Pope Abbot and the Witch Burners

Tony Abbot and his gang of right-wing radio shock jocks, astro-turfers and Tea Party sourced PR consultants have declared all out war on the Gillard government, using the Carbon Tax as a woodpile to hold their own witchburning.

We know Abbot has never liked the idea of doing anything about climate change, but why is Pope Abbot now stoking the fires of his Liberal/National propagandists to such a degree against the Carbon Tax?

Is it because he wants the best for Australians? Is it because he wants to ensure a great future for the wide brown land? Is it even because his religious beliefs as a Catholic compel him to decry an atheist Prime Minister?

No, of course its because he wants to rule.

Check out this video I did a while back, as promo for the Imaginary Friends Show - a great podcast that pokes fun at religious types. The depiction of a witch burning reminded me so much of the image of Abbot above, that I just had to go and dig up the video and repost it here. What do you think? Abbot the Witch-finder Persuivant?

But seriously Abbot wants to pillory the Labour/Greens Carbon Tax not because he believes its bad policy but because his polluting big-industry backers have agreed to help him into government in a US style lobbying driven back room deal, and it is that which requires him to fan the flames of fear and loathing against the Carbon Tax. Abbot believes that he can use the Carbon Tax issue to generate enough heat and smoke to spark an election to get himself into power. But now that the blaze is taking hold just as the Carbon tax becomes law, he has no choice but to become even more strident.

Now I'm quite sure that Abbot also happens to believe that Climate Change is crap, and that therefore he has no problem personally getting on board with the anti-carbon tax fervour. I also think Tony would have no problem convincing himself that God wants him to teach that atheist red-head a thing or two, and that a nice little burning that the stake would fix her right up.

But that is not why he is turning this Liberal/National opposition into a medieval pogrom.

Now just before we go on and look at what is going on here, a brief look at the tax itself.

The first point is this: The Carbon Tax is on polluters. No member of the Australian public is going to pay a cent of carbon taxes into government coffers.

What Abbots scaremongers are relying on is that the big polluters once hit with the real costs of dumping their waste into the air we breathe will immediately pass on that cost to you and me - the Australian public.

So just before it gets completely lost - the polluters are going to hit us with these costs, not the government. There is nothing in the Carbon Tax legislation that says the polluters have to make us pay, its just that they have been making out like bandits for so long, its pretty much a certainty that the polluters will be making us pay, now that the jig is up for them.

Also - the fear, uncertainty and doubt being peddled about jobs is not a government mandate either. If these big fat-cats cannot make enough profit from their coal-mines and manufacturing plants, by slugging us with the additional costs once they can no longer pollute for free, the argument goes that they will have to sack workers.

Again - that is a matter for those industries. And as BHP has committed billions to expanding its CO2 producing operations rather than contracting, its very unlikely that the coal industry will be sacking anyone over the Carbon Tax, even without the massive payments that they are getting from government. If anyone gets the sack after the Climate Tax becomes law it will be because the polluters sacked them, not because the law mandated it. But it won't happen, because the government is already cutting most of these groups so much slack that it has had to go into the red on its Carbon Tax rates, just to get it to pass.

But that truth won't stand in the way of a good story for Pope Abbot and his torch-bearing mobs.

But my main question - and my reason for writing today - is that so far Abbot has been playing all sides of this table, at once buddying up with the extremists and at the same time peddling a much tamer line, whenever questioned on it.

Just to be clear, some of the people who are attending these rallies subscribe to a range of bizarre beliefs. They are supporters of movements that believe fervently that the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund are part of a conspiracy to bring down the great nation of the USA. They are people who believe, like Pauline Hanson who was also at the above pictured "grass roots" rally, that asian immigration is the source of all our woes. These people are nut jobs. Crazies. But if in between the craziness they will offer their clenched fist in the air along with the others in response to Tony's anti-climate tax call, then Abbot will be there with them.

So come on Tony, where do you actually stand? Are you going to stand with the mob you have created? Or will you denounce in the strongest terms the calls from your mob, for Gillard to be put to death for what you claim to be lies?

Let's start with just two easy questions for you Tony Abbot:

1) Do you or do you not claim that Gillard knowingly mislead the public about her intentions regarding the Carbon Tax?

2) Do you agree that John Howard is a liar for introducing a GST when he said he would not?

Tony, do you call every one who ever made a political backflip a liar? Remember a liar is someone who knowingly misleads. Did John Howard then knowingly mislead?

John Howard promised that there would be no GST, only to later introduce one. That is one of many "liberal lies", and then of course there are the outright lies - like the Children Overboard scandal.

Tony Abbot has never been a Prime Minister. But if he manages through some ghastly miscarriage of political justice to ride his manufactured wave of fear and hatred to the top, there is nothing surer that that he will be forced to make political compromises.

Of course Gillard's government has been forced to work with the Greens, lead by Bob Brown, and as a result introduce a Carbon Tax at this time. As we know both sides of politics are in agreement that Climate Change initiatives are essential, Labour has had policies on the issue for sometime, including the ones for an Emissions Trading Scheme which Kevin Rudd was planning to bring in and which spelled his political demise. However its almost certain that Labour would not have bought in anything like the Carbon Tax this early without the requirements of their agreements with the Greens when they formed government.

Malcolm Turnbull too was crucified in his political ambitions by his position on Climate Change policies.

But the thing is Abbot has never been forced to make a Climate policy actually work in government. He is thus able to stand back and make inflammatory statements, and align himself with the rabid right - whilst at the same time stepping back from extremist association when it looks as though he might take a penalty from centrist Liberal voters.

Abbot gets to play both ends of Liberal/National politics, pretending to be reasonable while at the same time currying support from the conspiracy theorists and climate denialists.

The problem Abbot has now is that he has unleashed attack dogs like Cory Bernardi who are pulling together any and all of the rabid right that will support the anti-carbon tax cause, regardless of whatever other crazy causes they also support, and also regardless of the methods they are willing to use. The death threats against Gillard and other extreme

This interview with Bernardi shows him quite unabashedly talking about his astro-turfing techniques:

In this image from the Daily Telegraph we see Abbot alongside "Chris" of CATA, yet another of Bernardi's cookie-cutter generated "citizens" websites.

As explained in the interview with Bernardi these websites are all cross-linked, as can be seen in this page from the CATA website, linking in turn to several other "grassroots" websites, including "StopCarbonLies.com".

The trouble is that Abbot is now - whether he likes it or not - being closely associated with these radical groups. Anti-jewish groups, conspiracy theorists, anti-foreigner, anti-islam and anti pretty-much-anything you can name are all jumping on the buses organised by Abbots astro-turfers. Now when Abbot stands on that stage and accepts the microphone, he is joining their causes as much as they are joining his.

Every day that Abbot fails to clearly and comprehensively denounce the death threats and hate-speech from his far-right rabble, he becomes more clearly associated with them.

The Abbot lynch mob is now trying to pressure MP's - especially the independents such as Rob Oakeshott - since the only way his tactics can succeed is to stop the Carbon Tax before it becomes law.

Like the GST, once it is seen that life goes on and the new tax is not the monster it is portrayed as, Abbott's hysterical cries will have lost all credibility.

Don't bring the worst of US politics to Australia Tony, we don't want it.

All Clear for Clean Nuclear Power

Japan was recently struck by a natural disaster of unprecedented scale. A one-two punch of an 8.9 strength earthquake, followed minutes later by a massive tsunami wave.

But the worlds great powers are worried about the impact of the disaster, not for the Japanese, but for its possible nuclear risks. Instead of the usual concerns for citizens whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed in this terrible disaster, all we hear are calls in imperious tones for the Japanese to surrender to international inspections of their nuclear facilities.

Wait, when did the USA start treating Japan like it was North Korea? What the hell is going on here?

