Big Digital Energy

0:00 All right. I don't even know what to say about a pick at this point to somebody talk. I mean, what are we? Are we kicking off? Sure. Whatever. All right.

0:10 You know, I had an interesting meeting today. All right. You know, I'm a co-founder of a technology that takes ammonia and generates heat and hydrogen. Would you say you're the captain? That's

0:24 right, captain. So I met with a, uh, Hughson's probably most prestigious, uh, brewery today, the founder. And, uh, we talked to him about decarbonization, what he's trying to do. Number

0:39 one, I don't know if you've ever had a chance. If you ever met Brock Wagner at St. Arnold's, you know him, right? He went to Rice together. I mean, we weren't there at the same time, but the

0:49 Rice alumni world so small. It makes so much sense why he is number one successful, but he sort of epitomizes Houston, like not not air again,

1:02 not political per se, all community driven.

1:08 But we talked to him about his decarbonization goals and it's really interesting what he said. He said, honestly, our customers don't care. There are some people that actually care about the

1:18 environment, of course, but when it comes to buying stuff, what they actually purchase is a different decision. And they do care about decarbonization as a business He would love to, but it's so

1:29 expensive that he's like, Until you can compete against low energy prices, I can't, as a business, lose margin and potentially put himself out of business by buying solar or buying ammonia and

1:43 creating heat. I mean, he uses natural gas and et cetera, but I was super impressed by his humility and kind of the view of a lot of businesses about the true nature of decarbonizing

1:59 it's got to make financial sense or they can't do it. Or it's got to be part of your marketing dollars. I mean,

2:07 if you can get banged for your buck on the marketing front, 'cause - True. You know, if you view it as part of marketing expenses and that helps drive customer decision it give never would I, beer,

2:18 right you're and

2:21 a second thought whether my beer company decarbonized or not.

2:26 It's kind of key Yeah, so I think we all care about the environment but your point is is where in that hierarchy or ability to care falls, right? And the depoliticization

2:45 of the terminology that we're using in this debate, I've advocated for, let's focus on what's really the problem here in that's pollution And I think everyone's in favor of.

2:59 mitigating eliminating pollution. Question is, do you have the resources, the time, the ability to do something about it?

3:07 And so you also bring up another point which I think is larger and more fundamental to what we talked about last week in regards to things like the kind of the radical shifts that we've seen in a

3:21 couple of recent elections in Argentina and the Netherlands is that you put too much kind of real world pressure on the electorate and consumers, they're gonna vote in their self-interest. Right,

3:35 and so you can't burden me indefinitely with cost on some collective ideal that doesn't even make my hierarchy of attention or need on a daily basis. And I think where we've talked about this some

3:51 too that's going to be the surprising second and third level

3:58 the SEC mandating emissions. We're gonna see Amazon vans running around causing a lot of emissions. That's right. You know, I think it's gonna be surprising if we have a semi-educated effort to

4:12 say, hey, look at scope one, scope two in oil and gas. Actually not that big. Now let's look at it, you know, Amazon, et cetera. You're gonna see where these emissions really are coming from

4:24 and I think it's gonna wind up being a positive 'cause to your point, Mark, it's gonna educate to that. Hey, you don't want three vans shown up at your house, you're gonna have to live with less

4:34 convenience, you're gonna have to start planning, et cetera. And some people do that and some people just won't. And the notion that the producers, processors, transporters, refiners of the

4:46 products that are in focus here can somehow dictate or control ultimate consumer behavior,

4:56 for all, but the most extreme and extremely invested in an increasingly irrational point of view is the Scope 3 decision is up to the final consumer. That's always telling my kids, you wanna get

5:10 rid of oil and gas, just stop using it. It's up to you. I mean, I was with - With the choice. One of our loyal listeners this weekend, and he was like, Man, I didn't realize, 'cause we called

5:21 it months ago He's like, he was considering buying an EV, but the reason he didn't pull the trigger was 'cause of EV charging, and the ability to charge within the city of Houston, and the

5:35 difficulty of charging.

5:38 And I was thinking about this because we've talked about this sort of Orwellian view of electrifying the world. That's where, like Germany is about to go in this sort of dictating of the grid German

5:51 grid is said, hey, we don't have enough. We can't electrify everything. And we're going to have to start controlling who uses electricity or not. So if, if my house runs on electric key pumps,

6:02 if my house, if I run on electric vehicle, I might not have the energy. I might not be able to fill it up when I need it, because the government or the grid says, Hey, we don't have enough to

6:12 give you. That's a real concern. Um, right? It is. And you saw it on display. I don't know who went through the pain and brain damage to watch the, watch what I call the governor's debate

6:26 between DeSantis and Newsom. And one of the points that DeSantis tried to score was last year, the, um, notice to consumers not to charge their EVs during kind of high demand and stress periods on

6:39 the grid in California. Yet we're legislating by 2035 that all new vehicles will be battery electric

6:52 and far beyond the scope of the show today. We've talked about the grid ad nauseum and all the dynamics around that, but that's really what it's about.

