Do Politicians only group-care about financially inept mortgage owners?

Where are the brave politicians defending the rights of one of our citizens? Or indeed the politicians calling for investigations of the claims that the USA broke the law and ordered spying on UN diplomats. Or carrying out DoS attacks: is that not illegal?
We had one poor stupid sod languish in a deep dark hole in Guantanamo because the Australian government didn’t show the balls to demand he be charged or released. The British didn’t stand for it and I don’t see why we should put up with ineffectual government that spends billions of dollars placing soldiers’ lives at risk to keep up a US-Australia partnership which seems to revolve around grinning and bearing the receiving end of international diplomacy.

Politicians were falling over each other to rescue whinging mortgage owners from “unfair” exit fees a few weeks back.
Let’s put things in perspective:

• “Unfair” is shooting (or locking up) the messenger.
• “Unfair” is getting labelled a criminal without proper investigation.
• “Unfair” is letting the media publish content from wikileaks without threat of legal action, but not providing wikileaks the same leeway.

Defending Australian Citizens
So the politicians should grow a backbone and stand up for one of our own. If the current batch of polliticians are going to tip toe around protecting Australian citizens then resign so we can elect people who bloody well will look out for us. Currently our govt seems to care more about the USA’s dirty laundry than well-being of an Australian whistle blower.

So much dirty political laundry eh?

Moral issues with wikileaks
It is a murky area with some of the material leaked from wikileaks. For instance if material naming specific people in dangerous parts of the world. I can definitely see an argument for blanking out names that would identify them to those who would harm them. There are many people doing the right thing and speaking out against evil beyond the range of wikileaks and their concerns. Farmers reporting on scumbags threatening locals for sending their daughters to school or letting authorities know where killers are hiding. Those poor bastards have a hard enough deal in life without ending up dead for doing the right thing.

But exposing the communication that shows Clinton or Rice were ordering actions that would result in the UN head diplomats have their DNA or iris scans collected is not such a situation. I do think there’s an argument for some sort of censorship, but I guess then the problem becomes one of self censorship by wikileaks. I think it’d be a hard decision for the wikileaks mob (or you’d hope) to consider the impact of releasing some of the material it does. As with all things: weighing up the greater good is tricky.

Root cause

I think the problem isn’t so much Wikileaks, the problem is governments playing fucking “X-Files” with people’s lives around the world.

Is this book sitting on the shelves of Govt agencies?

What we desperately need is more transparent government. Wikileaks is a blunt instrument at the moment and like all movements toward more accountability those people/groups benefiting from secrecy are digging in hard. These people watch the Bourne movies and wonder if they could build a better Jason Bourne, the X-Files and scoff at the TV show getting cancer man’s cigarette brand wrong and just KNOW that your standard domestic aluminium/tin foil won’t block out the new brainwave-o-matic interrogator 3000.

Well.. it IS a conspiracy!

Life on the planet is a long play game. These sneaky, short sighted secret spy games damage the longer term goals (if indeed there’s any thought to longer term goals) which are I hope to settle down and get along without war. Taking down the secular democratic government in Iran is one such example: Brits and Yanks install a dictatorship because oil might not flow as freely, now everyone’s talking pre-emptive strikes and women are back to cattle status. Short term win for the USA and UK, but accumulating international political or regime debt.

Personal privacy is important

That’s not to say I’m not in favour of personal privacy: absolutely people should have a right to privacy. In fact, the biggest threats to personal privacy are these governments now complaining about their sneaky back-room dealings coming to light. The same conservative pundits now calling for wikileaks members to be assassinated were the same ones bleating “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” from things like the PATRIOT act and the slew of global privacy/wiretapping/rights erosion (not to mention invasions!) that followed the 911 attack.

An example you might not have heard about but the USA spies on details of international money transfers whether they have anything to do with the USA or not. So you transfer some money to Europe or Asia: CIA gets details of your transfer and hey, might just stick you on a no fly list if for whatever reason they don’t like your taste in under the counter German porno mags.

I’m of the opinion if someone likes dancing naked each evening before bed: who cares. If someone’s into some kinky consensual sex with their partner (or partners): no one’s business but their own.
What politicians do in their own time is up to them so long as they aren’t being colossal hypocrites (e.g. the vocal anti-gay campaigning republicans who always seem to turn up trawling for gay escorts in airport bathrooms or ones who build a career around “family values” only to be sprung shagging around behind someone’s back): then perhaps there’s a public interest.

