is unforeseen.

Subsequent to the two overpowering threats that manifested were 2 diesel generators for back up that failed, as well as a third battery system that also failed to kick in. All the fail-safes and redundancies were overwhelmed.  The fact that the system didn't go into immediate meltdown is some kind of testament to the engineering. Can all of this really be ascribed to the fault of the engineers? Isn't this more like what insurers call 'An Act of God'?

I'm not trying to redeem the nuclear power industry or Japanese engineering here, because at the end of the day there is an ongoing crisis that is threatening all of Fukushima prefecture and possible North-East Japan. What I do want to bring up is the nature of risk. Every time we drive a car we take a risk, every time we take the train we take a risk; society is actually built up on managed risks and underlying them all are assumptions on what is manageable and safe. For the better part of 40years, the nuclear plant in Fukushima ran without having a major hiccup until a series of overwhelming events. A rational person has to put that into the equation of benefits to balance against the risks.

So now I'm thinking aloud here, wondering if the case for nuclear is legitimately dead. Here's an intellectual exercise: Let's say the same plant was built in Australia and run with equal effectiveness. If it were away from the coast and rivers, chances are it's not going to be subjected to magnitude 9.0 earthquakes and tsunamis. What could possibly happen?

About the only thing I can think of off-hand are bushfires. But what if it had an exclusion zone around it? Again the question comes up as to what would be a legitimately safe exclusion zone to counter all bushfires? We could only figure out the worst bushfire and then calculate a 20% redundancy on top of the worst case scenario we know. But what if the disaster that strikes is twice the size of the previous worst?

The same problem is in fact what struck Brisbane and the Wivenhoe in the recent flood. The Wivenhoe dam was designed with the worst case on record in mind. The flood that eventually came had twice as much water as the previous recorded worst case.

I guess actuaries are busy doing their sums on this kind of thing, and doubtless there are mathematical formulae that address these things, and even then I'm guessing they will be found out to be faulty by the next disaster. Which leads me to think there's a structural problem with all of projection of worst case scenarios. Stock traders and commodity traders are always quick to point out that past performance is no promise of future performance. This is at its core the same problem with inductive reasoning.

The problem of induction is the philosophical question of whether inductive reasoning leads to knowledge. That is, what is the justification for either:

• generalizing about the properties of a class of objects based on some number of observations of particular instances of that class (for example, the inference that "all swans we have seen are white, and therefore all swans are white," before the discovery of black swans) or


• presupposing that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past (for example, that the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold). Hume called this the Principle of Uniformity of Nature.

The problem calls into question all empirical claims made in everyday life or through the scientific method. Although the problem arguably dates back to the Pyrrhonism of ancient philosophy, David Hume introduced it in the mid-18th century, with the most notable response provided by Karl Popper two centuries later. A more recent, probability-based extension is the "no-free-lunch theorem for supervised learning" of Wolpert and Macready.

Philosopher John Vickers concluded that we should use induction, not because it yields certainties, like deduction, but because it is a method that can correct itself - and is thus more likely to bring us closer to truth than other methods.[1].

Now this ultimately goes to Karl Popper and falsifiablity:

According to Popper, the problem of induction as usually conceived is asking the wrong question: it is asking how to justify theories given they cannot be justified by induction. Popper argued that justification is not needed at all, and seeking justification "begs for an authoritarian answer". Instead, Popper said, what should be done is to look to find and correct errors.[20] Popper regarded theories that have survived criticism as better corroborated in proportion to the amount and stringency of the criticism, but, in sharp contrast to the inductivist theories of knowledge, emphatically as less[21] likely to be true. Popper held that seeking for theories with a high probability of being true was a false goal that is in conflict with the search for knowledge. Science should seek for theories that are most probably false on the one hand (which is the same as saying that they are highly falsifiable and so there are lots of ways that they could turn out to be wrong), but still all actual attempts to falsify them have failed so far (that they are highly corroborated).

That's all well and good for knowledge, but for design and engineering, this has practical, real world problems. And I don't mean this lightly. The main problem we're seeing is that the critique comes in the guise of out of control, super-scale disasters. We only get to see the failure point of designs when a sufficiently large disaster strikes. On that scale, the trials of the Fukushima plant are inordinate challenges. They are beyond what could have been reasonably expected; the unreasonable-ness if you like, of the challenge is in a sense falsifying the design.

Was it reasonable to design for 8.0magnitude earthquakes when there are 9.0 magnitude earthquakes? Was it reasonable to design for 6m tsunamis when 5m was the highest that had been seen? I'd like to see one argument that is mounted without being post-hoc. It's the post-hoc arguments that are clouding the issue as to whether we can realistically look at any piece of design and find it acceptable.

Anyway, I've been racking my brain in the aftermath of the quake off Sendai, and that's all I've got for you. Some of you are better philosophers. You tell me if we can actually learn anything useful about the risks for which we can and can't design. It seems to me, we're all at a loss, and the triumphal "told you so" heard from our Green friends about nuclear power are actually nothing much more than opportunistic cat calls. And I'm saying this as somebody who is not even pro-nuclear. I just want some truth.

A New, Clear Dawn

The Tapes Have Recorded Their Names

Okay, so that's about the best line I can cite from Emerson Lake and Palmer's  'Karn Evil 9 Impression 3', but it's strangely fitting what with an apocalyptic sequence of events taking place over in Japan. First there was the magnitude 9.0 Earthquake. Then there was the Tsunami generated by the said earthquake, which wiped out the eastern coastline of Japan, and then the subsequent nuclear reactor problems at Fukushima that have steadily been going towards China Syndrome. "It's sort of a meltdown", "it might be contained," "oh look there's an explosion" sequence has been more or less the picture of panic and chaos. What's really disturbing with the Fukushima power plant situation is that it's really hard to tell what exactly is going on in there.