7:04 There's tremendous cost associated at all points along the way that are really coming into focus and coming to a head this week and next year at COP28. Did you want to hit OPEC real quick? Yeah,

7:18 hit, hit, hit cop because I don't even know what to say. I think we said it best last week when it was like, this is nape. Everybody shows up. I think I think the one way to say this is COP28 is

7:31 to show the airplanes in Germany that were frozen in the private jets that couldn't get to COP28 because their jets were frozen because they were going to a global warming conference. That to me,

7:43 some rises, COP28. But let's give her a thought. I thought they were mimicking just stop oil by sticking themselves to a hard I like, I like the one that said Chris. Chris D. didn't sit over the

7:55 wing

7:58 cop 28. I couldn't remember who that was. Well, there's a there's a lot to unpack around cop 28. And today's OPEC commentary addresses some of that. So I just want to hit that OPEC topic real

8:12 quick.

8:13 The Saudi minister is out after a few days of sloppy trading and weakness and crude in the face or in the aftermath of the OPEC cuts saying that he strongly believes that 22 million barrels of cuts

8:26 will be delivered. It will be enough to offset normal Q1 inventory builds and that they're starting to see signs of improved demand. So they're taking the fight to the market in an effort to put

8:44 some resilience under the crude market And so this is all in and around COP 28. We can start there with with a particular issue, and I think one of the things that has come to the fore in the last

8:58 couple of days and discussions and some of the news that's being - And Mark, real quick, before we leave OPEC, 'cause this is out there, and I have no idea how to handicap this one because MBS is

9:14 crazier than the past, but I mean, price war from the Saudis, that's ridiculous, right? That's not happening I was talking about, and so the third point that I had here in the OPEC segment was

9:27 how much is Saudi and OPEC going to tolerate because of the resilience that in the robustness that US production is showing. We're looking at an exit to exit 23 over 22 of another 870, 000 barrels a

9:42 day, which coming into the years is a lot stronger than what people were initially predicting. And that's against, and there's a lag here. But that's against a backdrop of all directed grid count

9:52 coming off about 20 since the end of September and continued at least perceived and on paper and not outspinning cash flows and returning cash to shareholders, capital discipline. The point is, is

10:06 that something is going on at a fundamental level, whether it's temporary, I've heard the notion that the privates are propping up their assets for an eventual sale or boosting production Because

10:18 they know they're going to get two and a half times a bit daw. The role is coming, the role is coming, just wait, but how long will the Saudis tolerate it? I think from my own personal

10:29 perspective, I think it's a bit less, in fact, a lot less likely that we see a repeat of Thanksgiving 2014 to punish kind of the market share interlopers that the US was viewed to be at that time

10:44 because of the dynamic of Russia being involved here.

10:50 Center to the conversation in OPEC. So this is interesting. So Wednesday on Chuck Yates needs a job My guest is Ted Cross of novylabs and novylabs uses AI To forecast reserves machine learning type

11:01 of stuff and he's been in digging into data kind of basin by basin

11:10 one per well efficiency greatness metrics, whatever you want to call it in the DJ basin Still increasing now his take is its consolidation and chevron actually knows what they're doing More

11:27 efficiencies by owning bigger blocks longer laterals all that so the DJ basin per well Still getting better. He says The Permian Basin has been off kind of like 10 the last couple of years He sees

11:44 flatter for longer. Other people are saying big bigger drop-offs in the Permian or prediction bigger drop off some Permian.

11:52 He and I kind of had a back and forth on that because I think what we've talked about on here is that you had Exxon and Chevron late to the game drilling in the Permian and they were drilling with in

12:02 effect best practices developed by others. So it kind of looks like there's this continued trajectory up and then a break over in the Permian when really it was just that I actually told Ted to go

12:14 run his data again without Chevron and Exxon Wells and see what it looks like. I think we've already experienced the bigger drop off in the Permian. But anyway, we were hypothesizing. But despite

12:25 kind of sitting there talking about it, I still can't figure out why the United States continues to grow.

