Hump Day Hilarity: Great moments in planet saving energy engineering

I have to admit, I sent this missive to Caroline Lucas (Green Party MP for Brighton), to open her eyes to the environmental devastation that she and her party have been ignoring for years:

Dear Mrs Lucas,
I have to ask – why you are protesting about hydraulic fracking taking place, despite the fact that it is far safer than the manual fracking that has been carried out throughout the world for decades, with little attempt to reduce it?
Manual fracking is considerably more hazardous than hydraulic fracking, as it involves sending a workforce into the locale to fracture the substrate; it also involves the use of many extremely dangerous chemicals – some highly explosive, and many known carcinogens – the removal of large quantities of substrate, despoiling vast areas of the surface, ruining many habitats, destroying environments, and creating huge risk of local tremors, many of which have been known to damage property and endanger life. Indeed, entire landscapes have been radically altered by manual fracking, resulting in the destruction of many environments. As I said before, this has been carried out in this country for decades, yet you have done nothing to control or prevent it, yet feel incumbent to interfere with the considerably safer process of hydraulic fracking – there are about 500,000 hydraulic fracking sites in the USA alone, and there has never been one instance of harm or damage to any individual, community or the environment. At the hundreds of manual fracking sites in this country, there have already been thousands deaths recorded, including many children, yet you are not making any protest about this devastation!
Yours sincerely,
Radical Rodent

I suppose I could have added more, but I wanted to keep the message short.
Originally posted this on Bishop Hill, where at least one person liked it.

Same sort of people at the “Line 9” pipeline protests in Hamilton, Ontario:
http://youtu.be/ArIV6XOmDHU

It would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous. As somebody said in comments somewhere else, in 1984/5 the police were roaming the country stopping flying pickets to enable businesses to continue to operate. Today, the exact opposite appears to be the norm. What went wrong? One answer to that question is the lack of balance.

Guinevere is Eric Idle. Regan could be Michael Palin. Karl Marx in the first picture needs crutches now? Poor fella.

They vote.

I’ve debated “free energy” advocates many times before. Many seem to hold two conflicting beliefs at once: (1) The laws of thermodynamics hold. (2) If you’re really clever, you can confuse Mother Nature enough that she gives up extra energy.
Must be a psychological term for this phenomenon.

Dodgy Geezer says (August 21, 2013 at 2:00 pm ): …”Frank Whittle invented it during the 1920s. We call it the ‘Jet Engine’…”
‘Ram Jet’ if I remember correctly.. and as OldWeirdHarold says (August 21, 2013 at 2:12 pm): “…I got that beat. A turbine is an internal combustion engine with one moving part.”
That seems to cover the cases for both zero and one moving part. I’m a bit dubious about Prajna’s design with two though.

I’ll venture a guess on his college major: environmental studies, sociology or psychology. Presently, living in mom’s basement, unemployed and on the dole.

Saw this on Bishop Hill. I laughed.
Then I felt guilty.
These people are not reaching their potential… but they are still people.
Prajna, for example, appears to have been damaged somehow. Maybe it was his lifestyle choice (dope). Maybe it was bad luck.
But I felt bad for laughing at him.

“Rhoda R says:
August 21, 2013 at 2:18 pm
They vote.”
Worse than that Rhoda – they breed.
:0/

He could easily release the design for his engine into to public domain and then multiple companies would start to produce his “free energy”.
Either:
a. He is lying and there is no such design, or,
b. He wishes to monopolize the production of “free energy” for himself.

The reason that it’s fair to hold them up to ridicule is that THESE are the people being used by the warmist establishment to try and pretend that there is some great grass roots movement that supports their anti-energy, top down controlling agenda.
No – their only real foot soldiers are hangers-on who hope to scam a buck or two, ideological loons, and the mentally incompetent. That needs to be repeatedly pointed out, and ridicule is the best tool to do that with.

Perpetual motion machines?

Only one small problem. They don’t seem to produce any extra energy to do useful work.

Oh dear, and they have the temerity to psychoanalyse skeptics and call us “nutters”!

They wage war on the economy just like the US and EU administration. A.O, EPA and the European Environmental Bureau (EBB) back up these protestor with hard cash. http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84268
We are at war. Time to behave like that.