Workers at the plant have been manually feeding seawater into the reactors to prevent the fuel rods from heating up and melting down after Friday's earthquake and tsunami shut down all the country’s nuclear power plants.

Mr Jaczko, who was briefing US politicians in Washington, said the NRC believed "there has been a hydrogen explosion in this unit due to an uncovering of the fuel in the spent fuel pool".

"We believe that secondary containment has been destroyed and there is no water in the spent fuel pool. And we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures."

Mr Jaczko told journalists later that he received the information "from staff people in Tokyo who are interfacing with their Japanese counterparts".

"I've confirmed that their information is reliable," he said, adding: "It is my great hope that the information is not accurate."

The NRC and US Department of Energy both have experts on site at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the Associated Press reported.

But Hajime Motojuku, a spokesman for TEPCO, played down the US concerns and said the "condition is stable" at reactor No.4.

The US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, also expressed his concern at the US Energy Funds hearing, saying that "the events unfolding in the Japan incidents actually appear to be more serious than Three Mile Island".

"To what extent we don't really know now," he added.

The quick answer is that it is much worse than Three Mile Island and about 3 inches of concrete from Cherobyl. It's going to be a big problem should it really blow. The rate it's going, on shouldn't be surprised. As with Chernobyl, you get the feeling that the officials at Tokyo Electric - TEPCO - hit the denial button pretty hard as things started to go out of control. The Prime Minister Naoto Kan was overheard through his door, yelling at TEPCO's representatives, "In the end there's only you there. Get serious. If you so much as pull out of the reactor area, your company will go under, 100%. I'll guarantee you that!"

By "Get serious," PM Naoto Kan means, draw-your-sword-and-prepare-for-death-serious, which is something that gets lost in the translation. This reported incident has garnered him more bad press but most people I've spoken to agree with him. So the question is, how bad is it really and how bad is it going to get? We may still be in Act 2 of a very drawn out apocalypse of the Nuclear industry in Japan and by extension, elsewhere in the world.

In the mean time, the whole nuclear debate in Australia itself is set to go dead quiet.

There were two strands for the Labor conference to consider: whether Australia should develop a nuclear industry, and whether Labor should adjust its policy allowing uranium to be sold to India.

It's the first strand that's become too fraught. Selling uranium to India is problematic, but still an outside prospect. It will come down to the Prime Minister. If Julia Gillard wants to sell yellowcake to India, then key figures on the Right and the Left will marshal the numbers to support the executive.

But the spectre of post-disaster Japan will also complicate that debate. Opponents will say that if Fukushima can happen in a country such as Japan - a developed country with advanced technological capability and orderly governance - imagine what could happen in India. The Prime Minister will need to want to have the fight, and whether she does - when she has so many other fights at present - is unlikely, but only time will tell.

At one level, Labor's internal truce on the nuclear issue would be good news for Gillard, who is going backwards with the public according to the latest Age/Nielsen and Newspoll surveys.

Voters have watched nonplussed while the Prime Minister has grappled with her cluttered personal history of fixes and formulations, primarily on climate change, but on other issues too - the vexed problem of asylum seekers and, of course, her complicated relationship with the man she replaced.

Deferring the nuclear debate will buy the Prime Minister some restorative Zen in the 24-hour news cycle, but, unfortunately for her, the underlying issues won't go away.

Japan or no Japan, India will still want our uranium. The Americans will still want us to sell it to them. This will remain a significant foreign policy challenge, as it was for her two predecessors, John Howard and Kevin Rudd.

And the broader subject of nuclear energy will come back round again in the political discourse if recent history is a reliable guide.

Rational people don't want nuclear power for its own sake. Only carpetbaggers and boosters will tell you nuclear is a perfect technology. Events in Japan show us nuclear's downside. When it goes bad, it's not just bad, but potentially catastrophic.

This debate is likely to be repeated around the world. As the article says, only the heavily invested will try and convince you of the merits of nuclear. The funny thing is I was in America to see Three Mile Island unfold and I certainly recall the day Chernobyl went up in a radioactive puff. It's amazing the nuclear industry made as much of comeback as it is, after those accidents.

The question that should be asked is whether countries like Iran, Pakistan, India and China really want to be venturing down the nuclear path and take these kinds of risks.

What Happens Next?

This is the curious question, and here's a curious answer in the SMH today.

Despite two decades of stagnant growth on home turf, Japan is the second largest foreign owner of US government securities, with nearly $900 billion of America's public debt. This time it could be the rest of the world that takes a financial hit while the Japanese economy booms.

To understand how this could happen it is necessary to follow the Japanese money. Savings by individuals and money held by Japanese insurers and financial institutions amounts to trillions of dollars in cash, much of which makes its way on to world securities markets. When natural disasters happen in Japan, individuals and companies need this cash to rebuild, and insurance companies need it for payouts.

Earthquake insurance is hard to get for most households in Japan, so much of the cost - estimated at $US100 billion - will have to come from a mountain of ordinary savings held in Japanese financial institutions, much of it invested overseas. For anything that is insured, possibly amounting to between $US10 billion and $US15 billion - the situation is complicated. Japanese insurers will also have to sell overseas assets, but they will be spared the full cost because they have reinsured a lot of their risk with overseas insurance firms, who in turn have reinsured it with other insurers. This insurance trail is a global labyrinth. Japan's risk, it turns out, is the world's risk.

