Author: Captain Obvious

I have to admit that I am now feeling a bit like Rip Van Winkle who woke up after being asleep for 20 years to find the world has completely changed.

As an engineer and a mathematician, I have long admired the process of long run integrated resource plans.  Following close behind that are the Independent System Operators (ISOs) who secure long term regional power resources based upon supply side economics and detailed reliability assessments.

So, when I see public opinion potentially trumping conservative logic and planning I become alarmed.  Read this for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Energy News

Yes, we engineers tend to “over design” systems so that they can persist even when things go wrong all around them.  Yes, we all know the story of Murphy’s Law that promises we will all be surprised by how things go wrong.

But, have we now lost our sensibilities about near term realities by surrendering to the glimmer of hope that renewables will magically replace near term needs?

Perhaps so, given we are now also banning natural gas in new construction … decades ahead of any regional grid being powered by 100% renewables.

Perhaps I need a 20 year nap!

I have to admit, I thought a fast-food chain featuring low fat, relatively healthy food was a winner.  Do you remember the chain from the ’90s, Delights?  It failed miserably.  People like eating fatty, salty, sweet foods … they simply taste better.

So, when I read about restaurants encouraging customers to eat lower carbon alternative meals, I have to admit I am a skeptic.  But it is happening. Read the latest from Green Biz.

Offering customer health information on foods has become pretty standard, but I doubt most people really look.  They like what they like.  You may see people studying the menu on the wall at fast food places, but you won’t see them lining up staring at the health information on each item.

So, to assume you can nudge consumer behavior by telling them how your food was sourced and what that environmental footprint makes me think we are not talking about mainstream consumer behavior … at least not yet.

But, I offer this observation:  I have never seen such a groundswell of enthusiasm around these ideas.  Perhaps it is being driven by corporate greenwashing plus brand redefinitions.  I just don’t know.

What I do know is we are in the fastest migration away from traditional talk around energy and environmental issues in my lifetime.

When I raised my daughters they would roll their eyes as I talked about energy efficiency and productivity work along with energy master planning at Mayo Clinic and elsewhere.

Now I am topically interesting … well … maybe not as interesting as the Kardashians …

I scan the online energy news coverage sources every morning, and this one caught my eye.  Read it for yourself to see I am not making this up. Read Energy Central’s news. 

Electric vehicles are a flawed technology

That rely on a unreliable power grid to operate……….the biggest flaw of eletricity is that it costs to much money to store it……electricity is very expensive…….electricity is only 100% efficient in heating and lighting loads……motor loads have a lower power factor which means those loads are less efficient……this means energy that could be used to heat or light homes …

Please note I did not change a word nor edit anything.  The headline certainly grabs your attention.  You then read the post and of course, try to check out the author.  Go ahead and try to do that yourself and let me know if you succeed.

Evidently, this was a random rant posted by someone who can’t spell, does not know the difference between “to” and “too” and goes on to rant that electricity is only 100% efficient in this or that.  You have no idea what the end conclusion really is.  Yet, it made it into one of the largest energy information publications with an inflammatory headline.

Please read what is posted carefully before accepting the premise in the headline.

This is pretty scary to me.  Where is the journalistic excellence in our news media?

No doubt you all have seen the footage of Novak Djokovic who was thrown out of the US Open after accidentally hitting a woman line judge with a ball towards the end of the first set of his match against the Spaniard Pablo Carreño Busta.  Yes, technically this was wrong to recklessly slam a ball in frustration toward a wall.  But the punishment seems so extreme given the blatant disregard for lawlessness we see everywhere else these days.  I guess part of the reason is Djokovic is white so he too should be punished for some form of white privilege.  I wonder if Serena Williams would have been disqualified for the same offense?

That brought to mind the question of punishment fitting the crime.  I was taught the Old Testament principle of an eye for an eye.  Most people misread that advice thinking that if someone does something wrong to you that you have the right to return evil for evil.  No.  It was written to warn us not to escalate wrongs.

As I was researching this I came across an excellent article in Psychology Today that stated:

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life…” is located in the sections of the Bible that instruct judges how to punish criminals. It is strictly an instruction for courts of law, not for personal revenge. In fact, the Bible instructs people not to take revenge. When we feel that someone has treated us unjustly and we cannot resolve the issue with them directly, we are instructed to turn to courts of law, not to take justice into our own hands.

An eye for an eye means that the punishment should fit the crime. If it doesn’t, it is immoral and is therefore likely to cause more harm than good. Turning the other cheek cannot be a policy for dealing with crime. Let’s say someone robbed or raped you. Would you want to go to a court of law where the judge’s policy is to let them rob or rape you again? That is not justice.

According to Psychology Today, punishment has several goals. The following are three of the most important:

1. 1. If crime is not punished, there is likely to be rampant crime, for crime will pay.
   2. Criminals should compensate their victims for the harm they caused.
   3. Punishments should guide criminals to become better people by getting them to feel remorse for what they did wrong so they won’t want to do it again.

Wow … seemingly obvious good advice and counsel.  Yet, a world-renowned white tennis player is thrown out of this match that may influence the rest of his career for a fluke occurrence … yet hundreds of hoodlums are lauded for truly reckless, premeditated behaviors on our cities’ streets purposefully throwing Molotov cocktails at police, breaking store windows, and looting?

No punishment for these crimes?  Really?

A fly that could be a key part of our future

The quest for sustainable agriculture has discovered a somewhat unlikely partner for our future food chain.  While you and I probably do not compost waste food products from our homes, many in the world do and this commonly found fly has emerged as a natural hero for our quest for sustainability.  It is easy and safe to create your own inexpensive Soldier Fly Farms for your garden and the benefits are truly astounding if you are interested in this lifestyle.  Go ahead and Google the way you can do this for next summer.

The reason I became aware of this was one more article on circularity that came in this morning warning about the unintended consequences of our aquaculture efforts. Read the GreenBiz article here. 

We all know that feeding the planet is extremely difficult to do without creating some kind of environmental challenge.

What I found refreshing about this article was that the quest to be responsible discovered a relatively simple answer that seems to be scalable and have no negative side effects.

It is so nice to see that we can work on worldwide hunger issues and discover scalable, simple answers.