I don’t get why people even want a perpetual motion machine, when there is so much energy available.
If you could somehow cheaply tap earth’s orbital velocity or say the geological heat of the Earth- that would be different.
Considering that we can tap the past energies of supernovas by using nuclear decay [fission reactors- which capable of providing nearly a infinite source energy]. The issue isn’t some lack of energy, it’s do people actually want to use it.

@sevad
Don’t feel sorry. He doesn’t feel sorry for you either. What he is doing is not innocent. He wants you and me to get poor and live in misery. This kind of people need to be exposed. They live in lala land and want everyone else to go there too. No way!

R. de Haan;
Yep. Hand me my resolver.

Latitude says:
August 21, 2013 at 1:33 pm
are these the same people?
The thing I noticed was that every car was on the wrong side of the road. How are pedestrians supposed to look out for the obviously wrong?
(Thats sarc by the way)

There is an IC engine with NO moving parts-a varient of the pulsejet (WW2 German V1 engine). Instead of flapper valves, the geometry produces pulsating air intake and exhaust thrust. Also excellent at converting fuel to noise…

Re Prajna pose:-
That is not tea or coffee in the mug/cup. There is no liquid in the mug/cup, that is just the colour of a well used, on site, contaminated (dirty) drinking vessel. Interesting how variable “contamination” can be?

Goldie says:

Meanwhile in Australia, the greens are promoting solar thermal in the desert just 500km from the nearest large city. Apparently they don’t know about line losses

Worse still, they don’t appreciate that Geothermal is Nuclear in Australia. They don’t understand that geothermal from radiogenic sources isn’t as well controlled as the operation of a man-made machine that exploits the same phenomenon more efficiently.
They’ll happily fracc for geothermal but not for any useful source of energy.
I think that that’s the key. To them, any useful source of energy is “bad”.

@Donald P. McCollor
“There is an IC engine with NO moving parts-a varient of the pulsejet (WW2 German V1 engine). Instead of flapper valves, the geometry produces pulsating air intake and exhaust thrust. Also excellent at converting fuel to noise…”
++++++++
Quite right.
The putt-putt boat engine has no moving parts either and is WAY more efficient than the gas-type because the working fluid has been condensed (heh-heh).
For those who don’t know about it, the putt-putt is an external combustion engine that uses shaped orifices to create water flow biased in one direction, which create a jet to propel the boat. They are often candle-powered.

At first there were a washer and dryer in the room , later on the were gone MMMM

Enjoy Sun News’ brilliant Ezra Levant as he skewers the professional protesters of Canada’s green left:
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/canadas-profess.html

Feel sorry for Prajna ???
Give his type a little more power and a gun and he’ll forcefully relocate you and a few million of your friends to the country for a little good old fashioned, back to nature, agrarian reform.

These people are the remnants from the Cold War anti-nuclear protesters. After the Cold War ended they needed to find something else to protest about. Then came global warming and now fracking.
In the interview I read “My great uncle designed a perpetual motion machine” and this:

Are you against all fossil fuel exploration?
Tom: “Yes. It’s costly, inefficient as well as environmentally damaging. It’s going to lock us into a carbon future that’s not only destructive in terms of climate change but also it’s incredibly expensive and will increase the fuel poverty that we see.”
[my bolding]

Is this what we are against?

Prajna:

So she said, ‘Do you intend to stay?’ And I said, I don’t intend to stay, I don’t intend to leave… I actually have no intentions at all.

My motto is ‘always say no to drugs’.

We do have a perpetual motion machine, with a single moving part. Called electric motor. Needs only permanent supply of clean electricity and that, uhm, comes from the wire, right? I wonder why these dudes can’t run their power plants on electricity.
Actually, no. I was five years old when came up with this smart solution while watching the small generator attached to my grandpa’s bike, but soon realized it would have never worked as expected.

Wonderful stuff! Britain’s finest. I am sure the USA can find equivalent in any Walmart store.