With images like the ones above coming from Japan after the disaster, aren't the "International Community" right to be concerned?

Well they would be if the above was an image of the nuclear power stations burning - but that report is of a Japanese Oil Refinery.

Fires burn, smoke from industrial and other fires roil across the stricken landscape of Japan. As we know from the disaster of the Twin Tower on 9/11 the miasma of debris fields creates a toxic and tainted atmosphere all around. The stink of death and destruction all rise from the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

Beside this the steam releases from Fukushima are immeasurably tiny.

Look at the reporting from the New York Times: "On Monday, an explosion blew the roof off the second reactor, not damaging the core, officials said, but presumably leaking more radiation."

Presumably? No - there was no radiation leak, and no mention of the fact that the 'explosion' was actually steam, and not a 'nuclear explosion' as they definitely intend readers to think. The steam that was escaping is radioactive but breaks down after leaving the reactor before it can cause any damage. The big concern would be if harmful "dirty bomb" type contaminants such as nuclear material, or worse plutonium, were escaping but there is nothing of the sort happening here.

And this (from the same article): "But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include cesium-137 and iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination".

Update: (noon, Mar 29th) The ABC are reporting that TEPCO has announced discovery of plutonium outside the containment vessel of reactor 2 at Fukushima. This is bad news for their continued efforts in cleaning up after the earthquake and tsunami damage. However it does seem to put paid to claims that TEPCO are hiding information. In the chaos that is the disaster cleanup reports come in as information is to hand, and the suggestion that somehow the Japanese are complicit in hiding information about the plant is my main point here. This is the first report of any kind of actual environmental contamination and it has not come from circling pentagon helicopters - it has come from the Japanese themselves.

Coal plants put out radioactive isotopes from their smokestacks at levels above trace. There is no scientific analysis of these particulates either linking them to Fukushima, or stating that they are at levels above normal pollution out put for an industrial area. Whose helicopters are these? What scientific bodies are carrying out the analysis?

No facts of actual harm - just speculation and fear-mongering. And of course because the USA is saying it, news reports worldwide are regurgitating this same story.

The truth is that Fukushima is a ringing endorsement of the safety of nuclear power. Especially when compared to the massive real health and environmental impacts of other energy related disasters.

The image at left is of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico where smoke, and flame and tons and tons of oil - actual real harmful contaminants poured by the super-tanker load right into the shared environment of us all. This, in the USA's own backyard.

Did the "International Community" demand oversight of the safety precautions taken by the USA?

What about the chilling revelations that safety measures came second to the operational realities of profits? What judgements flowed from that toward tighter controls on energy production on US soil?

None, of course - because that would be an outrageous challenge to the sovereignty of a first world nation with an advanced level of technological expertise and engineering whom we must trust to manage its national affairs.

Lets get this in perspective. Compare the images above of flaming oil refineries and platforms to the steam released at Fukushima. How much airborne cancer causing agents is in that thick black oil smoke pouring out of those burning oil refineries? That is real damage, not speculative fear-mongering and wild talk of nuclear possibilities.

Also look at the radiation from a coal plant as shown in this diagram:

The largest of the blue dose measures in the top left segment of the chart represents the radiation dose from just one airplane flight from LA to New York. The flying I did last year would have been enough to expose me to the dose received by Fukushima power workers.

Other of the blue squares represent the amounts flowing from the smoke stacks of coal burning electric power plants. We are frantic about tiny amounts of radiation exposure, that we are already receiving without being near any reactors.

We are panicking and frothing at the mouth about amounts of nuclear exposure that are tiny in their harmful effects compared to the smoke, and flames and environmental pollution that the rest of the tsunami and earthquake have produced.

If I had to choose between my family living downwind of a coal plant, oil refinery or nuclear plant it would be the nuke every time. If there is a forecast of a tidal wave or an earthquake - safest place to go? Your local nuclear plant.

If you dredge through the hype on Fukushima you don't see any actual figures on who was exposed to what. I have yet to see an actual report of anyone actually being harmed. Where are the workers whose rad-badges show them receiving an actual fatal or semi-fatal dose of radiation? Not one, and yet the death toll from the quake, the fires and other conditions flowing from the rest of the quake and tsunami are over 18,000 people.

What if you knew there was a power generation technology which killed in OECD countries between 1969 and 2000 a total of 14 people? Is the risk of that technology too great?

Do you say yes, 14 dead is 14 too many? Then you have consigned Hydro electric power generation to the scrap heap.

The same statistic for Nuclear power generation is zero.

For coal it is 2259 deaths.

So how has the international media got this so wrong? Apart from the hysteria and headline grabbing power of anything nuclear, the problem comes also from misunderstandings about the nature of radiation dose measurement.

There are reports of levels being measured at various locations, and spike rates being quoted as though they were constant - no actual figures of the workers (who wear dosimeters) of what they actually got exposed to.

I cannot believe how incredibly paternalistic our government and the USA are being. These demands to oversight what is happening in Japan verge on US Imperialism. And Kevin Rudd making demands on behalf of the "international community" to examine the reactors is just an outright challenge to a 1st world sovereign nation that would be warlike if it wasn't laughable.

This sort of thing happens all too often - you suddenly out of the blue hear Australian politicians and US politicians both spontaneously start singing off the same song sheet - its the intelligence briefings that they are all taking as gospel truth, even though military hawks with an eye on their budget are behind it. Same thing happened with Haneef.

In an article on this blog previously I wrote about how the same "think tanks" that denied the link between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer are now working to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about climate change.

In Australia where there is no nuclear energy industry, its easy to forget how prevalent nuclear power is already. This represents competition, for the players in the energy sector - but what has kept nuclear down as a competitor to coal has been the cost of nuclear. Building a plant takes longer, and its approvals process is full of risks - especially for the investors in the plant. Once its built the operators of the plant must arrange to dispose of the waste - sequestration if you like - where as currently coal plant operators just spew their toxic waste directly into the air.

So what is interesting about this is that with climate change on the agenda, coal and oil industry executives are scared of a future where market dominance of their products is eroded by nuclear plants. The USA has a lot of Nuclear plants already, as shown in the map above - so does Europe, Japan and many other countries. It would be very easy to scale up nuclear plant building and scale down coal plant building & oil fired home heating (big in the north-eastern USA) if cap-and-trade or other anti-carbon measures made it economic. If coal plants were required to sequester their waste product like the nuclear industry has to, then their profits would be seriously eroded.

As a result these industry figures are cranking up their lobbying machine, and getting their PR executives and spin merchants on the job to peddle the anti-nuclear story to anyone that will listen. They're especially scared of advanced clean and safe reactor technology gaining a foothold since then their dirty and dangerous energy production will be unsaleable.

Here's a good analysis of the Fukushima situation by a British tech journalist. Summary - a 30 year old reactor, due for decommissioning, hit first by an earthquake at 9 on the Richter scale (when it was designed to cope with up to 8), and then hit by a tsunami - result no fatalities.

There are reports in the press of "people showing symptoms" but there is no science in any of this. If you have a population of thousands of scared people and ask them if they have symptoms X, Y and Z you will get a handful saying "Oh, I have that". There are zero medically or scientifically confirmed cases of serious harm radiation exposure to anyone outside the plant.

Its hard to find good data. Wikipedia has a lot of "data" on their Fukushima page but when you look at their sources, again all of the danger danger red showing on their tables is sourced from such august scientific sources as the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times, who are using words like "presumably" in their reporting

Compare all of this to the Gulf of Mexico and the BP Oil Disaster - that happened without an earthquake or a tsunami. Or Exxon Valdez.

Nuclear reactors are not killing or harming people. Just scaring them - or at least the newspapers are.

What is killing and harming people? Coal.

Coal pollutant contamination is what some people who do live near the dirty and dangerous coal plants already fear.