Trawling for republican hypocrisy.

What you say to your friends, loved ones etc, what your sexuality is, what you eat for breakfast, what films you watch, products you buy is really no concern of anyone else’s whether they be the media or other snooping officials. What you got up to as a kid, which bucks party or boozy night out you saw strippers (or which relation used to be one): that isn’t “public interest” so long as you aren’t sending the bill to taxpayers.

Government transparency is important too

But governments on the other hand I think have a responsibility to their people to act in a responsible, consistent manner with the expectations of society. That means not organising assassinations, trying to destroy democracies to install dictators, not torturing people etc. If “government” was a person: would they be locked up? That’s not to say governments don’t have responsibilities to take some abhorrent action (e.g. wars always involve killing people, but weighing up the consequences of “do nothing” is necessary),

Aah yes, security. Trump card made of eroded rights.

They’re proving to be a walking cliche for conspiracy theorists.
Do they have to appear to use Orwell’s 1984 as the inspiration for whatever back room secret programs they run? Is hypocrisy the first chapter in some sort of “government for dummies” book they all get when they join a government department.

What needs to be done rather than hounding wikileaks
I say treat the root cause: call on the US government to lift its game, not just dumbly join the chorus wanting to assassinate or locking up Australian citizens for exposing the dirt. It seems it was ok to invade citizens’ privacy in the name of fighting terrorists, but a citizen exposing government secrets makes them a terrorist: that needs to change.

Would anyone claim it is a “tricky issue” or “tradition” that black people shouldn’t marry whites? Or would that simply be racist?

Citing tradition, religion or the status quo (as politicians, religious leaders do) doesn’t somehow excuse you from common decency.

Parallels..

If you don’t like gay marriage then it is simple: don’t get gay married or stay at home if invited (you may miss some rather extravagant gay weddings). Don’t for an instant think that supporting a ban is any more acceptable than wanting a ban on mixed race weddings (which I’m sure had another set of unenlightened people in the past crying about the decline of society and death of morality).

You don’t choose your skin colour at birth, nor do you choose your sexuality (when did you decide to be straight?).

You can however choose to continue to be ignorant, prejudiced, racist or homophobic.

(A letter the smh didn’t publish.. Guess pointing out that racism and homophobia are identical was too “out there” for ‘em).

• Exemption to the anti discrimination laws so that Churches could take stone age prejudice into the modern world (can’t have gays or unwed mothers working near Christians: it’d be harder to demonise them if they actually knew some)
• Increased Govt funding of public school chaplains (to the tune of $400m+ rather than spending money on qualified counsellors, an action labelled as “dangerous” by the Australian psychological group)
• removing (or maintaining the lack of) a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion
• no progress on euthanasia laws (after all, if people are suffering then it is god’s will, right?)
• creationism to be taught in schools (see their comment on the national curriculum here)

The ACL's campaign issues bear remarkable similarity..

In fact, if it is a progression towards a more equal or compassionate society: these clowns are against it. If it is a step towards a Christian Taliban style government where every outdated, barbaric garbage law from the bible is blindly enforced by law: then they’re for it. Their version of religious freedom means “massive government legal and funding bias toward Christianity”.

A Secular, compassionate democracy (consistent with say our constitution!) isn’t high on their to-do list.

So here’s my suggestion for their prayer for the Victorian election on their page:

Nathan says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

14 November 2010 at 10:09 pm

So I hope you’ll be praying for fairness and equality for all people, (not just straight couples) lest more gay people get persecuted/driven to suicide. It’d be fantastic to see a call from good Christians to deliver fairness in the marriage laws extended to all men and women.

And for the environment as a moral duty to future generations..

And for politicians to launch an enquiry into the paedophiles that the church has continually covered up lest more people have their lives ruined by this organised campaign of deceit..

And perhaps also spare a prayer for a proper secular separation of church and state (e.g. religions pay taxes and contribute back to the rest of society via the tax system).. As freedom of religion can only exist if there’s no funding of religions by govt.

Look forward to seeing those sentiments included in your prayers, I hope the uglier aspects of Christian lobbying are shunned in favour of these more compassionate views.

Or you can censor my views.. Whichever sits best with your conscience.

What chance is there they’ll go that way? It’d probably take a miracle (and they can’t even rustle up anything remotely convincing for Mary Mackillop’s miracle).

