Author: Captain Obvious

I would have never guessed that politics would entered the conversation around EV safety. Hurricane Helene’s storm surge hitting western Florida highlighted that submerged EV batteries can short out, even explode, causing fires. Some have burned entire houses to the ground.

When I watched the news back then, they warned everyone about this danger. When I checked with knowledgeable people, they pointed out that golf cart batteries have been known to do exactly the same thing.  Then, when I did my own research into this problem, I learned that these situations are rare but indeed deserve the warning to move them out of flood zones.

Yeah right, go ahead and try to move your golf cart just ahead of a storm.  Go leave it where others can easily steal it … remember, most golf carts have one universal key.

Knowledgeable golf cart owners have told me they know to remove the battery and get it out of reach of floodwaters. Wonder how many people know to do that or have the strength to remove them? It was news to us, the owners of a Tesla and a golf cart. But we don’t live in a flood zone.

My research included this link https://www.eenews.net/articles/why-6-flooded-evs-burst-into-flames-after-hurricane-ian/ brought another perspective to light. The news media reporting never seems to put these incidents in perspective. We are led to believe they are commonplace and that everyone should move their vehicles, when as the article points out, they are quite rare.

Given our recent experience trying to insure a boat on the west coast of Florida, we have learned you must have them pulled, a.k.a. put “on the hard,” during Hurricane Season highlighting the simple fact that you won’t be able to move them out of harm’s way in the short time you have. Therefore, the reason the insurers are telling us this is so they can avoid claims when the storm hits.

I understand all this and don’t blame them, but I am alarmed that our news media fails to put these tragic EV fires in perspective. Is it that they too didn’t know? Perhaps. But what I think is at the root of all reporting these days is they are just not thinking.

After all, a few EVs catching fire should have immediately prompted broader questions about why any EVs are catching fire if most are not? Remember, there are tens of thousands of EVs in the region and only a few are catching fire. What is the reason only these few are igniting?

I do wonder when we will stop the soundbites and have dialogues about the limitations of ideas in life and community.  After all, EVs aren’t for everyone.  They are wonderful for some, so help them make their choices through education of costs and benefits.

A close friend of mine was seriously considering one because he thought the self-driving feature would avoid accidents.  I found out he had most of the same features on his existing car but had not turned them on! 

But, along the way, we need to avoid either fear mongering or generic promotion.  You are not going to save the planet buy buying an EV nor is your house going to burn to the ground if you do.  If you are worried about that possibility in a coastal area, park it outside your house!

We need to stop the exaggerated soundbites and begin the education of the public.  I love my Tesla, but it is just not for most people.

Buzz Lightyear would be so proud of what the innovative thinkers are considering for the future location of digital server farms: orbiting our planet. The reasons stem from a host of issues here on earth that apparently become easier in stationary earth orbits. Take a look for yourself at: https://www.freethink.com/energy/future-of-data-centers and this commercial firm suggesting the same concept: https://lumenorbit.github.io/wp.pdf

Did you notice that no one seems to want to avoid this need in the first place? Can we really believe we can keep raping the planet making this stuff, killing children and their parents in third world countries as we irresponsibly mine because of our insatiable demand for raw materials, and then somehow find the power to fuel this unfettered growth forecast?

It seems like only yesterday that the electric utilities were promoting Redi Kilowatt and Gold Medallion Homes and forecasting load growth that forced them to build bigger and bigger power plants. The energy supply shortages in the 1970s changed all that and those plans were dashed on the rocks of energy efficiency, conservation, and least-cost planning.

The industry lurched toward natural gas to replace dirty coal, nuclear, and even hydro but ran into public opposition to virtually any form of new power plants. NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) was replaced with BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody) and NOPE (Not On Planet Earth).

How did we lose our memories of all this so quickly? Don’t we remember how we got here? Why are we on such a tear to build out capabilities that strip societies’ gears? There is a limit to sustainable life here on our planet and we are rapidly approaching it. Forget about the alleged climate crisis and look at the basic water, food, shelter, health care, and societal needs as we move much of the planet from third to second and then first world living conditions.

I know it is not politically acceptable to talk about restraining growth in our economy or standards of living, but we must start this dialogue and look creatively at longer term models for life. Otherwise, we will wind up with end points like the movies: WALL-E, Hunger Games, Idiocracy, and Waterworld.

Why do we listen to ridiculous answers like we will just go live on Mars or elsewhere?  Do we really think those ideas are better than working on fixing things here on earth? Or are we so elitist that we think we deserve a lifeboat for ourselves and just leave everyone else to forage for themselves?

 

We have had high occupancy vehicle lanes for a while here in Atlanta but have now moved to dynamic pricing to reflect the perceived value associated with shorter times on Interstate 85.  This highway is about six lanes wide on each side in many areas, but it still congests to a standstill during morning and evening rush hours.

