The Vision Thing  

The Rodent's new energy plan is being widely criticised for lack of vision. Pretty much all the opposition parties are proposing better alternatives, with the Greens suggesting we follow Sweden's lead and aim to be oil free by 2020.

Mr Beazley said Labor released its blueprint on fuels last October with a plan to develop an independent Australian fuel industry. "It's taken this prime minister far too long to act on this petrol issue," he said.

Labor senator Kerry O'Brien said the government had been "asleep at the wheel" about petrol prices. "The government has no eye on the needs of the Australian motorist," he told the Senate. "Its eye is on its own survival, and that is the basis on which we now see the government making an announcement on a number of initiatives relating to fuel."

Senator O'Brien warned motorists could face delays of several months in having their vehicles converted to LPG due to a lack of parts and a shortage of mechanics to perform the refit.

Australian Greens senator Christine Milne said Mr Howard's LPG initiative would do nothing to reduce Australia's reliance on fossil fuels. She called on the federal government to follow Sweden's lead and aim to make Australia oil-free by 2020, even if it did not end up meeting the deadline.

"The government does not understand what the problem is," Senator Milne said. "We are facing a global crisis with climate change and oil depletion. "We have to move to reduce fossil fuel use, not shifting from one fossil fuel to another."

Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the cash grants for LPG conversions were a knee-jerk reaction to electoral anger at the cost of fuel. She urged the government to develop a long-term plan to reduce reliance on oil.

The Age has an interesting article called "The world's running out of petrol. That's the fact of the matter" which looks at alternatives and also provides some fuel for theories about a repeat of the great oil price gouge of the 1970's (disguised as an OPEC "supply crunch") - noting that independent fuel retailers are being squeezed out - which sounds much the a chapter in "The Control of Oil" called "The Crippling of the Private Branders" (if the peak is still 10 years off, there is a lot of scope for some profit maximisation in the meantime).

AT first sight it seems crazy. The ACNielsen/ Age poll says 54 per cent of us think petrol prices are rising because of overseas forces beyond the Government's control. But 75 per cent of us think the Government has not done enough about it.

But everything about petrol prices is a bit crazy. Prices go up and down like a roller-coaster. We buy our petrol now in effect from supermarket chains — that often sell it retail for less than the wholesale price.

Probe more deeply and all this does make sense, but in a way that some see as sinister, and designed to throttle the competition that keeps down prices.

Submissions to the Senate economics committee inquiry into petrol prices warn that the supermarket chains are using their financial power to slowly squeeze independent dealers out of business.

And if the number of independents falls below a critical mass, their associations warn, they will no longer be able to keep the majors honest when the global oil shortage recedes.

The issue of petrol prices is not one issue, but many. With petrol prices up 63 per cent in four years, what, if anything, should the Government do to reduce them? What, if anything, should it do to stimulate development of alternative fuels?

And, amid the revolution in ownership of service stations, what if anything should it do to prevent independents being squeezed out of the industry?

The poll The Age ran yesterday is now out of date. Within hours, the Prime Minister unveiled a new package to support alternatives to petrol, mostly to encourage motorists to convert to LPG (aka Autogas), and service stations to install E10 ethanol blend pumps. Now he has done something.

It's not trivial, but nor is it breathtaking. In effect, the Government will now pay most of the bill for converting your car to LPG. Its figures suggest it expects close to half a million cars to either convert to LPG or be sold new with a fitted LPG tank. Close to 1000 more service stations are expected to sell ethanol blends.

But Australia now has almost 15 million vehicles, so the costing implies that 97 per cent of us will get no benefit from the LPG rebate. We have 6500 service stations, of whom only 260 sell ethanol blends; even if 1260 sell it, 80 per cent of servos would not.

The PM floated the prospect of something bigger, asking Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane to come up with a plan to encourage conversion of gas and coal to oil. That pinches the centrepiece of Labor's policy, which reflects the reality that Australia's gas fields hold at least 50 years' supplies, whereas its oilfields are rapidly running out. That's big-picture stuff, and we'll hear more about it.

The Sydney Morning Herald's editorial today was on "Petrol, polls and politicians".

It is to the Government's credit that the excise has been retained, and to the Opposition's that no serious pressure has been placed on it to do otherwise. Lowering the excise would be too expensive; it would skew even further Australia's costly and polluting transport bias towards roads; it would lull motorists, who already pay relatively little for petrol by world standards, into complacency about fuel costs. While the Government may have been tardy in responding to the oil price crisis, it has at least responded. Motorists who demand an end to the excise have not: they are acting as if no crisis exists, and they have the right to cheap petrol regardless of the worldwide shortage. Without clear price signals, they will never adjust their behaviour to the reality of expensive petrol.

