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 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 two extremes — Nazism or freedom. There is no way to jab someone in the face and take over their lives and social decisions without a Nazi state of existence. Who do you create exceptions for? Creating impossible laws and then making exceptions for them is Nazism. The insiders get the exceptions, and the nobodies get destroyed. That's Nazism.

But that's what it is really all about. 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. It is a truism that the maximum energy saving would result from total freedom, because 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.

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.

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 a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Plug-In Autos

The frauds 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 means relating one thing to another thing. 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, they mean how much fuel is required to move the passengers, or maybe the whole auto—it varies. For efficiency of an electric motor, they mean 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%. The electricity will be transported on power lines at 5 million volts costing about $2-5 million per mile. On humid days, about 50% or more of the electricity will 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.

When stretching everything in favor of the frauds, the end result is 17% of the electrical energy salvaged on a dry day, while the auto would supposedly salvage 20% by directly burning the liquefied natural gas. This assumes that someone will invent the battery and it will use 120 volts, so another transformer is not needed. In actuality, there will be a lot more loss with the electrical source of energy.

There is No Such Thing as Green