Like many people I am not totally happy about fracking, especially after watching the film ‘Gasland’. I understand though, that a lot of the film was exaggerated. Also it would appear that some of the problems were caused by unscrupulous companies not lining the wells properly which may allow pressurised fracking fluid to escape. does anyone have knowledge if it is the same few firms which allegedly are causing the problems? I also firmly believe that if we had a safe and secure electricity generation system which doesn’t rely on unsuitable renewables like wind or solar then there would be less of a need for fracking. However given that billions (perhaps trillions) of pounds have already been wasted on wind, we now need fracking in this country to prevent millions of deaths from hypothermia.

Is Pranja still living in his Mom’s basement?

rabbit says:
August 21, 2013 at 2:28 pm
⌂E⌂t ≥ h/2π , but good luck trying to use it.

They’ve discovered the Great Truth: If you consume enough psychoactive chemicals, the Rules of the Universe don’t matter anymore! 🙂

Sometimes I think these people behave like this on purpose to awaken my inner Eric Cartman.

Seems like a lot of folks here prefer to post off-topic ad-hominem attacks against Mr. Prajna rather than address the issue of fracking. This, in my view, tends to cede the “moral high ground” to a most undeserving element by in effect “lowering ourselves to their level”. That said, fracking may pose significant trade-offs which would be imprudent to make at this juncture, as the jury is way, way, out on the risk/benefit in proposed fracking/pipeline activity proximate to high-value aquifers.

Wow… actually, he looks rather harmless. I’m pretty sure he’ll never cost his country a lot of shed blood & £100bn+ listening to some wack job named Dick Cheney. Who btw cost his country a lot of shed blood and maybe 6 trillion.
Ttyl, locate that barf bag.

They showed them packing up on the T.V. Nylon tents, sleeping bags etc. He wouldn’t be sitting on that chair if it weren’t for the petrochemical industry

… and this is why drugs should be illegal.

@ Jimbo,
Don’t judge people who use drugs. A lot of interesting things have come out of drug use, like art.

From Outrageous Ampersand on August 22, 2013 at 2:49 pm:

Don’t judge people who use drugs. A lot of interesting things have come out of drug use, like art.

How much and which drugs does it take for you to think you’re pissing into a giant flower?
Although frankly, these colorful handmade porcelain giant flower urinals are quite striking. First saw them when mentioned on a local TV home and garden show. Also the snail and conch shells are great.
Now this is “modern art” I can support, explicitly made to pissed on. Rather than merely suitable and deserving.
Hey, here’s a question. Some upscale place puts these in their mens room. How long does it take a stoner to convince themselves they really are looking at a urinal?

NO MOVING PARTS
In high school I qualified for the International Physics Olympiad by solving a problem on an engine with no moving parts.
You are in a submarine in seawater and have a battery and a permanent magnet, both fixed. Can you make the submarine move?
The answer was YES.
You put the magnet with poles up-down. You put the terminals of the battery right-left, outside the submarine, in seawater. You’ll have electrolysis (that’s why you had to have salty seawater.)
As, say, negative electrons move right-to-left, around the submarine, positive ions move left-to-right, both in the magnetic field of the magnet.
As they have opposite charges and opposite velocities, they will be pushed THE SAME WAY, say, backwards.
By action and reaction, the submarine moves forward.
Decades later, I read that the Navy had considered such an engine, completely silent. The problem was that electrolysis produced bubbles, easy to detect. So they were still working on ways to capture the bubbles…

From Adrian O on August 23, 2013 at 9:27 am:

In high school I qualified for the International Physics Olympiad by solving a problem on an engine with no moving parts.
…
Decades later, I read that the Navy had considered such an engine, completely silent. The problem was that electrolysis produced bubbles, easy to detect. So they were still working on ways to capture the bubbles…

Dang, you’re ancient. First patent is from 1961. That was decades later for you?
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/2997013.html
In 1994 the US Navy patented a modernized version, now with superconducting supercooled electromagnets.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5333444.html
Now although your solution sounds ingenious, it also sounds like “bathtub nautical engineering”. Technically correct, the model would move nice in a still tank. But could you get enough thrust to move a real submarine anywhere but with the current? Note the “modern” version upgraded to seriously strong superconducting electromagnets to get more thrust.