Hmmmm well that's a harsh one for a first post. But never the less objective. Later posts to turn the subject in a given direction to suit someones purpose could prove something else. And I see a good point in proving misadvertising and fraud with efficiency rates. The EPA told the manufactures to act on a valid point. Failing to do so have to give sanctions. And efficiency testing have been performed on all types of units in Europe for many years and there is no reason not to belive that it can be done very acurately given the tests are performed in a proper way.
I am in no way living in the US or pretending to know what good or bad things the EPA are doing. But I can't relate to not wanting the true eficiency figures on an appliance. If people want an inefficient smoke dragon so be it. But not wanting the true specs on an OWB or stove when available seems far out to me.
Motorsen
Here is how our government works, in a nutshell, broadly speaking. Unelected bureaucrats "regulate" things, said regulations have color of "law".
These regulators retire with nice fat pensions, and go to work in the industries they were regulating, examples, food and drug, go to work for big pharmcos, treasury or securities and exchange money regulators go to work for fatcat too big to fail banks or brokerages, etc.
Pick something, any place there is gov organization, and that's what happens.
EPA was sorely needed, it really was, but..now...sorta nutso and some very very strange things happen, and it always costs a LOT to have them happen.
Look at saws, a main focus of this site. EPA regs are to the point they have to ship saws that in real world use will just burn up shortly, necessitating full replacement, with no observations of the pollution required to do this full replacement. Unless *someone* puts a real tune on these small engines, most are not going to last long.
We have corn liquor in the gasoline here, rank fuel, has wrecked any number of machines, again, causes more pollution that it cures, plus is leading to loss of farmland as they are doing again what caused the big loss of topsoil in the dustbowl years, stripping fields of border cover to squeeze out that last acre to grow corn, every time it rains hard, topsoil washes away, or if drought, topsoil blows away., not good for the environment, plus, raises cost of food and other things. Less pollution in the air? Debateable, because it takes more fuel to go from A to B.
On and on.
Always gets down to who is making a megabuck on something, follow the money. some way, somehow, some people make a ton because of new regulations and laws.
What I am saying is, it appears to be only marginally science based, and more political and economic. I mean "carbon credits", and taxes on carbon, on a carbon based life form planet???? Our regulations call carbon dioxide as a harmful pollutant, that needs laws and regulations, I mean egads it is what we exhale..take it from there...they have policies that restrict , severely restrict, logging thinning and maintaining roads in huge areas of forest, yet..these policies lead to hugemongous forest fires which release..millions of tons of this "harmful" gas, cause erosion, silt the streams, etc and waste all that wood and potential energy. and kill off endangered species, the same ones that in some cases were the reason to restrict use of the forests in the first place, and coincidently, kill jobs.....hmm...
What are they "protecting" again?
Just ask, who profits?, and follow the money.