Big Digital Energy

0:00 All right, Clyde, I am coming to you from a secret location outside of Starbucks. And I think just outside the

0:11 Loop Houston, Texas. Mark, where are you? You don't know where you are. I am in Durham, North Carolina. Nice. Great movie. Great movie. Boulder. Oh, man. I'm in Nantucket. Just got back

0:27 from New York I was lined and dined in Manhattan by one of the big banks. And it was a sports media dinner with some really cool people. I was the least cool person there. I thought you were there

0:42 for climate week. Well, I definitely, I definitely added to the climate by flying in on the jet, but of course. Are you allowed to say who was it dinner? Or is it hush hush? Um, it's hush hush,

0:56 But I will roll it out as we as we. maybe not on this podcast, but I'm definitely gonna

1:04 fill you in. Some cool people, definitely cool. Well, yeah, we'll drop out. I was in New York last weekend. I went and saw Jeff Ross's one-man play. I saw that, how was it? It's so good. I

1:16 think it's only running for another week, but I mean, moments in there you wanna cry. You know, he's really honest and vulnerable, talking about his parents passing away. And then it's Jeff Ross

1:28 So you know you're gonna get your ass roasted and you're gonna laugh your ass off too, 'cause he's really funny. It's a great show. What are we talking about in the world of energy this week?

1:39 Speaking of bombastic New Yorkers, Trump went and dropped the hammer on climate week. So kick us off, Mark. Yeah, among many things coming out of the goings on in New York, which is the

1:56 UN Climate Week in conjunction with. I guess other UN meetings, but fairly wide ranging, but pointed

2:05 speech that I think lasted 53 minutes after overcoming the sabotage of the escalator in the faulty teleprompter. You know, big part is it really is,

2:19 you know, consistent with the theme and I'll touch on a couple of other areas. Certainly that we've seen since the administration took over and I'm not sure I expected something as pointed but he

2:32 basically told, you know, countries who are following a certain path. Let's just put it that way. One of the paths or one of the

2:45 guideposts along that path has to do with rapid transition, a green agenda, et cetera. And he basically told those countries with that along with other things. policy-wise that those countries

2:58 were going to help. And so

3:04 not conventionally diplomatic, but also very directed to the point. And I think, you know, there wasn't the,

3:16 I don't know, there wasn't the, I guess the level of pushback, you know, typical headlines post the speech yesterday But, you know, the, the global decarbonization at zeros, et cetera, et

3:30 cetera. But I think the response that we've seen in prior years has been, it was fairly muted yesterday Well, did y'all ever read the book, The Real Man's Handbook, Real Men Donate Keish? It

3:47 made two great jokes about the UN. Number one that I always loved is something to the effect of.

4:07 Aside from producing a marginally attractive holiday card, what the hell is the UN. actually done? And then the other thing is it's got all these people sitting there and one guy covers the

4:08 microphone and he goes, I love sitting here screaming at 'em, calling 'em capitalist pigs. I do recognize they're paying for everything.

4:20 Look, man, climate week is amazing. It's like the Oscars for people who think they can control the weather. I mean, it really is like the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life. And no one's

4:32 winning any awards for common sense. Yeah, you know, we've talked about it a lot on this show and unless you start the conversation with, hey, once you go to burning hydrocarbons, your life

4:46 expectancy from wood and dung inside your house, once you do that, your life expectancy doubles, If we don't start the conversation there, I just really find it hard to take seriously. 'Cause yes,

5:01 I mean, we ignore climate change at our own peril, temperatures are rising, it could have a big effect on the world, but how much exactly is caused by us? We truly don't know. We do need to be

5:15 sensitive to that, but it's trade-offs. They're good things that come from it And, you know, why are we sacrificing lives today because in 100 years, somebody might die, you know? I just don't

5:29 get, you know, ah, I'm so tired of this. Just you're ending the world and it's just not true. Well, the other big headline was from the world's largest coal consumer in emitter in China,

5:46 President Xi said yesterday that they're committing to a 7 to 10. greenhouse gas or CO2 reduction from 2023 levels by 2035. I mean, yeah, let's just kick that can down the road. That's a, I love

6:03 making those statements. I'm not doing anything today. My favorite part of Trump's speech was Europe, you've reduced your admissions, 33. The whole world's up 57 because of China.

