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Yes, I know you were thinking of the poem by Robert Frost. Sorry to disappoint you, but I am going in another direction, pointing out the road we are on clearly goes nowhere if you are a carbon accounting energy fundamentalist.

This graph clearly shows that the use of fossil fuel in this country is NOT heading down and in fact rising dramatically. How then could we ever believe we will stop adding to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Articles like the one referenced point to the fact that data centers are directly in conflict with environmental goals: https://stateline.org/2024/04/30/states-rethink-data-centers-as-electricity-hogs-strain-the-grid/

It has become increasingly hard to understand how politicians can flipflop so quickly as well: https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2024/04/30/gop-gubernatorial-candidates-promise-coal-boost-utility-regulator-shakeups/

My read on all this is that the seemingly widespread coalition of believers in fossil fuel elimination are rethinking their game books and in the process going to lose their minds.

Also, if you look at the renewables component in the graph above and think about how much energy it took to create those resources, you could easily argue that we would have been better off not making them in the first place. Think about it … producing solar panels and wind turbines requires an enormous amount of energy … which came from fossil fuels in most cases. This is especially true of EVs which have so much embedded carbon that the average driver would never run them long enough to make a positive difference.

Remember, we are buying solar panels and batteries from China, and they are still building coal plants to keep up with their electricity demand. And, just wait till we get to the end of life on all these renewables and must dispose of them because they are not recyclable.

How can the scientific community say they will curb our carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere? The facts are clear as prior blogs indicated that the rate of carbon dioxide release is increasing … e.g., things are getting worse if you believe carbon dioxide is the key measure for planet wellness.

Nobody seems to recognize that demand for goods and services must be curbed, and this means you don’t just let free markets push consumption up in response to the insatiable appetite for profits. You don’t just sit by with ideas like cryptocurrency that gobble energy insatiably in their digital value chain.

I don’t like central planning “socialist” models, but I do believe we must consider their ideas to some extent. The “planetary load” of society has reached a tipping point … we can’t keep going on the current road. We must take a deep breath, pull over, study the maps illustrating our potential paths, and chart a new course.

The road we are on leads nowhere good. We clearly must change course.

… and socializing environmental anxiety in children? Is that the goal of our educational system? Apparently it is in New Jersey. You can’t make things like this up. The title of this blog comes directly from New Jersey’s governor’s goal of indoctrinating high school students. Read it for yourself: https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-jerseys-k-12-curriculum-climate-change-indoctrination-tammy-murphy-fb5a8c0e?st=cuwv2hat1mo52u3&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Critical thinking is thwarted when you try to answer difficult questions as if you really knew what the right answer is. We have all heard the joke about a lawyer when asked what 1 + 1 equals responds. “What do you want it to be?” I still remember our lead rotor dynamics PhD at MTI when I worked there and his response to the Garrett gas turbine people when they presented the balancing problem with a new design. Knowing the answer was contentious, he wisely asked, “What number you rooking for?” Remember Chinese do not differentiate between R and L sounds in their native Mandarin language.

That was a brilliant question since there were so many assumptions that could influence the outcome of the analysis. You could get any conclusion you wanted to make since the data assumptions were so indeterminant. If you assumed this you got that, but on the other hand if you assumed the opposite (and you rightfully could) you will come to a different answer. He needed to know what answer Garrett engineers were trying to get to. That event stuck with me to this day. Truly brilliant!

Spreading fear and environmental anxiety in our children who already are bombarded with so many messages contrary to their mental health is wrong headed? No wonder suicides are on the rise.

This documentary www.aclimateconversation.com should be in the curriculum. The idea that scientists are being bludgeoned into compliance to produce propaganda should strike fear into everyone. It also triggers fears of historical events that none of us ever want to see repeated. These techniques come straight out of the socialist playbook. Yet, where is the press on all this? Shouldn’t they be reporting it to us?

No … they agree with the agenda and have lost any sense of responsibility and pride in reporting news. They are simply spreading propaganda … no different than Russia or North Korea … except for the fact that the governments there control the press. Ours would appear to be serving the public, but no longer are offering news. They are pushing agendas.

