SH3RL0CK

for the last time, you pump it into a box at x pressure, it increases in pressure to 10x because of the surroundings that are warmer.

This is incorrect. If you pump it into a box at x pressure, it increases in pressure to X, not to 10X. Otherwise I wouldn't need an aircompressor to air up the tires on my car as I could do so by breathing into the tire. Now certainly a temperature change can modify the pressure, but we have already gone over why this doesn't work...

then you have 10 times as much pressure turning the turbine, generating 10 times as much energy, than what you need to pump it back at x pressure again.

No, you don't have 10X as much pressure unless you also apply a very considerable amount of heat energy in accordance with PV=nRT.

 

if you don't get it ......... I give up, go do whatever.

Certainly one of us does not seem to understand.

 

(btw, why we don't have helium in our atmosphere is because the earth has too little mass to keep helium-molecules within our atmosphere. the same reason is why we dont have any pure hydrogen in our atmosphere)

But you brought up the Kender engine and they specifically say they use Helium. Therefore their system must be a closed system, as I said, because our atmosphere is not helium.

WHAT??? ofcourse you wouldn't create energy by pumping the same darn pressure of gas in and out of a box!?!?! but where the heck did you think that was relevant? the kender engine uses the pressure at which the gas enters the radiator, the pressure it becomes from being heated up by the surroundings, and the pressure between the turbine and the compressor...

 

its impossible to decrease the complexity of an example when the example needs the "complexity" to actually form a logical problem at which one can come with a conclusion to. if you just take out the number "1" out of binary in an example to simplify it all, its all pointless!

 

The Kender engine uses helium, therefore it must be a closed system as I am very certain I am breathing a combination of Nitrogen and Oxygen and other trace gases with virtually no helium. As a closed system, yes, we are simply pumping the gas around inside a box, or multiple boxes.

 

By making it complex, we increase the chances (intentional or not) of introducing a mathematical fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_fallacy

I'd remove the requirement that the president be born in the US.

why?

Line-item veto would also be nice.

That would be good.

 

I'd also add a requirement that Senators must be selected by the governor or legislature of that particular state. That way the Senator would represent the interests of the state (as I believe was the intent) rather than the people of the state. That would go a long way, IMO, towards limiting the number of unfunded federal mandates to the states for example.

no, you can choose to release the same psi back into it, or you can send the same amount, only with 200psi pushing it there instead of the original psi. (if you pump 15psi out of the box, and release the same amount of gas per second that the compressor can pump out, you create energy because you pump 15psi out, but the energy coming into the box is at 200 psi which pushes the gas into the box quicker m/s than you pump it out and with more force). think about it, you pump out 15 psi, and between the box and the box with the 200psi in it there is a turbine, the 200 psi gas pushes its way through the turbine at over 13 times the force or energy than what you need to pump it out of the box.

 

Where did the 200psi gas come from? Under my scenario, I am going from 14psi (standard atmospheric) to a vacuum of 0 psi; then refilling at 14 psi. This was intentional to keep it simple. Adding a third pressure increases the complexity of your example.

 

But lets take your example:

 

 

where don't you see what I see?

200psi - turbine - low-pressure zone - compressor (20psi to make it easier).

heated - pushes - cools down and gets pumped out - re-heats.

200psi against turbine and mechanical stuff, around 50% effecient, so you get 5 times more energy than what you are using to pump it back at 20 psi.

 

For simplicity, lets have a closed system using an ideal gas.

It takes energy to get to 200 psi. For the sake of argument, lets say 1J.

Through the turbine, lets say we get the 1J back and the gas is at 14psi. You can't get more than the 1J back because that was all the energy input into the system, this energy was stored in the "P" part of the ideal gas equation then transfered to heat (T) and mechanical energy (V) by passing through the turbine.

 

If its contains 1J of energy stored in the form of heat (1J of T), then we gained no energy from the turbine (0J of V).

If we got all 1J of energy by harvesting it with the turbine (1J of V), then its not heated (0J of T). This is something you seem to be overlooking. In the formula PV=nRT, we harvest the energy in the PV part as the turbine in the form of mechanical energy. We either mechanically change PV (for an energy loss or gain) or change T (for an energy loss or gain). There is no free energy from this formula.

 

If we DID gain all 1J back with the turbine, then what good would it do to put all 1J of energy into the gas to re-compress it to 200 psi?

 

its not that difficult, I dont know how I can explain it simpler

Neither do I know how to explain it simpler...where and how does PV=nRT give us free energy?