6:15 Congratulations, guys.

6:19 And just look at what has happened to some key economies in Europe in conjunction with that.

6:27 The policy path that they've been on, we talked about it last week, but you know, we've

6:34 really maybe too strong of a characterization. I think we've wasted about five years

6:40 of fighting about this stuff and having very misdirected policy pronouncements, a lot of which we'll talk about one example in the next topic. A lot of which is a dilution of the attention

7:01 and the focus that we ought to be paying. We're seeing power here in the US, particularly as it relates to transmission. And now we're talking about global client rates that are 8. Where should

7:15 we be spending that? And the trillions that we've spent since Paris have basically been accompanied by about what a 02 degree C increase in global, CO2 temperatures has gone up from low 4s to what

7:32 for 2430. And so we continue to

7:39 try and battle physics with platitudes mostly and spend a bunch of money along the way where

7:49 Our ability to, number one, as you pointed out, Chuck, how much of it is due to

7:57 human-sourced emissions or

8:01 the emissions, particularly as it relates to fossil fuels, and then what has that effect been? We just have had all these distractions in the political arena and the policymaking areas that have

8:13 led to some real damage. I do think that the tone continues for these conferences and it started at COP last year. COP 30 is coming up in what Brazil and in November. There seems

8:29 to be a flagging

8:32 energy in terms of pushing that side of the agenda. I think people are kind of worn out with it. They look at power prices. Power prices have done nothing for the most part, but go up in the West

8:35 and in the US

8:50 People have had a decade of this and they're saying, all right, when are we going to start to see the pull through? And oh, by the way, we think that energy poverty and human flourishing should

9:03 take a priority over,

9:06 the superseding priority of the last 10 years of climate and CO2. So Kirk, I've got a question for you. Are more people dying because Europe and Africa don't have air conditioning like we do in the

9:19 United States versus we'll die from climate change 100 years from now? Oh, no doubt, man. Air conditioning is the lifesaver for all of us. Listen, I mean, Africa's a, you know, I know we're

9:36 going on the agenda to Africa, but climate change is a get rich, quick scheme. It has been we, should, oh,

9:47 Al Gore kicked it off for the PowerPoint presentation and became a billionaire overnight for doing some slides. It should have said everything we need to know that this is a scam. People are pushing

9:59 it. They line the pockets of their buddies. And that's really what's happening. We don't have adults in the room anymore. So it really isn't an issue. It's not that, as you said, Chuck, do we

10:12 want to be good stewards? Yeah, blah, blah, blah But unfortunately, the fascist playbook is brilliant. And part of the fascist playbook

10:24 is you silence everyone else but the common narrative and the narrative is climate change. And we're all scared. And if you say anything negative, people paint you out. And it's like, well,

10:37 common sense says this doesn't make sense, but you're not allowed to say it. I think that tide has turned,

10:44 Unfortunately, it's destroyed a lot of economies and probably people's lives because of it and we're seeing it play out. So

10:53 who cares what's happening in 100 years if we can't put food on the table today? Like I think there are a lot of things we should be paying a lot of attention to. All the plastics, I mean, I think

11:06 if you look into plastics, yeah, it really is causing a lot more estrogen and men leading to declining birth rates, et cetera. There's something real, we ought to be looking at there. Trash in

11:18 the ocean, we definitely need to be worried about preserving the ocean habitat and the like. You know the two largest polluters in the planet are? China and the Philippines. India, China and

11:33 India. There you go. They do not care. So unless, yeah, where's the, I mean, I, for one, I don't believe in the UN in general. say that, but

11:46 it's just a joke. It's a joke.