In being caught by the petrol price squeeze, the Government is not alone. Car makers have been living in the same drowsy world, too. Holden has just spent $1 billion to develop and launch a new family sedan which is marginally heavier than its predecessor, and with comparably poor fuel economy. Only one maker, Ford, produces a car which runs on LPG - though models of other manufacturers can be converted on request. But many motorists who want to take up the Government's offer and convert the car they already own will be put off if they find that the maker's warranty will be void if they do so. The petrol price squeeze has caught this country, like much of the world, unprepared. Right now, it hurts. To ease the pain, Australians must adapt fast.

While high oil prices are causing angst in most quarters, manufacturers of public transport are smiling, with the high fuel price tipped to keep United Group thriving.

UNITED Group expects increased use of public transport, driven by rising petrol prices, to help maintain soaring profits. The company yesterday posted a 65.7 per cent lift in annual net profit to a record $78.68 million, with performance improving across its train building, infrastructure, resources and property services businesses.

The biggest contributor to 2006's record profit was United's train business, which turned over close to $1 billion and accounted for around 41 per cent of earnings before interest and tax. It benefited from significant activity in the resources sector, to which United sells locomotives and wagons.

A rising oil price also helped the business.

"One of the consequences of the oil price is there's a shift of people back to public transport, so we're seeing a big investment going on in this country into passenger train investments, road rail infrastructure and getting goods onto rail," Mr Leupen said.

One last set of links from the Herald - they've also been running a series called "Sick Cities" which looks at the health problems caused by our car centred urban design (maybe they should included a piece on "The Geography of Nowhere") - episodes include "Our cities are killing us" (multimedia), "Living ourselves to death", "More fat people in world than there are starving, study finds" and "Two-wheeled remedy for urban headaches".

Australians' over-reliance on the car and the subsequent lack of "active transport" - walking and cycling - is a large factor in the obesity epidemic.

John Pucher, an American professor of planning who has spent the past year with the University of Sydney's institute of transport and logistics studies, is working with Australian and Canadian academics on a three-country comparison of transport systems and their impact on people's travel behaviour and health.

What he has observed here comes as no comfort: he thinks Australia is as bad as the US when it comes to urban design and lack of physical activity.

"Australians are so sports crazy; they are just nuts about sports," Professor Pucher said. "But there's something we have in common: there seems to be a lot of armchair sports fans … they are not getting any physical activity while they do it."

He advocates solutions that encourage cycling and walking, including a huge expansion of bike lanes, priority signals for bikes at intersections, improved pedestrian crossings, more car-free zones and reduced speed limits in busy pedestrian areas.

Chloe Mason, a visiting fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney, and a sustainable-transport consultant, works with companies to develop transport access guides - maps on business cards or brochures that explain how to get to places by public transport, walking or cycling.

Canterbury City Council, for example, improved the route from local train stations to Canterbury Hospital when she created an access guide for it. "With the cycling movement, the challenge is to get people to do it more for a purpose than for recreation," Dr Mason said.

The City of Sydney Council's new cycle plan, which includes 20 new cycle routes through the CBD and bike parking stations incorporating showers and change rooms, recognises that fear is one of the biggest deterrents to would-be Sydney cyclists.

But research shows that the more people ride, the safer the roads become for all cyclists. One study found the ACT, Queensland and Western Australia, which have the highest per capita distances travelled by bike, were safest for cycling. NSW, where cycling is least common, was the most dangerous.

WorldChanging has a great post on soil in the Amazon and the potential for a promising form of carbon sequestration - "Terra Preta: Black is the New Green".

Terra PretaCarbon sequestration faces some major hurdles. Technical geosequestration methods could pump large amounts of CO2 deep underground but are still under development. On the other hand, natural methods that store carbon in living ecosystems may be possible in the short term but require huge swathes of land and are only as stable the ecosystems themselves. An ideal solution, however, would combine the quick fix of biological methods with the absolute potential of technical ones. Terra preta may do just that, as a recent article in the journal Nature reveals.