12:33 It's just stunning. You got to keep an eye on it. We've seen this movie before where productivity has been buoyant. If not improving and it's, you know, the old, well, in times of stress, it's

12:47 easier to high grade. And that's true, when I think about what Darren would set on the Pioneer merger call about, or at least it was, it was suggested that there is a fundamental as much as

13:09 doubling of productivity that's possible. Now you've got the combined technical acumen of Pioneer and Exxon over what a million acres in the middle and basin, and arguably the best position in the

13:25 middle and basin, it's not everyone's, but as we've said before too, this industry is pretty good in observing, copying and applying effectively. I'm not saying the geology is not getting tougher.

13:37 I just don't know what that intersection of technology and geology looks like. You're not gonna take really bad rock and make it great, but you might take good rock and get it on the cusp of great.

13:49 And I think what's got to be overlaying this and I'm sure we could pull this data out is drilling speeds must be continuing to increase because rig rates have not been, you know, normally we, the

14:03 production bumps you're talking about. We usually can translate it back via the, the rig rate, how many rigs we got out there and all We've been flattened into your point declining since December.

14:15 Does drilling rates really matter to the ROI of a well over time? It's cost. I mean, it's, it's, it's not near the proportion. It's not near the proportion that completion costs. Yeah, it's a

14:27 third. I bet it's a third to 40 of the cost of the whole thing. I think it's one third, two third. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good rule of thumb

14:35 and our listeners who are drilling more wells these days And so we don't see an increase in rig count, but we see more wells being. I'd love for our listeners that do this for a living every day to

14:46 actually.

14:48 'cause we're too busy to hear us. Dude, how does a listener get a hold of us besides me? I get a lot of like, shout outs indirectly. How do we do it directly? Do we have a way for - You can do

14:59 comments on YouTube, underneath YouTube. Okay. And you wanna put quotes there. I'm nimblefatty on

15:05 Twitter. Chuck Yates on LinkedIn, so pretty easy to find. Kurt Coburn on Twitter. You can find me everywhere. WMarkMire on Twitter. W MarkMire, you have to like - No, we're gonna get a refrack.

15:19 When are we gonna change your name to refrack? Yeah, the oldest guy in the room gets - I thought you wanted to be T-bon with the name refrack. T-bon. I'm sidetracking, forever will be. So,

15:30 there we go. Thanks to the late, great Mike Fraser. Okay, so we - So, we converted you off of - Look, I think the risk is lower, if not much lower, than it was in 2014, but don't kid yourself,

15:43 the Saudis are paying attention to what's going on in the US, you know, an 870, 000 or an almost 900, 000 barrel a day number out of what is perceived to be a fairly disciplined discipline year on

15:55 the surface should give you some pause. Now,

15:60 as I mentioned earlier, I think, I think the Russian involvement in the conversation and their absolute critical need for higher prices to shore up their own domestic and warfront situation is a

16:14 consideration and pressure point within the cartel that you didn't have them. And kind of one last thing, just while we're here, Roy Johnson came on the Chuck Job podcast, I don't know, a month

16:28 or two ago, he says, you know, post-COVID, figuring out what demand is actually growing is a little bit kind of hazy there, because it used to be, demand grows a million barrels a day per year,

16:46 that's just what it did. Look back 20 years, it did that every year, except I think one year it was negative. It's pretty predictable. He said, given the gyrations we did, it's gonna take us a

16:57 little bit of time to really figure out how demand's growing, what is return of demand versus new demand, et cetera. So I hadn't really given that a lot of thought, but I think there's something

17:07 real to that. Yeah, and the farther away we get from 2019, which is always the baseline, let's go back to 2019, which gives us an

17:17 uncontaminated baseline of demand. What do the numbers look like? Today, I know Josh Young does quite a bit of Chinese air traffic and

17:26 air travel demand in China. He tracks that pretty closely. How much farther away from 2019 can we get to figure out, well, we're still working out of the noise of COVID and that aftermath versus

17:42 what is real fundamental demand. All right, so pick us back up.

17:53 And the president of COP28, who is my new hero, Mr. Algebra, who is basically said from a prior, I guess interview with prior to COP28, basically was not going to commit to or be put on the hook

18:12 for a definitive fossil fuel phase out target data timeline. And the OPEC secretariat came out this morning.