If Jesus existed he seemed pretty accepting of people, it’s self proclaimed Christians who seem to be known for their lack of acceptance, misogyny etc.You know what Jesus said about banning gay marriage: nothing. What he said about forcing old terminally ill people to suffer no matter whether they want to die or not? Nothing.  But here we have people claiming to be Christians and making these things their key issues..

Jesus disagrees with the ACL

Perhaps I should say a prayer that they see sense on their prejudiced ways.. Perhaps be a bit less like bigoted scum-bags and more like their spiritual leader supposedly was.

As a side issue I’ve recently become a member of the Secular party of Australia because of the need to focus on separation of church and state (or lack thereof). Especially when we came close to electing candidates unlikely to respect that separation as well as deny science in general.

Unfair bank exit fees? Do owners allow tenants to break leases without incurring extra charges? No. Renters are liable for anything from a month’s rent to the rest of the lease period. A renter is slugged many times more than the owner is for shifting a 30-year mortgage. What of the other “unfair moving fees” (removalists, cleaning, mail redirection and reconnection fees) an owner can impose on a renter: can we get those paid for by the owners?

While politicians aim their “unfair exit fees” pitchforks: I have a two-year mobile phone plan which has fees if I decide to swap to someone with a better plan. Where are my enraged politicians to take down greedy telecommunications companies?

A two-year gym membership would result in higher exit fees than 30-year mortgage owners would cop. I have a possible solution: mortgage owners could use a small part of the first home owner’s grant, duties exemption or massive tax writeoffs (for negative gearing) to cover these fees.

Nathan Lee Surry Hills

It was followed up the next day by a piece from Ross Gittins on “Demand a better deal and stop moaning about banks“.

Forgive me if I’m less than impressed by the tirade of righteous indignation being unleashed against the banks. It’s self-serving, selective and uninformed.

I guess when you get angry you forget to check things out and think them through. The media and the politicians on both sides are whipping up indignation, rather than conveying information and fostering understanding.

Hear hear!

You'd think you'd read the details on a mortgage contract huh?

So you don’t think I’m just making stuff up
As a concrete example, here’s what Optus had to say about my request to close off my account (because I get shitty reception in the building at work and my phone is pretty useless if I am going to get dropped calls while hugging the window hoping they’ll stay connected.

Hi Nathan,

Thank you for your email.

Your 24 month contract end date is 30 June 2011. Upgrading or Cancelling your service before the end date will incur the following fees-

o $504.00 (including GST) Early Upgrade fee or Contract Cancellation fee
o $112.00 (including GST) Handset Payout fee (8 remaining payments of $14.00 including GST)

I would recommend that you wait until you have only 3 months remaining on your contract to upgrade as we maybe able to offer an upgrade without the Early Upgrade fee.

… snip for brevity..

All the best

Melissa
Web Servicing Team
Optus

So there’s $504 to end my contract nearly a year and a half in and a handset payout fee.. So to get out of just 7 and a half months of a 2 year contract it’ll cost me $616.
Let’s look at what the bank exit fee whingers are complaining about from this article I can gather the following are the exit fees for the big banks:

• ANZ = $700
• CBA = $700
• NAB = $900

So it costs less to move hundreds of thousands of dollars of mortgage to another bank than it does for me to shift off Optus for ANZ and CBA. So a year into a 30 year contract worth $500k is less expensive to swap than my bloody phone plan.

Fatcat Banker cat says noes.

As I said, maybe they can use some of those tax breaks (for negative gearing) or blatant vote buying handouts (1st homeowner’s grants). If you think the whining is bad now, just wait til these mortgage owners start learning about negative equity. That and politicians seem to forget mortgage owners are in the minority, though I guess most of them are taking advantage of the generous tax scams available to investment property via negative gearing.

Along with the Libs and ALP Bob Brown’s jumped on the bank exit fee bandwagon and reckons:

“It’s time they gave something back to the average Australian.”

No, Bob, they never EVER gave anything to the average Australian. Well, you know, except the fucking mortgage in the first place. *slap*

Climate change denier and creationist. God help us if Abbott gets in.

I really wish Abbott hadn’t back stabbed Malcolm Turnbull out of the Liberal hot spot. He’s at least got half a brain more than Abbott and was prepared to take a stand for the environment (before the liberal party bribepolitical donation companies got their claws into him). If elected he’ll be our version of George Bush: ignorant, smarmy, religious as anything and completely unsuitable for the top job. He couldn’t keep his religion out of the Health ministerial workings imagine how things will regress with him in the PM seat.

