dirty little secret

70 years ago, the United States had built a hugely efficient network for transporting goods from almost anywhere to almost anywhere else.  We called it the railroads.

Then, someone got the bright idea that a lot more money could pass through a lot more hands, if they tore it all up, built Interstate highways and long distance trucks.  The highways required much, much more land.  They required much, much more equipment and materials, steel, asphalt and cement to build.  The trucks required many, many more operators - truck drivers- one per 40 tons instead of one per 40,000 tons.  The trucks required much, much more fossil fuel to operate.

So we destroyed over 2/3 of our track and rolling stock and we eliminated almost all of the passenger handling at the same time.

You want to know what this global warming thing is really about?  After the USA suffered brutal losses and huge casualties in the War on Poverty, and then took even worse losses in the War on Drugs?  Now they are asking the good citizens to make a War on the Weather?????

just follow the money.  ?Back in my day, Physics was a high school course.  Now, they teach either Swedish massage or organized football instead.  Consequently most people don't really understand energy, so they can be easily fooled.  I was speaking to a group of college-educated liberals the other day who genuinely believed that solar energy is free (but gasoline is controlled by a corporate monopoly, an equally-horrendous fallacy).

So here is a crash course for you all:

Suppose that you have ten acres of land.

Gasoline as an energy source, is akin to knowing that there is a single stick of TNT buried about a foot deep on your land.  Nowadays, we even have all the electronic and other equipment to locate exactly where it is.  All you have to do is to dig it up.

Solar, as an energy source, is akin to knowing that a million kitchen matches have been scattered all over your land.  If you want it, all you have to do is to go out and pick them up.  A lot of them.  Where it gets really interesting is if it is raining, or snowing, or even if it is just night time and you don't have a flashlight.  Oh, one other thing -- they don't keep well either and they are very, very difficult to move from place to place....

Of course I grasp, too, the madness of crowds.  You all were manipulated before, you will be manipulated again.  I can still take the train from my house if I want to go to Washington, D.C. and say what I have to say to someone.  I don't bother very often though because I already know I will be branded as having some kind of mental illness or something .....so I'll just stay at home, by the fire that heats my house a whole lot warmer and cheaper than these foolish heat pumps ...