11:50 And China continues to build, you know, coal plants just keep going. But anyway, let's move on. Energy Secretary has, you know, has been out there in a couple of forums. He's tweeted pretty

12:02 aggressively or posted pretty aggressively this week. And, you know, I think, again, the characterization by government leaders, particularly in the US, of something you couldn't say three or

12:19 four years ago that Ned's zeros by 2050 is a ludicrous idea because it lowers people's standard of living and causes increased misery of energy poverty. And I thought it was interesting that I was

12:35 under a blousey and I promised Chuck this is the only time I bring up the IEA. He's like assistant director, had a LinkedIn post yesterday basically enumerated 10 things as to where the climate,

12:48 kind of the climate debate stood right now. And his last point basically said something to the effect that energy poverty in Africa and the lack of clean cooking availability are the shame and

13:07 injustice of our times Well, excuse me, you've had a concerted effort by the global financial community, not the least of which has been the IMF and the World Bank more indirectly organizations

13:24 like USAID who basically said, we're not going to provide loans and loan guarantees if such loans are being made to invest in fossil fuel development And when you go across the ocean and look at what

13:40 has happened in Guyana, and use that starting point level of general poverty and standard of living and energy poverty. And all of a sudden you've had this wonderful

13:55 event of the discovery and the massive discoveries that got on a basin. We're in essence saying, look, we're gonna deprive many nations in Africa from having that same chance because the natural

14:08 resource endowment country to country varies, but at the same time,

14:15 success with that would certainly help them take much bigger steps. And so you've either been tacitly or explicitly against that if you've been under impulsive leadership. Sam Point, I found it a

14:26 little bit ironic and rich coming from someone who has been front and center with the IEA Secretariat as they've campaigned and pushed all this nonsense over the last five years And so, again, the

14:40 cost in terms of delay and - and the duration of that delay in really getting after it and spending money in the right places to help people, why can't we have much more aggressive distributed LPG

14:53 throughout areas in Africa that are off the grid to help quickly solve some of this clean cooking problem? For example, but I think pointing that out as if we all collectively share in this guilt or

15:07 this blame of the quote unquote injustice is nonsense. I mean, we've talked about it a million times. I mean, that's the Marshall plan for today is let's finance natural gas infrastructure in a

15:23 cheaply to the rest of the world, build their, increase their economies, increase trade, standard of living. It's the humane thing to do. We've got enough natural gas in the United States that

15:37 we could drill, baby drill and build export terminals.

15:42 and feed the whole world if we wanted to. I mean, if you, yeah, if you want to change behavior, you change the incentives. Last point, Bloomberg Green, which is a newsletter that comes out. I

15:53 don't subscribe to Bloomberg, but I get the, used to get the energy daily free, but then they put that behind the paywall. But I glanced at the green newsletter today, and of course it was about

16:06 climate week, but the focus was on how different the vibe is from the bankers that are in attendance. Whereas four or five years ago, everybody was pushing green finance. Now it's almost like

16:22 third rail type of discussion in that it's much more of a supply side conversation. It's much more look at what AI is going to mean for not only power in the US, but global power, which inherently

16:40 involves know, behind the scenes, I guess,

16:45 an enthusiasm for investing again in

16:50 fossil fuel development projects. And some of these are the same banks that willingly signed up for things like the net zero banking alliance and G-Fans, which was a kind of a soft sanction on

17:02 financing oil and gas projects and coal projects, you know, for the multi-year period of those what I call the fact of a cartel's existence. And so the tone has changed a lot and hopefully it

17:15 continues to change. Hopefully it changes pretty markedly in Brazil and November or continues down this more pragmatic, more balanced conversation path. I just think people are tired of it. Well,

17:29 let's go from one disaster to the next, the IEA to BP. So what happened with their annual energy outlook Yeah. Yeah, talk about, let's go ahead and make a call here now that almost three quarters

17:46 of the year is passed, but

17:50 BP's official energy outlook was out, I think this morning, and the big shift or the big change was they moved their call on peak global oil demand from 2025. Again, we're three quarters of the

18:03 way through 2025 to no sooner than 2030 And I thought, wow, that seems to be a little coincidental with what we just heard from the IEA.

18:16 You can't make this shit up, man. No,

18:21 you can't. And of all the seven sisters, BP keeps fucking it

18:27 up. I don't know why, why is it always BP that does it? I don't, Chuck, you don't have your English girlfriend anymore so we can trash him, but - What is wrong with that? That's it.

18:41 I have no comment, Senator. I can neither confirm nor deny any said allegation. No, I see this about BP.