Thousands of people have died over the last 10 years from Athsma - and it is known that air pollution is a strong risk factor for those with athsma. Nuclear plants don't have any affect on athsmatics at all. If we replaced all of our coal plants with nuclear reactors tomorrow my bet is that those athsma deaths would drop significantly. Similar story with lung cancer and other health problems.

I believe we need to urgently act to stop the pollution from our current industrial and domestic activities. We only have one climate, we only have one environment. The worst offenders are coal plants, but the transport sector with its motor vehicles are up there too.

However our livelihood, our hospitals, schools and industries depend on energy - particularly electricity. If we are to clean up transport by switching to electric vehicles, that electricity has to be clean and sustainable. The base load power has to come from nuclear - nothing else is both clean and plentiful - wind and solar have their place, but you cannot run an aluminium smelter or a hospital or a data centre off wind and solar alone.

By fostering a safe and efficient nuclear industry now, the advances desperately needed in nuclear power generation technology can come from innovation. Thorium based reactors which we have known about for decades are now being built in China, and hold the promise of much safer, ubiquitous nuclear power with a tiny fraction of the waste.

If we falter on nuclear now, coal plants will continue and our climate and our health, and the world we leave to our children will suffer.

The writing is on the wall here - energy is dangerous. To be the safest we can be, nuclear energy is the answer.

Time to quit

Like a 2 pack-a-day man, who's been told by his doctor to quit, Australia has been in denial.

Smoke from coal plants, and other pollution has been pluming from Aussie smokestacks throughout history, and we don't want to hear that its bad for us.

But guess, what its killing us. The image left is from a 2008 article I wrote about how strong government action on energy and climate change was urgent to counter what polluters were doing to us.

In February 2010 I wrote here on this blog about how climate change would bring significant increases in the incidence of floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires

Just a year later, flooding in my city of Brisbane, caused death and devastation. These news shots are of an area in Milton, just 15 minutes walk from my home.

Images from Brisbane's 4BC News during Jan 2011 floods.

This was a year after deadly wildfires and heatwaves in 2009. Now flooding has swept through the Brisbane valley, killing and destroying property, ruining lives and wrecking livelihoods.

We've been told. But we didn't want to listen.

As I explained in my article in mid-2009, the pollution lobby is paying for expensive think tanks and "conferences" to throw up a smoke-screen in front of their activities. And the Idiocracy that passes for our political system has been drinking this kool-aid by the gallon.

Somehow we've suspected that all this smoke was bad, but the pollution lobby - like the tobacco lobby of 20 years ago - has been there to provide us with ready made plausible denial. And we believed it because it was more comfortable to believe that what we'd been doing so far was some how OK, than to believe we'd been wrecking the world we are leaving for our children for our own profits.

The floods and fires we have seen are like the first few spots of blood on that inveterate smokers white handkerchief. This is just the early warning.

We asked "how long before it causes real damage?"

"What can we get away with?"

Well, you know what? I've been writing this blog, about the things we can do about climate change - using public transport, using non-polluting vehicles, looking out for what we are doing to the planet - for going on 5 years now. In that time I have seen more evidence of the violent damage that polluting practices can do to our planet, than I could ever write in a blog.

Our scientists have been telling us. So what do we do? Keep going until we can find another scientist who will tell us what we want to hear.

Every smoke-stack, every tail-pipe is doing us damage. Every day.

Now. We have to stop now.

The BP oil disaster off the shores of the USA, cyclones, fires and floods killing so many. In Australia we were lucky, floods in Brazil earlier this year were worse:

This is recent history. How soon will we forget?

Right through history tycoons have profited by pressuring or paying their political cronies into allowing them to plunder our futures. In previous blog posts here I have written about how in 1949 shell companies formed by Standard Oil, and Firestone Tire & Rubber tore up and burned the electric trams of US cities.

How could they - that must have been illegal, you ask? It was, and they were charged in court, and convicted of it (read the article) - a tiny slap on the hand, as they went on to cover the US with gas stations and highways.

Those same tycoons are doing their stuff now. Duping and dealing with our politicians in order to get just one more, two more, another years worth of quarterly profit reports up and into their bonus cheques.

So what can we do? Its all hopeless then?

No its not. Yes, its a gloomy message. Yes, its not news we want to hear.

Use recycled shopping bags and take the bus or pushbike to work? Yes - do those things. However the scale of pollutions from corporates is undoing that good work faster than we can fix it.

But there are things we can do to tell our politicians that we have the will, to start to fix this mess. We can tell politicians - since there are those that have the guts to fight for this - that we are are behind them.

Here's what I do - support GetUp.org.au campaigns to counter the pollution lobby.

GetUp.org.au has recently claimed a big success in re-instantiating a government programme to build power stations using solar energy, and to instead get the required funding for the flood rebuilding from subsidies to the polluters. Movements like GetUp's Solar Flagship programme are galvanizing an Australian public who are sick of being dictated to by the captains of industry who enjoy far too much access to the corridors of politial power.

If you don't like the idea of organisations like GetUp, then get personal: do it yourself. Learn, research, become informed - and then write to the MP's and politicians. Use the internet, the phone or write letters. Or even blog posts.

But whatever you do, don't forget the 2011 floods.

Hot, Flat and Upgefscked

A day or two ago I donated to GetUp's campaign to fund billboards on Abbot's "business as usual" climate policy.

I hope the campaign is successful not just in shaming the coalition into action, but also in waking up our elected representatives; currently making a hash of their only marginally better policy on climate change.

The opposition keep name-calling, hoping that their slinging of the dread word "tax" will stick to Rudd's cap-and-trade policy.

The irony is that a tax would be the best policy of the lot - David Victor, Stanford University Professor and expert on international coal markets:

I think we have vastly oversold the role of the market in the solution to this problem...

As Dr Victor grudgingly admits, ETS schemes are failing and only a tax would be a strong and clear signal - fixed and away from the vagaries of the market, so that Australian clean technology entrepreneurs, as well as all other green innovations and measures are actually economically viable.

Why would you catch a clean green bus, when your car is cheap to run on petrol? Why would you pay much more for an electric vehicle, when your gas guzzler is so cheap to buy and register by comparison?

This is 2010 - the year of the electric car, but we won't see any of them in numbers Australia because our governments are completely failing to create policies to make it attractive to manufacturers to ship them here. In the UK tax on new cars is figured based on their emissions ratings and thus EV's are very attractive there - zero emissions vehicles finally competing on a level playing field. In the USA tax credits are available for zero emissions vehicles - for example resulting in a $7500 saving on the Chevy Volt.

Why are electric vehicle entrepreneurs in Australia struggling to get off the ground?

Because here we just dig stuff out of the ground and ship it over seas. That's what we do, that's our plan for the future.

The Smart State? The lucky country? Nope, we're the Idiocracy. If it wasn't bad enough that we have Senator Fielding, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Attorney-General Michael Atkinson. Now we have Abbot and his ludicrous non-policy.

The problem for Australia with regards to climate change is that we've completely failed to realize the urgency, and the Abbott's of this nation are just lowering the average climate intelligence quotient right across Australia.

The heatwave conditions in Feb 2009 which filled the morgue in Victoria and spread wildfires were the pre-saging of more to come, according to the Australian Bureau of Meterology, thanks to climate change.

But more heatwaves when they come will not be our biggest problem here in Australia.

I've just read (on pg 80 of) Thomas L Friedman's "Hot, Flat & Crowded" (2009 edition) that the Sigma Xi group, commissioned by the UN to report on climate change, said in their February 2007 document "Confronting Climate Change" that the relatively small increase of 0.8 degrees C since 1750 has been "accompanied by significant increases in the incidence of floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires".

But more fires and droughts when they come will not be our biggest problem here in Australia either.

Our bigger problem is that when the effects of climate change hit the countries most vulnerable to its effects, when their crops fail and disease spreads and generally things are looking like the four horsemen of the apocalypse have moved in for good: where do you think those refugees are going to go?

