Month: August 2023

I keep hearing the politicians and the scientific community insist that we should follow the science.  The implication is that we doubt the claims of climate alarmists and therefore are somehow dullards. 

Well, the simple fact is that we know that a lot has changed over time that must also be taken into consideration besides the “fact” that average temperatures are warming.  For instance, most of these measurements are at airports which have moved from grassy fields to concrete jungles of runways and warehouses.  Another fact is that our air pollution is lower today than it was decades ago so the sunlight gets to the earth’s surface more today than then.

Another fact is that the combination of satellites and mathematical modeling has enabled us to “know” the severity of storms in far greater detail than in the past.  So, if decades ago a storm intensified and then moved back down before landfall we probably wouldn’t have known.

The graphic from the recent storms shown here is a perfect illustration of facts we know now that were not known decades ago.  That’s great news but invalidates any comparison of storm intensities between today and decades ago. Perhaps you studied the detailed predictions for this last storm and noticed that it indeed peaked to a Cat 4 but came ashore at much reduced strength … still a serious storm, but nowhere near a Cat 4.  However, the news media wouldn’t let go of that Cat 4 strength.

I do have one funny illustration from my days back in graduate school as I was studying wind waves to determine the incidence of “rogue waves” from extensive navy data.  Believe it or not, navy ships serving in the notoriously violent waters around Cape Horn kept detailed records of wave heights and they were pretty scary with heights over 10 story buildings reported. 

So, I manually entered over 1,000 detailed measurements and then did statistical modeling to see how they behaved.  And much to my surprise there was a definite bias in the reported heights as the wave heights moved beyond about 80 feet.  This meant that something was moving measurements over 80 feet to be “exaggerated” in some way.  Yes, you can prove bias in data like this.

So, I then researched how these measurements were actually taken and realized that no one was going to want to be out on the forward deck taking careful measurements when a wave of that height was about to wash you off the deck, so it was clear to me that the observers just noted something large and ran for cover.  After all, wouldn’t you?  Nobody was going to be the wiser.

Except me … a curious analyst who just wanted to know how wave heights truly behaved statistically so we could factor in rogue waves into hull design.

We are such an interesting species living in unprecedented times.  A bewildering array of food choices have been developed specifically to appeal to our taste buds.  These foods are produced in unsustainable ways, and even when we try to cut down on things like red meat, the markets come up with substitutes that defeat our responsibilities to reduce consumption.  We simply want ways to continue bad habits.  Miracle meats are simply not really miracles.

Then, coupled with media that amps up our desires leads to a toxic cocktail of societal desires to live life well and ironically at our own peril.  We simply are not aware of how modern foods, especially salty snacks and diet drinks, are so bad for us.  We see countless ads implying our friendships will be enhanced if we offer arrays of these foods.  We will be liked, and we want that for sure.

Even things like our diet drinks have so many chemicals in them that they twist and torment our natural body safety and control mechanisms … then couple all this with sedentary lifestyles and we get a nation of overweight people whose diets are just not balanced and nutritious.

We enjoy all this so much we look for ways to continue our bad habits with miracle cures for obesity, hair loss, wrinkles, and the quest for social acceptance.  When we find anything that works, we then jump on it with both feet hoping it will restore us to our youth and make us popular … something we longed for since our teenage years.

Well, in the case of obesity, Big Pharma may have unleashed the devil itself.  They once again seem to have found something that offers us the easy way out.  We don’t have to change our behaviors … we simply have pills to take our responsibilities away.  According to a recent article in MIT Research:

“Medicare still doesn’t cover drugs for obesity, but a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine warned that, in the hypothetical scenario that all Medicare beneficiaries with obesity were to use Wegovy, the cost would exceed the entire Medicare Part D budget. And if just 10% of obese people on Medicare were to take it at the net annual price of about $13,600, it would cost Medicare nearly $27 billion a year, according to the study. Unless the list price of Wegovy were discounted by more than 40%, the overall cost of the medication would eclipse the benefits to the U.S. healthcare system of lower obesity levels, according to a report by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review. “If you spend all your money on weight loss, you’re not going to have money to do other things in healthcare,” says Dr. David Rind, chief medical officer of ICER.”

What makes matters worse is these drugs will have to be taken for the rest of a person’s life.  If they stop taking them, their weight returns.  Evidently, our bodies have natural mechanisms that require natural answers to these behavioral questions.  We can’t just take a pill and forget about our personal choices.  We must relearn the basics and practice them religiously (pun intended).  Unfortunately, the business world sees the bounty in all this:

“The amount of attention drugs such as Ozempic are getting on social-media platforms, driven by testimonies from ordinary people and celebrities, shows how popular this new class of drugs is quickly becoming. Wall Street is working up its appetite.”

So, the real appetite problem is not only with us … the consumers.  The lure of big money and the continued flow of that is a drug corporate America has always been addicted to.  So, perhaps it is ironic and tragic that companies whose mission is to help consumers cope with their bad eating and living behaviors such as Jenny Craig are now going out of business, as reported today in the Walls Street Journal:

“Jenny Craig is going out of business after 40 years.  The once-highflying weight-loss brand, which offered personalized plans and coaching and touted endorsements from stars like Queen Latifah and Mariah Carey, said Thursday it was canceling all online food orders. The closure comes after new drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro—which have been embraced by competitors such as WeightWatchers—have shaken up long-held beliefs that diet, exercise and willpower are the way to weight loss.”

Perhaps we need to stop thinking about miracles and more about personal responsibilities.

Do you see a pattern here?  It seems to be everywhere these days.

 

There are times in life when a person becomes much more than a friend or acquaintance, and this blog offers a tribute to a person who helped Susan and myself build our company. The nickname came from the show Cybill where her inebriated friend would talk disparagingly about her husband saying “Dr. Dick” with obvious disdain. Dick Niess never fit that mold, but we called him Dr. Dick anyway.

I first met Dick back when I was manager of machinery development at Mechanical Technology Incorporated. We were both selected for a task force looking at heat recovery technology. Years later, quite by accident, I was visiting with Hal Bowles who headed up the Electrification Council for EEI who told me that Dick had left his company and was retired.

Georgia Power had picked up on my idea of industrial heat recovery as an alternative to cogeneration and I convinced Dick to join me … which he did and we worked together for about another 20 years.

Dick came from a different generation and was the refrigeration salesperson that first introduced air conditioning in New York City, mostly to the garment industry … not to keep employees comfortable, but rather to keep them from sweating and ruining fabrics as they worked on them in the garment industry.

Dick’s stories were a large reason for our success. They seemed like history lessons, but the wisdom was timeless and applicable to life today. Plus, most of them were funny … at least by the standards of humor back then. Some people today have completely lost their sense of humor.

My favorite story of was of the lady’s auxiliary in Britain after the second world war who had invited a Luftwaffe Colonel to speak about the war from the German point of view. As he finished, a British commander asked him about rumors of friendly fire as they returned to Germany after bombing raids.
Dick told the story with both British and German accents which I can’t replicate here, but work with me: “Colonel, I understand there were nights when you were mistaken for British planes as you returned to Germany?

“Ya … dis is true … I remember one night when we were fired upon by a group of fokers.”
The British commander quickly reminded the audience of women that the Fokker aircraft was one of the finest German fighters in the sky to which the German Colonel then responded with:
“Ya … das is true as well … but these fokers they were Messerschmidts.”

There were so many other stories he told which I will cherish for as long as I can still remember them.

Here’s to you Dr. Dick!