18:50 Any person I have ever met that worked for BP, I've always been incredibly impressed with the Tredstone management team that we backed back at Cane might've been the best management team on the

19:03 planet, smart, thoughtful, XBP guys, George Sam Palippo, back in the day, XBP guy, Jane Stricker, you know, at running energy transition for the greater Houston area partnership, no more

19:21 impressive person on the planet. They're all amazing, but when they come to, when BP comes together, it does the most brain dead shit. I don't get it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable Like the IAA,

19:37 BP suffers from, I think, a. You know,

19:44 I don't know if unprincipled is the right word, but kind of a politically malleable leadership mindset and message in that, you know, I kind of laughed that BP looks like the IAA's twin brother or

20:00 sister.

20:04 I swear someone over there, it's just a legalized marijuana is playing with a magic eight ball.

20:11 And just like whatever it pops up, it's like, that's first forecast. That's our strategy today. It really is. It doesn't make any sense. And you're right, Mark. I've tried to figure out the

20:23 logic here. And I'm surprised they waited this long because of the activist involvement and the big, you know, the big bloodletting that they've had. Now the stock has rebounded some and has been

20:37 on a bit of a relative outperformance. trend here lately, I think. I don't follow it that closely. As, you know, just no over time, what its relative valuation looks like. And these, these

20:51 kind of ham-handed strategic shifts that, we've all spent plenty of time talking about over the last several years. It is, it is a,

21:05 there is a big disconnect. Like at BP, there are a lot of very smart, capable people on staff the IAA that do really good work.

21:14 My issue with them is the secretariat. My issue with BP is with, with leadership, either at the

21:21 board level or at the senior executive level. And, and to have this kind of just ludicrous

21:30 back pedal or revision to something that, you know, what, what kind of what scenario of reality are you dealing with to put out these? outlooks that have oil demand clearly, and oh, by the way,

21:44 their 2030 oil demand is now at like 1034 million barrels a day. We're already there, right? I will say this in defense of BP, when we were selling panther and we ultimately wound up selling

21:59 panther to, oh,

22:04 I forget what it was called, but ultimately it's part of Devon now One of the bidders was actually Lord Brown with some Russian money, and my CEO Barry Mullinex was talking with them, and he was

22:16 freaking starstruck. Oh, Lord Brown was on the call, and so they, there was a little bit of a rock star thing going on there,

22:29 so I'll give them that So I think we can look for

22:35 BP to do it's, you know, death by a thousand cuts and messaging or. and incrementalize itself to death as we move forward, absent a major structural shift in supply and demand, driven really by

22:49 demand response.

22:53 It's, you know, we don't have the data here, but if you look at over the decades what replacement rates have done and how they've regionally shifted, you know, we use, I think globally, 36

23:06 billion barrels a year and we're through exploration, replacing less than half that over the last, you know, five years or so. And we haven't been in replacement rate for some time now. And, you

23:23 know, part of that is

23:27 you've had a huge focus shift away from true exploration, but also there's kind of questioning what the terminal value of these enterprises are. in the investment community. Yeah, thanks so much,

23:41 thanks, that's happened. We've talked about what's happened to exploration spending over the last 10, 15 years. Yeah, I wrote about it back in like 2011 and 2012

23:53 and how budgets just continue to go backwards. So back

23:57 in, when we were raised an interview fund eight, call it 2018,

24:03 all the buzz was EVs and oil's gonna be gone We're not gonna use it in 10 years. And I was asked to go to the CIO conference and give a speech. And I got up there and I said, okay, let me read

24:17 some headlines from the New York Times. Electric vehicles are sexy. Electric vehicles have vastly superior performance. Electric vehicles are greatest things since sliced bread. And I said, let's

24:32 talk about this. You know how many cars there are in the United States? 400 million. Do you know how long the average car is on the road? 12 and a half years. You know how many of those cars are

24:44 still going to be on the road, you know? 93 of them because they get shipped to South America when we stop using them. And I went through all this stuff and I said even if we hit 30 million, you

24:58 know, EVs a year and sales and I went through all the stats, still 85 of the cars are going to be you know, oil based in 15 years. So I went through all of this and basically said, hey, oil's

25:11 not going anywhere in fact, usage is going to continue to go up. And I said, thank you very much. I got this mattering of applause and I took a few steps away from the mic. Then I came back and I

25:22 said, oh, by the way, those headlines from the New York Times 1917 1918 and 1919. This shit didn't do

25:34 That's a true shame, man. And that's kind of what I feel like too. I mean, if you wanted to tell me oil was gonna peak in 2040, I can't really argue that. If you're gonna say it's gonna peak in

25:48 2035, okay, maybe, I don't know, but

25:52 I would take the over if I had to bet my life savings on it. What about BP's second scenario about they need to, to get below two degree Celsius fantasy that demands a 90 emissions cut by 2050?