Here is where they'll go: the lucky country. While we battle bushfires, and raging ignorance, and compete to see how far we can stick our heads in the sand, desperate refugees will be arriving here in force. At the same time, our armed forces will be called on for international relief efforts, much as they were for the tsunami disaster in Banda Aceh in 2004.

While we turn up our air-conditioners, and argue that climate change is bogus because of some emails from East Anglia, the evidence of climate change will be arriving on our doorstep in ever-increasing numbers.

Oh, and Tony, good luck reanimating some the policies of our old dark lords with a return to "turn back the boats" policies - these people will have no country to go back to.

Apart from refugees, the other problem dwarfing fires, drought and heat that climate change will bring for Australia is that if we keep being as backward as we are regarding clean technologies is that soon no-one will want the stuff we're digging out of the ground.

China is investing massively in clean technologies, and indeed some of our top talent in solar technologies have gone there - others to the USA - due to the clear state commitment to controlling climate change with high-tech solutions, especially compared to the dismal picture here.

When these large Chinese plants come on line in the next 5 to 10 years their own local reserves of coal will be more than adequate to meet the needs of their dwindling coal plants.

By then it will be too late for Australia to turn around and beg those scientists to come back and start trying to foster a clean tech industry - we'll be sitting on a pile of worthless black dirt that no-one wants, and lagging so far behind the technology race that we don't have a hope of catching up.

Swamped with refugees and becoming a backward third-world country. That's not what I want for my Australia.

Come on K Rudd - show Abbot what a real forward thinking climate policy looks like, and make us the lucky country once again.

Gloves come off as Copenhagen nears

Computer files were delivered to a climate change sceptic, BBC weather personality Paul Hudson. These files - it was claimed - are evidence of malfeasance by scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit.

For example in one of the files the writer, allegedly a CRU scientist, talks about using a "trick" and also refers to "hiding" some values.

The story first unfolded on Hudson's blog where he says he can confirm that some of the files are actual East Anglia CRU emails, because he was involved in those email conversations.

Although he received the files on the 12th of October, suddenly with Copenhagen around the corner the apocryphal files have been beaten up in the last 48 hours, into a smoking gun, 11th hour expose by this tawdry conspiracy anorak Hudson and a handful of other journalists who ought to have known better.

Hudsons involvement and the provenance of these files reeks. Any ethical journalist would not have touched the affair with a barge pole.

Note that these are not paper documents, they're electronic files. Already if one follows the link from Hudson's blog to the small sample of the alleged emails it can be seen that the emails have been altered by replacing the authors email addresses with xxxxxxx.

Clearly any of the text of the alleged emails could easily have been altered in subtle ways to make the contents appear suspect. Certainly East Anglia University has not verified that the alleged emails are true and correct, and without alteration.

What makes this appalling lack of journalistic rigour by those promoting this beat-up even worse is that there is no global warming conspiracy in these emails, even if they were true.

As the RealClimate web forum puts it:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, ... no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.

These files are not even close to any smoking gun, and just amount to the same back-and-forth that you'd find in the email servers of any professional organisation.

As RealClimate points out - a trick does not mean something underhand. If you're a professional in any sphere, a handy technique that quickly gets the job done but produces valid and ethically sound results can be called a "trick" - a valuable nugget of experience.

Everyone from surgeons to auto-electricians have handy tricks they use to get their job done, without any implication of malfeasance.

Certainly cherry-picking the computer files for phrases that could imply anything is meaningless without reading all the files in context.

I write software for a living and there are often vigorous disagreements both within our company and between members of the software engineering community and our own engineers about the quality of code, the viability of our approaches and a range of other topics. But none of this detracts from the fact that we produce the deliverables, and the results are well engineered and professionally sound.

Just the IPCC report - the work of several hundred scientists from all over the world - is sound and so and the science behind it and other peer reviewed studies which reach the same conclusions.

A few dozen emails out of months and months of correspondence of one research center and all they could come up with is a "trick" being used?

Don't worry - there will be more dirty tricks from the right wing media and their mud slinging brigade in the lead up to Copenhagen.

The Future of Energy

In a very timely conjunction, I went to a great panel discusssion of five experts, all of whom were speakers at the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering 32nd Symposium held just recently in Brisbane. The title of the symposium was Future-Proofing Australia - Rising to the Challenge of Climate Change.

I say timely because the panel discussion was a face-to-face demonstration of a real conviction in the scientific and engineering community that ways are immediately available to move forward into cleaner energy for Australia.

Perhaps for me one of the most surprising moments in the proceedings were when a straw poll was taken of the audience on whether they would support nuclear power generation in Australia: the result was a resounding "yes".

Myself I'm used to being in the minority especially amongst my greenier friends when I advocate for nuclear power.

After the event I talked to one of the panelists, Peter Meurs, about his Blade EV which Peter charges from a very impressive solar array at his home. A real world example of zero emissions EV driving.

Of course if you have read my previous posts, a future of greener power generation has great implications in electric vehicles. If EV's have only relatively small takeup - and optimistic projections say 20% by 2030, then the impact on the grids emissions will likely be negligible.

But with clean power we can look to a future with close to 100% EV penetration in the national fleet - with all the zero tailpipe emissions that that would entail - without having a coincident increase in emissions from coal fired power plants.

Why this is critical is that many EV manufacturers are only going to deliver their limited EV production to countries that provide decent governmental support, with infrastructure spending if possible, but also with taxes or other incentives that make the EV's competitive with petrol powered cars. And governments will do that if they know that EV's will definitely reduce greenhouse gases.

While at the panel discussion I also spoke to another of the experts, John Loughhead of the UK Energy Research Center, who told me about the UK system of incentives and programmes for low-emissions vehicles in the UK. John told me about the UK excise on vehicles that have higher emissions of greenhouse gases, which as an example usage of the VED calculator places a duty of 405GBP (around $730 Australian) on the 4.2l V8 Ranger Rover for its 376 g/km.

When vehicle buyers are paying for their polluting ICE vehicles at a rate that reflects their actual cost to the environment it makes the extra upfront costs of zero emission EV's and low emissions PHEV's comparable on a level playing field.

The aim of the long tailpipe crowd is to spread confusion and disinformation in order to derail that message and kill off the electric car by making ICE's stay at their artificially cheap current day prices.

I'm seeing a lot of activity around the "long tailpipe" issue at present. Of course there is the E&T report which I critiqued in my last post, and before that the GAO report in June. I dismissed that report at the time as it made no negative findings about EV's.

However it was quoted in a number of articles since under headlines like "GAO: Electric Cars Won't Reduce Carbon Emissions". This is a bit of a stretch from what the report actually says which is that electric vehicles charged from coal fired power will only be 4-5% better.

Update: I contacted Mark Gaffigan (Director of the Natural Resources and Environment Team at the GAO, and lead author of the report) for comment:

The bottom line regarding your questions, per our report, is that plug in electric vehicles could result in reduced emissions of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants but the environmental benefits depend upon whether the electricity used to power plug ins emits fewer greenhouse gases and pollutants than the fuel it replaces.

What Mr Gaffigan is carefully saying is that EV's could result in reduced emissions - not that they definitely won't - and that whether they do or not depends on the grid.

I am at a loss to understand the cynicism of attacks on the EV, which wilfully misquote reports and studies, and use other dirty tricks.

Do these people really believe that we can just keep driving in petrol powered cars?

We should have fixed this 30 years ago when the first oil shock occurred, when we realised the dangers of being hooked on oil and beholden to its curators, a who's who of enemies of reason and western democracy.

Here is some good science that provides yet another example of how personal management of EV charging provides the opportunity for great reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. There is no such opportunity with petrol powered cars, including conventional hybrids.