It was a few days ago that Susan and I watched a Netflix documentary on Dan Rather hoping to see excellence in journalism. Nope. It was a celebration of his career of biased reporting … telling the story from his philosophical point of view … not reporting the news.

It frightens me to see how far off the mark our news media has strayed. It should frighten you as well.

Do you know the meaning of this Yiddish word that entered the English language in the 1940s as the Jewish comedians worked the Catskills?  Boy, to many of you that last sentence makes no sense.  The Catskills had fabulous hotels which were called Dude Ranches because they offered all kinds of things like horseback riding but tamed down so “city kids” were able to do them.

I grew up in that world dominated by the simple fact that we New York City dwellers didn’t have air conditioning yet (it wasn’t invented for mere mortals until Carrier did it in the 1950s).  My parents tried to escape the heat (and remember the buildings in New York are densely packed so when they heated up in the sun they reradiated that heat all night) by traveling just a few miles north into the hills of New York just outside of the city, called Catskills.

But I digress … let’s get back to the meaning of schtick.  Comedians and other performers developed characteristics that made them unique.  They were often funny things they did or said repeatedly that became synonymous with them.

“I don’t get no respect” was the phrase used all the time by Jack Roy (born Jacob Cohen) better known by his pseudonym Rodney Dangerfield.  He was known for his self-deprecating one-liner humor.  Today’s clinically and emotionally sterile consumers would point out that this phrase is a double negative meaning that he does indeed get respect.  What endeared him to most listeners is that he sounded like them the way they spoke!

Give me a break.  Can’t you hear him in your mind now that I triggered that with his catch phrase?  Don’t you smile remembering how endearing he was as he confessed all the things that went wrong in his life, and mostly because he bumbled this or that?

George Burns’ (born Nathan Birnbaum) cigar smoking routines we all saw on TV ended with him asking his wife Gracie Allen to “say goodnight, Gracie.” My wife and I were in Las Vegas doing consulting work for Nevada Power and I heard he was performing there and bought tickets so she could see him in person while he was still alive.  She thought the price was way too high, but I reminded her that included a drink.

George performed standup without an intermission for two hours always puffing on that cigar.  It was his part of his schtick. He never cursed or demeaned anyone.  He always made fun of himself in life’s journey.  When he was in his late-90s, I remember watching a TV interview with him.  He was asked if he planned to perform at the MGM Grand on his 100^th birthday.  He said yes, he did.   The interviewer questioned his confidence in that,  to which George replied “Yeah … they may be out of business by then.”

This video summarizing his life’s work played on at the end of the ABC Evening News on his 100^th birthday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=encJXmTe_Bg&t=167s

That my friends is the definition and personification of schtick.  Have we lost our sense of humor?  Are we so concerned about offending someone who might in some way be hypersensitive to any implication they are not perfectly normal?  Is it no longer acceptable to listen to Alice’s Restaurant as a social commentary?

Perhaps President Truman summarized it perfectly in response to General MacArthur’s question to him, “What does the term politically correct mean?”  Truman responded that “political correctness was a doctrine, recently fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and promoted by a sick mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end!”

The phrase “going to the dogs” usually means the business is failing. We hear some say our country is going to the dogs. Set that aside for the moment. This blog is about how a dog food and treat company is positioning itself in a competitive market. And this business is literally taking off: https://time.com/6981278/dog-airline-bark-air/ Watch their video too: https://cdn.shopify.com/videos/c/o/v/a95cdd43902142d386ac7ab32bc6e490.mp4

What was your reaction to all this. Did you just dismiss this as a crazy idea because it has so many obvious problems? Or, did you dig deeper to see why the idea has any traction at all? Did you get on their website to look at booking a flight? If you did, you would have seen that many of the upcoming dates are sold out even at $8,000 a ticket.

Did you take a closer look to see that this company does not own any aircraft nor employ staff to fly them? Did you figure out why this company created this business proposition in the first place to enhance the brand equity of their base business? Why didn’t you?