The article is really interesting in that it plays out a scenario where the Japanese trade out those US Treasury bonds to save itself.

Perhaps the biggest difference is the Tokyo government's fiscal position, awash in debt that amounts to two years' worth of GDP. It can ill-afford the generous injections it is making to stabilise markets and the spending that will be needed to restore infrastructure.

If the model plays out as predicted, the sell-off in bonds will continue, and the yen could rise further. The immediate effect on the Japanese economy will likely be to turn an expected 0.3 per cent growth this quarter into negative growth, perhaps sending Japan back into recession. But within a year the rebuilding effort will deliver strong GDP growth. Production of everything from cars to concrete will have to be ramped up to satisfy the expected demand.

If things work out according to that scenario, there are going to be a lot of hurt investors in bonds and insurance companies.

The other thing that needs to be said is that like the recent Queensland floods this disaster is going to end up stimulating domestic demand. I can't quite fathom the amound of fear of the people getting out of say, the mining sector at the Australian exchange. Alright, Uranium is deservedly down, but surely coal and iron are going to be in much demand as all these places like Queensland, Christchurch and the north of Japan all go into a rebuilding frenzy.

Check out what the Economist has to say about shocks to the share market. These things bounce back. If I had money to spend I would've spent it today buying shares. The Economist also dug up its 1923 reportage of the Great Kanto Earthquake.

As to the repercussion on the trade of the world generally, there are obviously circumstances in which so serious a blow to one of the great trading nations might set up a series of trade crises and precipitate world depression. But, again, the universal stagnation of trade, and the fact that speculation has for this reason been recently restrained within extremely narrow limits, means that commerce generally is not so vulnerable, as is sometimes the case, to a shock to credit. Indeed, looking at the matter from a purely narrow national standpoint, it is conceivable that the momentary withdrawal of Japan from world competition may cause buying by India and China in other markets, and that Great Britain may momentarily benefit from a cause which in the long run will reduce, and not increase, the trade of the world.

The rebuilding of Tokyo will, of course, afford some compensation to the otherwise depressing effects of the disaster. A substantial proportion of the requirements for this purpose will be needed from overseas, which will involve the placing of loans abroad, presumably in London and New York. Some of the sums raised in this way may even be required for purchasing food if it should appear that very large stocks of these requirements have perished or been spoiled, and that internal Japanese resources are insufficient or cannot quickly be mobilised by the Government for the relief measures that will be necessary.

Sounds familiar? That's the sound of history repeating. Cue Shirley Bassey and the Propeller Heads.

Compensation For Carbon Price

This Is Going To Get Interesting

Less than 5months from now, the Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate and not surprisingly they will be pushing politics to the left by a long way. This might be a good thing given how far to the right things swung under John Howard. Some Gen-Y kids are going to be in for a surprise. Besides which, the Greens aren't green through and through, they're more watermelon-like: green on the outside, red on the inside.

That being the case, the Greens are already shooting down calls for a compensation package for there being a carbon price.

As chief executives from some of the nation's biggest companies attended climate change talks in Sydney yesterday, the Greens highlighted the fraught political landscape confronting the government's push for a carbon price.

After the Herald revealed growing unease among business leaders over the government's negotiations with the Greens, the party's leader, Bob Brown, vowed to challenge the resources industry in its campaign for compensation.

Advertisement: Story continues below
Senator Brown accused Rio Tinto of trying to ''gouge'' public money after this week unveiling a record profit of $US14 billion.

Rio Tinto, which owns half the country's aluminium smelters, is understood to be lobbying to ensure it is protected against higher electricity prices.

But Senator Brown said he would ''take on'' Rio, which he said would have pocketed $565 million a year under the abandoned carbon pollution reduction scheme. The Greens blocked that scheme, claiming that the compensation it offered to trade-exposed sectors and the power industry was excessive.

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, was co-chairman yesterday of the meeting of executives from companies including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, NAB, Woolworths, Qantas and Origin Energy.

It is understood most of the executives agreed a carbon price was inevitable, but stressed the need to avoid ''unintended consequences'' for the economy. One said trade-exposed companies including BHP and Rio Tinto appeared ''nervous'', and were the most vocal in explaining their situation to the government.

I guess the mining business headed up by such hard-done-by types like Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest and Gina Reinhardt are going to take to the hustings (or the back of flatbed trucks) and spend scores of millions to discredit a government trying to do something to address the fact that there needs to be a carbon price. I'm even guessing that the same bunch think that they can roll the Labor government if they can get to the two independents, Windsor and Oakeshott but there's every chance they can't. Let's face it, Windsor and Oakeshott were up to taking the punishing, bullying pressure from Tony Abbott. If the corporate world start launching ads attacking these men, they're more than likely going to push them away; not turn them so they join Tony Abbott.

The uncomfortable truth is that the Senate with the Greens holding power is going to be much, much more progressive than the old Senate so any number of these deals such as the revised Mining Rent Resource Tax and Carbon Pricing are going to be harder to negotiate. It's clear Bob Brown is spoiling for a fight, and he's got his numbers down.

All this is to say once again what a colossal fuck up the move against the ETS and Malcolm Turnbull was, and because of that move the corporate sector is going to pay a heavier toll than if the Coalition had let the Emissions Trading Scheme get up. The boot's going to be on the other foot come 1st of July.

And Just Why Should They Get Any Compensation?

