Thursday, January 5, 2012

How Stupid Can We Be?




Albert Einstein once said “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.” Well we now know that universe is expanding and at even a faster speed than previously thought and no doubt human stupidity is doing likewise so is there a number beyond infinity? Let me shed a little light on what I think is the most stupid government policy in these Ignited States. If you buy a Chev Volt, a Nissan Leaf, or some other plug in vehicle you receive a $7,500 gift from the Treasury of the United States. This is a supposed noble idea to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Of course the EPA gives the plug in car a green star and lets the manufacturer claim that the electricity was produced with 100% efficiency when calculating the equivalent gas mileage for the vehicle. So not only does the US government give the purchaser of the heap of junk a gift, they allow the manufacturer to make claims that disobey the laws of thermodynamics. Of course Steve Chu Chu is the engineer steering this runaway train of fake out and payola.

Now that I have got my disdain for old Steve out of my system, let’s investigate just how much money was spent by Uncle Sam in 2011 to subsidize the sales of Volts and Leaves. 9,674 Leaves were sold in 2011 in the US and 7,671 Volts were likewise sold. By my estimate, had consumers bought a Chev Cruze instead and drive 15,000 miles a year the quantity of CO2 emissions that are saved by the Volts and Leaves sold in 2011 amounts to a paltry 17,216 tons a year. The Treasury of the US spent just over $130 million in 2011 to affect those savings in CO2 emissions. Had Dr. Chu Chu provided one of the electric utilities in the Midwest such as Ameren or Duke with a $130 million gift to build a 144 megawatt combined cycle natural gas fired power station to retire a similar old coal fired power station, we could have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 578,166 tons a year. Because old Chu Chu is beyond infinitely dumb we wrongly spent the $130 million and actually will have 560,950 more tons a year of CO2 emissions continue indefinitely.

But this is not where the stupidity ends. Had the money been spent on the natural gas combined cycle generation station, GE would have supplied US made equipment for the project. Instead the Japanese supplied the batteries for the Leaves and the Koreans supplied the batteries for the Volts and GE was left scratching its butt for something to do. Of course Chu Chu is instructed by the Commander In Chief engineer who runs the administration on what is best policy for these Ignited States. Heaven forbid the man with a Noble Prize in low temperature physics actually tell the Nobel Peace Prize winner that we are flatulating in the wind when it comes to reducing carbon emissions with Volts, Leaves, Karmas, and Codas. An update on the Karma batteries there were only 239 recalled cars and of those only 50 had been delivered to customers. Yippee after over $500 million of government subsidy the Fisker motor company got 50 Karmas into the hands of customers like Leonardo De Crapio (intentionally misspelled). This week the morons on Wall Street have upped A 123’s stock price on news that they will supply batteries to Via for trucks. Who is Via one might ask? Via is the remnant of Raser the famous firm that had the other side of the isle, in the form of Senator Hatch, excited about the “100 MPG Hummer” that he drove around the US Capitol. Now tell me with all the stupidity in DC is it not time for a third party? DC is owned by Wall Street and Wall Street is owned by who knows who but stupidity like greed is universal and is growing and actually may reach a value that is larger than infinite. Perhaps old Eistein should have postulated the largest number that is post infinite and is called superinfinity. We have super PACS that can pay for negative ads in the presidential elections. These super PACs can make Gnats out of Newt so perhaps the super infinite number can make Chu Chu understand that shift happens and that DC like Exergy is being destroyed by changes in temperature. I will explain Exergy sometime in the future but for now think of Exergy as the maximum useful work in a system. Exergy is about zero in the department of entropy.

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