THE LIGHTER SIDE OF ENERGY

SORRY, THIS WAS FINISHED BUT NOT PUBLISHED.  SO HERE ISIS TODAY, THURSDAY.  The American Energy Society's final publication for the year featured the lighter side of energy.

• Darwin Energy Award.
• Given to a people who accidentally removed themselves from the gene pool by foolishly using energy or electricity.

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  Winner:  Electrofishing, by Javier, to catch more fish faster.  Used an electrified metal fishing rod with a live electrical wire to stun fish in nearby waters.  I couldn't find out who Javier was or if this actually happened.

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  Runner up: A prisoner in Arizona was taken for an MRI. The technician told the guard he didn’t need to remove the prisoner’s shackles for the scan, nor did he need to remove his gun. Both the guard and the prisoner were immediately sucked up against the machine. To make matters worse, instead of hitting the big red emergency "off" button, the technician spent more than 15 minutes trying to call the supervisor to ask what she should do.  I found a video.
• Apparently, the Darwin Award is used by other organizations for other reasons.  Watch this Top 10 of embarrassingly stupid ways people die.
• 
  Shithead of the Year.

58-year old Michael Hart of San Diego pleaded guilty of smuggling hydrofluorocarbons--a greenhouse gas used in refrigeration--into the country and posting HFCs for sale on social network sites.

Best comedy skit:  Nate Bargatze on global warming.  Here is a longer one.

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  Zombie Cargo:  Crocs are one of the most common items from lost shipping containers.  Can you believe that more 20,000 shipping containers have tumbled overboard in the past decade and a half?  Researchers mapped the flow of debris to several Pacific coastlines thousands of miles apart, including Lewis’ beach and the remote Midway Atoll, a national wildlife refuge for millions of seabirds near the Hawaiian Islands that also received a flood of mismatched Crocs.

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  Zombie Vessel:  
• The EM Longevity, a Singapore-flagged oil tanker, made its final voyage almost three years ago after two decades at sea.  
• It was sent to a scrapyard in Bangladesh.
• But ii reappeared this year in the Dalian Port of China.
• Then Yantai, China.
• But disappeared again.
• But was seen in Japan and the Suez Canal.
• And disappeared.
• Probably, the old tanker was scrapped in Bangladesh and a new vessel stole the ID number of the old tanker.
• So where is it now?  Whatever, appropriate name.
• 
  Nature is not a trash can.

Tourists. A tourist dropped a Cheetos bag in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico. The processed corn, softened by the humidity of the cave, formed the perfect environment to host microbial life and fungi. Cave crickets, mites, spiders and flies soon organized into a temporary food web, dispersing the nutrients to the surrounding cave and formations. Invasive microbes and molds spread on the cave surfaces, causing natural organisms to die. (Note: similar events happened when a tourist spit out a piece of chewing gum.) The Carlsbad Caverns now has a “leave no trace” policy.

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  Salmon on the Klamath:

On October 2, 2024, the Klamath dam was removed. The very next day, a Chinook salmon began swimming up the undammed previously inaccessible Klamath River for the first time in more than a century. (Note: the former Iron Gate dam, one of four dams near the California-Oregon border, were demolished as part of a national movement to let rivers flow freely. In 1912, the Klamath was the third-largest salmon-producing river on the west coast.)

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  David takes down Goliath:
• Dixie Valley toads live in hot springs in northern Nevada.
• A proposed geothermal development was halted because it threatened the toad's habitat.

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  So did a rusty patched bumble bee:
• Amazon, Google and Microsoft have all struck deals recently to link to nuclear power plants for energy.  
• Amazon paid $650 million in March for one of them.
• Google last month ordered six or seven small modular nuclear reactors to become the first high tech company to commission new nuclear power plants.
• AI queries can consume up to 10 times the energy of a standard Google search.
• But in 2017, this insect became the first bee added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species list.
• 
  End of Mark Zuckerberg's project.
• But Zuckerberg did have lunch with Donald Trump at Mar-a-lago.  Trump was barred from Facebook and Instagram after his coup attempt, and had threatened to jail Zuckerberg.
• 
  Margarita:  Cocktail of the year.  A slushy margarita can drop your internal body temperature by 1 F in 20 minutes.

• Tequila: Silver or reposado is traditionally considered to be the best tequila for margaritas, but any type of tequila (or smoky mezcal or sotol) will work.
• Freshly-squeezed lime juice: For the best fresh flavor, I highly recommend juicing your own limes versus using store-bought lime juice. I swear by this citrus juicer, which makes juicing a breeze and comes in especially handy if you are making a large batch.
• Orange liqueur: Cointreau is my go-to, but Grand Marnier is also delicious or you can use a good-quality Triple Sec.

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  Meme of the year:  The origins of the energy crisis, the hole in the ozone (1985), and climate change (1988), when Jim Hanson testified to Congress) can be traced to the 1980s.  Well, this is not true because the energy crises occurred in 1973 and 1979!!!

• 
  What geological era are we in?  Industrial?  Holocene?  Anthropocene?  Or, maybe this is the Plasticene epoch.

• 
  Dad jokes of the year.

"I opened my electricity and water bills at the same time. I was shocked!"

 

Honorable mentions:

How do you pick out a dead battery from a pile of good ones? It’s got no spark!  

 

And, 

 

What do you call it when an electron cheats? A current affair.

• 
  Bad Idea Award:

Should an oil producing country host a climate event? Elnur Soltanov, chief executive of COP29 and also Azerbaijan's deputy energy minister, used the global climate event to broker oil deals for his country.

• 
  American Energy Society is guilty as charged.

Full disclosure: we were going to poke fun at business executives who had not yet adopted any AI technology in their workplaces ... until we realized that we haven't either. We've never used AI to write any AES news stories, magazine articles, reports, or email correspondence. 

But:

Proudly "AI illiterate," we put together all of our publications with a bit of blood, some sweat, a few tears, and a ton of pride. We believe the content you read from AES is better for our process

• 
  Winner of Elon Musk Award:  
• Elon Musk, who has won this award for 9 consecutive years.
• This year because of Colossus, the world's largest AI supercomputer and training center in Memphis, Tennessee.

• 
  Captain Obvious Award:

We have a transportation problem. Even though the US is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases (on a per capita basis), it does reasonably well in 3 of 4 emissions buckets compared with other economically developed or industrial regions (agriculture, industrial processes, electricity generation). So, why does the US have one of the highest emission rates in the world? Transportation. 92% of American households own at least one car, 33% own two, and 23% own three cars or more. In addition, fuel inefficient trucks are the most popular vehicle type in America, most of which are not used for commercial or agricultural purposes. (Insert: a truck "rolling coal.")

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