Abbott was so bad as health minister I wrote to John Howard suggesting he should be sacked.

Although I’d prefer the Greens to get a bit more of a say (to make up for Labor’s back-down on taxing carbon and capitulation to mining interests) or perhaps a wild-card like the secular party to reel back in the massive bribery/infection of church into state. But for no other reasons than the National Broadband Network (NBN) and the GFC recession free status of Australia (unique in the developed nations) Labor should get another round. It seems the dummies are hung up on Rudd’s disposal and yes, it was rough, but let’s look at policy instead. The situation is as it is: both leaders trampled the guy before them. Deal with it.. Who stabbed who in the back is kinda expected since the “Et tu, Brute?” story has political origins.

Et Tu Brute...

Anyhow, if Abbott gets in all this talk about stopping the boats won’t be important. If Abbott wins the NZ PM had better get a boat phone system in place because hoards of Aussies will be paddling their way to New Zealand strapped to anything that can float!

Tony's direct line to stop the boats.

And if that’s not making any sense:

and the scary movie rip off (probably better known):

You’d think Tony Abbott would steer clear of phones altogether after getting stuck in the outback and unable to work a phone:

There was some discussion about using a satellite phone Mr Conway had left with the party to summon help in the form of a helicopter from Kings Creek station.

As the light was fading, the chopper pilot wouldn’t be able to land but could drop some supplies.

“Beer, water, food and rugs. Especially beer,” quipped the Opposition Leader.

Just one problem with that plan.

No-one in the group could get the satellite phone to work.

After failing to make a voice call, Mr Abbott tried sending a text to the only mobile phone number he could remember, that of his press secretary Claire Kimball back in Canberra.

“WERELOSTNEARFOSSILCREEK” the text said. No one could work out the key on the sat-phone to put spaces between words.

It’s probably just as well for Ms Kimball’s peace of mind that this alarming text failed to transmit.

While the concept of the armed forces/navy calling the PM isn’t particularly novel, it makes for a good visual though.

Check out #boatPhone on twitter for other news.

So much so that consideration is being given to either bringing the leaders’ debate forward by an hour, or delaying it until another evening so it does not clash with the series final of the hit show MasterChef.

I’m fine if you aren’t at the TV but given the choice and sitting at home stuffing your face with takeaway food while you pretend you’ll cook good food one day and you can’t pay a bit of attention to what’s going on in the election. Well…

Let’s be clear: Masterchef is big brother but without the shower and bedroom scenes. If BigBrother was entirely in the kitchen and the one on one interviews (completely and utterly staged post event I might add). Maybe with a bit of the apprentice thrown in (the drive away, low camera angle in the car). In 6 months no one will even remember it because they’ll be watching the next mind numbing but annoyingly addictive reality show.

Here’s the poll results so far:

Please tell me the public cares a bit more about the future leadership of the country than this!

Perhaps no one notices the bullshit

Perhaps Tony Abbott has a chance with his flat out liestatement that he can promise lower interest rates (for those not in the know: the reserve bank is independent of the government of the day and sets interest rates based mainly on inflation and other economic measures.. not on the whim of the politicians in charge). Perhaps both parties can overplay the significance of their “number one issue” and we will lap it up, just so long as it fits in the ad break of that TV show we’re watching!

The debate about the little things
The debate will hopefully revolve around the environment, jobs, education, healthcare, border security and immigration. You know, the “little things” in life. Obviously our future is not as critically important as watching these guys:

The hosts (image from the Age Newspaper)

• a pompous fat bastard (who needs to step away from the table more often and has to wrap his neck to keep his expansive jowls from exploding),
• a little bald English geezer (with small man syndrome and a knack for pointing out the blinding obvious in an urgent sounding voice) and
• a granite faced grump (I haven’t watched enough to know what he’s notorious for)

shovel a half billion calories into their already well stuffed gullets.

The meals are cooked by people who appeal to one of a handful of viewer-broad appeal stereotypes (e.g. the gay guy, the blokey clutz, the princess, the douche-bag, the “bit rough” tomboy girl, the ethnic “let’s keep this show from being a white wash” minority, the out of place awkward guy and the “jesus is my life” religious one that all the Hillsong cult mob will vote for). Not only are we dumb, we’re predictably dumb and don’t like seeing anything new it seems.

Step away from the cupcake fatty!
In a nation with over half the population overweight we shouldn’t be obsessing over food, particularly not the stuff on Masterchef.