26:10 It's like plenty of surf trip to Norman, Oklahoma. I mean, it's just not, it's just impossible. I'm gonna buy some shorts.

26:20 Chuck, you're recounting that last anecdote is uncanny because I was looking through

26:29 on YouTube, whole, you know, series of And I just happened to land on, I was actually looking to see which ones we got, we got fact checked on and looking for the footnotes. But I actually

26:43 watched almost the entirety of one from two years ago, it was June of 2023. And we spent a lot of time focused on things like Norway, and it's electrification yet And Colin was on that show, so

26:59 that tells you how long ago it was, Kirk, you were in Nantucket, but you were talking about, you know, how much does the average Norwegian consume and oil on a per capita basis per year? And it

27:14 was 19 barrels per year compared to the US at 21, despite the fact that you've got, you know, huge EV penetration in a normal - In the Hydro out there was a lot of zoos, yeah. Yeah, and there

27:27 was a lot of head scratching going on amongst us. around, well, how do we, how do we account for Norwegian oil demand staying so resilient? But you also made the point, Chuck, that, you know,

27:43 the, the, the life cycle of an ice vehicle and, you know, other things and other segments in the Norwegian economy is, is explanatory when it comes to that intensity. And I made the comment,

27:59 there's, there's a lot of water in Norway We got a lot of boats. Everybody's got a boat. And we make really good cars today. I mean, say what you want about Detroit cars are really good these

28:11 days. I mean, they'll run forever. Yeah. I mean, you know, how, how often do you like get a new car because it breaks down? Never. You get a new car because you want a new car, not because

28:24 it broke down. So are we on to the next topic? Da-da-da-da Hey, hey, hey, good bye Yeah, this is the left coast,

28:40 I guess, equivalent of East Coast in New England, offshore wind, killing whales. We've got,

28:53 I really hadn't paid attention to this facility, but you've got an announcement that in 2026, you're going to have a closure about 13 or 14 years before the end of the Power Purchase Agreement of

29:11 something called the Ivan Pah concentrated solar facility which is in the South Central Mojave Desert on the border of California and Nevada, it's in California And

29:27 this thing is something that carpets about five square miles. Have you guys heard of this facility? Yeah, a really good friend of mine was CEO of this and actually was instrumental in setting it up.

29:44 And as you're telling this story, I remember him telling me about it for the first time and I thought it was bad chick crazy, but he's a smart guy. I will say John's a really smart guy. Yeah, and

29:57 there were demonstrations at kind of 20 megawatt scale And what it is is concentrated solar, it's a bunch of mirrors that are controlled by some type of intelligence that orient the mirrors in this

30:14 solar facility to maximize the reflective concentration of the solar rays that then go up to these 450 foot tall receivers and about 1, 000 degrees

30:32 which then, you know, you're able to generate steam, which then, you know, through conventional steam turbine technology, generate electricity. The big problem is, or one of the big problems,

30:47 one of the trade-offs is that you're frying about 6, 000 birds a year. So over the course of this facility's operation, you've

30:57 cooked about 60, 000 birds or more There was also some commentary in there about the Mojave Desert tortoise is problematic, because you've taken out a big chunk of its habitat. But this was one of

31:14 the projects that came out of, I don't know if it's before or after Solendra, the DOE

31:24 loan guarantee back at the Obama administration 2012, 16 billion, which. you know, kind of total sunk costs now into the facility. It was like 22 billion. But economics are really the driver,

31:42 PGE, move to terminate the power purchase agreement that was supposed to run in

31:49 2039 early. So they're going to shut down in 2026. Yeah, so we, at Shell, we're in

31:58 unfortunately I got thrown into that one, but we're an investor in Glasspoint Solar. Similar idea, there's a project in Oman where basically, you know, they concentrated solar to create steam for

32:11 EOR. But

32:16 it's crazy idea, actually. It's actually, I think it's difficult, but here's my thought. What if we could figure out how to bread these birds and we could have fried chicken

32:31 It would be fantastic, dude. Big, bad barbecue sauce on the ground. So when they get sound, they're in the hot sauce. He just reminded me of one of my favorite Cajun jokes. Which is?

