Six weeks later, still a nation of idiots
My college buddy Russ Grosse sent me a link to an article that claims cold fusion is just around the corner. Russ knew I would be especially outraged since the article does not come from some “over-unity” pseudo-science website, but from Forbes Magazine. I guess this a nice bookend to that GE magazine article I ridiculed six weeks ago. GE should know better. GE is the outfit that moved me to tears when they showed that ad where their engineers dragged a jet engine up Pikes Peak in the middle of winter to find out how it would operate in freezing conditions. Forbes should know better. Then again, Forbes is the privileged elite. I have hung out with Steve Forbes at Cato Institute functions and he is a stand up guy, not to mention he daddy Malcolm was a biker. So I want to like Forbes but this article makes that pretty hard. I met John Malone, a former Forbes editor. and he maintains that Forbes gets every single thing about technology wrong, and he meant every single thing.
But you don’t even have to know about technology to see the Forbes article is BS. First, it’s structure. The guys posits an impossible falsehood-”Imagine energy too cheap to meter” which is what the AEC (atomic energy commission) guy said about nuclear. It was stupid then, since we engineers know that the boiler is a small part of the cost compared to the building, the generators and the entire distribution network. I think the whole fuel cost is something like 20% of your electric bill.
So after the absurd wish, the author of the article wastes 1000 words describing in detail the implications of free energy. Buried way down in article is the exact technology that is supposed to give free energy. Fran Granville has taught me the basics of good technical writing. I usually get impatient at writers that bury the lede. But I was in no great hurry here, since I knew that this guy’s lede was BS.
Its some clown that says he has a magic catalyst that, get this, will transmute nickel into copper and give off the associated nuclear energy. This is even more absurd that the average over-unity cold-fusion BS. That did take me a half-day to understand, how well-meaning and good-intentioned scientists can claim to get fusion reactions in a chemistry setup. Their error is simple to understand, at least to engineers and especially any engineers that read our sister publication Test and Measurement World.
What these BS over-unity cold fusion guys do is fire up an electrolysis bath, running current through two electrodes suspended in some witch’s brew of electrolyte. They monitor the heat coming off the vessel. They do this for about a week and then, eureka, they see that the vessel is giving off more heat than the power going in as determined by the voltage times the current. It must be cold fusion. It’s more like teen spirit, a newbie mistake.
What these folks have done is put all kinds of free ions in the electrolyte solution. They can never get to over-unity to be predictable and they all say it may take a week or two. That time is the solution getting saturated with excess ions. Then temperature in the lab changes, or maybe barometric pressure. A bunch if the ions go out of the solution and for a while you get more heat energy out then you are putting electrical energy in.
What these folks are really doing is watching instantaneous power and declaring they are making energy. Ask Martin Rowe of T&MW to come over and do a setup and he would tell you that you have to look at all the energy you have put into this contraptions and then integrate all the energy that comes out. No surprise; that is never over-unity. You always have to look at the entire power over a time period and integrate that power-in and power-out over the entire course of the experiment.
Its like these scientists are children that trickle air into a balloon and are sure they have invented free energy when they let go and balloon flies away. They pump air in at low power levels for an hour, and release in the few seconds as a high-power event. But that nasty old man energy, just keep on rollin’ and bein’ conserved, along. Energy is power times time.
So like I said six weeks ago, I used to be disgusted; now I’m just amused, so lets just have fun writing our own articles for Forbes. You see the prototype. First make a wild implausible claim. Then waste 1000 words describing what a great world would be if the claim were true. Then bury a paragraph full of weasel words and mention this is not exactly settled science. Then another 500 words going back to describing the halcyon paradise the world would be when the wild claim comes true. Here, I’ll start you off:
Imagine, a world without friction; it’s a reality.
A future where your jean’s seam does not roll up.
Now your pet can talk.
The next frontier: disposable cars.
A cell phone with a lifetime battery.
Banish resistance and your motor runs forever.