MasterChef?

When “half a block of butter” and “a handful of salt” are in pretty much every dish: there’s a problem. Double problem because you’re watching the damned thing on TV and don’t get enough exercise. There’s perhaps a cross over opportunity for emergency room when they all (and they will) end up in hospital with a heart attack as their cholesterol encrusted arteries, basting in the umpteenth pork belly dish, finally give in. Or perhaps dig up “the biggest loser” hosts and get this mob to boot-camp.

Apathy is not a virtue!

It says a lot about the general apathy of people if they would rather watch a bunch of people chop up vegetables than take the slightest bit of interest in the policies and running of the country. One of my friends (Dave?) said that the ability to vote should require people to prove they have read at least two different papers in the week before the election so they’re at least somewhat aware of the issues. I’d settle for the average voter being able to put off watching some moronic cook off contest to watch just one political debate every few years.

Who elects these idiots anyhow?
In between elections there’s always plenty of moaning about how poorly the politicians are running the place: perhaps it is down to how poorly informed the voters make themselves by apathy and ignorant choices. Stupid voters deserve the stupid leaders they vote in.

Perhaps if people cared more about political issues than about which person goes on to the next round of the latest idiotic reality TV show of the moment: we’d demand something more from our elected officials. So we wonder why our politicians are a bunch of untrustworthy, back stabbing, gimmicky, slogan spouting twits! When they have to compete with reality TV shows to get elected: is it any wonder?

Businesses will get away with using as much energy, polluting as much as possible unless there is a cost attached to doing so. More than that actually, they have a duty to their shareholders actually to continue to pollute as much as possible while ever it is free to do so. So CO2, like any number of pollutants that had a cost attached via regulations/fines/taxes needs to have a cost associated. If you look back in time you’d see that any number of things have gone through this transition:

• lead
• asbestos
• CFCs
• DDTs
• etc

Prior to the health or environmental impact of the above triggering change it was the wild west type situation for businesses. Lead was in paint, added to petrol (gasoline for the yanks), smelters didn’t have to worry about minimising the contamination of ground water/soil around refinery/smelter operations. Then when the science and medical research came rolling in: it was either banned, phased out or required to be cleaned up (e.g. a fine last year for lead contamination). That made lead expensive to pollute with because it had to be treated with consideration to the impact on children etc.

Same deal with asbestos. It was (and still is) great for a number of things: heat proofing, building materials (the old version of “fibro cement” with asbestos was superior to the current cellulose variety (which is nowhere near as durable, strong, fire retardant or flexible.. seriously, asbestos is magic stuff). But while not as good in some ways, it doesn’t get into your lungs and cause nasty growths/cancers that will slowly kill you.

But back to global warming/climate change. What if we’re wrong about it?

I think the following cartoon sums up my thoughts on the matter:

The "horrible consequences" that await!

So I’ll take the argument from point of apathy: the “do you REALLY care” option.

• Does anyone care if they drive a petrol or an electric car if they both get you to and from your destination (assuming they start making them look half decent)? What if the electric one can be charged from the sun and doesn’t pollute the air around population centres?
• Would you care if you plugged in the car or dropped in a battery pack vs filling up with petrol? Battery packs should stink less and service stations look a bit cleaner (without run-off into drains etc).
• Does anyone care (or know for that matter) whether the electrons running your monitor that you’re reading this come from sunlight via solar cells or wind via wind farm or kite or does it HAVE to come via burning fossil fuels like coal? e.g. does your ability to put food on the table depend on energy being generated from fossil fuels, and if it does: could you possibly do one of the many new jobs away from coal?
• Would anyone notice if the hot water for the morning shower was heated via a solar hot water unit on the roof or is burning coal necessary for a good scrub temperature?
• Do you care if there are millions of new jobs in green industries created as environmentally dirty jobs are phased out?
• Do I care if my amazing Triumph Daytona 675 motorcycle is superseded by something sexy and electric like the MotoCzysz E1pc?

If you don’t really care about stuff like the above then keep your coal industry fibs to yourself, shut the hell up and let the people pushing for those things get on with the job. The absolute worse thing about these misinformed twits is that they are campaigning against improving the world for no other reason than because they want to go with the “do nothing and let everything get more polluted for our kids” option.

Want to see where we’re headed worldwide: take a look at China’s worst polluted spots for some hints (it isn’t pretty).

