Captain Obvious

A recent WSJ article points correctly to the fact that rare earth elements can be recycled from old hard disks, MRI scanners and other gear containing magnets made of rare-earth metals. The startup company Cyclic’s pitch is that this is faster than setting up new mining operations, which can take decades, and slashes carbon emissions and water use.  The picture above is from their literature.

“What we are doing is disrupting that supply chain,” said Cyclic chief executive Ahmad Ghahreman.

The company has invented a process to separate rare-earth magnets from other metals, grind them to powder and use chemicals to extract rare-earth oxides—like hot water releasing caffeine from coffee, Ghahreman says. The company has a deal to supply oxides to Belgian chemicals company Solvay, which processes them to make metal for new magnets.

I applaud innovation of course, but the logistics of getting the candidate raw materials to the processing site and building such a site at scale to be meaningful in modern markets is daunting. Noble for sure … but daunting.  And, if we are to learn anything from recycling plastics in everyday use, it just doesn’t work. Very little of discarded material is recycled … and mostly due to economics. It is cheaper to ship our sins to third world countries and to continue to sin.

You can legislate recycling and charge people per item as they do in the Northeast for plastic bottles, but I have yet to see a study showing that it is making a difference. Frankly, people would rather pay the fee than have their lives further complicated with multiple trash paths. In like manner, composting food waste is certainly a good idea if you have a garden, but very few will do it. Most who do will write articles and get covered by the local news media as heroes, but other than that …

Recycling has been proven to do one thing for sure … and that is to dull the guilt sensitivities of those who consume those goods in the first place. People today buy bottled water, and if you ask them, because they believe the bottles are recycled.

One more convenient myth used by marketers to dull our sensibilities.

Did you ever want to know why you can’t fix stupid?

For years I have been puzzled by the pervasive nonsense I see in politics regarding our clear raping of the planet, most egregiously amplified by recent suggestions that we mine the seafloor.  What is wrong with these people?

Well, here is a video that explains it: Dunning-Krueger Effect Explained

We have the perfect storm of Arrogance and Ignorance (AI) that previous blogs have mentioned is what AI really stands for.  Couple that with the fact that social media has replaced the peer review process and anyone can publish their nonsense, idiots get reinforcement confirming almost any conclusion they reach. 

Please watch this video and decide where you stand.  Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?  I fear the most vocal today are largely the problem and the movie Idiocracy is becoming a reality … smart people are having fewer children than dumber ones, so the average IQ is dropping.

There are signs of hope, and it can’t come too soon. Many scientists and engineers are now correcting some of the superficially appealing notions and trying to develop sustainable energy strategies.  We do have professionals who have repeatedly pointed out that the emperor is nude, like Dr. Katherine Johnson with her insightful weekly postings.  And, as the short article reposted at the end of this blog, there may be a turnaround on some issues.

But we are outnumbered by the dominant ignorant publishing that most read or watch, which they then spout as truth. Plus, we all seem far too tolerant of the increasing abuse of our planet.  Have any of you looked at how we ship goods around the planet?  Do you really think these shipments are all about food and shelter that can’t be provided locally?  Haven’t we considered possibly relocating people to be symbiotic with their local environment?  One of many positive consequences of the current trade war is that it may sort some of this out as each country evaluates whether they need to import vs. make or grow it locally. 

No, we build skyscrapers where nothing grows and malls with ski slopes to prove we can.  We produce and then scrap cars when we can no longer find spare parts or don’t like the styling, rather than build them for long-term use. Or perhaps the most ludicrous is burning fuel moving water (H₂O) all around the world in bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a plastic derived from crude oil. 

But why stop there?  How outrageous is it that we are told by politicians that we are going to replace the internal combustion engine with renewables by 2030 or 2050?  Sure, all those 18-wheelers you see on the Interstate are going to run on renewables, plus all the airplanes and ships.  If you think that possible, check out these websites to see how many planes and ships (Ships) must be converted … this is Not happening any time soon.

We need to step back from the abyss we face, rethink our strategies, mend our fences, forgive one another, and start thinking clearly about our choices.  Otherwise, we are heading full speed into worldwide chaos as we allow China to deplete our oceans’ fish, let EV and PV manufacturers rape the planet while killing innocent children sent to mine the needed rare earth minerals, and then pat ourselves on the back with such ridiculous ideas as sustainable renewable aviation fuels.

Sustainable aviation fuel plans under fire over crop emissions  

By Jim Giles May 5, 2025

Scaling the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) made from corn and soybeans is the focus of U.S. plans to decarbonize aviation, but researchers at the World Resources Institute are urging a rethink.

• • The U.S. produces around just 1 percent of the quantity of SAF needed to hit a government target of 3 billion gallons of domestic production by 2030, according to the Department of Energy.

• • But when land-use change is considered, corn and soybean-based SAF creates more emissions than fossil jet fuel, the WRI concluded in a report released last week.

• • The crops “are not a viable strategy for decarbonizing aviation,” said Audrey Denvir, a WRI research associate and author on the report.

Industry figures questioned key details of the analysis.   

“Context is everything,” said Adam Klauber, who oversees sustainability and digital supply chains at World Energy, a SAF producer. Klauber argued that the WRI analysis relied on global averages for the impacts of biofuel crops and overlooked the higher performance of crops grown in the U.S.  In a new report, the WRI team argues that when a more holistic approach is used to assess SAF production, two crops that are essential to scaling supply — corn and soy — are found to create more emissions than conventional fossil fuels.

The crops “are not a viable strategy for decarbonizing aviation,” said Audrey Denvir, a WRI research associate and an author of the report.  SAF advocates disputed the report’s conclusions, saying the researchers failed to distinguish between global averages and data on more sustainable biofuel crops grown in the U.S.

