Author: Captain Obvious

“No major storms have occurred in the Atlantic since mid-August, the quietest hurricane season in 56 years.” So much for the predictions that this year was going to be more active than normal. Has anyone other than me correlated the predictions of NOAH and the major universities who predict storm intensities with what actually happened that same year? Do you know what you get as a correlation coefficient when you compare predictions vs. realities?

Of course not! The fact is that the correlation coefficient is high, but it is NEGATIVE meaning that you have pretty good odds betting against these predictions! Now, don’t jump on me just yet … but do ask the natural questions this raises. Why were the predictions wrong? Were the models fed data that was estimated, and actual data would correct the predictions? Or were the predictions just wrong in all cases for “no reason?”

Plus, when you do look at the few positive correlation examples of weather over the last few decades, you see very low levels of correlation. For example, ice out contests are very common around the world where people bet on when rivers or lakes will be free of ice. So, accurate records are kept. And, when you correlate them over time you do see a small level of correlation indicating earlier ice outs in the last four decades or so have occurred slightly earlier. But it is about the same correlation coefficient as the stork population and birth rate in England. I hope I am not going too fast, but storks do not bring babies. People who do weather correlations also conveniently stop using data during the 1950s when the fear was a coming ice age. Let that one go.

My point is that the correlation coefficient being low tells you something: you haven’t found the key variable that explains variation! Nobody looks at the correlation of all this with the cleanliness of our atmosphere because of pollution controls and emission reductions resulting from the 1970 Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act (CAA) is the comprehensive federal law that regulates air emissions from stationary and mobile sources. You never hear this mentioned in the media that reports on the alleged climate crisis. What do you think might happen if they did look at this parameter that we cleaned up the air? Isn’t it obvious that a cleaner atmosphere lets more light and heat hit the surface of the planet? Hmmm.

The root problem here is summarized in what is called confirmation bias. According to the online version of Britannica: confirmation bias is people’s tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional, and it results in a person ignoring information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. These beliefs can include a person’s expectations in a given situation and their predictions about a particular outcome. People are especially likely to process information to support their own beliefs when an issue is highly important or self-relevant.

I still remember my business planning course professor’s statement called the Seer Sucker Theory: For every theory there is at least one sucker. And the number of people who want to profit from a belief that climate change is an existential threat are looking for confirmation that they are correct.

Well, they just got a wakeup call based on the fact we have had no major storms in the Atlantic since mid-August in a year predicted to be more active than normal.

Trellis (the new name for GreenBiz) once again has a wonderfully interesting summary of how AI is driving the need for additional servers which of course drives the need for additional electricity. This of course drives the need for more green energy to power these servers. Doesn’t this sound like an unsustainable plan going forward?

The water cooling for these servers poses additional challenges where the cooling systems use wet cooling towers. Here is Trellis’s summary of the situation:  Data centers are thirsty, and AI is making things worse
• A vast majority of data centers use water to keep servers and networking gear from overheating. In some northern climates, operators can get away with using outside air to do that job.
• 20 percent of U.S. data centers are in regions at risk of water shortages.
• Artificial intelligence is increasing that stress, and could account for 4.2 – 6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal by 2027, according to October 2023 research.
Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia lawmakers have all introduced legislation that could limit data center development, due to concerns about energy and water use.

The battle between Alabama, Florida and Georgia over water is legendary: https://chattahoochee.org/case-study/tri-state-water-conflict/ Notice that the conclusion was to open up discussions and negotiate … not litigate.

So, why are we on such a mad dash for all this AI capability? It is obviously because businesses are realizing economic benefits from its use. Well, what happens when there is no more water available?

Gee, Joel, it seems everyone has put their straw in this punchbowl of opportunity and is trying to suck out as many resources as they can before they run out! Doesn’t this sound just like the whaling industry that moved from inshore whaling to offshore and then to factory ships because they wiped out the local whale populations?

Can’t we all see these as unsustainable? Doesn’t this call for some forms of least cost planning where the full societal costs are considered, along with natural constraints such as total water use?

Those of you who remember all the arguments about externalities in the electricity planning process will just shake your head in disbelief that we are now facing similar situations because of data centers … which most of you will remember were feared countless times in the past, and especially recently with the bitcoin agendas.

Is the problem just too big to tackle because water rights are so complex? Well, if so, why do we somehow think this problem is going to solve itself?

We came precariously close to a crisis in the Western US last year, which now seems to have diminished … so now we no longer work on it as if it was still important. Haven’t we learned anything from history about the ability to sustain civilizations?

Stinkin thinkin!

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.