Alternative Energy Community -

[Goofy Logic]

When it comes to subjects that attract people who are rather looney, I believe alternative energy is one that attracts the most conspiracy theorists. The community is full of hucksters and con-men who, like @Brad Watson_Miami, make heavy use of pseudoscience, rely on burden-of-proof for their claims, and will get really angry if anyone dares question the theory behind said invention.

It is also not unusual for them to blame any criticism and financial or legal setbacks on "technology coverup" by profit-mad industries, usually the auto and oil industry.

The more seedier part of the community seem to focus on getting energy out of water. whether this is because it is the most common substance on the surface of the earth or it ideally fits the requirement of "Green" energy is up for debate. While the idea has been around for a while, the Cold Fusion craze from 1988-1990 appears to be related on the same idea.

The Pure Energy Wiki Sums up the mindset perfectly: "If it appears to break the laws of physics, and it works, that's when we get interested."

 

[TowinKarz]

I somehow knew, before even opening the thread and reading your write up, that it was going to be about the cranks that still think "Free Energy" is real and being suppressed by the big power companies, just like how Ford has the 400-mile-a-gallon carburetor locked up in a safe somewhere....

I wonder if 1,000 years ago, these same guys were around, blabbing about how they'd bred a horse that never got tired....

The song never changes.

 

[Brad Watson_Miami]

@Goofy Logic / anonymous cow ard,

The definition of 'huckster' or 'con-man' includes deception so as to acquire money. Since I AM neither deceiving anyone or taking any monie$ for my information, your categorization of me is a proven lie! You are a compulsive liar and have taken the BIGGEST gamble there is by mocking GOD and His/Her Christ. The law of karma will reflect your actions.

----------------------------------------------------​

Earth's Moon Colony (EMC1) would mine for helium 3 to solve Earth's energy and environmental crisis.

 

[Splendid]

Well this got interesting fast. I see @Brad Watson_Miami now adheres to the loveshy school of debating,

 

[Goofy Logic]

Earth's Moon Colony (EMC1) would mine for helium 3 to solve Earth's energy and environmental crisis.

Helium-3 is a potential energy source, sure. But for the moon. you are forgetting about the energy and resource requirements to ship this stuff to the earth.

 

[TowinKarz]

A lot of cranks are ignorant of economics.

A more complex way to do something isn't necessarily better and is, frequently, worse, as every step in the process of building something requires the expenditure of something, be it mass, energy or time. A lot of rabid "science" defenders try to pretend this isn't so and say that economics is just an excuse not to advance, the "who's going to pay for that" question is never addressed without a dirty look and a snarl that you're some kind of Luddite stuck in the past or a contemptible caveman who just can't get their heads around how GREAT an idea this is, so great, that somehow, it renders economics void.

Just because we have the technology to manufacture golf balls on the Moon right now, doesn't mean it's going to happen because for the same price in terms of resources spent, you could supply a lifetime of golf balls made the "low tech" conventional way in terrestrial factories to every golfer on the planet. The sheer cost of getting to the Moon and back is frequently overlooked. They also seem to have an almost mystic belief that stuff made in a more "high tech" way is, better.... somehow..... in much the same way they have that flawed view of genetics that believes that it's always better to be bigger, stronger and faster than your ancestors, when any biologist can point out there are times when it pays to get smaller and weaker (and eat less when, say there's little food) again, more "economics" arguments that I think ruin a lot of the daydreams of armchair thinkers. Everything has to balance cost against benefits, but to the crank, they are so allured by what COULD be possible, they miss the forest for the trees, so to speak.

Sometimes this ties into a grander crank theory about how they've also developed some revolutionary new kind of energy that will make the trip less expensive, if not negligibly trivial in terms of fuel costs, but when asked for proof of THAT, they often circle right around and say that the raw material for this marvelous new engine just happens to be..... Helium-3, on the Moon.

It's a closed circle argument, with no easy "hop on" point where the physics, economics (or both) isn't so suspect that it's not worth it, which the cranks spin into some grand conspiracy by the establishment to keep everyone from ever buying a box of golf balls with "Made on the Moon" packaging.