32:49 Well, Boudreau and Cuvignon were talking about, you know, they'd been out hunting the, they were, Cuvignon, been out hunting the day before. And

32:58 he, he shot him a chicken hulk and Boudreau say, What'd you do with that chicken hulk? He said, I hate it, made a gumbo. He said, You ate that chicken

33:11 hulk? And Cuvignon said, Yeah. And Boudreau say, Hmm, what's that chicken hulk taste like? He says, Bye, like owl. Like owl.

33:23 by Legos. So PGE is tournament. Go ahead, Chuck. Well, I was going to say, you know, technically, I think the project was actually pretty thoughtful. Let's use mirrors to concentrate heat and

33:40 boil water

33:43 and all that. It just supposedly had problems with storms because the mirrors that get dirty And there was a lot more maintenance there than was anticipated.

33:55 You didn't have energy storage out there. And so you only operated when the sun was out and the water would cool down pretty rapidly. So you'd start over from room temperature, if you will, each

34:13 morning. I don't know that that's exactly true Um, but it I mean it did generate electricity. I mean my only beef with the project is the government guaranteed all the ones. I mean, if this had

34:25 been a private enterprise, you know, hey, God bless you, you tried it. It didn't work or it only worked about two thirds of what it was supposed to. But anyway. Yeah, I think that's the point.

34:39 I mean, the technology proof and then commercial scale up, you know, there is a market for that, proving, you know, proven potential and viability. You know, I've said it before and I'll say

34:55 it again. When I flip the switch, I don't care where the power comes from. I just care that there's power there and the lights and AC are on. So I worked with some great Dutch people and

35:09 Glasspoint Solar had their hand out for more money. And I'm in an investment committee with one of the most

35:17 pessimistic investors I've ever been around. but he was in on Glasspoint for political reasons. And we almost got to a knockdown drag out. I'm like,

35:33 they want more money. We're not giving it to them. Like we just keep funding this idiotic idea that concentrated solar is great, but the economics aren't proving out And I've never seen a guy so

35:50 upset over, come on, we need to give them more money to see if they can succeed. And I'm like, that is a good strategy when it's early, but after a few hundred million dollars, or in this case,

36:02 16 billion, at some point you got to just call it. Just like

36:07 PGE finally terminated their PPA 14 years early. And I'm wondering if they're like,

36:16 Wow, from a five iron away, she looked like a birdie, but up close, she's more like a triple bogey. I mean, you know. How bad does it have to be for PGA to cancel a contract? I mean, I would

36:32 think of any of the people out there, that would be the most forgiving mistress on the planet. One of the factors that was cited

36:43 is that a solar photovoltaic has got better economics than this concentrated solar, which is interesting. So I don't know if they're gonna swap that power supply from concentrated solar into an

36:56 equivalent with respect to solar PV, but I thought that was another interesting aspect of it. Hey, let's try it. I love the, we talked about it, it's been some time ago. I don't know if you

37:08 guys remember talking about the thermal batteries with the carbon bricks.

37:14 I think, you know, I've. I like that kind of that tech around. There's some cool ideas that actually might make sense. But it reminds me of another project we're an investor in. It was a Google

37:27 idea where here's the logic. It makes a lot of sense, right? Hey, the wind really high in the sky blows harder and more consistently than the wind lower. So why don't we fly a kite up there and

37:47 generate energy? This seriously, Google came up with this and Shell funded it. Shell funded it. I have to find your tweet thread. Then I came in on this and I'm like, what the fuck? And I'm

37:59 just like, I'm not an engineer, but I think about operations all the time. And I'm like, okay. So we have a gigantic kite up in the sky and it's not on a pole 'cause you're, it's on like, it's

38:14 on a line. You tell me how that's gonna work when the wind stops blowing or there's a storm or birds, airplanes. I'm like, this makes no sense whatsoever. And it never did make sense. But all

38:33 these engineers and in fact, when Shell's like, oh, it's Google, they're cool. Like we wanna, we're investors with Google. I'm like, you guys are drinking the Kool-Aid and have not thought