Well, you get the general idea. I am sure the tech minds here at EDN will do a crackerjack job. This article in Forbes reminds me of the eternal conversations we all have around “What I would do if I won the lottery”. In honor of that, here is a picture of my biker buddy Fast Freddie Hand. He and I worked up a pretty good bit we would tell at drunken biker parties years ago.
.
Here is my buddy Fast Freddie Hand, back in the day. He knew how to spend a lottery win.
Freddie: If I won 10 million in the lottery I know just how I would spend it.
Paul: 10 million? How would you spend ten million dollars Freddie?
Freddie: Well the first 3 million, I would spend that on drugs and booze and giant parties with all my friends.
Paul: Wow, sounds like fun Fred.
Freddie: Yeah and the next 3 million, I would spend on Harleys and Ferrari’s and guns and yachts and airplanes.
Paul: Cool Freddie, that sounds like a blast. What else:
Freddie: Well the next 3 million, I would spend on loose women in a love mansion just like Hugh Hefner has. It will be great.
(long pause, and if no one asks, I prompt him.)
Paul: But Freddie, the drugs, the bikes, the women, that’s only nine million of your ten million dollar lottery win. What about that last million? What will you do with that?
Freddie: Oh, well, that last million, I would just blow that frivolously, ya know?
.
And just think, with free energy from the philosopher’s stone in the Forbes article and Freddie won’t have to spend a dime of his lottery winning on frivolous things like electricity.
OK folks be sure to describe your perpetual motion machines, how they will make the world a better place, and how you will spend all the money you will make with this brilliant new idea. First one to get it picked up in Forbes gets a prize.
Constant314 commented:
The theory of evolution is a (scientific) theory. And it is a darn good one.
savroD commented:
Paul.... I don't see why it's any surprize that we are a nation of idiots. Look 50% plus of the population think evolution is a theory; however, when they need a treatment that is based upon microbiology and genetics using evolution as the basis for running tests to develope and verify said treatment you don't hear a peep. I think idiots is putting it too kindly!
Andy T commented:
Citations please, or put your marbles back in the bag and go home.
David Rasberry commented:
Dr. Rossi's E-cat low temp fusion reactor has been peer reviewed and verified many times over the past two years or so. It is a thermal reactor that fuses nickel and hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst producing copper. The reaction is self sustaining once heated to operating temperature and the only energy input from that point is to run water pumps and cooling fans.
Last week's initial proof of performance test for the first commercial 1MW reactor installation used 66KWH of input and produced 2635KWH of output in the form of steam over a 5 hour period. It consumed two grams of hydrogen.
kkrumm commented:
TANSTAAFL!
Raymond commented:
Some people believe in the transmutation. But many people also believe in god ...
The human stupidity has no limits...
Peter Demchenko commented:
May I quote Heinrich Heine:
"I don't know who is right,
Then let others do decide,
But... " look, the Time Machine exists: simply compare dates of first comment and the article itself!
Kirk commented:
go to you tube and search
manipulating momentum
Kirk commented:
go to you tube and search for
manipulating momentum
William Ketel commented:
Free energy is available right now, all that we need to do is start burning our trash to fire the boilers of the generating system, no more dependence on coal. Of course, there are some "details" to deal with, but engineers should be able to take care of them. What we can see is that "for every complex problem there is a simple solution, AND IT IS USUALLY WRONG". All that is needed is to ignore physics and thermodynamics, and solutions become simple.
I really did enjoy the reference to Star Trek. It proves that people will indeed believe whatever they are told, if the teller looks good and sounds right. So we are not really a nation of idiots, but rather a nation containing a majority of idiots.
run4thehills commented:
Paul, wonderful and well written article. Can I add thoughtful? Yet for all the wonderfulness (pun, all you critics let your blood pressure slow back down)the story depresses me. How can we survive as a civilization with so many misguided (read stupid) folks out there. That little cabin back in the mountains is starting to look really good.