I never use those toll lanes even when the traffic is at a standstill.  There is something just wrong in my mind paying $5-10 to save ten minutes or so, but it tickles me to see them grind to a halt as well … with no refunds for the fact that too many people are in them.

These lanes are called Lexus lanes by the locals because that is the typical car brand that uses them.  We drive a Lexus but don’t use the lanes.  I might feel different if I were trying to get to work or had some time dependent issue, but it just galls me to think how much people are spending for convenience.

Maybe I am just out of touch because Disney just announced “Lightning Lanes” that give patrons no-wait access to rides and attractions, thereby avoiding the lines.  I stopped taking my kids to Disney because we spent half the day in lines, so I guess this makes sense, until you realize the surcharge is $300-400 a day per person for this privilege.

Why is it that Disney gets a pass on things like this when they are under the gun by the woke gang to eliminate so many characters that are the bedrock of the Disney stories we grew up liking.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is under fire for obvious reasons as are many other wonderful stories from our childhood. 

How can society say it wants affordability, equity, and inclusion then encourage class discrimination like this?  Plus, where is the moral outrage by those who can afford these fees to the obvious price gauging since there is no way this privilege costs Disney this amount.  This is clearly pricing for the perceived value of convenience and not reflecting the costs of providing the service.

If you only have a few hours in the park, this makes some sense but fails on so many other levels in my opinion.  But perhaps there is something to be learned here for the electric power industry.  We have priced electricity based upon the costs it incurs to provide it.  Is there a market for premium power choices, and possibly for better reliability?  If so, can utilities who have been regulated to keep prices in line with costs charge for something that may just reflect value rather than incurred costs? 

It seems especially odd to me that the trend these days is to avoid price transparency … the push to advanced electric rates seems to have stalled at the alter of convenience.  If you can’t recover costs for this, why not pursue the path of pricing for the convenience people are seeking.

Lots to think about, and possibly some concrete lessons to learn from Disney.  Let’s see.

The latest uptick in GPS Spoofing has commercial pilots alarmed. The basic challenge here is that nefarious individuals and/or countries are trying to disrupt those who rely on the GPS signal for navigation. Here is a link to an excellent article from the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/electronic-warfare-spooks-airlines-pilots-and-air-safety-officials-60959bbd?st=d2Ja3q&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Spoofing has such an innocent sound to it … implying something akin to poking fun at a topic. Perhaps the best example of this in modern media is the Babylon Bee which makes no claim to be anything more than an almost endless stream of thought-provoking fun:
https://babylonbee.com/news/kamala-safe-and-in-stable-condition-after-attempted-interview

But, where is the line between thought-provoking and malicious? I was always taught that making fun of someone was wrong, and spreading misinformation was also wrong. Isn’t this a direct violation of one of the ten commandments: do not bear false witness?

The Babylon Bee article introduces creative writing and humor to soften the tone, and does offer a chilling reminder of the name calling so prevalent in today’s news cycle:

The FBI arrived at the scene shortly thereafter and discovered that the would-be interviewer was in possession of several notepads, pens, a cellphone, and a camera authorities believed was intended to capture the event for a livestream or video. “Isn’t that sick?” said a campaign insider. “This nutjob had this all planned out. He was coming out here for the specific purpose of interviewing Kamala Harris — and he was trying to record himself doing it. This is the type of America we can expect under Donald Trump.”

I don’t have space in a blog to fully describe the range of spoofing but consider two extremes for illustration: parody where the intent is clearly to poke fun and offer insight, and cybercrime where we are being baited to lower our guard so someone can steal our critical security information.

Compounding all this is AI which is being used to tailor the messaging methods to further lower your guard by offering deep fakes of individuals you normally do trust. A major bank was bilked out of millions by one of these deep fake videos of an officer requesting a funds transfer that virtually no one detected as illegitimate.

We all seem to be in a password and two factor authentication phases right now thinking that we can defeat these criminals, but if anyone stole our phones they probably could easily get past all this.

The AI genie is out of the bottle. We are in a form of spoof prevention escalation that will eventually drive us all to trust someone or something to protect us. Who will offer that, and can we trust them?

This all points to future dystopian madness. The ability to and cost effectiveness of manipulating the masses is rising exponentially. Perhaps we caught TikTok today, but that just taught nefarious players to be more covert. Is YouTube next? I don’t think so.

I remember first reading the book 1984 thinking we would all be on drugs but did not even consider this would be digital drug addiction. Is there a safe level for digital addiction? And, if not, what are we going to do about all this?  Just say “no” as in the famous drug reduction efforts in the 1980s and 1990s?  This is going to take a lot of personal discipline and conviction.

In my opinion, it is just too easy to keep saying “yes” until we are hooked.

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/