Yeah: what if it is (by some hugely unlikely plot by tens if not hundreds of thousands of scientists) a hoax and we end up with a world that doesn’t care about oil or coal. A state of being where we can let that shitty, dirty internal combustion technology retire into being another of those strange oddities in a transport museum (along with the coal fired steam engines and those planes with flapping wings failing on takeoff). If we lose the car noise and smoky exhaust smell in the cities and have the whir of electric driven wheels (or better yet trams/trains or electric buses) instead.

I would hope that certain jobs go quietly into the night and were replaced with many others:

• coal power plant technician
• oil rig drilling engineer
• internal combustion mechanic

Working in heavy dust, Chinese migrant workers invariably start to have health problems after 1-2 years.

Perhaps “replaced” with:

• solar array technician
• recycling engineer
• electric vehicle mechanic

But I suspect the anti-green Luddites and the climate change deniers will be digging in hard for many years to come.

Banish those bare rooftops says SA's premier!

The target set for SA is better than the national target, which is also good news:

Speaking at the Copenhagen climate conference, the premier informed that the South Australian government had came up with a new 2020 energy target that will generate 33 per cent power from renewable sources. The revised target is far higher than Australia’s nationwide 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target (RET).

Realistically though: we’ve truckloads of sunshine falling on Australia. The vast hoards of backpackers washing up bright red with sunburn on beaches over the summer is proof enough of that. So I can only hope that every government building in every country with half decent sunshine does this. Solving the global energy situation is like the eating an elephant concept: you have to do it one bite at a time. Government roof space is an easy win. I blogged some time ago about the nation building money going to good use on solar in Australia and how we should use the dead space for solar generation. I’ll post up some ideas in a separate post about some possible next steps Government could take.

The other thing that could fill some of that spare rooftop space, roof gardens:

Another use for that dead space: green rooftops.

I’ll leave you with the thought that if every government building rooftop was producing electricity: it’d be at least one thing in the building producing something worthwhile. Might even make up for the hot air coming out of parliament?

Left vs Right mindset on lots and lots of issues.

Though I’m a sucker for information visualisation I should disclose. Data and concepts such as this can (and should) be interesting.

As an aside, here’s a TED talk showing some pretty funky visualisation:

I posted that up earlier as one of my “ten wow must see TED videos“.

Australia plans to build the world’s largest solar power station with an output of 1000 megawatts in a A$1.4 billion (US$1.05 billion) investment, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Sunday.

Finally! maybe this will be the boost that is needed to get solar over the tipping point from the niche “isn’t that a shiny expensive novelty” to something substantial. Or at least to the “isn’t that a shiny expensive widespread thing”.

Always good to compare things to the rest of the world:

“The government plans to invest with industry in the biggest solar generation plant in the world, three times the size of the world’s current biggest, which is in California,” Rudd said.

I think solar has enormous potential in Australia to cut down the amount of coal we’re burning for daytime things like air conditioners, factory equipment, aluminium smelters etc. Particularly when (as I’m still enjoying the novelty after the UK) we get so much bloody sunlight:

It’s a bit of a pity we’re also blessed with oodles of coal, which means Australia can afford to be lazy and polluting and still have enough electricity for everything.

As an aside: here’s an interesting quote from the long dead Thomas Edison from way back in 1931:

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Natures inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

Incidentally, he was talking to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone.

For practical solar hitting the mainstream: I’d like to see more use of dead space as solar collection areas. We’ve lots of roads/railway lines/rooftops that could surely be feeding back into the grid. Lots of space you can run strips of metre wide solar cells for long distances. All we really need is for the cost per unit and the ability to plug back into the grid without too many $$$$.

Anyhow, good to see a proven real technology like solar getting such a chunk of cash, rather than more bleating on about the hopes and dreams of a clean coal fantasy land. I’m hoping we get to a point where we just leave the coal in the ground and it becomes just another geological feature because we just don’t need it.

Bit of a longer, but most comprehensive coverage of the videos/slides here. In ten minutes you’ll know what happened.

A power point slide show with stick figures gives another explanation here:
http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&pli=1

Nice clean, quick description of what’s going on.

The bounce of money (short intro by a news reader.. stick with it), so more of an “end result” type coverage rather than examining how we got here:

Oh and this one is worth mentioning:

How the unemployment statistics are worked out.