38:44 about the fact that we're, basically investing in a gigantic kite. And kites do only one thing. They fall to the ground after you play chicken with them or the string breaks or you know, I mean,

39:01 we've all flown kites, we know what happens. They don't last forever. Do you ever put a razor blades on your kites? My brother and I used to fly kites at each other. He'd get the back kite from

39:11 TG. and Y I get the white one with the big eyes and we had wars. We always would like get it up, let all the string out, and that's when we start dog fighting. I mean, the kites last for five

39:24 minutes, it was awesome. But did you ever affix razor blades to your back kites? I mean, that's a lot of work, only because we were lazy and we wanted to get it thing up in the air and start

39:35 fighting. That's the only reason we didn't do that. So back to this tech, there was an X thread. It's been a couple of three

39:43 weeks ago that you were back and forth on with this technology and there was a Chinese example. Maybe we can dig that up. Yeah, I'll go look more close to that. My question is, and these were

39:57 super high altitudes as I recall, what is the transmission or how does

40:06 that work at super high altitude? That's the other question I couldn't figure out is how do we get this power back down Which is the same thing with Mojave Desert as well. It's like - Well, you're

40:18 not flying a bunch of batteries up there. They're too kind of. No, but let's generate power in the middle of nowhere. I mean, that sounds like a good idea.

40:27 Last Friday night, I went and saw John Kleece. And John Kleece did a showing of money Python and the Holy Grail. And I don't know if y'all remember the scene where they were trying to get inside

40:40 the castle and they built this big rabbit And the rabbit goes in and they forget to be inside the rabbit. And it's like, oh my God, what do we do? Perhaps we should build a big badger. That's

40:53 kind of what this technology feels like. Let's come build a big badger.

40:60 This is great, man. It's great. All righty boys, well I've officially had enough to drink where I have to go to the bathroom.

41:11 Wow, well You sure you're not at a bar I am not at a bar, triple filter water, the best thing, the best thing on earth. I've been drunk for about two weeks now. I went to tell you right to the

41:23 blues and blues festival. I wound up going to Denver to Churchill's bar. Then I did Jimmy Carr, then I did John Cleese, then I did Jeff Ross's one man show like said earlier. Then I did Leon

41:39 Bridges and Charlie Crockett. And then last night we had a happy hour in Austin. And so my body has said there will only be water for two weeks.

41:50 I'm done. But before we leave, guys, the 2025 Ryder Cup is upon us at Beth Page Black. There's already a lot of drama. So are y'all tuning in and kicks off tomorrow morning? Absolutely.

42:06 So just to make a

42:09 bring it all together, John Willard who was.

42:14 CEO of Bright Source, which built that solar plant. He and I went to the Ryder Cup, and that was the year Justin Leonard hit that 50-foot putt to win it. It was at whatever, right outside of

42:30 Boston. I'm blanking onto the name of the court. Brookline. Yeah, whatever the course was, but he and I went to the Ryder Cup together. Amazing. Well, that's - She's not gonna be a guard Kurt,

42:44 are you gonna be there? I am not gonna be there. I thought about it, but I just, not gonna go this year. I'll probably regret it. I'll be, it is probably the most fun event in the world to go

42:56 to golf event. It's just so fun. But we'll see. Waste management's more fun. I might catch a kite over to the festivities and I'll, I'll podcast it also. and show you guys. I want to see you

43:14 debate Brando Shambli, who? Dude, he went off his on Bryson D'Chambeau, calling him a captain's nightmare, and then all of his YouTube followers are bots from Saudi Arabia. So he's, Brando

43:31 Shambli is insane, but there was a great article written about him today that dropped this morning. He might be the best golf

43:42 writer that's, what do you call him? Writer, media guy, he is actually fantastic. He's super controversial, but guess what? What sells new paper, newspapers controversy, and he brings it.

43:55 He's good at it. Is

43:59 Brando, or are you talking about Bryson? Brando. Yeah.

44:05 All right, boys. Hey. I just think, I think the whole Saudi angle is hypocritical. Oh, if he's never benefited from the miracle that was Saudi oil that started in the '50s, then he can take the

44:22 high road. Yeah, exactly. Ooh, hot take from Mark to end it. All right, boys, we'll see you next week. Peace, great seeing you.