 

how do we cool it? we release x amount of gas at room-temperature, into 10x amount of space and cut the pressure and temperature by alot (any box without gas in it is a freakin' vaccuum! and what do you think the 1/5 energy produced goes to? a compressor (compressor compresses the gas to 15 psi or whatever, and it comes out 200 psi or whatever at the other side, therefore you produce energy, there's many percents losses oh yeah like on everything else, that's why 20% of the energy is lost instead of just 10% (cus if there were far less losses due to all the gas-physics and mechanical stuff it would produce about twice the amount of energy but still only need the original compressor-energy)).

 

 

 

release the gas into an artificially made low-pressure part, right where the compressor gets the gas it pumps back into the radiator.

 

 

 

So if I understand you, you are saying it takes less energy to draw a vacuum in a box than you gain by filling the box up again?

 

Lets assume a 100% efficient vacuum pump that uses 1J of energy to pull all the air out of the box. Applying PV= nRT, there is now an energy differntial of 1J of potential energy that can be gained by letting air back into the system, stored in the "n" component (fewer number of atoms) and "T" component (perhaps the overall temperature of the box dropped).

 

So, now if we let gas back into this box, the system gains the 1J of energy from the box in the form of the "n" components (more gas in the box) and in the "T" component (perhaps the overall temperture increases once again).

 

So where is the extra "free" energy coming from?

 

Are you claiming that, assuming the box cooled and some energy is stored in the "T" component of the equation, you will let the external environment warm the box up to room temperature. Then the box will become warmer than room temperature once gas is released into this vacuum (PV= nRT and some energy added to the "T" part of the equation) and you will harvest this extra energy?

 

If so, I would suggest the problems here would be 1) most of the energy is in the "n" part of the equation so there is very little "T" energy to reclaim by this method. 2) A real vacuum pump would have losses greatly exceeding this potential gain. 3) It would be necessary to harvest energy only during the warm up phase, otherwise you would lose this potential energy gain during the "cool down" when drawing the vacuum. I'm not sure how you could switch off a potential energy harvester like this but there could be ways to do this. 4) Even assuming 100% efficient pumping and energy harvesting, there is still energy losses associated with maintenance and repair of the valves, connections, pump, energy harvesting equipment, etc. that may exceed this energy gain (its going to be quite small).

 

You would be much better off installing a windmill or solar panel to harvest the available energy in the environment.

well heat-transfer is not a one-way street, no, but if a molecule with less kinetic energy (heat) hits one with more kinetic energy, the one with more will allways give kinetic energy to the one with less. Therefore you can allways make something very close to absolute zero (lets say 23 kelvin is very easy in this case) just by using the clever pressure-decreasing trick only a more elaborate setup, but you'll need alot of tubes and pipes and valves.

and I suspect a much, much, much higher initial pressure than 14 psi... but regardless how do you "decrease the pressure" without applying some kind of energy to the system?

 

if you "reduce the amount of gas present in the system", don't you DEcrease the temperature?

PV=nRT. If PV is constant (and R is constant), then if n decreases, T must increase. Of course in the real world, removing some of the gas (decreasing n) without changing either the pressure or volume is going to be a trick. One way to do this is to increase the temperature by applying some energy that is external to the system

 

If you wanted to decrease both n and T (or decrease T and keep n constant), then you will have to increase the pressure and/or volume. How do you propose to modify either the pressure or volume of a system without applying energy?

anyways, its not black magic, you just use the 14 psi's in our atmosphere, send it through a valve that decreases it to 1psi or something like that,

which requires energy to do

then you cool the 14 psi pipe with the cooler gas,

which results in the "cooled" gas heating up much more quickly than the "14 psi" gas. The reason being that there is much more gas at 14 psi than what was "cooled" through the valve. PV = nRT, in a closed system PV and R is constant so n must be reduced proportionally to T. When the numbers are run, I'm sure the energy input to force the pressure decrease to 1psi will equal the amount of cooling to the 14 psi gas, plus losses. In an open system, the "cooled gas" cannot cool down the gas at 14 psi since this is essentially an infinite amount of gas.

 

Which means the following:

then you get cooler and cooler gas out of the 14 psi thing until...

doesn't happen. At least not in a way that any energy is gained. And since there is bound to be energy lost due to inefficiencies, this system just spends a lot of energy to do nothing.

 

(btw, technically you dont need energy to cool something down, you just need to let the molecules you are trying to cool to give their energy away to other molecules)

 

 

One difficulty in this, of course, is to prevent these same molecules from receiving energy from other molecules at the same time...its not like heat transfer is a one way street. PV=nRT is a good equation to start with determining how to change the temperature of an ideal gas (either increase P or V; or conversely reduce the amount of gas present in the system n, to increase the temperature). In all practical cases, energy must be applied to force the molecules to do something they wouldn't have otherwise done.

