When I watch TV, it seems clear than no one understands energy. I know that most people don't know the difference between power, work, force and energy. I would tackle that one, but I don't think that I will live long enough. To keep things simple, I always like to use simple examples. The best simple examples seem to come by way of simple minded people, including our President, Obama. Remember the "Cash for clunkers" program that cost over a $100,000 per net car purchased? I'm going to use that one for my example on energy.
Seems that Obama and his green friends wanted our cars off the roads that got low miles per gallon and get more cars on the roads that got good gas mileage. Seems like a good idea if were to occur in the normal course of business with individuals making decisions in a distributed system that were in their personal interest. That is not the government's way. Obama and his green friends think that it is the government's role to take us stupid taxpayers where we are too stupid to go. They are just helping us stupid taxpayers. How could that be bad? Now for some energy stuff. Think about exactly what a car is and how it got to be? Where did all the steel come from and how did it get to be a car? Well, steel started out as iron ore in the ground some place. At that point it had no real value. It had been sitting there in the ground for over a million years without bothering anyone. Now how did it get into this car? Energy was used again and again to find the ore, dig it out, haul it to the smelter and smelt it into iron and steel. Trucks and tractors using oil as a fuel were used to get it to the smelter. At the smelter, coal was used to take out the oxygen and sulfur from from the ore to leave pure iron. When it was all done, the steel was worth just a little more than the amount of energy that it took to make steel. That is rule number one of economics. If something is not worth at the end, more than the energy that went to make it, why would a normal person do it? This same logic applies to all aspects of the car. The worker who turned the bolts had to be fueled with food of some kind and that food was made of energy. The worker's stomach smelted the food and saved the energy to help his muscles turn the bolts. In the end, it is all energy pure and simple. With me so far? Now for the punch line.
I am not going to develop this point because it would take too long, I think that the value of a car is 90% energy one way or another. That means the price of a car is a 90% measure of the amount of energy that was required to produce it. When things cost less, 90% of the weight is because they use less energy than some other item. This is why many of the energy policies or ideas fall flat on their faces in the long run. Take a wind mill. Many people rationalize that the cost of wind mills will go down or the power they produce with be competitive when the price of oil goes higher. What they do not understand is that the cost of the wind mill is 90% energy and thus when oil prices go up, so does the cost of the wind mill. The gap between the price of energy from oil and that from wind mills will "never" narrow.
Back to the cash for clunkers idea. If you are simple minded and don't take into account the cost of car and only the cost of gas, you would agree with Obama. If you are a two mover in checkers, then you will be able to see thru Obama and his green friends. Think about it. We have a car that gets 20 mpg and is only worth $5,000, but has at least 100,000 miles of life in it. Obama wants us to destroy this old car and force us the buy a new one for $40,000 that has 150,000 miles of more life than the old car, but gets 30 mpg. The old car still has $4,500 worth of energy value that has not been realized. The new car has $36,000 of energy value that has not be use yet and only has a life of 250,000 miles. Now for the 4th grade math. Ready? $4,500/100,000 miles = $0.045/mile for the old car. Now for the new car $36,000/250,000 miles = $0.144/mile. With me so far? Those two number are energy per mile because cars and really energy. Now how about the gas mileage. I am going to use my 4th grade math again. The old car gets 20 miles per gallon and with gas is $3.00/gal. $3.00/20mpg = $0.150/mile. The new car is a lot better and gets 30 mpg. $3.00/30/mpg = $0.100/ mile. With me on this 4th grade math? Now the big one, we add the numbers together. For this I will resort to 2nd grade math and here is what I get. For the old car $0.045 + $0.150 = $0.195/mile. For the new car $0.144 + $0.100 = $0.244/mile. Surprised? Now I have to use 5th grade math. $0.244/$0.195 X 100 = 125%. This shows that the new car as a total system uses 25% more energy than the old car that it replaced.
Now I did this all with 2nd, 4th and 5th grade math. Why is it that I can figure out that the Obama and green friends are stupid and the news media can't seem to figure it out? That is the big question. Now in my numbers, I did not spend any taxpayer money on either of these cars. If I added that money in it would clearly be much worse. In my example, I considered that Obama was able to cause the switch from old gas guzzlers to these new cars with just his "mouth" and no tax money changed hands. My point is that energy is in every thing and it needs to be taken into account. If this had been done by Obama and his green friends, we would have saved all the taxpayer's money that was spent as well as saved energy. A person who knows 4th grade math is smarter than our President.
