Captain Obvious

My apologies in advance that this blog appears way too long. It is because I included the lyrics to the Taylor Swift song by the same name. You may have seen some of her videos, especially the video outtakes of her production of this song using ballerinas and others who have skills Taylor clearly doesn’t have. It is of course endearing for her to admit her lack of skill. It is indeed also humbling and a bit unnerving how talented some people are at things. She is right … we shouldn’t take our lack of ability too seriously. Watch it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM&t=11s

Now, set aside the musicality and the production values and look at the words our children, especially young women are internalizing and worshiping about her in her lyrics. Plus, remember these are the words to the song which her fans have memorized:

I stay out too late
Got nothing in my brain
That’s what people say, mm-mm
That’s what people say, mm-mm

I go on too many dates
But I can’t make ’em stay
At least that’s what people say, mm-mm
That’s what people say, mm-mm

Many commentators have poked fun at Taylor over her young life for her breakups and incidents which she herself made fun of in her Saturday Night Live performance years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2twcSFYlt0

You have to give her credit for resilience and her hard work, and for her success these days drawing unbelievable crowds and selling out her performances in a matter of seconds. But, I do become a bit concerned when her lyrics can influence modern impressionable youth with models for success that only she can achieve. The song continues with reasonable encouragement:

But I keep cruisin’
Can’t stop, won’t stop movin’
It’s like I got this music in my mind
Sayin’ it’s gonna be alright

‘Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)

Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)

I’ve skipped past some repetitive verses to get to my point in this blog. Indeed there are many bad behaving men out there, but today’s young generation fails to see they are encouraging that kind of behavior in the way they dress and behave. Their sexual freedom may make them seem attractive, but it fails to bring the right men into their lives. My favorite question to my daughters was “what are you trying to tell young men about you based upon the way you are dressed?”  They then put on more modest clothes.  Here are the lyrics of concern:

Just think, while you’ve been gettin’ down and out about the liars
And the dirty, dirty cheats of the world
You could’ve been gettin’ down to this sick beat
My ex-man brought his new girlfriend
She’s like, “Oh my God!” but I’m just gonna shake
And to the fella over there with the hella good hair
Won’t you come on over, baby? We can shake, shake, shake (yeah)
Yeah, oh, oh

Taylor may be right in not letting others define you by their views about life. But the lyrics also point out that a shallow view of potential mates brings the wrong people into your life. Taylor may correctly advise her fans to shake off ridicule and unfair criticism, but there is a fine line between comments being unfair vs. wise counsel these days.

Perhaps then we shouldn’t be so quick to shake everything off?

“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.