Amazonian Dark Earth, or terra preta do indio, has mystified science for the last hundred years. Three times richer in nitrogen and phosphorous, and twenty times the carbon of normal soils, terra preta is the legacy of ancient Amazonians who predate Western civilization. Scientists who long debated the capacity of 'savages' to transform the virgin rainforest now agree that indigenous people transformed large regions of the Amazon into amazingly fertile black earth. The Amazonians' techniques remain an enigma but are believed to have used slash-and-smolder to lock half of the carbon in burnt vegetation into a stable form of biochar instead of releasing the bulk of it into the atmosphere like typical slash-and-burn practices.

The difference between terra preta and ordinary soils is immense. A hectare of meter-deep terra preta can contain 250 tonnes of carbon, as opposed to 100 tonnes in unimproved soils from similar parent material, according to Bruno Glaser, of the University of Bayreuth, Germany. To understand what this means, the difference in the carbon between these soils matches all of the vegetation on top of them. Furthermore, there is no clear limit to just how much biochar can be added to the soil.

Biofuels are touted as 'carbon neutral', but biofuels and biochar together promise to be 'carbon negative'. Danny Day, the founder of a company called Eprida is already putting these concepts into motion with systems that turn farm waste into hydrogen, biofuel, and biochar.

The Eprida technology uses agricultural waste biomass to produce hydrogen-rich bio-fuels and a new restorative high-carbon fertilizer (ECOSS) ...In tropical or depleted soils ECOSS fertilizer sustainably improves soil fertility, water holding and plant yield far beyond what is possible with nitrogen fertilizers alone. The hydrogen produced from biomass can be used to make ethanol, or a Fischer-Troupsch gas-to-liquids diesel (BTL diesel), as well as the ammonia used to enrich the carbon to make ECOSS fertilizer.

We don't maximize for hydrogen; we don't maximize for biodisel; we don't maximize for char...By being a little bit inefficient in each, we approximate nature and get a completely efficient cycle.

Terra preta's full beauty appears in this closed loop. Unlike traditional sequestration rates that follow diminishing marginal returns-aquifers fill up, forests mature-practices based on terra preta see increasing returns. Terra preta doubles or even triples crop yields. More growth means more terra preta, begetting a virtuous cycle. While a global rollout of terra preta is still a ways away, it heralds yet another transformation of waste into resources.

...

It's particularly interesting to think of this in light of Brazil's commitment to biofuels and flexi-fuel cars. One could easily imagine a Brazilian carbohydrate economy based on sustainably farmed local crops, south-south smart breeding and the soil-building techniques of an ancient Amazonian civilization.

The Engineer Poet has a good post at The Oil Drum on ethanol and the ongoing Vinod Khosla debate.

Okay, let's go over this one point at a time:


1. Ethanol in today's engines means going E-10, "gasohol". That takes us up to about 14 billion gallons/year of EtOH, replacing perhaps 10 billion gallons/year of gasoline.

2. Then you promote better hybrid technology. This is orthogonal to fuel supply, but even the gas-only HEV's reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions far more than current flex-fuel vehicles do (and they start from a lower base).

3. Last, you suggest going plug-in as the evolutionary path to pure electric vehicles. This would also obsolete the entire 200-billion-gallon-per-year ethanol infrastructure you talk about, the beginnings of which you happen to be invested in.


Then there's the matter of carbon emissions. There is no practical way to capture carbon from a vehicle, so anything which comes out of a pump is almost certain to wind up in the atmosphere. Hybrids slash carbon emissions by about a third right off the bat, and by far greater amounts if they become plug-ins charged by wind, nuclear or sequestered anything. On top of this, there are some short-term considerations and some long-term considerations:

1. The field-to-wheels efficiency of ethanol in FFV's is currently about 7.5%. Biomass-fired stationary plants should be able to get at least 50% field-to-grid, with PHEV field-to-wheels efficiency of at least 30%, perhaps 40%.

2. This both stretches biomass several times as far as any ethanol scheme, and it provides biomass backup for the grid.

3. A stationary bio-fuel plant could sequester its carbon and become carbon-negative.

I believe rapid action along those lines is the only way to prevent a climate catastrophe (if it isn't already too late). Your preferred trajectory rules that out.

Grist, WorldChanging and TreeHugger all report on Al Gore's slideshow for "An Inconvenient Truth" going viral.

A few months ago, when we attended a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, we had the distinct pleasure of a post-show appearance by Al Gore himself. He mentioned at that time that he was developing a training program to teach 1,000 people how to deliver his climate change slideshow in order to spread the message faster.

We asked Lisa Day of Participant Productions a few questions about how one becomes an Al Gore clone. According to Day, the first of these training intensives will take place in Nashville towards the end of September, with under 100 people, some of whom will be hand-selected by Gore, others of whom will be chosen by application.

