Congress passed legislation requiring vehicles to get 35 miles per gallon gas mileage. Few congressmen are that crazy, but they are under extreme pressure from environmentalists who now have journalists and fraudulent scientists bulldozing the subject around based on the carbon dioxide fraud.

The fraud is more than scientific or technological. There is extreme fraud in promoting gas mileage as a five word sentence with no evaluation of the meaning or consequences. The earlier gas mileage requirement made exceptions for large vehicles defined as trucks; and as a result, more than half of the vehicles on the road are in that category including the four-wheel-drive SUVs which old ladies drive to the grocery stores. Often, SUV drivers have no need for four-wheel-drive vehicles, but they need the space, which is only available in those vehicles which were exempt from the gas mileage requirements. So the net result is that society as a whole burns more gas than it would if the government stayed out of it.

But this time the crazies are preventing such circumventing of their motives by requiring vehicles which were previously called trucks to be included in gas mileage requirements. Farmers aren't going to pull trailers with pickups which get 25 mpg, let alone 35 mpg. But the crazies promoting the scheme don't know aluminum from wood; they just know that there are some vehicles which now get 35 mpg, and they assume that social force is all it takes to change gas mileage numbers.

There is not an iota of discussion of the social implications of gas mileage requirements, not just because the promoters of the fraud are clueless on technology, but more significantly because the implications reduce down to power mongering and social control. The promoters of the scheme would be just as satisfied dictating the flavor of salt, because all they are really doing is establishing their ability to run other people's lives. There is no real saving of energy in their dictates.

Maximum energy saving would result if people had the freedom to decide for themselves how to meet the complex challenges of transportation. Encumbrances never improve efficiency. People have to go around unworkable laws or have their lives screwed up. Screwing up peoples' lives does not increase efficiency.

Abolishing the Lightbulb

This principle is demonstrated by the light bulb. The crazies are in the process of abolishing the common light bulb and forcing people to use replacement fluorescents. Supposedly, the replacements use less electricity. But they only give off a fraction of the light. By the time the number of bulbs is increased to make up the difference, no electricity is saved. But perhaps even more significant is that the fluorescents do not start rapidly, which means people are going to leave them on semi-permanently and use ten times as much electricity for that reason. About ninety percent of the normal light bulbs in a house are only turned on for a minute or two. The fluorescents cannot be started that fast. So they will be left on all the time, just as old ladies have to drive SUVs, where they would rather drive something more practical.
 
Here's what General Electric says on their web site:

"Compact fluorescent bulbs are best used in fixtures that are left on for longer periods of time, rather than in fixtures that are turned off and on frequently...These types of lamps can take up to 3 minutes to warm-up...the lamp needs to warm-up in order to reach the point of most efficient operation. Frequently switching them on and off will shorten the life of the product. If the life of the lamp is shortened significantly, you will not reap the financial benefits (includes energy & life of lamp), that are common to CFL lamps."

Guess what. Modern houses already use fluorescent lights for most purposes, and all business lighting is fluorescent. Probably about 1-3% of indoor lighting is incandescent. Then a major part of lighting is street lights, which are not going to be switched to fluorescent.

What it means is that when frauds talk about a major chunk of the energy supply being improved by compact fluorescent lights they are misrepresenting the numbers. Less that 1% of the energy used for lighting is subject to conversion.

Even if there were improvements as claimed, the gains would be too trivial to justify the expensive glass, mercury and inconvenience. But the truth is, there will be more electricity used and materials wasted. Yet incandescent bulbs are already disappearing from the stores because of the overwhelming fraud. Where are people going to get incandescent bulbs for the inappropriate fixtures and conditions which GE mentions? They will cost about $5 each.

Any analysis would show that the fluorescent light bulb scheme is nothing but an expensive fraud which will waste energy. The same is true of every scheme designed to supposedly reduce energy use, when it is forced onto someone instead of letting people decide for themselves what works best. Since any honest person knows this, the obvious conclusion is that the frauds are using environmentalism to establish their Nazi control of society, not to save energy.