Its great to see some real science and engineering working on getting solution that work now rolled out for the benefit of all our futures.

EVs Speed Climate Change? WTF??

Now that climate change is firmly on every country's agenda, lobby groups and think tanks everywhere are jumping on the band-wagon.

It seems like there are million of these wise-ass organizations trumpeting green advice for public consumption, and producing policy statements and reports for government.

A very common factor in many of these statements and reports is the well-to-wheel analysis which talks about electric vehicles producing greenhouse gases. Below I go into a detailed discussion of why this type of analysis and its conclusion (EV's produce greenhouse gases) are just plain wrong.

But first a prime example of how misleading this type of "report" can be.

Clean vehicle website Autoblog green is carrying a press release from the Environmental Transport Association, quoting from a new report by a group called Transport & Environment stating that:

Switching to electric cars could speed climate change

There are other groups such as the National Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Law and Policy Center saying:

Plug-in cars could actually increase air pollution

Wait!! Oh, my God!!

You mean my electric car, which I thought was definitely clean and green, could actually bring on climate change? Panic! Hold the presses!!

Could, might? Its lurking down there in my garage, and on the toss of a coin, the roll of a dice, it might decide to start spewing greenhouse gases into the environment! There's a chance??

No?

So what the hell are they talking about then?

Are these guys some sort of oil industry goons, talking down EV's?

No, they're mostly not - but they're also not scientists (like the IPCC) or governmental agencies (like the US Department of Energy). They have their own particular hobby-horses to ride.

The ETA for example is a company that makes its living in the United Kingdom by selling green transport services, like insurance and roadside assistance. Its name - Environmental Transport Association makes it sound official, but its a commercial organisation, and it has to pay the rent just like any commercial organisation. Every EV owner who believes that their vehicle generates no emissions is one less customer for ETA's carbon offset service.

NRDC does not like coal, and - rightly so - is keen to jump on any chance to point out that increasing dependence on electricity in states that depend on coal has to be coupled with a corresponding commitment to reducing the use of coal in its power generation mix. As the NRDC rightly points out so-called carbon capture and sequestration is not a "technology" it is a branch of science fiction, and is not to be relied apon to clean up coal-fired power generation.

And of course since most of the states in the mid-west rely on coal for power generation (see table A1 in the DOE's figures), the ELPC (a mid-west specific environmental organisation) is keen to see that the new-found governmental interest in EV's does not push aside concerns about pollution from coal fired power generation.

There is a completely valid point to be made here that coal fired power generation is an environmental hazard, and that clean power generation has to be a top priority in the fight against climate change.

What is not valid is to connect uptake of EV's to an increase in coal fired power generation.

Let's unpack this Plug-in cars could actually increase air pollution statement.

See the could here, is not that there is some chance or possibility. Green EV's are not suddenly going to start producing greenhouse gases on some percentage outcome.

Electric Vehicles never ever produce greenhouse gases.

All of this confusing scare mongering is just another repackaging of the good old long tailpipe argument that we've heard so many times before.

Let me just say this again slowly.

Some power plants produce greenhouse gases. Not EV's - power plants.

An EV is not a power plant, and EV's don't have tail pipes at all, or chimneys, or in fact any way at all to produce smoke or pollution.

Well-to-wheels - in depth discussion

How this mischief has come about is that the good ol' boys that we love for coming up with the "Hummer is more economical than the Prius" and other great "analyses" and "reports", just could not except that EV's produced no pollutants. They said "You have to look at the big picture - you have to do a well-to-wheel analysis".

As a result the EPA and also european equivalent organizations have come up with measures based on gCO2e - which means in English grams of CO2 equivalent, used to analyse things like the total impact of renewable fuels. Stretch that analysis over vehicles and you have gCO2e/km, which results in completely bizarre statements like the GM claim of 230 miles per gallon for the Volt PHEV.

Don't get me wrong - the Volt is a great design and will be a great vehicle for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But 230mpg is rubbish - its meaningless. Why? Because equivalents just do not work when you start powering vehicles with electricity.

How you drive, when you drive, when you charge, how you charge - all of these things are drastic game changers for the sums behind the report that the ETA is quoting from.

I contacted the ETA's press officer and on request was promptly given a copy of the 51 page report. The report is actually written not by the ETA, but by the European Federation for Transport and Environment. Yet another official sounding group, T&E is actually an industry organisation representing around 50 different bodies mostly with a environmental focus. The report is not new facts - it is an analysis of existing studies and of yet more reports. The main focus of the report is on the European Emissions Trading Scheme and the impact of European government taxation schemes on electricity generation for EVs.

The T&E group wants stronger government action to tighten taxes and legislative incentives to produce cleaner power - something we all should wholeheartedly support. But since EV's are so high on the agenda of governments, T&E is hitching their message about cleaner power to EV's by saying EV's could "produce more emissions" unless power is cleaned up first.

This is where T&E stretches the friendship, by making claims that there is no science to support.

So what does T&E base its claim on, if its so wrong?

Well, the sound bite that heads up ETA's press release, and which is trumpeted in the introduction to T&E's report is referenced (on pg 27) to a study by Kromer & Heywood. In fact several large portions of the T&E report are verbatim from Kromer & Heywood's study.

Take note before going on, that the plugins could speed climate change statement has actually lost some context as it appears in the sound bite: the Kromer study is actually saying that if power is coming from coal, PHEV's like the Chevy Volt will be marginally more emissive than a hybrid vehicle like the Prius.

I think you'll agree that this is far from saying that EV's will increase climate change, but its still wrong, and its potential for misquoting means that it must not be left to stand.

The Kromer study was funded by companies including Shell, and the Ford Motor company. The latter via yet another research group called the Alliance for Global Sustainability. It is wonderful that Shell and Ford are getting involved in funding research into sustainability, and not for a minute do I suggest anything but the highest standard of intellectual rigour in the methods of Kromer's study but again it is not new science. The methodology is to take existing figures and using a computer model develop a number of scenarios to predict future figures.

All of these scenarios are based on the idea that CO2 equivalents can be fairly calculated for the electricity used to charge EV's. In fact the methodology uses a straight energy content calculation, and goes further by doing such things as adjusting to allow for transmission losses via the grid, comparing these to the plant-to-tank costs for transporting conventional fuels.

These foundation assumptions for the well-to-wheel (WTW) methodology employed are just plain wrong. WTW is the long tailpipe argument in academic guise. The methodology comes from an existing energy sector that is clinging to its existing structure with oil refineries as central points of distribution.

But notice that while no company, save the oil companies, can currently refine their own petroleum to drive their cars, everyone has the potential to generate their own power to power EV's.

This is the first breakdown in the WTW assumption. Electric grids world wide are right now being transformed by local power generation from a vast number of solar panel installations. Solar panels are going on rooftops all over the world.

While I was working at Google last year, the many electric vehicles on the campus were being charged from the solar array on the Google rooftop. Here in Australia houses all over are sporting solar rooftops thanks to the governments incentives.

There are zero transmission losses here - the power is generated right where it is used, and that power is 100% clean.

Oh, but wait - those amounts of power are still tiny compared with total electricity consumption!

Yes - but so are the amounts of power being used by electric vehicles! EV's require very small amounts of power to run, and we have so few EV's that the process of renovation of the grid is more than keeping pace with EV uptake.

While many of these environmental reports are talking about "technologies" such as carbon capture which are right now just science fiction, EV's and local power generation is here and now. Its already working.

Along with local power generation from solar panels, there is also a large amount of activity in co-generation, demand side response and active power market participation.

When I was at the AEVA Electric Vehicle Festival in October I met and talked with Dean Spaccavento, Enabling Technology Manager with Energy Response. Their service involves enabling companies to take an active part in the National Energy Market, by responding to energy demand as reflected in real-time updates of energy costs via DSR. The software and hardware systems that Dean is involved in building go into Australian industries and reduces their total energy bill, whilst at the same time reducing the impact on total energy generation capacity requirements and the environment.