Gore will take the slideshow and pull out anything that's personal, to create a general version...Trainees will learn to do updates themselves, and Gore will also feed updates to them periodically. Once trained, people go back to their communities and give the presentations themselves, and train others in their community to give it.

TreeHugger also has a post on "Ferocious Medicine: Alligators and Snakes Could Save Our Lives. Gotta love those reptiles.

You hug trees, right? How about snakes and alligators? Gulp. Definitely two kinds of creatures you wouldn’t want thrashing about in your medicine cabinet. Whether you like them or not, these ancient animals are proving their value in gold to medical researchers studying pain and deadly diseases. In the everglades of Florida and the bayous of Louisiana, scientists have learned that reptiles like alligators are extraordinarily sensitive to pesticides, fertilizers and other pollutants, says a news report by Sun Sentinal. Alligators may be a useful early-warning system of possible hazards to people. Like the giraffe's neck and the hawk's eye, the alligator's immune system, they say, is an adaptation to its environment and behavior. Scientists are hoping that a whole range of anti-viral and anti-bacterial drugs can be created by understanding the inner-workings of the alligator’s immune system.

On the other side of the swamp (well actually, it’s more like the other side of the sandbox here in Israel)- another slithering and highly underrated specimen, the Palestinian Pit Viper, recently made its debut on The Scotsman for its highly potent venom. Researcher Naftali Primor says viper venom can curb pain and heal arthritis.

Maybe the Israelis and Palestinians should set aside their differences (and knock down that wall) and get to work farming pit vipers and getting rich selling arthritis cures...



The Age has a report on a oil drilling disaster in Indonesia - Java sinks deeper into toxic crisis.

Toxic mud still spurting from a gas drilling well part-owned by Australian mining giant Santos is threatening to mire East Java in a full-scale disaster.

Unable to prevent millions of tonnes of mud from blocking highways and rail links, experts propose to divert the flow into the ocean, risking another environmental catastrophe.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited the disaster zone south of Surabaya yesterday, after thousands more villagers were evacuated when the rising mud breached levees.

For two months mud has flowed from an exploratory well near Porong, inundating 25 square kilometres, putting 1000 people in hospital with breathing difficulties and forcing more than 10,000 from their homes. It has cut roads, covered train lines and threatens the rail link between Jakarta and Surabaya, Indonesia's busiest port.

On Thursday, more than 5000 people fled a wave of mud when a dam broke, leading to suggestions that large areas of land should be left to the mud and residents relocated. Authorities are concerned that other six-metre-high dirt dams erected to contain the mud will not hold.

Cost estimates range from hundreds of millions to more than $A4 billion, with compensation costs continuing to climb.

Santos has declined to comment directly on the cause of the disaster and clean-up attempts, saying these are matters for the well operator and Indonesian authorities.

Greg Palast is in a joke telling mood today - looking at a familiar theme in "So, Osama Walks into This Bar...".

So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See? and Bush says, “Whad’l'ya have, pardner?” and Osama says…

But wait a minute. I’d better shut my mouth. The sign here in the airport says, “Security is no joking matter.” But if security’s no joking matter, why does this guy dressed in a high-school marching band outfit tell me to dump my Frappuccino and take off my shoes? All I can say is, Thank the Lord the “shoe bomber” didn’t carry Semtex in his underpants.

Today’s a RED and ORANGE ALERT day. How odd. They just caught the British guys with the chemistry sets. But when these guys were about to blow up airliners, the USA was on YELLOW alert. That’s a “lowered” threat notice.

According to the press office from the Department of Homeland Security, lowered-threat Yellow means that there were no special inspections of passengers or cargo. Isn’t it nice of Mr. Bush to alert Osama when half our security forces are given the day off? Hmm. I asked an Israeli security expert why his nation doesn’t use these pretty color codes.

He asked me if, when I woke up, I checked the day’s terror color.

“I can’t say I ever have. I mean, who would?”

He smiled. “The terrorists.”

America is the only nation on the planet that kindly informs bombers, hijackers and berserkers the days on which they won’t be monitored. You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to get a jump on George Bush’s team.

There are three possible explanations for the Administration’s publishing a good-day-for-bombing color guidebook.

1. God is on Osama’s side.

2. George is on Osama’s side.

3. Fear sells better than sex.

A gold star if you picked #3.