Cryogenic Natural Gas

As coal plants are being shut down, they are being replaced by plants which use natural gas, because the crazies say natural gas does not produce as much carbon dioxide as coal. There is not enough natural gas from domestic sources, so it is being imported. Iran is one of the primary exporters. And since there are no pipelines for it under the oceans, the gas is being liquefied and transported in cryogenic containers. Cryogenic means real cold. The gas is kept below its boiling point, so it doesn't have to be pressurized. The primary method of keeping it below its boiling point is to allow some of it to boil away. This puts methane into the air, and it is 23 times stronger of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Plug-In Autos are a Fraud by all Criteria

Melting steel for windmills and transmission lines uses huge amounts of energy. Every dollar spent produces so much CO2, and more dollars are spend per watt of wind and solar energy than coal generated electricity. Yet greens pretend that throwing money at CO2 is the answer to something.

 

Fake greens are claiming that electricity is a more efficient and environmentally friendly source of energy for autos than liquid fuels. The logic is that a gas motor has an efficiency of 20%, while electric motors have an efficiency of 85%. On top of that, scale is supposed to create a big savings, and an electric power plant is a million times larger than an auto engine. Fraud, fraud, fraud.

Efficiency could mean anything depending upon what is compared. There is such an ocean of alternatives that it is almost impossible to pin down a consistent meaning for efficiency.

For efficiency of an auto, the meaning is how much fuel is required to move the passengers, or maybe the whole auto—it varies. For efficiency of an electric motor, the meaning is conversion of cranking torque into electrical energy.
 
What really happens is this: The new natural gas electric plants will use turbines to convert the "fossil fuel" into rotational torque—the efficiency being 20-40%—not an iota better than the conversion efficiency for a modern auto engine, which could use liquefied natural gas directly. The torque from the turbine will then generate electricity, supposedly at an efficiency of 85%.

Notice that there are two places where energy is lost in generating electricity. When combining them both—say 30% x 85%—the total is 25.5%, which is less than or equal to the efficiency of a gas burning auto.

The electricity will be transported on power lines at 500 to 5,000 kilovolts costing about $2-5 million per mile. On humid days, about 50% or more of the electricity could dissipate into the air and ground, because 5 million volts does that. At least four transformers are needed to get up and down in voltage. Ideally, they might have 90% efficiency. The electric motor in the auto will supposedly have 85% efficiency.

The net efficiency for electric cars is 30% for the gas turbine times 85% for the electric generator times 90% X 90% X 90% X 90% for the transformers times 85% for the electric motor in the auto, which totals 14% of the energy recovered for the electric auto. But the auto using natural gas directly would have an efficiency of 20% or more. It means electric autos are nowhere near as efficient as burning fuel directly.

Often there will be even more losses with electricity due to line-loss, additional transformers, etc. And this assumes that someone will invent the battery, which is still grossly inadequate for autos.

Furthermore, the efficiency needs to include the increased expense of the electric vehicle, because it takes a lot of energy and resources to produce something. And then the physical plant for generating electricity and transmission lines are very expensive. The pretense that no amount of expense is too great for saving energy is a fraud. Expense is energy burned.

Update—How Capitalism Works

Conservatives oppose bailout of American auto manufacturers because, "They're not building the right products" and "They don't innovate." "Companies fail everyday and others take their place..."

So supply and demand says the public didn't want to buy all those SUVs and Pickups. What they really wanted didn't exist due to a lack of innovation. When Detroit is gone, the Japanese will fill the void. Are they going to produce the mystery machines that people want? Why aren't they doing it now? It seems that less competition will force them to do it. Some capitalism. Why is Congress requiring 35 mpg in the future instead of demanding the mystery machines in the past, when Detroit was supposed to be producing them? Supposedly, Detroit should do what the government didn't do and force people to drive something they don't want. Or are they supposed to do what The Great Randy does and defy the laws of physics?

New Technology

Supposedly, new technology will increase gas mileage and reduce pollution. The most scary thing about the subject is no one with a trace of knowledge in the areas of science and technology is making that claim. Yet it is being forced down everyone's throats, because brain-deads say so.