Companies that produce energy as a by-product of their operations can generate electricity on site, to both provide their onsite electricity requirements, and also sell back into the grid. There are a increasing number of co-generation sites in Australia right now, such as Coopers Brewery in South Australia. Power companies are getting into the act, enabling and welcoming co-generation as a way to reduce load on power generation capacity and also reduce environmental impact. Using software like that produced by Dean Spaccavento's company they can benefit financially by responding to the local market with their co-generation capacity.

This is working, right here, right now. Zero transmission losses with power being used on site, and with EV's in that companies fleet parking lot their charging is not reflected at all in any central coal fired power station.

The future for co-generation has much greater promise, with waste products being used for domestic level power generation instead of going into landfill. South Australian company Micro-Cogen have developed a small scale cogen unit suitable for the basement of your house which they say will be shipping in 2010.

Smart grid technologies also have matured and will form an integral part of the EV take-up phenomenon. As we see our grid as mentioned above becoming cleaner, it will also become smarter with software and hardware from a whole range of companies, including industry giants IBM, and other new startups competing to provide the best savings in electricity generation capacity.

EV's are inextricably bound up with this future since they are ideally situated to be charged at times when it is cheapest for their owners, and also lowest impact on the grids generation capacity.

When the dinosaurs of the energy world, the oil companies threw up their hands in horror at being compared to EV's they were right to be afraid. Their well-to-wheel analysis tries to portray a negative impact via the long tailpipe argument for EV's on the basis that a "whole lifecycle" model is the only fair way to compare EV's with internal combustion engines (ICE's).

But we have had 100 years of internal combustion engines, and now the landscape is covered with petrol stations, pipelines and petrol tankers - the infrastructure to support the plant-to-tank mentality that the dinosaurs are still clinging to.

The only fair way to compare EV's to ICE's is to look at what the energy distribution network will look like with these real current technologies - smart grids, solar, co-gen and local power generation - feeding into the EV picture.

Forget about gCO2 equivalents which assume the moment you plug your EV into the wall, a power station somewhere is instantly going to produce smoke directly in proportion to the energy used at the socket.

Those analyses were bogus when the oil companies first proposed them, and they are bogus now, even though many producers of reports who ought to know better have swallowed their marketing story.

But surely all these smart grids and co-generation are going to take time to ramp up, and in the meantime if every body goes out and buys EV's isn't that going to put pressure on the existing electrical grid causing more pollution from coal fired power stations?

But the reality is EV uptake is going to be slow. It will take years for early adopters to convince the middle of the normal curve that a switch to an EV is a good idea. Even with Nissan producing its new Leaf EV in production volumes next year, going forward EV's as a percentage of the national fleet will by even the most optimistic of projections still be down at %15 by 2030.

And the good news is that our existing grid infrastructure can easily accommodate the loads generated by these levels of demand without generating any new pollution at all. The charging can be done out of surplus capacity, meaning that even in places where coal is being used for generation, no extra generation will be done as a result of the EV's plugging in.

A study in 2007 by the Pacific National Northwest Laboratory found that surplus generation capacity in the USA could support 43% market penetration of electric vehicles, based on charging being done during the night. Interestingly this same information is actually quoted by Kromer, and Kromers quote is produced verbatim in T&E's report, yet they both fail to draw the obvious conclusion that projected levels of EV uptake are not going to have an impact on power generation. The PNNL report mentions a case study of San Diego where night time charging would allow up to 60% of the San Diegan's becoming EV drivers before any generation impact was felt.

Of course the T&E report claims (page 30 and 31) that as EV ownership increases, quick-recharging facilities are demanded and

"...substantial daytime charging will also occur..."

however they offer no support whatsoever for the claim of substantial daytime charging. Whereas the PNNL study examines night time charging as the obvious mode, there is no support in any actual studies for T&E's claim.

Does it make sense then? Will people charge during the day rather than at night?

You can only charge a battery if it is empty, or partly empty. And EV's are always plugging in where-ever they go. You arrive home from work in the evening, plug into the wall socket, and during the night the battery is topped up to full on cheap night-time rates.

Then during the day you head out to work, and maybe your employer has a charge point to plug into. If you're an EV owner you definitely have a charge point at home, but maybe your employer has one for the EV owners on staff. Then on the way home you stop at the supermarket for 30 minutes, and maybe there is a charge point in their car park.

And of course since the majority of drivers make relatively short trips, their EV's are going to be nowhere near empty when they plug in during the day.

Also day time charge points are going to be supplied by a company like Better Place, and will involve a charge via your credit card. Even if its like iTunes, where you make micro-payments for the small amounts of electricity topped up into your EV's its going to be much more attractive for most consumers to get their power from the socket at home where it just appears on their power bill. Or doesn't appear, if they have a solar panel or co-gen.

So these day time charges are going to happen, but due to:

• cheaper night time rates
• ubiquity of home chargers
• slower rollout of charging points at other locations
• small trips by driving majority meaning day time battery levels are high
• charging account costs with daytime power compared to home charging

all meaning that the claim that daytime charging is going to be substantial does not make sense.

I am sure daytime charging at Better Place style charge points will be a very important part of the EV landscape, especially when EV ownership levels are as high as 20%, but even then daytime charging will not represent a substantial amount of kilowatt/hours put into EV batteries.

Instead daytime charging will be a part of the modality of EV usage, that you top up in small amounts so that you never have to worry about being low on juice.

Conclusions - EV's (still) do not "produce" greenhouse gases

Current levels of EV usage do not impact at all on coal fired power generation, and so EV's being charged today, are thus not generating any additional greenhouse gases.

By the time the EV landscape has progressed to 30% ownership, for the range of reasons discussed above, power generation will have changed how electricity delivery takes place to the point that EVs will still not require any additional power generation from coal fired or other centralised power generation sources associated with greenhouse gases.

Our Governator has the Cahoolies

Just in case you haven't heard, that legendary cigar chomping tough guy, Hummer driver and California Governor, has sent a sculpture of bulls testicles to lawmakers in a wry attempt to suggest greater fiscal and legislative courage was needed to make unpopular decisions in tough economic times.

Governor Schwarzennegger has however not been making the really hard decisions, when it comes to putting the bite on the heavy hitting oilmen who so far have been getting a free ride on taxation, and enjoy massive state sponsored benefits.

I was reading about all of this, after receiving an interesting email from Doug Korthof:

Sleazy California politicians join corrupt regulators in proposing new handouts to Big Oil, this time allowing new offshore oil drilling. This is the WRONG way to go, we need to leave all oil, especially exotic and expensive oil, IN THE GROUND, not pay subsidies to help drill it up and burn it.

Chevron admitted to the California Coastal Commission that they dump their "drilling spoils" in the Ocean because "it's too toxic to barge to land, we'd need an air resources permit". Now, they are asking for new drilling, and new threats to the Ocean, instead of paying their fair share of taxes.

(thanks Doug) and it occurred to me that we have a tough decision maker right here in Queensland that could show the Governator what it means to have the Cahoolies.

What I'm talking about is Premier Anna Bligh's excellent policy of abolishing fuel subsidies. These subsidies, like such subsidies everwhere go into the pockets of the fuel companies and fail to help the farmers and the bushies.

I sent Premier Anna Bligh MP a letter - which is only very slightly tongue-in-cheek - commending her administration on the policy, and suggesting that she tell her fellow state politician in the northern hemisphere how we roll up our sleeves down under.

Here's the text of the letter, faxed recently:

Anna Bligh MP

Premier of Queensland

PO Box 15185

City East Queensland 4002

Dear Ms Bligh

Your government is to be commended on its stand on fuel subsidies.