The Fear Factory

I’m going to tell you something which is straight-up heresy: America is not under attack by terrorists. There is no WAR on terror because, except for one day five years ago, al Qaeda has pretty much left us alone.

That’s because Osama got what he wanted. There’s no mystery about what Al Qaeda was after. Like everyone from the Girl Scouts to Bono, Osama put his wish on his web site. He had a single demand: “Crusaders out of the land of the two Holy Places.” To translate: get US troops out of Saudi Arabia.

And George Bush gave it to him. On April 29, 2003, two days before landing on the aircraft carrier Lincoln, our self-described “War President” quietly put out a notice that he was withdrawing our troops from Saudi soil. In other words, our cowering cowboy gave in whimpering to Osama’s demand.

The press took no note. They were all wiggie over Bush’s waddling around the carrier deck in a disco-aged jump suit announcing, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.” But it wasn’t America’s mission that was accomplished, it was Osama’s.

Am I saying there’s no danger, no threat? Sure there is: 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance. IBM is legally stealing from its employees’ pension plan and United Airlines has dumped its pensions altogether. Four-million three-hundred thousand Americans were injured, made sick or killed by their jobs last year. TXU Corporation is right now building four monster-sized power plants in Texas that will burn skuzzy gunk called “lignite.” The filth it will pour into the sky will snuff a heck of a lot more Americans than some goofy group of fanatics with bottles of hydrogen peroxide.

...

Fear sells better than sex. Fear is the sales pitch for many lucrative products: from billion-dollar sailor injectors to one very lucrative war in Mesopotamia (a third of a trillion dollars doled out, no audits, no questions asked).

...

Oh, hey, you never got the punch line.
So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See? and Bush says, “Whad’l'ya have, pardner?” and Osama says, “Well, George, what are you serving today?” and Bush says, “Fear,” and Osama shouts, “Fear for everybody!” and George pours it on for the crowd. Then the presidential bartender says, “Hey, who’s buying?” and Osama points a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. “They are,” he says. And the two of them share a quiet laugh.

And thats life in The Kingdom of Fear...

I'll close with an ancient essay from Bertrand Russell - "How To Become A Man Of Genius" - though I'm sure you readers don't need any advice on this score.

If there are among my readers any young men or women who aspire to become leaders of thought in their generation, I hope they will avoid certain errors into which I fell in youth for want of good advice. When I wished to form an opinion upon a subject, I used to study it, weigh the arguments on different sides, and attempt to reach a balanced conclusion. I have since discovered that this is not the way to do things. A man of genius knows it all without the need of study; his opinions are pontifical and depend for their persuasiveness upon literary style rather than argument. It is necessary to be one-sided, since this facilitates the vehemence that is considered a proof of strength. It is essential to appeal to prejudices and passions of which men have begun to feel ashamed and to do this in the name of some new ineffable ethic. It is well to decry the slow and pettifogging minds which require evidence in order to reach conclusions. Above all, whatever is most ancient should be dished up as the very latest thing.

There is no novelty in this recipe for genius; it was practised by Carlyle in the time of our grandfathers, and by Nietzsche in the time of our fathers, and it has been practised in our own time by D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence is considered by his disciples to have enunciated all sorts of new wisdom about the relations of men and women; in actual fact he has gone back to advocating the domination of the male which one associates with the cave dwellers. Woman exists, in his philosophy, only as something soft and fat to rest the hero when he returns from his labours. Civilised societies have been learning to see something more than this in women; Lawrence will have nothing of civilisation. He scours the world for what is ancient and dark and loves the traces of Aztec cruelty in Mexico. Young men, who had been learning to behave, naturally read him with delight and go round practising cave-man stuff so far as the usages of polite society will permit.

One of the most important elements of success in becoming a man of genius is to learn the art of denunciation. You must always denounce in such a way that your reader thinks that it is the other fellow who is being denounced and not himself; in that case he will be impressed by your noble scorn, whereas if he thinks that it is himself that you are denouncing, he will consider that you are guilty of ill-bred peevishness. Carlyle remarked: ``The population of England is twenty millions, mostly fools.'' Everybody who read this considered himself one of the exceptions, and therefore enjoyed the remark. You must not denounce well-defined classes, such as persons with more than a certain income, inhabitants of a certain area, or believers in some definite creed; for if you do this, some readers will know that your invective is directed against them. You must denounce persons whose emotions are atrophied, persons to whom only plodding study can reveal the truth, for we all know that these are other people, and we shall therefore view with sympathy your powerful diagnosis of the evils of the age.

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.