Everyone seems to be forgetting that trains, while efficient, rarely go exactly where people need to go. In my particular case, I can drive to work in about an hour. Or I can take mass transit (there are several possible combinations of trains and buses, all of which wind up with the same time) in about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. First, I can't afford the extra time required for mass transit. But my point really is that any energy savings mass transit has over automobiles could be lost due to the extra distance involved.

Nobody in their right mind doubts that the world has warmed in the last 130 years or so...So how much of the warming is due to CO2? If it is a lot, then mitigation is a great idea and should be done. If it's not a lot, then any mitigation attempts won't make much difference in the long run and we would be better off spending the money on dealing with the consequences of climate change.

 

Physics tells us that for a doubling of CO2 from the preindustrial levels, we should get a warming of .5 degrees. That's the starting point. Anything above that is due to other factors which include both forcings and feedbacks.

 

How well do we know those other factors? From above it is clear the answer is "Not as well as we thought".

 

I am skeptical, but less about the "A" in AGW and more about the bottom line. What is our best course of action? We do not know.

 

In my mind, this question is really two fold.

 

1) We need to establish with certainty the realationship between our actions and climate change. We need to know that if we do X then Y happens. The climate modeling that currently exists isn't currently capable of doing this with any certainty, IMO.

 

2) Once we answer #1 above (and I am opposed to any serious spending until then), we need to determine how much we are willing and capable of spending to mitigate the climate change. This needs to be a political question and not a scientific question.

 

Perhaps the best course of action is to do nothing. Perhaps it is a few minor lifestyle changes. Perhaps a return to the stone age (though I myself disagree as in this case I would probably either starve or freeze during the next winter).

 

To answer your question of how to deal with a "denier" you first need to determine exactly what is being denied. In JohnB's case, he is denying some claims regarding the "A" in AGW. In my case, I reject some (most until we understand the science better) of the proposed "solutions" to climate change. A debate between either of us would necessarily be different, as it would be to a true "denier" as we have differing viewpoints.

Common sense doesn't apply in the religious battle between evolution and creation.

No, it seemingly does not.

Science believes evolution started billions of years ago but also says it was invented in 1858. There is a paradoxical inconsistency, just like in religion. If I wished to start another irrational debate, we can debate 1858 versus 2-billion years ago. That would be just another 7000 years ago versus 13 billions years ago.

 

Well, there is a difference in that no one seems to be saying evolution never happened until 1858. There are, unfortunately, creationists stating there was no life before 7,000 years ago.

 

This does not invalidate all creationists, however. There are many with a creationist view that does not conflict with science (i.e. a 13B y.o. universe, 4B y.o. earth, evolution etc.).

I am surprised by this as I have seen credible information to the contrary (about a week ago). Right now I am quite busy and don't have time to look up my original source unfortunately. I'll try to do so when I get a little more time.

 

Well, I have to admit I must have mis-remembered my source or confused it with something else as it is pretty much in line with your information. As such, I retract my statement.

 

Not that I am in favor of tax increases. I am of the opinion the real problem is that our leaders have a spending problem and I would prefer the government spend our money more wisely.

... The barrel is sch 40 pipe (not some custom honed, heavy walled gizmo that would cost a mint by itself alone). The ignition system is ...

 

I assume you have done the math regarding the expected pressure that this refinery piping will see due to the internal explosion? And that you have compared this pressure with the ratings for "schedule 40" piping?

Do you have any prototype pressure and hydrostatic testing?

 

I wouldn't mind seeing these calculations and/or since I am a bit skeptical that your "schedule 40" piping will sufficiently contain the potential explosion. Which of course, could result in the rupture of the piping and the potential for property damage or even loss of life.

 

Especially considering you stated

 

. It's mostly made out of stuff pulled off of scrap piles.

 

People generally do not throw away quality stuff, making the aforementioned pressure and hydrostatic tests pretty important.

 

After all, playing with fire (or explosions) is fun only until someone gets hurt.

Your argument was that Republicans' "business-friendly policies raise the GDP to cover the shortfall," and you cite Reagan? Zuh?

 

 

Yes, that would be the national debt, as a percentage of the GDP, skyrocketing under Reagan. This is certainly not evidence of your assertion that the Republicans' "business-friendly policies raise the GDP to cover the shortfall". If anything it is a blatant counterexample.

 

I am surprised by this as I have seen credible information to the contrary (about a week ago). Right now I am quite busy and don't have time to look up my original source unfortunately. I'll try to do so when I get a little more time.

I'm sorry, were you not paying attention during the past decade? Their "business friendly policies" lead to one of the worst financial crises in history, a monumental drop in tax revenue, and a staggering increase in the budget deficit.