 

 

 

(Airbus hydrogen-powered aircraft rendering. Photo: Airbus/Zuma Press)

About five years ago, Airbus made a bold bet: The plane maker would launch a zero-emissions, hydrogen-powered aircraft within 15 years that, if successful, would mark the biggest revolution in aviation technology since the jet engine, the WSJ’s Benjamin Katz reports.

The plan raised eyebrows because the technical challenges of the way they were going to do this were huge. Engines would need to be reconfigured to run on hydrogen which would need to be stored in liquid form at minus 423 degrees F. The heavier fuel load and equipment would reduce both seat capacity and range. And then there were the safety concerns exemplified by the 1937 Hindenburg disaster.

The company settled on hydrogen-fuel cells to generate energy for electric motors. But fuel cells are extremely heavy, and the plan required a radical redesign of the airframe and propulsion system which would carry only 100 passengers about 1,000 nautical miles. Plus, as the picture here shows, it is a propeller driven design, so it is certainly not going to fly as fast meaning passengers are going to find their flights longer. This is all just wrong.

The company has spent more than $1.7 billion on the project, according to people familiar with the matter, and over the past year they concluded that technical challenges and a slow uptake of hydrogen in the wider economy meant the jet wouldn’t be ready by 2035. Notice they also failed to admit that hydrogen was going to cost them more than conventional aviation fuel. This was greenwashing at its best, and a complete lack of fiduciary responsibility on the part of senior leadership.

But I blame the scientific and engineering community who knew better. The whole idea was just wrong-headed. That is, until you look at their motivation as the article points out:

“Airbus also had a commitment to a major shareholder—the French state. The company had been a major beneficiary of a Covid-era government support package for the aviation and aerospace sector of 15 billion euros, equivalent to roughly $16.6 billion. The deal required Airbus to spend a portion of the money on bringing green aircraft to market by the 2030s.”

That’s all you need to know. $1.7 billion looks like a small fee to get back $16 billion!  Greenwashing at its best … always follow the money!

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted the future of AI can be shaped to produce maximum societal benefit, rather than replace humans in society. Technology has already begun to reshape workforces in industries ranging from coding development to apple farming, but there’s still uncertainty about what exact role AI will play in the economy. Mathematicians call this the objective function used in optimization.

Very simply, the purpose of the objective function is to define the net benefits of all independent variables under our control and seek the best portfolio of decisions that will lead us there. Objective functions can be developed to predict economics, environmental, and societal goals to mention just a few. The electric utility industry used this approach for decades to decide and justify the elements in both the supply and demand side portfolio.

Well, according to one Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, we’re doing it all wrong. Sendhil Mullainathan says humans can choose what kind of technology it becomes but by contrast, it is now uncoordinated and self-centered on the developer perspectives. AI tools are being evaluated, developed and deployed based on their capability for automation, not their capability for augmentation, Mullainathan says.

The MIT professor says companies like OpenAI and Google could evaluate their newest models based on their ability to help people, not their ability to automate processes. That framework, he argues, could help ensure that AI becomes what Steve Jobs called a “bicycle for the mind”—a technology that amplifies humans’ inherent abilities and streamlines their efficiency.

Nice try Professor Mullainathan … our free markets defy such ideologies.

Worse yet, bad people are defining the objective functions, which are largely to deceive, rob and steal from innocent citizens. The evils of this world have been the drivers to innovation right behind space and defense. Don’t you remember that porn drove the video cassette and DVR business and will drive the deep fakes to virtually eliminate the actors and actresses in that business.

Meanwhile we argue about digital rights and NFTs as if the market was listening to us. We are lambs being led to slaughter, by those who have jumped on the technology already.

Remember this simple adage: if something is free to us, the ones “giving it to us” are likely taking advantage of something we did not understand had value and/or as individuals could not acquire as value. They are indeed giving it to us …

EPR stands for Enhanced Producer Responsibility.  GreenBiz has rightfully pointed out that the food industry is embroiled in a reporting transition where the food products we see at retail will be tagged to indicate how they result in food waste.  The idea is that producers should have full responsibility for the journey of their food and its packaging from beginning to end.

This makes sense on some level of course.  If you make the mess, you should clean it up.  But it fails to ask and answer the question about why the mess was made in the first place.

By analogy, if you play paintball and mess up public property, you should be the one to clean it up.  But the bigger question is whether you should be allowed to play paintball on public property in the first place.  Shouldn’t people be restricted to playing paintball in places designed for that?

Just as an aside … I hate paintball, but know others love it, so far be it from me to suggest you shouldn’t play.  But I have every right for you to follow the rules and not expect others or society to clean it up.

So, what is ECR?  I changed the word Producer to the word Consumer.  After all, might we be better off pushing consumers to move away from convenience foods and take more responsibility to eat fresh produce?

I know … wouldn’t this hurt jobs and the economy?  Sure, but these products are not good for society in the first place.  In some ways they are no different than the production of cigarettes.  Yes, I do know it is not at that level of health harm, but the point is they are NOT good for us.  They just taste good.

Isn’t it clear now that our societies’ problems are being made worse by the salt in prepared foods?  Yes, we are now more interested in composting and returning to a more sustainable food cycle.  We all want tomatoes that taste like tomatoes and enjoy picking those pea pods as snacks?  However, we have now become a society focused on convenience rather than responsibility.  We want the privilege to eat whatever we want.

We also seem to prize and are willing to pay more for organic foods, trusting our suppliers to be honest that they are indeed produced that way.

Please realize then that big business is once again using all this as a side show … if you failed to catch that prior blog, here is the link to it:  https://captain-obvious.com/the-side-show/