TK Hallus commented:
Once again, dispatches trickling in from expeditions
to the Edge of the Known inspire a thousand donkeys
to song.
To single out a particular set of dispatches: it is
reported that one Rossi, an Italian physicist, has
constructed a device containing principally metallic
nickel and an undisclosed combination of "catalysts"
which, when provided with an infinitesimal flow of
hydrogen gas and an electrical input of something
less than one kilowatt, produces a continuous power
output of some ten kilowatts, in the form of water
heated to or beyond boiling.
I take an extremely firm position, in which I am
absolutely confident, in regard to this matter:
the reports are either true, or they are not true.
I do not possess sufficient reliable information
to form any other opinion, and have no desire to
make a complete fool of myself, either by giving
credence to hearsay or by pretending to a deep
knowledge of the Mechanics of the Universe which
I have been convincingly Shown I do not possess.
Ultimately, all that may be said of these reports is
that either they are founded in observable reality,
or they are not founded in observable reality; and
the question of which is the case may be resolved
only by resort to observation. Absent observation
of the device in question -- preferably hands-on,
using a replica of the device constructed de novo
(except possibly for its trade-secret-proprietary
Magic Pixie Dust) from a technical description, and
over an extended interval -- any assertions in this
regard are necessarily pure speculation.
A commendably dispassionate overview of the history
of "cold fusion" investigations will be found in
Wikipedia under that title. Those reading this who
can be bothered to take a few minutes to at least
scan the entry will quickly discover that the present
article conflates the Rossi device (nickel/hydrogen,
continuous/controllable 10KW power output, ca 2011)
with the experimental setup (palladium/deuterium,
unpredictably-episodic/barely-detectable "anomalous
heating", ca 1988) of Fleischmann and Pons.
Hee-haw.
An (admittedly curmudgeonly) synopsis of the outcome
of the nearly universal failure of Top Scientists at
Leading Universities to replicate the observations
of Fleischmann and Pons is, "Having duplicated your
equipment and your procedures, we have not observed
the anomalous results you claimed, and may therefore
confidently conclude that you did not observe them,
either. Go away, peasants."
Which is to say, absence of proof proves absence.
Right.
(Academia, whatever its other attractions, has
been since time immemorial a safe haven for the
Gifted Child who is unwilling -- or unable --
to get over himself, where he may continue, for
the remainder of his perpetual adolescence, to
play (albeit in its more sophisticated variants)
the Tribal Game of all Gifted Children, *My IQ
Is Longer Than Your IQ*.)
Hee-haw.
Consider the plight of those Top Scientists at
those Leading Universities who have poured some
billions of dollars into a -- so far, at least,
spectacularly unsuccessful -- attempt to build
some sort of device -- "tokamak", "stellarator",
whatever -- that would allow them to (to quote
one of the woolier phrases from the early days)
"create a star and feast on its heart forever":
here is a bunch of nobody PhDs, using thousand-
dollar-class components in labs that are little
more than kitchen tables -- or worse, *townies*
doing "experiments" with "apparatus" made from
old Mason Jars, and *actually* working on their
kitchen tables -- claiming to have observed this
"anomalous heating" thing in their "labs", even
after we have proven conclusively that no such
thing existed, or could possibly exist!
What's a Top Scientist to do?
Fortunately, "virtually unlimited quantities of
almost-free energy" is close enough to "totally
unlimited quantities of absolutely-free energy"
-- the Holy Grail of the Free Energy Bozos --
that this "cold fusion" business, with only the
tiniest squint, can be dismissed as no more than
an outlying province of that land of charlatans
and crackpots.
And if some of these crackpots have "doctorates"
in some physical science, so what? A "Phd" from
Podunk U -- or some A&M in (snicker) *Italy* --
can scarcely be expected to distinguish between
*power* and *energy*, or to understand that the
Coulomb Force prevents nuclei from approaching
each other except at endostellar temperatures;
and by simply working in a domain infested with
crackpots and charlatans, he surely proves that
*he* is a crackpot and/or a charlatan.