18:25 I think in actually the voice of the Saudi oil minister, I saw a tweet from oil daily or oil price, supporting that or reinforcing that point. And it brings up a larger, I think, plot line in COP

18:41 28, which is there's a demand from the opponents to have the industry commit to those hard dates and that there is a definitive and tangible phase out

18:60 ramp down of fossil fuels or hydrocarbons over a period of time. And what I think the voices that are largely coming from the oil and gas side are saying, we're not going to do that And so we're

19:18 going to continue to

19:21 impress upon people the progress that's being made in terms of things like reducing flaring

19:31 and. Fugitive methane emission elimination. And so there was this oil and gas development, excuse me, oil and gas decarbonization charter that was signed by I believe 50 or 51 companies few days

19:46 ago. that committed to certain and specific flaring and fugitive methane emissions targets by 2030. Well, the other side is saying that's not enough. We need an associated commitment to phase down,

19:58 phase out fossil fuels.

20:01 So, I mean, that's where I think the friction is rising because voices like Al Gore have cropped up in the middle of this, John Kerry as well. And so you're gonna, I think you're going to see

20:13 over the next week and a half, which is I think the runtime of the remainder of COP 28, you're going to see no blinding insight here and escalation in the political rhetoric. There was, you know,

20:26 the notion, I haven't seen anything official around it yet that the UN was gonna call on the United States to cut down on its meat consumption because it's a big, livestock ag is a big contributor

20:40 to the problem And so we seem to

20:44 be headed to more polarization than less. and it feels like the oil and gas community is taking the opportunity, my observation, my assessment to play a little offense here. So given everything

20:59 that's gone on. And they went one step further than what you've been talking about on offense and granted he did it by himself. But the COP 28 president, my new hero, although I shouldn't say that

21:12 'cause I don't know enough about him. Got easy to hear. He may have bad things in there but algebra,

21:19 he went so far as to say there's no scientific evidence that saying going to net zero by 2050 will actually stop global climate change. Well, it's the 15 degrees. Yeah, it'll stop the 15 degrees,

21:33 exactly. I mean, so,

21:42 I mean, bordering on

21:44 what the other side would call climate deniers. So not just a pushback of, hey, we're doing our part, we're doing well enough He actually said, show me your. show me your cards. So what do you

21:48 do with this information? You've got, you know, from COP 28, John Kerry saying, we being the United States, we've signed up to the phase out of unabated fossil fuels, we have signed up and we

21:60 voted for it at the G7. So that's

22:03 American politics. What it means I think primarily in that context was unabated coal, which is really kind of old news. And the fact that the Japanese reiterated this week that they're not going to

22:17 sign up for that because of their resource deficit and the dependency on things like imported coal and natural gas. Good, all right. At the same time, I mean, that's, so that's, I mean,

22:31 rhetoric, I mean, that's semantics in many ways. Look, renewables have not had a good year. Not at all. From a capital or equity performance standpoint So I think your job, your job review,

22:44 but not accept.

22:48 The strident tone is

22:51 natural when you feel like your back's a little bit more against the wall, you've lost momentum on your side of the debate. And so now you have the

23:04 coincidental or not so coincidental mirror geographic location of this gathering and being led by a pretty prominent figure and voice in the oil and gas community. And we're starting to see the stark

23:19 differences in how we tackle this collective pollution problem, right? And the big, I think the big standoff here is

23:33 one, wanting to get the oil and gas community to agree on a wholesale global basis that we're gonna phase this stuff out and here's the defined timeline over which we're going to do it. And you're

23:43 starting to see naturally pushback.

23:45 I mean, you're going to, it's interesting because while COP 28's coming out,

23:52 RWE, one of the large utilities in Europe says that they're warning that Europeans gas secure. There's, there's basically, what is their Europe's gas security without a margin or buffer? We

24:06 talked last week about having 99 like their, their storage is at 9 of gas But a year, just a year ago, their, their gas prices were at 300 euros per megawatt hour in August, which is huge. Now

24:24 they're dropped down around 43 or 43 euros per megawatt hour. But there's a lot of risk here and, and right now they're, they're, their, their storage is about two and a half months worth. So if

24:37 they go into a cold winter, he said, no buffer. We have no buffer And you asked the question last week, what happens? with full storage in Europe, does that, you know, does that lessen the

24:49 severity? If we have, I don't know, an El Nino winter that is, an outlier from normal to the not so good cold side. And I think what you're seeing articulated by somebody who's in the hot seat,

25:01 no pun intended, is that we don't have any margin for error here, so it really matters how the weather casino plays out for us

25:11 this winter. The weather casino, I like that It's such an old term. The, no, and it's, you go look at the, I'm planning to potentially head to Europe, some part of Europe for - Well, you know,

25:25 they're not - For not most part of the EU. The island that you have been to is not part of Europe, isn't it? But my whole point is I am having to pack extra clothes because it's freezing. It's

25:37 cold. It's really cold there right now. Now that does not make an El Nino winter, Germany choose between industrial output and keeping grandmother alive. But at least right now it's freezing. I