Removing these subsidies is not, as some have tried to say, a new tax, but a removal of an iniquitous burden on the tax-payers of Queensland, and an end to a system that rewarded wasteful and greedy behavior, whilst failing to help regional Queensland.

Additionally for too long those who maintained wasteful and negligent practices with regard to their own motor vehicles, have been subsidised by those of us who mindful of the environment and our energy security try to reduce usage of fossil fuels. The end to the subsidy is welcomed by those of us that want to see clean air for our children to breathe and a reduction in the hemorrhage of cash to foreign oil producing nations.

As a Software Engineer I recently returned to Brisbane from working in California's Silicon Valley.

As a Brisbane resident, rate-payer and voter, I am proud of the initiatives our state is promoting in these very difficult economic circumstances. Its a chance to make far-sighted reform for long term good. While Queensland works to define itself as the Smart State, these new measures of removing the fuel subsidy are world beating, and are to a standard of independence from industry influence, and courageous right-thinking that the Governor of California ought to aspire.

I would like to suggest that the Bligh Government send Governor Schwarzennegger a statement of support for his planned new tax regime, as his administration struggles to address terrible budgetary problems in the State of California. It might be appropriate to remind him of the previously planned tax on oil production which according the Los Angeles times:

How embarrassing is it for California to be hanging out there alone? That outstanding anti-tax crusader, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in 2007 raised her state’s tax to 25% of the value of extracted oil and gas. ... At the current world benchmark price of about $70, the 6% tax contemplated by Proposition 87 would have generated more than $1 billion a year

Instead of raising these much needed taxes it seems independence from industry influence requires a fortitude that is lacking, as California's watchdogs:

dismissed assurances from the Schwarzenegger administration that his panel's
independence would not be eroded. ...

"You've taken the position of destroying several decades of work by this commission," he told Sheehy, pointing out that it was established in
the late 1930s after an oil scandal had snared state officials.

It would be a great thing for Queensland to show its international credentials by reaching out to another state as it too struggles to manage energy policy in the face of public opinion, industry pressure and challenging financial circumstances.

Again I would like to congratulate your government on this policy, and hope it continues to show its world beating standards in governance and independence while also demonstrating good fiscal management in these difficult economic times.

I'm sure someone at the Premier's office fell of their chair with surprise at actually receiving a positive message regarding the fuel policy.

But its time we started paying the actual cost of the black gold. The fact that there is a federal tax does not in anyway construe this new policy of removing the state subsidy as a "new tax".

That removal of the subsidy is somehow a tax is a bizarre construction, straight from the spin-merchants hired by vested interests. Those vested interests want to keep up their unsustainable practices, filling our air with tail-pipe emissions, and they want our tax dollars to pay for it.

Bravo for a Premier with the cahoolies to say no!

Leave the oil in the ground, drive electric with the savings

You can leave the oil in the ground and drive in electric vehicles 15% of the distance the gas guzzlers would have gone just on the saved energy that refineries would have used to extract the petrol and diesel from that oil.

With many thanks to one reader, some corrections have been made to the figures in this article. Please accept my apologies for the error.

What these numbers mean is that the long tailpipe argument - that EV's just move their emissions to the power stations - is put to the lie.

It also means that claims EV take up by the public would result in mass over-subscription of power generation capacity are also not supported.

Read on.

As the USA shows its world beating credentials by making billions of dollars available for a range of climate friendly initiatives, inevitably the conservatives are coming back more loudly with complaints that the green spending spree is a "new boondoggle".

I've never really been sure what a boondoggle is. But Mr Carney writing in the Washington Examiner echoes the sentiments of plenty of other better dead than red types, when he compares the recent funding initiatives for battery technologies by the Obama administration to the dreadful corn ethanol initiatives of the previous administration. Lithium, necessary for battery technology being produced in a country like Bolivia has all the McCarthy-ists reaching for their propaganda manuals.

The Obama governments Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Program serves up billions of dollars in funding, 5.9 billion for example going to Ford for its new initiatives which include Electric Vehicle (EV) research, as well producing more efficient traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles.

If Mr Carney really wants a boondoggle, he only has to look back at the previous government grants to the big auto companies to make more efficient cars: money which those automakers cynically frittered away without only to arrive today at a financial crisis, and with rising fuel prices, and their caps in hands again.

Like many who are reaching for the handbrake on the clean vehicle charge, Carney is quoting the recent Government Accountability Office's report on Plug-in hybrid usage in the Federal Fleet. The executive summary of the report says in part

For plug-ins to realize their full potential, electricity would need to be generated from lower emission fuels such as nuclear and renewable energy, rather than the fossil fuels - coal and natural gas used most often to generate electricity today.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?

Its the same old FUD that's been going around for some time now.

As we already know, in answer to the GAO report and other "long tailpipe" arguments, the fact is that just replacing ICE vehicles with plug-in Hybrids without changing any of the electricity production would realize a saving of 27% in pollutants. And in California, where a cleaner mix of electricity production is used the figure is 40%.

But the biggest argument against the GAO report and other clean car naysayers is this fact: if you just leave the oil in the ground, your electric car has already done 15% of the journey for free, just on the energy saved by not running the refinery.

Add in the costs either side, of extracting and shipping the crude to the refinery, and then trucking it across the country in tankers - figures that are much more difficult to obtain - then the

Put it another way: that electric power which the naysayers claim electric cars would chew up, causing extra pollution would actually come for free - and actually even more save on pollution - just because the refineries are not pumping out so much of Chevron and Texaco's favourite money-spinner.

I first saw this in a ground breaking article by Doug Korthof. (Note that I now think Mr Korthof's claims are a bit strong, based on the numbers I have been able to produce, but I think the idea is still valid - but you have to include the costs either side of the refinery, just the refinery itself is not enough).

I just had to check the claims he makes for myself. I contacted the US Department of Energy for their take on it, and Paul Hesse of the Energy Information Administration got back to me with references to some of the DOE's figures.

According to the figures in 2008 oil refineries in the USA purchased 42,682 million kWh of electricity.

Another major energy cost is 710,500 million cubic feet of natural gas, which assuming only 50% generation efficiencies is worth another 108,642 million kWh.

Coal is also used - 43,000 Tons (US), which at a typically quoted figure of 2.5MWh/ton electricity generation rate is good for 107 million kWh.

And we'll also include the steam purchased 98,769 million pounds. Assuming 0.3kWh energy content per pound and conversion efficiency of 60% (modern steam turbines are pretty good): 19,600 million kWh.

That's a total of 171, 031 million kWh of electricity.

That is a hell of a lot of electricity being used by oil refineries.

Now that power went to produce 5,119 million barrels of petroleum and oil products.

Lets imagine that green citizens of the USA buy up the electric vehicles that the Obama initiatives are funding, and that 0.1% of the production capacity of USA refineries is saved as a result.

Just imagine how good it would be if 5.12 million barrels of petroleum and oil products don't have to be produced, and 0.1% of energy costs at refineries is saved as a result.

What could that 0.1% produce?

The answer is - according to the DOE figures (their diagram left) that one 44 gallon barrel produces around 19.15 gallons of gasoline for ICE cars, and around 9.21 gallons of diesel fuel.

The gasoline - around 98 million gallons of it from the 5.12 million barrels - would make for 24 million trips of 100 miles in internal combustion engined cars, and another 16 million trips of 100 miles in diesel vehicles - that's assuming an average of 25mpg EPA mileage for the cars and 35mpg EPA mileage for the diesels.

But since the 5.12 million barrels of production didn't happen, and the USA saved that money - the refineries also saved the energy costs involved 151.3 million kWh worth.

Turns out that is enough to do 6.1 million 100 mile trips in an electric vehicle, like a Tesla, which uses just 28kWh to do 100 miles on EPA figures. See my bar chart at the top of this article for a graphical representation of these figures.

