Month: August 2024

I am not sure when I first heard this phrase to describe things that distract people and give them the feeling something important is happening when in fact it is meaningless. A recent article in the newly renamed greenbiz.com is exactly that. https://trellis.net/article/inside-deltas-plan-to-take-single-use-plastic-cups-off-its-flights/

Saving a few thousand pounds per year aboard the fleet of Delta’s airplanes is simply meaningless. The image improvement they believe will occur by using paper instead of plastic might be measurable, but it is also meaningless. Nowhere is Delta testing whether doing this will be deemed greenwashing by their customers … which is what I and anyone who knows something about all this is going to think.

This is a magician’s trick: create a distraction from the main event. As the article points out, 90% of Delta’s carbon footprint is fuel. That is a tough nut to crack as they found out. All the talk of biofuels fails the scale-up test, and the economics would bankrupt Delta unless and until all airlines had to use biofuels.

At least I am not reading that Delta is going to try to use hydrogen as a fuel. As my prior blogs have noted, that would be a disaster because it would produce nitrous oxides in the upper atmosphere that are 300 times more powerful as a global warming gas than carbon dioxide. Oh, you think I am nuts? Check this out: https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/does-use-hydrogen-produce-air-pollutants-such-nitrogen-oxides

Yes, fuel cells do better with hydrogen, but they are just not economic. Remember my career working for the company that developed most of them, Mechanical Technology Inc. in Lathem, NY. That was about 40 years ago, and they told everyone fuel cells were about five years off. They remain five years off from true commercial realities.

Recent blogs on the failures in the solar and wind industry should be a wake-up call, but don’t be surprised that the news cycle fails to cover this. Delta is making a big deal of something that is just not substantive, even in the minds of consumers. Eliminating single-use plastic water bottles is much more important. Delta can recycle their plastic cups.

Sorry to those who dislike the word fart. Get over it. It is a natural process in the human body. It also reflects what you eat and how healthy you are. Therefore, being able to smell them is beneficial feedback.

There is a reason the phrase is derisive. Delta deserves to be criticized for this attempted greenwashing.  It stinketh greatly!

The recent opening of the Olympics in Paris with its depiction of the Last Supper using drag queens and deliberate mocking of this event points out how far the freedom of speech has come and how far we must go to put it in balance with the wellness of society.

The deliberate disrespect for the religious traditions and beliefs of others was trampled by a modern progressive and liberal artistic point of view in full defiance of any accountability to the damage it might do to the wellness of the society in general.

It is one thing to protest and express a point of view, but to deliberately use an international event itself to promote disrespect for sacred traditions dating back 1000s of years shows how far we have come to accept being shocked to our core with those who use the freedom of speech to disrespect societal norms and long held traditional views.

While almost all my readers will amen these opening statements, please now take your outrage and concerns to the cancel culture of today, especially on college campuses, where alternative points of view are the grounds for professors being fired and campus violence.

Why are so many accepting the offense in the last supper depiction and these same people will fire a professor with traditional conservative points of view? I thought college was supposed to stretch the minds of students to see life through a bigger lens.

There is only one explanation for this inconsistency and that is to see how it might fit into a consistent plan to destroy traditional lifestyle points of view. It has now become quite clear to me that this is no longer an intellectual debate, but rather a planned gaslighting campaign to kill long held traditional lifestyle choices by deeming them vestiges of the past only embraced by deplorable barefoot hillbillies and hicks.

President Biden insisted we should lower the temperature of our freedoms of speech. I fully agree. What I believe is missing is to stress, just like the Pope did in his recent carefully written statements, that we all should refrain from deliberate mockery of sacred traditions in any community of individuals.

Diplomacy, deference, grace, and peace should be clear agendas for dialogues and decisions.

I know saying that is impolite, but I simply cannot resist. Today’s WSJ lead article on the collapse of the solar industry is confirmation of what I have been saying for years. The interest rates were low tempting silly economics, the claims for savings were high and unsupported with facts, the true costs to nonparticipants were high and unsustainable within fiduciary responsibilities, and the demand would collapse as a result. Ta da!

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/sunpower-bankruptcy-inflation-reduction-act-subsidies-green-energy-joe-biden-kamala-harris-a8bef0c6?st=yw6eqj69aa3odyw&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

How many stockholders are going to take it in the shorts? I don’t know, but what I do know is that whenever the government picks winners and losers you get these corrections. Haven’t we learned anything from Obama and Solyndra? Don’t we remember the boom/bust cycles caused by Jimmy Carter’s ban on this or that plus absurd incentives to promote incorrect alternatives to energy challenges.

Can’t we see we are on the same path again with the climate change crisis? I am seeing a groundswell of caution emerging finally, but it is still drowned out by the Kool-Aid swallowing climate alarmists.