This is the crux of the Greens' position. The reason a carbon price is being discussed is to create a deterrent for wanton emissions, as well as build a fund to combat the effects of climate change. The Corporate sector says they're only part of the problem, and ask why must they pay first before the private citizens? The answer to that is that they can always pass on the cost to the consumer, and therefore the punter is going to get hit with the carbon price; but also the notion that the government should compensate these polluting businesses for the losses they make when they have to factor in a carbon price is just another way for these firms to try and socialise the losses, just as they seek to continue privatsing the profits by avoiding the mining super-tax.

There's really not much more to it than that, so you can easily expect the Greens to ask, why should the tax payer fund any compensation for any of the polluting activity that these companies engage in and contribute to? They've been getting a free ride to date but the free ride is over. There is no reasonable argument to give compensation to freeloaders who suddenly must pay their way. Certainly it's the exact same argument they mount when they attack the welfare system and dole bludgers (do such entities exist any more?).

They can surely cop their own medicine. There shouldn't be any compensation at all.

This Is Still Normal?

Cyclone Yasi

Only a fortnight after the floods that hit Queensland, Cyclone Yasi is bearing down on the northern end of Queensland.

Authorities have recorded wind speeds of 295km/h and warned that storm surges of up to 7 metres could hit Cardwell, between Townsville and Cairns, as the cyclone’s expected arrival late tonight combines with a high tide.

The life-threatening system is forecast to cross the coast near Innisfail, with furious winds, torrential rain and floods adding to Queensland’s massive damage bill from natural disasters this summer.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has announced that Cyclone Yasi is even bigger than Cyclone Larry that hit Innisfail 5 years ago, and that it is in fact a storm with a scale of which has been unseen in generations. I take that to read it's a once in a hundred hear event - just like the floods that hit Brisbane.

In the aftermath of Brisbane, it got pointed out by some people that Brisbane was always prone to flooding and that the councils that allowed construction of houses in such places were to blame. A lot of it came from people who had the usual climate-denial axe to grind.

It was conveniently missed that the Wivenhoe Dam was built after the 1974 floods in order to control flooding, and that it had been overwhelmed with the scale of water that was way beyond what the designers had foreseen. The precipitation that led to the recent floods was reported as double the precipitation in 1974.

Indeed, where did all this water come from?

Uhh, in case you're wondering, that's a rhetorical question. It seems incredibly ornery to ignore the volume of water that has been introduced into the system with melting polar caps and glaciers. But I guess that's what you get from climate change deniers.

From Texas To Maine

So while the north end of Queensland is getting inundated in historic proportions yet again, we find out that North America has been hit by a historic snow storm.

The monstrous storm billed as the worst in decades delivered knock-out after knock-out as it made its way from Texas to Maine, bringing Chicago and the rest of the Midwest to a halt and prompting a region-wide snow day.

"I'm usually skeptical about predictions of a big storm," 50-year-old law firm librarian Janet Smith said Tuesday afternoon while waiting at a downtown Chicago train station. "But I'm kind of excited. I wasn't around for the storm of `67, or the storm of `79, or the storm of `99. I've missed all the greats. I'm excited about experiencing it."

For the first time in history, the state of Missouri shut down Interstate 70 between St. Louis and Kansas City due to a winter storm. The newspaper in Tulsa, Okla., canceled its print edition for the first time in more than a century. And in Chicago, public schools called a snow day for the first time in 12 years.

Now, here's the thing. I experienced '79 and it was billed as the worst snow in 30years in the New York area at the time. But that was superseded by a snow fall in the mid 1990s that was billed as worst in 60 years. It's a little odd that we're seeing once in a life-time sort of events in regular succession.

Yet, this is exactly what is predicted by climate change models where global warming has led to more water in the system, giving rise to wilder and wilder storm events. These things aren't coincidences and chance happenings.For it to be chance you'd expect more of a regression to the mean. Instead we're seeing a shift towards a 'new normal' where we're hit with more extreme storms more frequently and marvel at the historic ferocity. Hurricane Katrina anybody?

Yes, it could all be chance an coincidence and luck and within the bell curve of events that could realistically happen. However, it's a lot more scientific to explain it as largely because there's more water in the climate system, causing frequent extreme weather events. Occam's razor says it's the latter. This whole extreme storm thing is about global warming.

Whaling To Go To International Court

May As Well Have A Showdown

Here's an article in the SMH that says the Rudd Government is going to make good on its election promise and sue Japan in the International Court over whaling.

Sources said the government decided to make good on its election promise in 2007 to take Japan to court.

The government has come under intense attack for putting its centrepiece environment policy - the emissions trading scheme - on hold until at least 2013, and for reneging on other election promises.

The Coalition and the Greens have demanded the government act on its consistent threats to take the legal action after Tokyo also rejected the ''peace deal'' put forward by the IWC on the basis that the cuts it proposed to Japan's ''scientific'' whaling program in the Antarctic were ''too drastic''.

The legal action would not stop Australia taking part in the international diplomacy before the IWC meeting in Morocco next month, where the ''peace plan'' to legitimise strictly limited whaling quotas will be debated.

In February the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said Australia would take legal action in time to halt the start of the annual hunt in November. But if the ''peace plan'' succeeds and legitimises Japanese whaling, the basis of the court case would be undermined.

I'm wondering if the government really thinks it can win, or whether it's a kind of brinkmanship to see if Japan bends on a point it says it will not bend; and further to that if they should win, then Australia can claim whatever it likes about whaling but should it lose, it will have the option of ratcheting down the rhetoric. It seems to me if it is the latter then the Australian Government is sending delegates to the IWC in bad faith.