Therefore, no reputable scientific journal will
even put a submission treating this "field" out
for peer review... if they wish to continue to
have *reputable* scientists paying the rather
stiff subscription fees that pay their editors.
Hee-haw.
I should like to think that Engineers would have
said to Fleischmann and Pons, "Having duplicated
your equipment and your procedures, we have not
observed the anomalous results you claimed, and
must therefore conclude that we have not, in fact,
really duplicated either your equipment, or your
procedures, or both. May we come over to your
place and watch what you're doing for a while?
We'll bring some pizza and beer."
Not all "Engineers", it would appear, concur.
Hee-haw. Hee-haw. Hee-haw. Hee-haw. Hee-haw.
A final word to those Readers who have bravely
soldiered through to this point, in regard to
the entire subject of "cold fusion":
A Closed Mouth Gathers No Feet.
And a final word to the Author of this Column:
Use, an it please you, an item of journalistic
jargon which most readers, conversant only with
Standard English, will mistake for a misspelling;
but, as a favour to friends of that language, you
might adhere to the convention adopted by nearly
all literate writers in the same: that "it's" is
*always* a contraction of "it is", and *never*
the possessive form of "it" -- for which latter,
"its" is *invariably* employed. Compare:
I I'm my
you you're your
he he's his
she she's her
it it's its
we we're our
you you're your
they they're their
Just remember that "it's" goes with "he's" and
"its" goes with "his" (dh, no apostrophe in the
possessive form of "he", and thus no apostrophe
in the possessive form of "it"), and you should
be able to avoid repeating *this* solecism, at
least, in future.
Happy Tinfoil Cat commented:
Don't believe me? Here's some links.
www.infinitepowersolutions.com
www.cymbet.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5asw7Xjl5pk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvcjhzWfa-U
That should get you started. Although I don't design cell phones, the company I work for does and produces them by the tens of millions. It's not all that implausible to think of a standard cell phone battery for high end devices. It could even become as common as the AA batteries are today.
Ofer commented:
Paul, I think that you are missing the point and are outraged for no reason. It is all a question of semantics. The fact that you get more energy than you put in is in almost all cases not a case over-unity. Take the example given below with a log and a match. The match burns for 30 seconds and lights the log and it burns for a few hours so you did get much more energy than you put in, but this energy is just conversion of one type to another type through the burning process so there is nothing over-unity here. The fact that there are scientists out there that are looking for a way to create a cold fusion process is amazing. I really hope that they succeed because it seems very difficult for many years and many lost their carreer and credibility over it. When they succeed it will no be over unity. It will just be a low-power mechanism to trigger a nuclear reaction instead of a high-power one. The energy comes from the matter so it is not over-unity. I think it is a PR issue and a question of semantics. You have to be able to present such work so that people understand that you are not trying to violate scientific principles, just find a better way to trigger a nuclear reaction that we can benefit from. Trying to do is very noble and very worthy and when they succeed they will solve the worlds energy problems.
Happy Tinfoil Cat commented:
I'll take the "A cell phone with a lifetime battery." article.
The battery technology is in production right now. It has a standby of over a decade and can be recharged 10,000 times. It doesn't explode and you can hammer a nail through the battery and it will keep going. It has 2/3 the energy density of LiPo batteries currently in vogue but I'd bet you'd want to keep the battery for your next phone when this one dies; So it would not only last the life on the cell phone, but several.
Constant314 commented:
A Superluminal train gate
I have a new invention. It is called the faster than light train gate.
But first a few definitions:
unit = an engine or car. For convenience, all have a length of 10 meters.
train = a string of any number of interconnected units. The units can be any type, except the first which must be an engine.
position of a train = the point half way from the front of the front unit to the back of the back unit.
The train gate itself consists of a huge guillotine has an incredibly hard stiff material. It is powered either by explosives or a homopolar generator. When it operates, it cleaves the connection between the first unit and the rest of the train. It takes about 100 microseconds. The rest of the input train is disregarded. The position of the guillotine is assigned position zero.