25:50 think you heard my the summer when I was in London and stayed my one night at the Duke Hotel. My telltale on on energy conservation was that the heated towel racks in the hotel were turned off. Yeah

26:08 That's one of the great luxuries of staying at an English hotel. The martinis. The martinis are number one. The martinis. The super hot towels are another, but now in all seriousness I think

26:23 I think we're seeing a lot of these issues come to kind of a real time current head and throw on all the electric vehicles sitting at dealerships, how many 4, 000 dealers sent a letter to Biden

26:37 today saying, hey, got to stop, man. We can't keep producing these. So I mean, again. of the, we're going to dictate to the market and if the market doesn't show up, we're going to force

26:48 something to a head. Yeah,

26:53 it's, you know, it's unfortunate that politics distracts progress on these very important, in some cases, critical issues and debate resolution But there's so much money invested in political

27:11 stakes across all points in this debate. And I just think, you know, we're going to see pushback as we saw and have talked about in Argentina and the Netherlands, you saw a little bit of it in

27:27 Ireland, which was, I think, different reasons But a lot of this is related to an ever-increasing cost burden because of what's going on with the everyday citizens' average energy bills.

27:45 and the affordability in the degradation of the erosion of life in the standard of living. And just to be fair, since climate activists always use 1850 as their starting point because it's the

27:56 lowest temperatures we had in the last 10, 000 years, for all of this debate we are having today and all of these metrics on number of cars sold and all that, we are going to use the passage of the

28:08 IRA as the starting point for that. It hadn't been a good run, hadn't been a good run for renewables, transition, etc. I mean, I'm just thinking about, you know, my conversation this morning,

28:20 it's like, if you're buying beer, number one, if you're buying, we talked about, like, where's the growth? In fact, St. Arnold's has a pretty interesting, they were one of the only like, uh,

28:32 beer companies actually grow over the last few years but if you're a consumer and you're actually paying more for craft beer, 'cause you're upgrading, 'cause you want a good quality experience. Are

28:44 you gonna pay an extra 50 cents a bottle or whatever it is? Because it's, you know, it's clean. People aren't gonna, people are not doing that. And so that's something that we need to be

28:60 cognizant of because as things are moving to electrification, you gotta have, you have to have gas. You have, you need other sources You need energy security. So that's a common theme that you're

29:12 starting to see, even in the media, that we're moving, transitioning from clean to security, especially as we head into a cold winter. And I hope what happens for Brock, 'cause I like Brock a

29:24 lot. And I was actually there the night he unveiled the

29:30 logo for St. Artals. He had sketched it. We were at the last concert cafe downtown. and we were there and he laid it out. Hey, what do you think about this? I just had an artist draw it and it

29:40 was old school, you know, pencils on paper, 'cause that guy that had to have been, I think I've still been in college. Do you want this one? Yeah, exactly, perfect. We'll send that to them.

29:52 No, I hope, I hope for Brock's sake, I think part of the issue with Brock saying, my customers don't care about it is, a lot of customers don't know that potentially manufacturing concerns

30:08 pollute as well. I mean, right now the target's focused on oil and gas, period, you know, which is the input to all of that, which is the input, but it'll be interesting to see those dynamics

30:20 of, are we gonna start, when we're starting to report our emissions, are we gonna turn our inventory all over? And if fairness to Brock, he cares. He's like, I've run the math, I keep running

30:30 the math it never makes sense. And when I talk to customers, what I have found out They'll tell me they want this, but they're not gonna pay more for it. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And I

30:41 mean, it's a business owner. I mean, he's got employees that he wants to keep on the pay. I forget how Jim Marchy put it. I quoted him off of his LinkedIn post that consumer choice has got to be,

30:56 a main factor in policy. And unless we're thinking about another framework or structure outside of a democratic system, then I think policymakers would be wise to heed that. That was part of the

31:14 message. I want to Doug Sheridan with Energy Point who I think is one of the top energy opinion makers on LinkedIn, which is where I read most of his stuff. Was basically out this morning with a

31:28 fairly long commentary on really what's at play here and I've never felt it. thought about it or framed it this way, but basically contending that the reason behind the demand that the oil and gas

31:44 industry or the fossil fuel industry more broadly commit to specific phase out timeline and targets is that when the chaos that ensues, when there's a scarcity of, I think what everyone believes is

31:59 going to be critical to sustaining and thriving for a number of years, if not decades going forward, once that becomes problematically short and prices skyrocket and lower to middle class suffers a