Just to go over some old bits and pieces, here are some things that Australia's going to have to argue in court.

The first thing they'll argue is that whales are endangered. Well, who has the numbers on that? Japan still does the most cetacean research in situ and it tables the findings each year at the IWC. They have a better track of numbers than most countries at the IWC when it comes to the Pacific Ocean, so it would be incumbent upon Australia to produce better data on the numbers to prove the species the Japanese are hunting are on immediate brink of extinction. The Japanese will be able to show they've been catching the minimum allowed by the agreement, so Australia's claim that it is "too drastic" is going to be a hard sell.

Australia will most likely argue the line about scientific research whaling being a disguise for commercial whaling on the basis that the whale meat ends up on the market. Except the scientific research whaling is sanctioned under the current regime. All whale captured for such research must be sent to the market under IWC rules. So by the rules of the IWC, it's both acceptable for Japan to conduct its research and sell the whale meat at its markets. It's going to be interesting to see which part of this rule and its applications with which Australia is going to take issue.

Then there's the territorial waters claim. Australia's case is going to the International Court on the basis of Australia's territorial claims to the oceans near the Antarctic. This is not a territorial claim that is not recognised by other nations, but it is this claim that will also get tested in the International Court. I imagine the average Australia likes to think of it is 'our' waters, in the same way the Tom Cruise was 'our Tom' during his decade long marriage to Nicole Kidman, but it's really more projection than fact.

Australia can also argue damages to its whale-watching tourism trade but they'd have to then prove the Japanese were hunting those particular whales. This one is going to be more of a red herring because the argument against Japanese whaling isn't a damages claim sort of thing; it's about the principle of it and all that metaphysical arguments to do with how whales are exceptional and therefore should not be hunted. It's going to interesting when Australia is going to get asked to produce the evidence that whales are indeed exceptional. Or even intelligent as claimed.

In contrast to the primates, cetaceans are particularly far-removed from humans in evolutionary time. Therefore, cognitive abilities generally cannot be claimed to derive from a common ancestor, whereas such claims are sometimes made by researchers studying primate cognition. Though cetaceans and humans (in common with all mammals) had a common ancestor in the distant past, it was almost certainly of distinctly inferior cognitive abilities compared to its modern descendants. The early divergence of the human—dolphin ancestry line creates a problem in what cognitive tasks to test for because human/dolphin brains have been naturally selected so differently, with completely different cognitive abilities favoring their very different environments. Therefore, an anthropomorphic problem is raised with exactly what cognitive abilities to test for, and how to test for them, because of the completely different evolutionary line and environment human and cetaceans have.

Australia is also likely to argue a line about environmentalism. It could walk into a minefield with that one. Australia's beef cattle industry isn't exactly the most environment friendly business, on top of which Australia's a major exporter of coal which is a major source of mercury poisoning in the world's marine life. So Australia would be getting up to argue a case against whaling on grounds of the environment when it could be on the receiving end of such a lawsuit. And need we remind ourselves that Australia didn't sign on to Kyoto and was a notable hold out for along time under the previous government. The world of international opinion may look at Australia's record on the environment rather differently to what Australia likes to think of itself.

So all in all, Australia's got its work cut out for it. But you never know. It would be interesting to see if Australia wins; and if it does, then if events leads to the gutting of the IWC because the International Court of Justice would essentially be overruling the IWC's own rules. If IWC rules aren't worth the paper they're written on then why would all the other whaling nations stick around to talk about it at the IWC? In a sense Australia is arguing to the International Court to invalidate another international institution.

It's ugly business but I'm going to enjoy how this all unfolds. It can only get worse for Japan and Australia's diplomatic relationship from here on in. It's amazing there's not a dissenting voice in either side of parliament.

Things To Depress You

Hey, I Don't Invent This Stuff



It was one thing for a wayward tanker to crash right into the Great Barrier Reef this month, there's also been this disaster in the Gulf of Mexico where an oil rig blew up and now oil is spewing everywhere.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Oil is leaking from the ruptured well of a large rig that exploded, burnt and sank in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, the US Coast Guard said Saturday.

The Coast Guard estimated that up to 1,000 of barrels of oil, or 42,000 gallons (158,987 liters) were spewing each day from a riser and a drill pipe, prompting further concerns of damage to Louisiana's fragile ecosystem, already stressed by hurricanes and coastal erosion.
Officials confirmed the discovery a day after the Coast Guard said that no oil appeared to be leaking from the well head.

Coast Guard Eighth District commander Rear Admiral Mary Landry told reporters the leak likely began on Thursday, when the rig sank two days after an initial explosion tore through the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible oil drilling platform.

The best case scenario is sealing off the pipe ruptures in a few days; the worst case scenario is a matter of months. The Coast Guard said it would take several days before they determine how to stop the pipe leaks 5,000 feet (1,525 meters) down in the Gulf waters.

Petty Officer Connie Terrell told AFP the oil sheen was now 20 miles (32 kilometers) in diameter about 40 miles (64 km) off the Louisiana coast. Over 33,700 gallons (127,570 liters) of oily water mix have been recovered in the cleanup effort so far, she said.

Now that's got to be an ecological disaster the size of which has not been seen since the Exxon Valdez. I know our civilisation runs on oil, but surely these kinds of disasters have to force us to think of alternatives means of running out civilisation. It's depressing to think that 21 years on from the Exxon Valdez outrage we're still just as hooked on oil and vulnerable to massive ecological disasters.

The Big ETS Delay

Meanwhile back in Australia, the Labor Government is now making noises that it will delay the introduction of the ETS.