Since engines can be inserted anywhere in the train, then the train can be any length. Let us say that the train's length is about 600 km. Just as the first unit is through the gate, the position of the first unit is +5.0 meters. The position of the entire train is about -300km. The guillotine operates and in just 100 uS, the position of the output train is 300 km ahead of the input train, hence the position of the output train advances at the speed (300 km / 100 us ) = 3km/us = 3*1E9 = ten times the speed of light. We all know that if you can exceed the speed of light you get tomorrow's Wall Street Journal and make a killing in the stock market. All I need are some investors to help me gather up that 600km train.
Rich der Tec commented:
You want a large supply of FREE energy? Then trap all the hot air from politicians to run turbines that will generate electricity.
Ray Brohinsky commented:
Paul, I couldn't begin to beat the one already in the media: that you can take electrical power, produced from fossil fuels, transported through a lossy network of transmission lines, and store it in a chemical battery system to use to power an automobile, and that this will eliminate pollution. Once you've bought into this idea, everything else makes sense, even if it is something as stupid as performing obviously poorly-measured 'science' experiments with faulty assumptions, and producing conclusions which amount to perpetual motion.
Ray Brohinsky commented:
Nice try, Meredith Poor. There is more to energy production and the economy than simple math. First, anything on sale today is on sale for a reason, and with solar, the most usual reason is that the company making it or the distributor stocking it wants it off their hands, and fast. That infers that it either is out of, or going out of production. And if you think logically about that, you might see that it isn't likely to provide 25-cent-per=Watt panels, if they're dumping them now. You want to see panels being sold, rather than being "on sale", from healthy, growing companies. Solar doesn't have many of them. So, whether the idea is more or less dumb than cold fusion, the lack of business acumen and market analysis is making it unfeasible.
discouraged reader commented:
Mr Rako: Please have your articles spell-checked and proof-read. This may help some of your audience read past the first paragraph.
Common_Sense_Lost commented:
Behold there is "free energy," Just someone else to do 'it', what ever 'it' is......
disappointed commented:
I would think a tech guy doing an article like this would have the capability of using spell check.
FreeEnergyGuy commented:
I have an amazing mechanism. I just engage a relay which puts electricity into it for a second or so and immediately it produces energy and keeps on going for many hours without any external energy input. Only after many hours do I start looking for a gas station.
Let's Think commented:
I thought I had a great idea to invest retirement money in solar, so that I could replace my engineer's salary at the appropriate time. After doing the math, it seems to take about a football field's worth of PV solar to do it...I doubt I could even maintain that much, and a tornado or hurricane or hailstorm would wipe it out.. lay persons can't imagine the amount of pure energy in a gallon of gas.. and, yes it is 'free' energy, just comes out of the ground!
MSimon commented:
Rossi was pretty much debunked here:
www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2829
and here:
www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=3200
There are some pretty smart boys on those threads who can run the numbers.
Petri Pihkala commented:
I don't know what was in the Forbes article, but I would suggest that you do more research about Rossi's E-Cat before you dismiss it as hoax. You can start at www.peswiki.com that has quite a lot of coverage. You might also want to check out this www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/FocardiSlargeexces.pdf . It is about units used for over half a year with excess energy. That would be quite a storage for a hoax...
Jay Dee commented:
Paul, maybe you should proof read your article. Maybe you would not look like an idiot with all the mistakes.
Stimpy commented:
How's this for some serious research: an anti-gravity machine. With little effort we pump water to great heights, turn off the anti-grav for part of the cycle, harness the energy. Rinse and repeat. Endless free energy and everyone lives happily ever after. I'm selling stock in this venture.
ron sanecki commented:
reminds me of the politician who wanted to build an energy pipeline to the sun. easy to say. hard to do.