32:19 lot that then the finger of blame can be, not only did you guys cause the problem, you cause this pain and suffering as well. That's basically, it's a brilliant maneuver if indeed this is the case,

32:33 right to. kind of hang your own self with the commitment to phase it out. And then when the damage starts, because you've done it too quickly and too early, if that is the case, then you get

32:47 blamed for it as well. You pointed that out this morning and I went and read it and it was very well stated. And you can almost see that folks playing chess by going, you know how we're gonna do

32:59 this? We're gonna do this with corporate profits. Look how much money we're making, 'cause when costs rise and

33:08 I'm using a life owe accounting and I stop life owing, I'm drilling and doing that, guess what, my costs basically go way down, I'm a huge net income. I used to say about - Right. And in my

33:23 corporate life and in my banking life or research life that ESG and sustainability and the whole conversation around doing better

33:35 was there were two segments or two dimensions to that one is playing the game. And I don't mean that cynically or you have to. It's compliance, it's reporting, it's marketing, it's doing, it's

33:46 public relations, it's doing all the things you need to do, but you need to be able to prove that those things are truths and your policies and your behavior. But for an industry that is rife with,

34:02 I think some of the premier technical talent in the world across a number of natural sciences and engineering, the ability to actually solve the problem. So it's the solving the problem side versus

34:15 playing the game. The industry is very well equipped and I think it's demonstrating that it's finally

34:23 and proactively and aggressively within practical and physical limits, certainly willing to take that on Yeah, the OGDC packed is. some would argue late in terms of flaring and fugitive methane

34:37 emissions. And I think we've been pretty consistent that that's something the industry should be held to account. Well, I thought the cop chairman, the Sultan said, this is actually one of the

34:48 things I took away. He was talking back to the media. Please help me show me the roadmap for a phase out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development unless you wanna

35:01 take the world back into caves Yeah, he threw out the caves. I mean, let's be honest here. Like, and we're seeing the middle class to the lower class who actually don't have a real voice, but

35:13 the middle class are starting to push back. You're seeing this. Well, let me close it with this 'cause then I'm gonna have to do something that's probably gonna make me throw up a little bit in my

35:22 mouth, but

35:25 close it with this on this front. I have always been, you've heard me say this on the podcast a lot, three ways to change people's mind. Ask them questions, make them laugh or scare them. IE,

35:36 you got to play on the emotional side. And the single worst way, according to the psychological research, is facts, reasons, and argument.

35:47 I have always been, let's make people laugh, let's ask questions, let's be positive and all that. I've gotten to the point where I'm really close that we as an industry need to start scaring

35:57 people. Let's put out how many people will die based on higher costs of energy. And let's start quantifying legislation and how much more expensive it's gonna make very things I'm. close I'm but,,

36:10 very personality my not That's. there get wanna don't I. close there getting almost I'm 'Cause. that on tolls death doing start let's And.. Well, it's already

36:21 started on the other side of debate, although there's not a lot of specifics other than millions. Yeah, everybody's gonna die. The world's gonna end. Well, yeah. Millions have already.

36:33 You know, I think people who would die in a severe winter because they either can't afford it and then maybe some extremes in some governments and societies that actually gets cut off. We don't do

36:51 that by and large here in the US, but physical shortages that prolong enough to take out more vulnerable parts of the population, those are going to be real immediate here in our numbers,

37:03 fertilizer, et cetera, going down. I don't think people, especially in, I mean, in the modern world, we've got a lot of the countries that they're almost irrelevant from this perspective

37:14 because all they're trying to do is put food on the table. So like most of India, a lot of China, but when you think about the modernized world, no one cares. They're a TikTok generation. They

37:26 watch stuff on TikTok and laugh to once they can't afford food. It's one that can't fill up gas tank when they lose their job. They have no health care when they need it. That's when things get

37:38 serious. And we're about, we could get there in Europe this winter. We could get there. Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, and there was, you know, there was anticipation that we were gonna run

37:50 into that severity of crisis in Europe last year. We talked about it, it didn't happen. Dodge the bullet. One was water since 1880. It was amazing on weather. The weather casino worked out Keep

38:01 using it, I like it, bring it back. All right, this is gonna make me throw up a little bit in my mouth. Congratulations to the Texas Longhorns for making the college football playoffs. I mean,

38:14 thank you. Let's talk about CFP here. Listen, man, do we deserve to be there? I could give you an argument of why, but there's a lot of teams that actually deserve to be there that aren't gonna

38:25 be there. So, I humbly am proud of the horns I think this. makes me throw up my mouth because I was a doubter. But I think coach Sark has built a great program over in Austin. He's, he's a kind

38:39 of a humble leader in many ways. Um, I'm glad they're there. So, and I will, I will say this, your athletic director, Christel Conte, first athletic director job. Was it Rice University?