A spokesman for Mr Rudd said the government would legislate an emissions trading scheme by 2013 if there had been ''sufficient international action''. The strategy has been the subject of fierce debate within the government. The move will save $2.5 billion over the next four years.

A special prime ministerial task group will report in June on options including an energy efficiency trading scheme and new industrial and building efficiency measures.

Together with new fuel efficiency regulations and existing funding for solar and clean coal projects, the measures will become pre-election announcements to justify the claim the government is still committed to tackling climate change and able to meet the reduction targets it has pledged internationally.

But environment groups said the deferral - aimed at defusing the opposition leader Tony Abbott's scare campaign about ''a great big new tax on everything'' - would drastically increase the cost of meeting Australia's targets, no matter what other policies the government adopts. They said it would also send a disastrous signal to the flailing international climate negotiations.

In other words, you delay it and pay more, but you're not crossing the road alone, first. Was tat really what we voted for back in 2007?

Here is another piece on it, with more of an explanation why they will delay the introduction of the ETS.

The Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, told the Herald the government would not try to legislate the ETS even by its new delayed start year of 2013 unless there is ''credible action'' by the end of 2012 from countries such as China, India and the US. It would also require a resolution of the Copenhagen deadlock over how national efforts are checked.

''We will only [legislate] if there is sufficient international action,'' Senator Wong said, declining to explain exactly what that meant. She admitted the delay would ''make meeting our [emission reduction] targets more expensive'' and that without a carbon price Australia would not meet the targets at all.

''You can't get to your targets without a cost on carbon … we have been very clear that we have to put a price on carbon,'' she said.

Which all goes to show they understand what they're trying to do, they understand how urgent it is to do it, but they're letting the rest of world's intractability get in the way of doing the right thing. Consider that Kevin Rudd's government got elected on this promise back in late 2007.  2013 would be 6 years lapsed from that election. The wait is intolerable, and this is absolutely the kind of failure of leadership for which Kevin Rudd was lambasting the Coalition.

The commentary on this very moral cowardice is here.

Tony ''the settled science of climate change is absolute crap'' Abbott and Kevin ''the greatest moral challenge of our age'' Rudd know they have to have a carbon price to make a significant difference to Australian greenhouse emissions. But both now say they want to wait and see what the rest of the world does.

To understand just how far this debate has shifted, think back to poor old Brendan Nelson, who lost the Liberal leadership in 2008 for suggesting the wait-and-see approach that now seems to have bipartisan approval.

Kevin Rudd suggested yesterday he was just shifting the timing of the ''implementation'' of his carbon pollution reduction scheme - like it was a minor administrative matter.

But then he also said he would be assessing at the end of 2012 what the rest of the world had done, and the political realities in the Senate. What if the rest of the world hasn't done much? Seems he could drop an emissions trading scheme altogether.

The Coalition's decision to abandon bipartisan support for an emissions trading scheme last year obviously changed the politics of the issue. Labor could have put the issue to a double dissolution election, or said it would try again after a normal half Senate poll. Instead it has distanced itself as far from the scheme as it can without dropping it altogether.

And therein lies the heart of the shit-fight that is the ETS scheme. For a start, the best thing about the ETS is that it puts a price on carbon. When you look at it closer, it's a crappy price they put on it, because they don't want to hurt the current emitting industry too much, but it also stalls the growth of carbon capture/management businesses that are waiting for a price. Then of course the ETS arrangement isn't even perfect. It gives away too many freebies to polluters, which is why the Greens won't even countenance negotiating with the ALP.

So really, the Rudd Government is basically strapped to both extremes of the argument having to put something in the space dead-bang in between, while the extremes move further out in their cloud-cuckoo directions... rather than just doing what's right. It should be willing to go the double-dissolution on this alone, but hasn't. There's something that reminds us of the politics around the introduction of the GST back in the day. There was no way known a Labor government could/would introduce it, so it fell to the Coalition. The electorate bitched and whined and moaned all the way but hasn't really found the GST regime to be so crippling to the economy or daily life. It seems there's no way that a Coalition government an ever put in an ETS given its 'Global Warming Sceptic' constituency, so it's inevitably going to fall to Labor to pass it. And the electorate will bitch and whine and moan, but chances are that in years to come it will be accepted for what it is.

The thing is, if it's so necessary - and sane people all agree it is - then why don't they just do it properly? That's all I'm asking for.

New Zealand Opts To Deal

Who Would Have Guessed?

What do you know? New Zealand is willing to deal and back the compromise plan to reduce the absolute number of whales that are killed.

New Zealand has backed the compromise pact, which would lift the current ban on commercial whaling while reducing the number of whales killed by Japan under the guise of "research".

NZ had been one of Australia's staunchest allies in the fight against Antarctic whaling.

But now the country's whaling commissioner, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, says he'll support the compromise proposal at the next meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in June, the ABC reports.

Currently, commercial whaling is banned but countries can hunt whales in the name of science. Up to 1900 are killed each year.

Australia wants Japan to stop whaling, but Japan insists that it has the right to hunt whales.

The issue has been stuck in diplomatic limbo and there is an increasing push to find a compromise, alarming conservation groups.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett spoke out against NZ's support for the compromise proposal.

"I am alarmed and very concerned that NZ would support a proposal that is flawed and represents a huge compromise to pro-whaling nations," he said.

"Australia cannot support the compromise package now being discussed in the IWC."

That package was loaded in favour of the whalers, Mr Garrett said.