MSimon commented:
He3 for fusion? There is not a lot of He3 around. Even on the moon. More promising (still somewhat of a long shot) is the Polywell Fusion B11+H reaction. As someone said in the comments: the Farnsworth Fusor (a precursor of Polywell) produces neutrons.
Brett D commented:
> not to mention he daddy Malcolm was a biker.
?????
Paul Rako commented:
Sorry guys, "lede" is the correct spelling, it is writer/publisher speak for the first sentence, the first paragraph or the first idea in an article. Follow the link and you can confirm I have used the correct spelling.
Denis FItzpatrick commented:
Talk about Ledes, a "nation" of idiots? Low marks for that.
G. Durocher commented:
"Rossi does not pass a current through an electrolysis bath for a week. He runs current through an electrode and gets results in minutes or hours. In the last test the device ran with no external power for something like 4 hours - creating heat the whole time."
I can do the same thing with a match and a log.
Lawrence Ragan commented:
So you wouldn't bury a "lede". Not knowing what a lede is, I suppose one could use a shovall.
Dumbo commented:
Wait a minute - How is this "free"??? If they're converting nickel to copper, besides the obvious energy required to break apart a stable nulceus, seems to me you're losing 80% of your money.
A nickel is worth 5x more than a penny!
Duh
Think about Forbes - And I thought you were the money experts... ;)
Dave Eaton commented:
You know, it is not like fusioneers don't know what to look for- neutrons, transmutation of elements, etc. Calorimetry, as you point out, is a dense thicket. So I cannot understand why this kind of stuff still gets ink.
On the other hand, a handful of dedicated tinkerers have produced fusion in Farnsworth fusors- it is not likely to be a power source, but it could be a useful portable neutron source, and x-ray source.
I have a lot of friends who are not engineers (and I'm not one either, I'm a research chemist, but work right beside engineers) and I do find it hard to explain sometimes why the hope for doing lots of stuff with no icky side effects is just not likely at all. But the effort can pay off, with patience, and an insistence that no, you do have to keep thinking like an engineer if what you want is to figure out how to do something, or whether that something is worth doing.
A professor of philosophy asked me what would be necessary to overthrow the periodic table. I thought, and then said, "We might change our interpretation of why properties are periodic, though I doubt it, but it would persist because it works." This seemed like a very novel criterion to him, but I suggested that we organize what we see with theories, and fix those when they don't work. The empirical stuff is as close to a fixed point as we get, though we can always learn more as we look closer.
Mark commented:
I'm going to LMAO when E-Cat is shown to be real. Rossi never said it was "too cheap to measure" - some other pundit said that. This technology has been demonstrated numerous times and Rossi is on schedule to deliver a 1MW plant. Then we shall see if it is a hoax or not. Rossi does not pass a current through an electrolysis bath for a week. He runs current through an electrode and gets results in minutes or hours. In the last test the device ran with no external power for something like 4 hours - creating heat the whole time. Rossi has made extraordinary claims that require extraordinary proof - but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss thi.
BobSound commented:
About 7 years ago I switched a flourescent light fixture in my garage to the new energy-efficient T-8 bulbs. They're nice and bright, but only last about 1-2 years as compared to the original flourescent bulbs which lasted 5 years or more. Also, the T-8 bulbs burn out completely instead of just dimming over time like the originals. This makes no sense. The T-8 bulbs cost more and are now filling up land fills faster than the old bulbs. The small increase in energy efficiency just doesn't make it worth it. I wonder whose dumb idea that was...
Surprised commented:
I am rather surprised at all the fuss about a few technical illiterates. Spend your outrage on religion, the greatest con of all time.
Casey commented:
Thanks Paul. I enjoy your candor and glad you've lightened up over time too. There is no use getting upset unless you walk into the executive suite of your own company catch your CEO reading this article and getting excited... then it's time to get angry again!
Andy T commented:
You can't harness anything on the planet in any scale without serious ecological implications.I don't care if it's wind, solar, tides, Meredith's "big river", geothermal, etc.