38:49 Yeah, I know you're, I was waiting for that. I'm a big, crystal content band. So, uh, clearly Michigan deserves to be there. Clearly Washington deserves to be there I'll actually say this,

39:00 you guys were number three on my list too. You deserve to be there. I mean, your one loss is a rivalry game. After the game has played out on Saturday, especially after the Florida state

39:11 Louisville game, which was tough to watch. I'm dismal. It was just tough to watch, but they did finish the season 13 and Oh. And recognizing that the committee had an out with the guidelines that

39:23 actually say player availability and predicting what that means for. competitiveness in a playoff and on the heels of TCU getting shellacked in the championship, it felt like that that card was

39:39 going to be played. And that's what happened. I didn't think Georgia would drop five spots. Yeah, but which is, if they took one person from the SEC, they had to honor. Well, if they took

39:52 Alabama, they had to take Texas. Because that pretty much taken Georgia and they couldn't do that with Michigan It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a pretty illuminating and humorous look back or

40:05 throwback to Mike Leach's rant, I think from

40:12 2017. Yeah, that's still circulating. Talking about the committee and, you know, it's just a bunch of fans and, you know, it's not really a playoff. It's an invitational. And that's true.

40:21 That's true. That's true for masters, but, you know, my, my only, my only,

40:27 I guess, pondering was Since the Pac-12's going away, you could have bounced Washington out and

40:36 the Pac-12 doesn't exist anymore after this year, so what does it matter? You could have bounced - Now I think Washington deserved to be there. Same argument. Yeah. Well, deserving your best

40:42 team, right? Yeah.

40:46 So, it's,

40:51 you know, as an Aggie, it's really. Yeah, I know. There's a few on the rice out. There's a few unwritten rules You can't lose late in the season. That's why George is out. Yeah. It's

41:03 unfortunate. It's always been that way. You lose late in the season. You're, you're, you split the game. But the committee. It's the second guy that won. The committee watched all of those

41:13 games and that one key non-reviewed call at the end of the first half on fourth and four.

41:21 I think on review, it's gonna be very tough

41:26 to stand as a completion. Yeah, we all have those calls, no question, but, but the mere fact that, and I don't know how the process works in game and in college football on that type of, of

41:36 stoppage for review, but it was in retrospect, it was kind of odd to me, because I think they'd reviewed a play before that was

41:45 much less worthy, I guess, of, of being reviewed. I don't remember exactly what that was But yeah, so I got, oh, I got two things just say on this one, the competitiveness of the game and the

41:60 injuries, I don't buy that because I think it's impressive if you win with backups, but it is a criteria laid out, like, like you said, I will say this, I don't think any of those three teams

42:11 Michigan, Washington or Texas would score more than 14 points on that floor to state defense That floor of state defense is real, and if you're going to score 14 points, it's always going to be a

42:22 coin flip whether you win or not. Cause it's fair statement. You know, I think they're undefeated. They won their conference. I think they should be in, but that. Hey, as someone who is

42:32 somewhat. I'm glad they're not. I don't know how to put this. I had two daughters graduate from Clemson. So I guess I'm a little bit genetically anti-FSU, although I do think they got, they got

42:47 absolutely screwed. I went back and looked at the statistics from the Florida State at Clemson game in September. And Clemson dominated and outplayed in every category, but the most important one.

43:03 And if you don't remember and there's no reason you should, Dabo had in an emergency or a desperate situation brought a retired kicker, grad student out of retirement. And with 145 left in

43:17 regulation, tie ball game, he missed a 30 yard chip shot game went into overtime for state one. But if you look at the entire box score and team by team comparison, that was not a, I don't know,

43:33 we get into the, how good or bad are your wins and losses as we start to go through the subjective evaluation. Alabama fourth and 30. It's just kind of a G, just kind of a G was, I do think a 13

43:43 and a power five, especially ACC getting bounced out when they ran the table is, that's a tough precedent So two final things, happy to give credit where credits do or remain anonymous. A point

43:57 was brought up to me by a very smart person this morning. ESPN's gonna have a lot of influence here. ESPN is owned by Disney. Who has Disney been fighting with all year? Florida. So the state of

44:12 Florida getting screwed, is there something having to do with that? Coincidence? The ten foil hat on the floor. That's a great great a is That hat foil ten 10-4 hit.