Well Peter Garrett would say that. In a trade off between numbers and principles, the Australian government wants to hold on to the principles and not trade away anything at all AND have their way. I don't think that's how deals work Mr. Garrett.

Of course that being said, this is April Fools day, so who knows if the New Zealand government is really considering this move.

UPDATE: here is an article with a better explanation of the NZ position on the issue.

Former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, who chairs an International Whaling Commission (IWC) group trying to negotiate a deal, said the IWC could fall apart.

"I think there is a big risk of that and I don't relish it," Palmer told reporters in Wellington.

"We cannot afford to see the end of the International Whaling Commission because if it comes to an end, there will be no international instrument for protecting the whales."

It raises the question what happens to the issue of controlling whaling if the IWC were to fold. After years of fruitless wrangling, it may actually be getting to the point where Japan, Norway, Iceland and Russia walk out o the IWC and there would be no agreement whatsoever.

Palmer said he was not confident the opposing sides of the whaling argument could agree on a workable deal, but said it was important they were still talking.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully also described a deal as "a long shot" but said it was worth trying.

"All the alternatives to holding these discussions are truly awful," he said.

Australia has taken a harder line, saying it will take Japan to the International Court of Justice if it does not agree by November to stop hunting in Antarctic waters.

New Zealand said it there was a good chance court action would fail, leaving controls on hunting weaker than ever.

That can't be good. Here's another article with some interesting points:

Since there seems to be no way to stop Japan from killing cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises), the Obama Administration is poised to compromise on commercial whaling in order to secure broader, more effective regulation by the IWC. If Japan chooses to cooperate, that is. Its recent success at thwarting protection for depleted, sashimi-bound Atlantic bluefin tuna during a UN wildlife session does not augur well.

IWC meetings are rancorous affairs at which neither side wins the three-quarters majority needed to change anything. Founded by whaling nations, the IWC was taken over by whaling opponents in the 1980s, since which time Japan has used foreign aid to recruit support from Caribbean and Asian countries. (Dominica dramatically reversed its pro-whaling position last year.)

A three-year effort to reorder the IWC (read the talking points from a recent working session) would create a South Atlantic Sanctuary and beef up conservation efforts to help the world's biggest mammals cope with oceanic pollution, ship strikes, climate change, and sonic disruption. In an historic compromise, countries that hunt whales could do so along their coasts--and Japan could continue to exploit Antarctic waters--but only under an enforceable legal agreement that the U.S. official said must unquestionably cap whaling "at a significant decrease" below the current fatality rate. "Numbers are key."

So that means Mr. Obama AND NZ are both on board with the compromise plan. This is interesting because it means it's up to the UK and Australia to continue with the strident antics at the IWC, but neither seem to have taken into account just what happens after the IWC falls apart.

The New Hominin

Expanding The Human Family

This news completely took the world by surprise. They've identified a strand of humanity that is neither on the Neanderthal or the Cromagnon-modern man line.

The paper that describes the finding comes courtesy of the Max Planck Institute's Svante Pääbo, who has been actively pursuing the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. It seems likely that this particular bone fragment was targeted due to suspicions that it might also provide an additional Neanderthal sequence. The site, called Denisova, is in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia, an area that has had hominins present as early as 125,000 years ago. The sample itself came from a layer of material that dates from between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago. Neanderthal DNA was found in a sample from the same time period less than 100km away, while artifacts indicate that modern humans were also present in the region by 40,000 years ago.

So, there was no apparent reason to suspect that the bone would yield anything more than a familiar sequence. And in fact, most of the first half of the paper simply describes the methods used to construct a complete sequence of the mitochondrial DNA, including over 150-fold coverage of the genome, and an alignment program designed to account for the errors typical of ancient DNA sequences. About the only surprise here is that Pääbo's group has switched from using 454 sequencing machines to those made by Illumina.

Various checks indicate that the sequence the authors obtained contains damage that's typical of ancient DNA, and that it all comes from a single individual. So far, quite typical.

Things got quite unusual when they attempted to align the sequence to the mitochondrial DNA from the hominin species that were likely to be present at that time and place: human and Neanderthal. Instead of clustering with one or the other, the Denisova mitochondrial genome was a clear outlier, having about 385 differences with the typical human mitochondrial genome. In contrast, Neanderthals only differ from modern humans by an average of 202. The obvious interpretation is that the Denisova lineage split off before modern humans and Neanderthals did. If we accept that Neanderthals are a distinct species of hominin (and we do), then this sample clearly represents yet another one.

Building a tree with the chimpanzee genomes and assuming a divergence time of 6 million years, the data indicates that the Denisova lineage diverged about a million years ago. At that point, Homo Erectus was already a global species, but our human ancestors were still in Africa. That suggests that the Denisova variant probably originated in, or at least near, Africa as well, although there's no way to tell whether it was a distinct species before it started migrating, or whether it became an isolated population because of a migration.

And so the article goes. The most interesting thing about this population is how recently they were living. Keep in mind, 40,000 years ago places it about the time Homo Sapiens is moving into Australia. The Neanderthals don't disappear until 24,000 years ago. The hotly disputed Florensis hobbit population existed between 94,000 years ago through to about 12,000. What we seem to be getting a picture of is a variety of Hominin species cohabiting this planet. The conjecture would lead to the distinct possibility that our ancestors eradicated these populations to become the dominant ape.

Here's another link which suggests that the 'X-woman' aka the Denisova Hominin split off the common line of humanity about 1.04 million years ago.