Look … I am fully onboard with the quest to reduce our energy footprints, but the solution to these existential questions is not consistent with our paths taken today. There are so many great ideas and important social questions we should consider, but they are drowned out by the quest for more lithium to make more and bigger batteries and the arguments over where we can put all these wind turbines.

Those are important supply side questions but notice that the real problem now is the demand side … the fervor for EVs, solar, wind, etc. is declining rapidly. If you build the EVs being pushed by the alarmists, they are going to sit in the dealer car lots … as they are doing right now.

There are no easy answers in life. That is why it is so important to talk through realistic choices and let people choose. That is why economists insist that price signals reflect these choices. But, in the same breath, economists will remind everyone that the true price signals are often elusive and therefore policies must be formulated that make choices easier. How many Americans or other citizens of the world understand this?

Nope. They are hoping others will simply decide for them. They have, but they don’t either understand these complexities or have become complicit with opportunists because it feathers their nests. Follow the money.

As Al Gore and Richard Branson replied when asked by an interviewer if they were climate Prophets in Planet of the Humans, Gore responded, “It all depends on how you spell Profits!” And the two of them tossed their heads back and doubled over howling with laughter…at us. You can watch it on the well-done documentary on Amazon Prime.

No, this is not some kind of geometric progression you had to recognize as part of your college entrance exams.  These are all key numbers in the energy industry.

Do you know why these numbers are important?  You probably only recognize the last two as the DOE recommended thermostat temperature settings for heating and cooling setpoints.  Do you remember when those recommendations were made and why they were deemed important?  Do you know how much one degree Fahrenheit change in your setting makes in your heating and cooling energy use and costs?

Of course most people don’t.  Believe it or not, that first degree change saves or costs about 7-9% of your monthly energy use.  So, those of you holding 75 F for cooling in your home are using about 25% more energy for those 3 extra degrees of comfort … and costing energy and carbon along the way in almost every case.  Yet, you don’t hear politicians asking you to do this.

You should be asking why … so let’s go on to the first number in the title of this blog. 

Yes, that was the speed limit Jimmy Carter imposed on our superhighways to reduce our fuel consumption as part of his response to the second Arab oil embargo in 1978.  The sweeping legislation emerged because of the crisis was deemed “the moral equivalent of war.”  The Department of Energy was formed and a host of key energy legislation imposed to get us off foreign oil.  Lowering the speed limit had other positive consequences including lowering the number and severity of our highway accidents.

I remember those lines at the gas stations and there was palpable fear in all our hearts.  Everyone seemed on board to do their part individually because we knew, or at least believed, that the result was good for all.

So, if we are so concerned about the future of our planet, why have guidelines like this gone away?  We now have many highways with speed limits of 70 upon which we seem to average 80.  Our analysis of homes indicates the average air-conditioned home holds 74. 

Do we care that we are gobbling energy with these behaviors?  Or, have we shifted the responsibility to our providers in the hope that we no longer have to be inconvenienced or sacrifice anything in the bargain?  Perhaps you remember when President Obama recommended we all check our car tire pressure because most tires were not properly inflated and the rolling resistance does decrease fuel efficiency as a result.  There was almost instant rebellion at the suggestion we should all do our part in this logical way.

It strikes me as odd and inconsistent that we Americans say we want to limit climate change and yet are not interested in personal accountabilities.  We want others to work the magic, in the same way we won’t reduce our calorie intake or stop eating the wrong foods.  We are outsourcing our responsibilities rather than changing bad behaviors. 

The consequence for driving on today’s highways is tragic.  I am terrified of driving on the highways in Atlanta and have taught my daughters and son to always watch their rearview mirrors to scan for idiots who will slalom both right and left lanes going over 90 mph.  One of our friends was killed by someone doing that.

Yes, it is nice to “make good time” on our long trips, but I have to say that driving my EV has taught me the relative efficiency of speed vs available battery miles.  The screen monitors provide constant feedback so I can make the tradeoff of speed and arrival time and alerts me if I am not going to make the next charge station.

I remember gasoline cars that did the same thing, so we have the technology.  Apparently, we are no longer interested in personal accountability for our driving characteristics.  But perhaps that is also about to change as insurance companies tap into the onboard computers to evaluate our driving behaviors.

I can already hear the arguments against this as an invasion of privacy.  Let’s see how the market players manage this new world of information availability.  Do they emphasize you can get lower insurance rates by being recognized as a safe driver?  Or, given we live in a democracy, does the plurality of bad drivers kill this idea because they know their prices are going to go up?

Wouldn’t it be ironic that free markets and risk transparency run against energy and societal stewardship?  Haven’t we learned anything from the energy price spikes in the electricity markets years ago?  … oh … if you didn’t know … the problem was that there was no incentive for homeowners and businesses to reduce their consumption during those hot summer afternoons. 

The only thing we seem to learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history.