 

[Bridechu]

The guy who created the original Chuck E Cheese set-up, Aaron Fechter, has been trying to make alternative fuel with water and graphite for a couple decades now. He actually almost blew up his entire building a couple years ago and disrupted Orlando train services for a day when a tank ruptured. The guy is an outstanding lolcow in so many fields.

 

[Brad Watson_Miami]

@Goofy Logic,

I AM not "forgetting about the energy and resource requirements to ship Helium 3 to Earth". How much money are the shipments back from the International Space Station currently generating? Space ships full of supplies heading to the Moon Colony returning full of Helium 3 will pay for itself.

 

[TowinKarz]

The ISS isn't being run for-profit. And the "I" part was done specifically to spread out the costs to everyone.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

 

[Mrs Paul]

 

[neverendingmidi]

Most of the shipments from the ISS are waste or finished experiments. The shipment to the space station are pretty damned expensive, which is why just about every section that's been sent is so far behind schedule.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I thought from the thread title that it was about people who took alternatives like solar power or wind power (stuff that still actually works) way too seriously.

 

[Splendid]

I thought from the thread title that it was about people who took alternatives like solar power or wind power (stuff that still actually works) way too seriously.

Wind power isn't actually that great of an idea. Sure it might work locally in some areas, but there are a lot of cranks who believe that we can genuinely power the entire world with nothing but wind and solar energy, and because they're advocating for a form of energy that does really exist, they seem much more credible.

 

[Enclave Supremacy]

I somehow knew, before even opening the thread and reading your write up, that it was going to be about the cranks that still think "Free Energy" is real and being suppressed by the big power companies, just like how Ford has the 400-mile-a-gallon carburetor locked up in a safe somewhere....

Yeah well these people are idiots after-all. The Tesla wireless energy thing gets me, how is that supposed to work? I was generally under the impression that colossal amounts of energy flying through the air was a bad thing. But it's being suppressed by Big Energy, those guys that must love losing about 1/3 of their generated product in transmission alone.

I love how Amero-Centric everything is as-well. When people claim that the Oil Companies cover things up but what about all the high-tech companies without super massive Oil cartels, like Japan or something.

 

[TowinKarz]

That's when you get into the fractal conspiracies, those pesky logical constraints that undermine conspiracies are solved by invoking even LARGER conspiracies.

Big Oil (tm) is REALLY just a front for the New World Order when operating in countries with petroleum industries! Duh! In Japan, they hide behind "legitimate" national industries like fishing, shipping and producing really weird manga titles....

That's also why Ford never took the magical carb out of that safe in the early 00's when people were so fed up with gas prices that a car that got 400 miles a gallon would instantly put all their competitors out of business..... they're secretly controlled by the space lizards who don't want us sheep getting ahead in life..... you don't REALLY think the Ford Motor Company BUILDS CARS for such a pedestrian thing as capitalist profit do you!?

And you're right, lots of these people have Tesla-boners, he's the perfect "Free Energy" patsy for them to lionize, he's a scientist who never got his ideas to work, and he's DEAD.

 

[Goofy Logic]

Let's do a case study of one alt-energy freak: Paul Pantone and the GEET fuel system.

His idea is a "reactor" that generates plasma and decomposes fuel into component elements. However if you look closer at the reactor, you realize it is nothing more than a pipe with a magnet in it, because FUKKIN' MAGNETS! The system in reality makes the engine a water-injected system by bubbling exhaust gasses though the fuel first.

Paul himself is a bit of a drunk, and when he was getting sued for patent infringment, he claimed technology cover-up and got himself committed to a mental hospital.

Paul is now supposedly in Oklahoma after getting out, and is still trying to peddle his free energy machine.

 

[TowinKarz]

And, 90% of the comments are free-energy disciples arguing he's being persecuted, he's being oppressed, the powers that be (unironically called as such) are trying to keep him down, the courts are crooked, reputable scientists don't know what they're saying, media sources that don't say a kind word are "biased", and how do we know it DOESN'T work? and the "If it worked you could buy one from somewhere other than the back of a huckster's car" argument is a fallacy because the government passed laws making it illegal to sell them... or something..... blah blah blah ...... I'm NOT a crackpot!!!