I could go on, but here is my basic point. Our mood toward opportunities has gone sour. Big companies define success as big ideas, not pandering to some elitist special interest group as this company appears to have done. Nobody seems to understand brand.

Yes, there are way too many business startups that are pie in the sky (sorry for the pun, but it is contextually accurate). We should be suspicious and dig deeper. But first and foremost we should be looking for the core business-value created and consequent brand loyalty.

A sad commentary on this for the energy utility companies is that General Electric started their brand awareness with Ronald Reagan as the pitch man saying we should live better electrically. GE got into the electric appliance business to give utilities things they could sell which in turn would build their business so GE could then sell them power plants. And, electric utilities did sell appliances directly to consumers. This virtuous circle came undone with all the nonsense about the future of energy, but it worked for decades. GE’s business has gone to the dogs as a result.

It is easy to dismiss new ideas, but that is the intellectually lazy approach. Think about the user perspective and what makes the idea attractive to them. Anyone who has a pet, especially a dog, considers them part of their family and honestly may be the only family member showing them unconditional love.

Flying is merely one dimension of togetherness. While this element has all kinds of wrinkles and stumbling points that come to mind, it is a window into a value proposition. Think of this as just one more type of concierge service. Yes, that sounds like an elitist business proposition … because it is. Does that bother you that some people spend more on their pets than you can imagine?

One of our friends acts as a concierge for Delta Airlines and his job is to act as the problem solver for pilots who may need all sorts of things that we everyday people do ourselves. We have other friends who cater to high-net-worth individuals taking care of their vacation homes all around the world.

It makes no sense to most of us. We just shake our heads in disbelief. I understand. What we tend to forget is that some people are looking for a premium offering and are willing to pay the price. Flying first class is part of the business, even if it is a small part.

Unfortunately, the model these days seems to be to drive the value through the pursuit of mediocrity at low prices. That is seldom a sustainable business model. No, worse than that, it is almost always unsustainable since somebody else can always offer a lower price.

Reread all the press releases about this company focused on a premium dog business. The flying portion may never be large, but it may prove to be a powerful differentiator.

Be wary of any politician or corporation that makes promises so far into the future that the individuals making them are very likely gone. It is sobering to look to the past and reconcile promises made decades ago about almost anything and square them up with where we are today. I can tell you from firsthand experience, the odds are against any form of accuracy.

Some trends are certainly persistent, but the pace of change is always elusive. Before Steve Jobs changed everything in personal electronics, few would have forecast the expansive range of his innovations. Xerox management’s inability to understand the future of paper copiers stands as a stark reminder that we tend to see what we want to see in the future.

So, when CEOs of car companies talk about 2030 and beyond, you should take anything they say with a grain of salt. I tried to warn all our clients about the claims of the Nikola startup about their trucks and how they were going to revolutionize that market. Car and Driver has an excellent summary: https://www.caranddriver.com/nikola

Aspirational goals are always interesting and welcomed in most situations. Who would want to argue with raising the standard of living for all, affordable food, housing, education, and healthcare. Let’s add in peace on earth and make the world safe for everyone.

The reality is quite a different matter. The devil is in the details. Things are never as easy as they seem, nor as cheap as promised. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dream and follow our dreams, but it should make us pause when someone gets in front of us and makes bold promises of sweeping change.

I still remember my college professor’s admonition about forecasting the future. He called it the “seer sucker theory” … which he explained as for every person who believes they can see into the future, there will always be suckers who believe them.

Transitions are often quite slow. Even when something is clearly a better alternative, those who are comfortable with what they have are rather unlikely to switch, and those who haven’t are generally slow to adopt. These are called market penetration half lives … the time it takes for half of the market to adopt an idea. These half lives are most often decades long.

Electronics is one of the shortest … 2-5 years, so there is always the possibility of rapid market adoption there. Energy systems like heating cooling and ventilation equipment are decades. We only have about 5-6 years before we hit 2030 … therefore promising anything much more than a small adoption by that time is without precedent.

Politicians of course want you to believe they can work miracles and who doesn’t want something for nothing. But remember my “seer sucker theory” comment. Who then is being played for a sucker? Right … you should be angry and vote accordingly.