The example is the Prius hybrid. It is said to get 35 mpg by combining electric motors with a gas motor for capturing energy while braking or going down hills. One problem is that it costs 50% more than other vehicles, and about twice as much as a similarly sized vehicle would cost. More dollars of cost mean more real pollution created and resources used in production.

But the number one fraud of the whole concept of innovation and technology with automobiles is the size. Regardless of technology, reducing energy consumption is nothing more than reducing size. Technology cannot change the amount of energy required to overcome the force of wind, and only a small part of the force of inertia can be captured by hybrids, because every time you touch kinetic energy a lot of it is converted to heat which is lost. In other words, the 35 mpg of the Prius is due as much to its tiny size as its complex technology.

The agitators argue as if size doesn't matter. They imagine a single person driving to work in a mile wide gas hog which needs to be shrunk down in size. That was decades ago. Vehicles have been shrunk in size long ago to a point where people do not get their needs met with the sizes that exist.

The entire reason why SUVs and pickups outnumber regular autos is because people need the extra space for getting things done. If they can't get done what they need to get done, alternatives forced onto them are going to cost more and waste more energy. There is nothing more efficient than people getting their work done themselves while making their own decisions. Brain-deads cannot understand such things. They assume you can force society into a smaller and smaller container until the boogieman disappears in their own heads.

Look who is doing the arguing. The agitators couldn't pass an eighth grade, general science exam; yet they are succeeding in forcing their insanity onto everyone, because when dealing with the complexities of technology and sociology, rationality is too easily destroyed by force and violence.

Hypothetical Examples

Here are some hypothetical examples which show that hybridizing is just an expensive fiasco. These would not be the exact numbers, but the truth would be something similar to this.

These hypothetical vehicles all have the same amount of useable space—50 cubic feet. The Prius and the Volkswagen Mouse get the same gas mileage—35 mpg. But the Volkswagen Mouse costs a lot less, because it weighs a lot less. The Prius is heavier and more expensive, because it is a hybrid which includes one or more electric motors, a special charger and a heavy battery. All the hybrid does is add extra weight at no loss of gas mileage. But it still costs a lot to add the complexities. If the same weight were added without hybridizing, the mileage would be reduced to 27 mpg.

So why aren't greens calling for another version of the Volkswagen Beatle? Because the lower classes would buy millions of them, while only a few elites buy expensive hybrids. Green is nothing but a war against the lower classes. Resources are squandered to shove the lower classes out of the economy.

Legislating Absurdities into Facts

Greens use laws to get improved efficiency, as if they knew something the engineers didn't know, or they could change laws of physics through legislation. Why not legislate the laws of friction and gravity instead of gas mileage?

Of course, there are a few odd engineers and scientists who will make wild claims, just as the creationists have a geologist who claims existence began six thousand years ago, and Hansen claims carbon dioxide is creating global warming.

This corruption is similar to collateralized debt obligations. To sell them, the rating companies had to show triple A ratings for sub-prime mortgages. So they had physicists write computer models which showed the desired result. Rational persons said, you can't get from point A to point B by writing a computer model which turns junk mortgages into something reliable. It was done anyway, because competition required it. Frauds rationalize absurdities into supposed fact, until they bankrupt everyone doing it.

Why do we have to have Al Gore tell us what the science of global warming means, when he has never studied an iota of science? For the same reason we have to have crazies tell us that all vehicles can get 35 to 50 mpg through improved technology. Put a windshield in front of a motorcycle, and the mileage will go down from 55 mpg to 45 mpg. The technology cannot defy laws of physics.

Supposedly, the automobile industry has to be forced to produce a better result, because they just can't rise to the standard of intelligence and responsibility of the environmental freaks who assume you can write laws to get any result you want. They try to do the same thing with so-called alternative energy—outlawing coal plants and then creating the magical fix later. Their magical fixes need to exist before they write the laws, not afterwards.

There is No Such Thing as Green