44:22 Two years, three years, and - I love that introduction. And we're gonna go ahead - I'm happy to get credit where credit's due if on that

44:31 today. And in some circles, a bit of a controversial mascot. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, and by the way, the governor did comment on Florida State not making it. Yeah. So there might be more

44:40 true to that than fiction. But here's the final close on this. If Mike Pence will just do the right thing right now, Florida State can come in Well, there were a number of voices calling for step

44:54 in and we'll have an emergency one game play in. Yeah. Do the right thing. I mean, who watches the December 17th bowl? No one. Yeah. Let's go. I think the 12 game set up. I could live with

45:10 Georgia coming in too. Let's go six. It elevates the value of the pre-New Year's weekend bowls by a lot because there's much at stake. How many times have you turned on like the gator bowl and seen

45:24 the entire upper deck completely empty all the time on some random non-holiday between Christmas and New Year's? Let me tell you just from the inside of a

45:36 Texas fan, we're schizophrenic. So a varsity athlete, I'm on a thread with, the night before the announcement after we won, the comic came across, we're the best team in college football Same

45:51 guy next morning says, we're not gonna make it, we're terrible. I'm like, that's Texas. Thank you, I'm glad we're in. Good, good for you. And from the perspective of the less fortunate on the

46:04 outside looking in, the number of entrance to the transfer portal from Anoms Best Ever Recruiting Class in 2022 has now reached eight. Well, let me tell you, Texas fan, I would love to see him

46:22 become, excuse me, I'd love to see him become great again. It would be great for the SEC and especially for the side of the SEC. And I can't find the, the stat right now and I should have had it

46:37 pulled up. But, uh, you know, rice only lost how bad did rice lose to Texas? Not as bad as Oklahoma State and tick down on a number of y'all's wins. So we're client, you know, and we're going

46:51 to a bowl and they don't play Texas because it's easy. Texas because it's hard. That's right. That's such a great line. All right, everybody. Oh, we got to let Chuck go throw up. Yeah,

47:02 exactly. He's still in my mouth a little bit as I used to tell my ex brother-in-law who had stole the virtues. Let's, let's go ahead and do a round, a real quick round of predictions since I think

47:13 you're who wins. Yeah. Who's the national champion. Well, semifinals and and finals. Um, I'm going to go. I'm going to go Michigan goes all the way. And then, um, I am going to go, I'm

47:31 going to go Alabama for Washington.

47:35 Now, Texas plays Washington. Yeah. I got it backwards. Okay. So, so Texas beats Washington and Michigan beats Alabama, Michigan beats Texas I'm going to say that, uh, Texas is going to cover

47:49 Washington. We're going to beat them. I think Bama's going to actually beat Michigan. I think that they're, they're confidently going to be ready to head to head match up Texas verse Bama in

48:01 Houston. I'll be drinking St. Arnold's, by the way, yeah, I think it's going to be come down to the last play and I can't tell you who's kicking that field goal or running that touchdown One

48:13 thing that I've always believed is I've watched the last 10 years of the CFP and the is that particularly as it relates to Alabama, LSU, and Georgia, is that next level speed on both sides of the

48:26 ball ends up really showing up in terms of the contrast between the top of the SEC and the other conferences, particularly the Big Ten.

48:37 At least we've had data points that have shown that. That's my observation, may have nothing to do with anything. And the other thing that happens, too, that I have to give the SEC credit for is

48:47 coaching actually shows up when you have a month off. And you can't give a month to

48:55 an SEC coach. They're just that much better. And you got a hardball sitting on the sideline. So that's, so I am going with the emotion. Everybody hates us at Michigan to overcome the fact that

49:05 hardball is not allowed to coach. My picks, Texas Beach, Washington, pretty decisively. Okay And I think pick your adjective. for Alabama over Michigan. And then I think once again, a Saban

49:22 protege is left wanting after facing the master in Houston. Oh, wow. All right. You heard it here. The Texas showed me something in terms of that speed and power, despite the fact that the, you

49:36 know, the naysayers were saying, Oklahoma State's a different, you know, a different level. I just think the kind of the, did you see how Sark brought the Gundy type plays against Gundy? I was,

49:51 I was so impressed by, we did some trick plays, which is usually up on the state sleeve. So that was pretty fun to watch. Yeah. All right. All right. Everybody, if you enjoyed the podcast,

50:01 please share it with a friend. Hopefully we got flagged three times on the fall start trying to end the show. Yeah, exactly. Whatever. And hopefully we'll get Colin back back the, I'm, I'm like.

50:14 struggling. He's hiding. He's actually going to lose. He's trying to get taller. So that's painful. He's stretching. Got him on the rack out back. Take care.