The earth has established its operating energy equilibrium point. F-ing with the earth's energy sources in any large scale will shift that equilibrium point - uncontrollably by mankind.
We do need to figure out fusion, the REAL and possible one, using He3, and Washington needs to get a brain and fund >breakeven He3 commercial fusion reactor design and at least pace the Chinese in getting to the moon to mine it (even that has implications on tides in the long term).
The naive promises of cold fusion "science" are ruining funding for the real stuff.
He3's not just about high-yield weapons, though that's always been the motivator, unfortunately.
Meredith Poor commented:
There is a river big enough to do this - running between Greenland and Iceland. All your equipment will get ripped to shreds, but hey, if you could harness it....
Constant314 commented:
A short conversation with my friend Carla, liberal arts major
Carla: I just saw Carl Sagan on PBS. He said that our spaceships can never exceed the speed of light so it is unlikely that we would ever get visited by spacemen from a different star.
Me: That is consistent with physics as we know it.
... pause...
Carla: Don't they do that every week on Star Trek?
Me: yes
Carla: Well, somebody is wrong.
Me: Carla, Star Trek is fiction.
Carla: I know it is fiction; but they wouldn't make up something like faster than light travel if it wasn't true. Would they?
Me: yes, TV shows make up facts all the time
Carla: hmm
You can guess the rest of the conversation. It happens all the time. Someone sees something on fictional television or in a movie and believes it can happen. Oh, don't get me started...
Constant314 commented:
A conversation with a Sally, a social work major
Sally: You are an electrical engineer aren't you?
Me: yes.
Sally: Good, we need somebody to present our study to the public in a way that will make sense to everybody. Would you like to read it?
Me: Perhaps later on reading. Maybe you can just tell me about it.
Sally: We talked to some science majors about this. It turns out that if you have enough energy you can make almost anything you need. You can produce hydrogen from water to power all the machines that use gasoline and oil. You can bring mechanized farming to the whole world so there will be plenty of food. And you could have all the manufactured things you could ever want. Everybody in the world will have the same high standard of living. And since everybody has everything there is no need for war.
Me: That sounds like a lot of coal being burned. And coal mines being dug.
Sally: Oh no. We solved that too. We'll just use hydro-electric power. It doesn't make any smoke and it is safe and free.
Me: There is only so much undeveloped hydro-electric power. I don't think you will be able to get enough power that way.
Sally: we figured that out too. If you look at the rivers of the world, there are not many power plants on each one. We figured if you put a hydro-electric power plant every mile or so along the river that we could easily generate 100 times the energy that we now use. We just need to get the word.
Me: You get energy out of hydro-electric by letting the water drop; there is only so much drop on a given river, no matter how long it is. Not all the drop in the world has been tapped, but you aren't going to get anywhere near the amount of energy that you would need.
Sally: You just don't understand. Quit thinking like an engineer. You need to see the big picture.
Me: I have an appointment across town. I have to leave now, but from what you've told me, I'm sure I don't know the right people to present your study to.
Meredith Poor commented:
Would solar panels that cost 25 cents per watt be "too cheap to meter"? I've done some math indicating that at that price one could make gasoline from CO2 and water at $3.50 per gallon (amortizing the capital cost over 7 years). I'm finding solar panels on sale today for about $1.30 per watt - more or less. if solar gets cheaper at 17.5% per per year, it will be in the 25 cents range around 2020. Is this more or less dumb than cold fusion?
Ypresian commented:
Never mind the implication of "Cold" regarding that fusion which implies low energy production. I suspect a certain baseline IQ is required to comprehend two or more concepts at a time and connect the dots.
Then again, there are the Occupy Protesters and their hypocritical complaints of greed. What are they protesting for, a free handout? Never mind that Capitalism is little more than a set of freedoms; Freedom to own the means of production, set prices, trade in goods and services, etc. We all know the outcome of attempts to "moderate" those freedoms with centralized control after the 1930's -Fascism.
But if you need any further proof of human stupidity
www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/20/alchemy_sentence/