What that means is that if 40 people took their fossil fuel powered vehicles off the road, 6 of them could travel for free just on the power saved by not running the refineries.

The other 34 people would just be travelling at the 27% pollution saving, and at a fraction of the cost to the hip pocket compared to the fossil fuel powered vehicles.

These same figures work for Australia too, and for other countries, although here we have slightly better average fuel consumption in our vehicles, and less nuclear power stations, so the figures are a little different - but the general message is just the same.

Now I'm sure there's some play in my figures - for example critics might say there's line loss in the transmission of the electricity, and there are extra products in the barrel of oil, such as aviation gas.

But I haven't yet counted the costs of extracting and shipping the crude oil, or the cost of trucking of refined petroleum to gas stations.

Petro-politics and the energy security implications are difficult to evaluate, but the costs of wars and military protection for oil shipping also should be factored into these numbers.

I'll say it just one more time in case it didn't stick first up: leave the oil in the ground, put the petro-dollars back into education or something useful, and the power saved by winding back production at the refineries will run 15% of your EV's.

When you add the other costs, the figure is probably close to 100%. Anyway - its got to be better than the damage we're doing now, and the only way to know how much better for sure it is to start making the changes.

Every way you look at it, EV's are a much better choice for the world - its time for the oil men and their cronies to say uncle - the game is over guys, its been a great century for you.

Now its time to join the 21st century, stop burning fossils and join the technical revolution.

Clean Vehicle Adoption - VHS & BetaMax all over again?

One of the things that drives me crazy about clean vehicle debates is the binary nature of the dialogue: hydrogen or electric? Plug-in hybrid & range-extended or flex-fuel?

Sides are forming, straw men are being thrown up, and in the technology of the new clean green car it looks like a VHS versus BetaMax argument all over again.

When new technologies come on-line the supposed way things happen is that the best tech wins as the relative merits are discovered by an unsung army of innovative consumer investigators who compare the offerings and vote with their wallets.

Innovators in small numbers buy the new technology just because its new. These folks love trying out new stuff, and don't mind if it doesn't work perfectly.

Then the early adopters get on the bandwagon - they can see that the new tech actually provides a pragmatic solution to their real world need, and are willing to spend a bit extra in time and cash to find out how. There's lots more numbers of these trend-setters, and a key difference (at least according to the theory) is that they'll send out the message via journalism, blogging, and the whole range of public expression.

You can see from the diagram how the rest of the population takeup follows on from these ground-breaking types. In the ideal cleaner world, at any rate.

But in the case of VHS and BetaMax the best product didn't win. It was a case of marketing, politics, vested interests, sides being taken and sheer chance.

So how do the folks out there make their choices? What makes a technology debate finally settle to where it seems like it was always meant to be that way? What will Joe Sixpack do? What car will he choose?

Those lining up behind Hydrogen as a solution are running the argument that Joe Sixpack is on their side, and therefore manufacturers and governments should focus on the hydrogen highway. The argument goes that Joe and his friends will choose the hydrogen cars, because they look like that SUV he already has.

Of course the Honda FCX Clarity is a big four door car. And it looks like a valid choice. Hydrogen filling stations, SUV's with gas pedals: its not a hard sacrifice for Joe Sixpack to make.

But its actual on-road cost is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can only lease them, and then with a insurance bill that reflects the units actual value. It will be 5-10 years before the investments in hydrogen technology research produce a vehicle that can be mass produced.

And Honda has now committed to electrification as the way forward, with plans to produce a range of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, including electric motorcycles.

Toyota, Mitsubish, Nissan, GM and most major manufacturers have now switched to electrification as their key strategy for clean vehicles with plans for either all electric or plug-in hybrid/range-extended vehicles starting from 2010.

But doesn't Joe Sixpack get a wallet vote here? How do these manufacturers know they've chosen VHS or BetaMax?

As much as I hate to say it I don't think the noble consumer vote is going to carry much sway here, since our decisions are going to be mostly made for us by pricing - hydrogen cars are way to expensive to produce.

At present if you live California or Iceland you can refill the hydrogen fuel cell that supplies electricity to your electrically powered vehicle. But in Australia, and most of the rest of the world, where hydrogen is still a commercial gas for industry, produced in relatively small quantities from fossil fuels, pulling into the local hydrogen station is at least 10 years away.

Yes, hydrogen can be produced from water using electricity - but then why not just use the electricity?

Why do we have to build out a collection of hydrogen filling stations just to act as middle-men? Are we trying to keep Joe Sixpack happy here, or is it actually ExxonMobil?

I have cheap electricity already coming out of a socket in my garage, so explain to me again why I should drive somewhere, and queue up so I can pay someone for it?

And what the manufacturers and governments are realizing is that it will not be a reality for the early and late adopters in their very large numbers, for ten years at least.

Another compelling argument for going straight to electricity over using hydrogen as an electricity middle-man is the Smart Grid.

Its certain that the Smart Grid will be a necessary innovation to both enable new efficient energy consumption strategies for consumers, and to manage the growth of solar, wind and other alternative electric power sources. The way we get power at present is that each turbine and generator that is bought online at the local power station to meet a days peaking usage results in a big step up in power availability. Its like power is sprayed out over the consuming public from a fire-hose, and another fire engine just backed up to pump out more.

Its a hit-and-miss operation, where the amounts we choose to use bear little relation to the generation capacity power authorities have to produce. A SmartGrid allows a feed back loop where intelligent management of capacity and consumption makes the consumers partners in the process - instead of a firehose, we get to channel more like what we need.

Also the SmartGrid enables balancing and management of clean energies at the times they're produced - on windy days, or sunny days for example.

When we see large scale take up of clean vehicles that don't use oil to power them, an amazing by product will be the free electricity no longer needed by the refineries - one analyst at least says that this amount of electricity would power the equivalent electric vehicles of the petroleum that would have been produced. This changing face of electricity production and usage in the face of climate change initiatives and a new greener high-tech economy will necessarily require a smart grid to manage it.

So we're going to have to get a SmartGrid - where does Hydrogen fit into that? Answer, nowhere that I can see.

Electric vehicles can use the SmartGrid to charge at off peak times, and even take an active part in buffering the SmartGrid. Hydrogen doesn't work that way, and the Joe Sixpack consumer model hydrogen gas station is even worse of a fit.

Nevertheless, common-sense and the good of mankind have never been good enough reasons to do the right thing.

And its certain that adoption of cleaner vehicles will be slow going.

If you follow the "Crossing the Chasm" theory of technology adoption, there is a big gulf between those true-believing converts in the early adoption camp, and their reticent counterparts in the early adoption majority.

But this is yet another win for electric vehicles, in my view. Electric cars are the ideal chasm bridging technology, because they provide a way to "sharpen the wedge".

Hydrogen has a big hump to get over with its requirements for new fuel cell technology, hydrogen filling stations, cryogenic storage and a laundry list of high-tech advances.

But with electric vehicles, ordinary folks are building them out of spare bits and pieces in their garages. The technology is really nothing new. That innovative spirit that has us rolling up our sleeves and tinkering in the shed will give traction to the already burgeoning grass roots electric car movement.

Also making the take up slope less of a hike is the the time-saving and budget-conscious aspects of electric vehicle ownership. I don't have to do anything new with my electric car - just park it and plug it in. The socket is right there, where I park my car - its a no-brainer. No more finding time to get to the gas station, or adding up those 4c per liter savings vouchers.

Don't get me wrong - its not that I don't think hydrogen has a future. It definitely has a future, especially in fleet and heavy vehicle usage.

But to get over the hump of clean vehicle adoption before we all choke on our collective soot, we can start with an easy curve to climb.

2010 will be the year when we see these new cars arrive in numbers sufficient to make a difference. Zero tail-pipe emissions is a really good difference to be able make, especially around our schools, our cities, and our local environment.

It will be exciting to finally have the chance to be part of that difference.