If only there was a way to efficiently harness the brains of conspiracy theorists as their minds do donuts on the lawn.... that would be the solution to the energy crisis.

 

[DykesDykesChina]

Helium-3 is a potential energy source, sure. But for the moon. you are forgetting about the energy and resource requirements to ship this stuff to the earth.

It is actually possible to ship nuclear fuels such as He3 from other celestial bodies to earth and release net energy -- this is because nuclear fuels pack several orders of magnitude more energy per mass unit than is needed to move the same mass from one planet to another. That said, while there is a lot of noise being made about He3 mining on the moon, it would probably be impractical, because it is very diluted in the regolith (moon dust). More realistic (but of course also more futuristic) might be to "mine" the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune for it, using maybe some kind of ramjet-like contraption to do so. If you are keen on moon mining, you should rather set your eyes on the moon's Thorium resources!

Not that there will be any neccessity to do something like this in the foreseeable future. Earth is very rich in all manner of nuclear fuels, Actinides (Uranium and Thorium) as well as fusion fuels (Deuterium and Lithium). It does not have He3 but this is not a big problem because the first generation of fusion plants will run on Deuterium and Tritium (which will be bred from Lithium) which are abundant on earth. He3 fusion is more difficult to achieve than D-Li-T fusion, and thus will probably be rather used for propelling spaceships than for power generation on earth. It is often claimed that "fusion will give us nearly unlimited energy", but we don't need to wait for fusion. Once we set up some Integral Fast Reactors or Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (both technologies have been developed and successfully tested by American National Laboratories), we can run our entire civilization on Actinides for millenia.

But back to our friends, the free energy lolcows. These come in several flavors:

1. The scientifically semi-literate. These usually have some science background, maybe engineering, sometimes even physics. They claim they have discovered something revolutionary, that is, an energy source which doesn't pose even the slightest risk of accident, creates absolutely no hazardous waste and takes energy out of thin air. They may allude to some effect which has been studied by mainstream scientists, such as "cold fusion" (in which there has been a waxing and waining interest from theorists and experimentalists but so far has proven elusive and probably doesn't work) or zero-point energy. Nonetheless, so far none of their inventions could be replicated by independent researchers, and so we are left with the realization that once more wishful thinking has overpowered reason.
2. The Snakeoil Salesmen. "YOU! Your support is needed to make our fantastic clean energy source a reality! Just invest ten thousand US$ to make it happen! You don't want to deprive humanity of clean energy, do you?!"
3. The total crackpots. No scientific knowledge here. Einstein's wrong cuz user WorldsBigestGeinus on forum so-and-so has said so. Relativity is a scam by the international financial elite! I can run my car on water, but the insidious oil industry suppresses my invention and even threatens to kill me! My clean energy generator pulls orgon vibrations out of a pink parallel universe. No, you can't see it in action because... you know... it broke down yesterday and I, like, need to repair it. Often, these guys don't stop at "clean energy" and go the full way and "invent" a perpetuum mobile. (But they can't demonstrate it right now because the evil oil industry has sent out its henchmen to kill them!)

Examples:

1st type: Claus Wilhelm Turtur (who actually is a TRUE and HONEST professor of physics).

2nd type: Andrea Rossi

3rd type: Daniel Dingel

Keep in mind that if something is said to have ZERO negative side effects it is probably useless. Like in medicine, everything that has an effect also has some side effects.

BTW zero-point energy is a real effect -- quantum field theory predicts that vacuum is full of tiny particle fluctuations creating pairs of virtual particles which exist for a very short time. This energy cannot be used to drive a machine though: because it is evenly distributed throughout space, you cannot exploit it. For this to be possible, there has to be an energy gradient, that is a concentration of energy at one point and a lack of energy at another, so that you can create an energy flux from the high-energy place (e.g. a hot nuclear reactor) to the low-energy place (the cooling tower or cooling pond) and on the way you can re-route a certain fraction of the energy to do useful work. Zero-point energy, which exists everywhere at constant concentration, thus does not offer this possibility.

 

[The Colonel]

Solar freaking roadways.