Professor Stringer commented: "Another intriguing question is whether there might have been overlap and interaction between not only Neanderthals and early moderns in Asia, but also, now, between either of those lineages and this newly-recognised one.
"The distinctiveness of the mitochondrial DNA patterns so far suggests that there was little or no interbreeding, but more extensive data will be needed from other parts of the genome, or from the fossils, for definitive conclusions to be reached."

Experts have been wondering whether X-woman might have links with known fossil humans from Asia, which have controversial classifications.
"Certain enigmatic Asian fossils dated between 250,000-650,000 years ago such as Narmada (in India), and Yunxian, Dali and Jinniushan (in China) have been considered as possible Asian derivatives of Homo heidelbergensis, so they are also potential candidates for this mystery non-erectus lineage," said Prof Stringer.
"However, there are other and younger fragmentary fossils such as the Denisova ones themselves, and partial skulls from Salkhit in Mongolia and Maba in China, which have been difficult to classify, and perhaps they do signal a greater complexity than we have appreciated up to now."

All the same, the world of ancient humans got a whole lot more complicated as a result of this discovery.

Putting A Price On Carbon

10 Bucks Per Ton?

The Department of Climate Change isn't buying Tony Abbott's plan.

The analysis, prepared by the deputy secretary of the Department of Climate Change, Blair Comley, says that rather than reduce emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 as the policy claims, it would lead to an increase of 13 per cent.

Mr Comley, an economist who was instrumental in designing the Government's emissions trading scheme, says the Coalition policy underestimates the cost of each tonne of carbon for which taxpayers would pay businesses that reduce emissions.

On Tuesday, Mr Abbott unveiled a policy he said would cost $3.2 billion over four years and more than $10 billion by 2020.

At its core is an emissions reduction fund worth $2.6 billion over four years.

Polluting businesses which chose to reduce emissions could apply for grants from the fund and they would be paid between $10 and $15 for each tonne of carbon they saved.

Here's the follow up to the Coalition's Climate Change policy.

The Coalition's scheme is not all good news for our farmers.

First, farmers will be paid $10 for each tonne of carbon dioxide stored in soil. But $10 is a very low price. Under the government's carbon emissions trading scheme, farmers would be paid two to four times more than the Coalition's offer.

Second, while the focus on storing carbon in soils is welcomed, farmers will not be paid to restore native vegetation on degraded land.

Under the government's scheme, farmers would be paid to plant trees on degraded land and in areas of high conservation value.

Farmers would get an extra income and would help improve the health of degraded river systems in the Murray-Darling Basin, fix land degradation across the south-west of Western Australia, improve water quality in the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef, and address overstocking in our vast rangelands of northern Australia.

The advantage of the government's scheme is that farmers would be paid to optimise terrestrial carbon across the country and it puts a cap on carbon pollution.

But neither side of politics has adopted a cap deep enough to drive the industrial transformation.

The NSW Government pays $25. I don't think $10 cuts it, do you?

The bottom line perhaps is that the Coalition don't believe in Climate Change for reasons that satisfy their own prejudices and not much more, but have cobbled together a policy because they know the electorate have been convinced about it and therefore must come up with *something*/*anything* to mollify a demand.

Here's another critique.

The central element of Abbott's policy is a new Emissions Reduction Fund. A Coalition government would allocate $11 billion to this fund over the 10 years from 2011 to 2020: it would start at $300 million in 2011 and grow to something like $2 billion by 2020.

The fund would give grants to businesses for projects to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases.

Participation by polluters would be entirely voluntary. If businesses chose to do nothing and continued increasing their emissions in line with current trends, they would not face any penalty or cost.

The Coalition reckons its fund will "buy" 140 million tonnes a year worth of reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 2020.

A reduction of that size would indeed meet the Federal Government's target of reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent by 2020.

But the Coalition has used back of the envelope calculations to arrive at its 140 million tonne by 2020 estimate of greenhouse gas abatement under its policy. The calculations are based on estimates from industry lobby groups eager to get their hands on the grants.

Real-world experience with similar schemes suggests these estimates are highly ambitious.

It goes on to say:

The Federal Government's Department of Climate Change has calculated that the current cost of each tonne of carbon abated under this scheme is around $40. Inflation would lift that to $50 a tonne by 2020.

At that price, the $2 billion in Abbott's fund in 2020 would buy only 40 million tonnes of abatement, a long way short of the 140 million tonnes the Coalition has estimated.

I did some calculations of my own based on commercially available project components and couldn't come up with better than $75 per ton unless I had a dedicated, bulk/ mass capture solution. The hidden cost of carbon capture whether it is in trees or slabs of limestone or what have you, is that you then have to transport it somewhere for storage. So $45-$55 per ton for capture makes sense, but it doesn't include shipping & storage and GST. Even the Federal Government's $40 figure is probably based on a hypothetical efficiency gained from scale.

But that's just the numbers. The best understanding of it is here:

The two most reputable market-based policies for cutting emissions are carbon taxes or "cap and trade" schemes like the Rudd Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Both impose a carbon price on emitters.

Cap and trade schemes fix the quantity of emissions and let the market determine the carbon price. Carbon taxes set the carbon price and let the market determine the quantity of emissions.

Abbott's scheme is effectively a "negative carbon tax." This means it is the worst of both worlds: it does not fix the quantity of emissions nor does it impose a carbon price on polluters.

This means central planners and business lobbyists rather than market forces will determine where emissions reductions are to be pursued. That is hardly likely to deliver the lowest-cost abatement.

And it is a remarkable approach for an avowed pro-market politician.

Magic Pudding indeed. To think that we were so close to an ETS only 2 months ago. The mind boggles.