Might as well put something silly at the end:

I’ve heard suggestions involving burying, sticking in oceans, filling mines with it, blowing it into oil wells. While the oil well option sounds like it might work a bit (they currently pump salt water into a lot of ‘em to keep the flow going): I don’t really see how you can capture all (or even a significant portion) of the CO2 and stuff it in there (last time I checked the oil rigs weren’t exactly near to power stations either). None of these options sound like a particularly permanent solution or likely to be able to account for a decent chunk of the emissions.

Here’s a novel idea: if you want the CO₂ back in the ground so much: don’t dig the bloody stuff up in the first place! Yet still the politicians believe this will surely work, yes that’s right they have lots of faith in this energy industry quackery. It’s akin to the cigarette industry saying people don’t need to stop smoking because one day there’ll be a cure for cancer soon enough.

Whatever the solution it’ll most likely be expensive, require large changes to infrastructure and require quite a bit of energy to do. Yet it has widespread professed support from the energy industry, you know: the same industry that baulks at anything other than coal (e.g. solar, wind, tidal, nuclear) because of the above reasons (too expensive, requires new infrastructure and still requires energy to build everything).

A Time article by Bryan Walsh points out another issue with Coal fired power stations: the ash left over after you burn it (and have the goblins and fairies take away the CO₂ in little balloons or something) is pretty nasty stuff. In an accidental spill of coal ash/water a power plant in Tennessee Valley, USA has “released 100 times more waste than the Exxon Valdez disaster“, wiped out property and polluted the waterways with all of the nasty stuff that still lurks in coal after it’s been converted into airborne pollutants and power for those flat screen TVs and air conditioners we all know and love.

So not only do you have massive amounts of this toxic slurry to get rid of still but the information has been floating around for years that coal power stations release more radioactive substances into the atmosphere than nuclear ones, and the ash also contains the nasty radioactive stuff. To what extent that is true is a bit trickier to figure out due to the battle of misinformation that went on back a few decades ago. Given anything dug out of the ground tends to have radiation of some sort (e.g. household bricks leak small amounts of radiation) it stands to reason that coal would have that too, difference is that it is getting burnt (so would release that into the air in some quantities) but the real problem is the heavy metals and other “hostile to humans” stuff in the ash by the sounds of it.

I found a fact sheet that has an analysis of some coal from the USA and what it typically contains (from Radioactive Elements in Coal and Fly Ash:
Abundance, Forms, and Environmental Significance). Their conclusion:

Radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm. The vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks. This observation provides a useful geologic perspective for addressing societal concerns regarding possible radiation and radon hazard.
The location and form of radioactive elements in fly ash determine the availability of elements for leaching during ash utilization or disposal. Existing measurements of uranium distribution in fly ash particles indicate a uniform distribution of uranium throughout the glassy particles. The apparent absence of abundant, surface-bound, relatively available uranium suggests that the rate of release of uranium is dominantly controlled by the relatively slow dissolution of host ash particles.
Previous studies of dissolved radioelements in the environment, and existing knowledge of the chemical properties of uranium and radium can be used to predict the most important chemical controls, such as pH, on solubility of uranium and radium when fly ash interacts with water. Limited measurements of dissolved uranium and radium in water leachates of fly ash and in natural water from some ash disposal sites indicate that dissolved concentrations of these radioactive elements are below levels of human health concern.

I don’t think having the water/ash mix free and easy through the waterways would really constitute an environment that you’ll be able to control the pH or final destination of the particles much. Subsequent human/animal ingestion of said particles probably won’t be great either, but seems fairly upbeat about the danger it poses “below levels of human health concern”. So perhaps the radiation won’t kill you, but all the other nasty stuff might.

Regardless of how nasty and in what way the ash is, I think everyone knows coal is a dirty industry. Deadly if you consider how many people die in coal mines worldwide. We built our modern world on burning whatever crap we could (wood, dung, peat, coal, oil, gas) and now we need to clean our act up. While we continue to be stuck burning things to release their energy there’s likely to be stuff pumping into the atmosphere that we can’t sensibly prevent (at least not without using a significant chunk of that energy we’re trying to produce in the first place) so the best course of action is simply not commit ourselves to having to burn the stuff in the first place.

Containing and collecting gasses will always be tricky or require energy to convert them into something that won’t just float on up to mess up the climate so how about something a bit less aesthetically challenged and which we know works:

Renewable energy is much prettier huh? (in Germany, near border of belgium. )

Perhaps then we’ll spend less time on CO₂ pie in the sky solutions and more on something real,
Nathan