So are you saying the economy went south because the Democrats took control of Cogress?

 

You cannot deny the great economic boom of the 1980's (under Reagan and Tip O'Neil), of the 1990's (under Clinton and Gingrich) and of a good economy during most of the early part of the 2000's (under Bush and a Republican congress). I suppose if Bush gets all the blame for this current recession, then we need to assign the blame for the 2001-2 recession to Clinton, the 1992-3 recession to GHW Bush, and the 1980-82 recession to Carter.

What is more critical than the overall debt, is the debt as a percentage of the GDP.

 

If you owe $1M that would be somewhat of a problem for someone making $100k a year. But its manageable for someone making $1B a year. A rising debt isn't a problem if the GDP grows faster. But as you imply, it would be far better still to have savings rather than debt.

 

Which is why it is important that the economic recovery happen sooner and stronger, rather than later and weaker. Too bad no one really knows how to make this happen.

 

As an aside, I'm neither republican nor democrat. There is little fiscal difference between them, both parties have shown they have a spending problem. Democrats spend, and raise taxes to cover the shortfall. Republicans spend, and whose business-friendly policies raise the GDP to cover the shortfall. IMO, we got lucky in 2000 when Clinton (D) raised taxes and Congress ® enacted policies to raise the GDP resulting in an actual reduction of savings (the last time this happened).

How about a water filled container? Figure out a drainage rate in drops per minute and count the number of drops, you should be able to adjust the rate to whatever rate you desire. More drops will be harder to count but more accurate if done right. As long as your reservoir is much greater than the amount of water you use the drainage will have negligible effects on accuracy.

 

Never mind counting the drops, just measure the volume of the water that has drained. That way you only need to take one measurement at one time. You can also calibrate the water volume to account for the slower drip rate once the bucket level has dropped (due to a longer timeframe).

Short term, the USA looks like a bad investment, but a longer view should be taken.

 

Good points Pangloss.

 

How long before China decides that we aren't a good investment?...OPEC is already talking about using Euros. ...

 

But what is the alternative? As Greece has recently shown, the Euro isn't necessarily a better investment. The public debt of the USA as a % of GDP is similar to, or less than, other Western nations. China is already investing in itself heavily, but the lack of transparency and the probable corruption makes China (and a very large part of the developing world) a risk as well. So where does China, OPEC, Japan, and Russia invest given the USA may be the best of a bunch of bad choices?

 

I agree the USA needs to be more financially responsible, and I do think that will happen. The sunset of the Bush tax cuts will help regarding the public debt immensely (though I would prefer a reduction in the overall size of the government). People are starting to hit the AMT, and that trend will accelerate in the coming decade which is going to greatly increase the IRS revenue. When the economic recovery happens, the tax revenues will greatly increase and that will help. And, when the recovery happens, the lack of stimulus spending will also help. And, the winding down of the Iraq war will help. I don't see a real problem in the medium term.

 

In the long term, medicare and social security will bury us, unless the USA decides to not fully pay this obligation (what I think will be the resolution to the pending SS and medicare crisis).

TomBooth,

 

Thanks for clarifying the consensus on workable and non-workable designs. I should add the design of heat pumps and the like are quite complex. More complex than can be adequately addressed here. Again, if you are serious about this, enrollment in an engineering college would be advisable.

 

I think perhaps I did get your idea confused with the Kender engine...your plan certainly has more merit than their design.

Naturally.

 

I certainly envy your command of numbers and formulae Mr Skeptic. I must confess that much of what you posted is a bit (or more than a bit) over my head.

If you are serious about this idea, it behooves you to study and learn this science at least as well as Mr. Skeptic. I would suggest you enroll in an engineering college somewhere. That you lack an understanding of PV=nRT indicates to me that you have a lot to learn about this field.

Nevertheless, it seems there is some confidence all around that this heat compressor, or compressor operating primarily on a temperature differential will work, to one degree or another.

Other than from yourself, who exactly is confident this idea will work? Everyone except yourself (and the fine people at Kender, apparently) on this thread are quite confident this will not work. The people thinking this will not work have backed up their beliefs by mathematical equations. The people thinking it will work have a more nebulous arguement that I, for one, am not buying.

 

The math does not lie.

How accurate must this be? A sundial would actually be sufficient if accuracy wasn't a concern.

 

If Hitler had said early on that he intended to kill all the Jews and declare war on the world, I don't think he would have had much support.

 

He did say so publically early on. And he still had much support, perhaps because of these statements.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_kampf

 

 

On extermination of the Jews:

 

at a Nazi party convention in 1929 Hitler argued against the "Jewish train of thought:"[18]

 

“The worst danger is that we are interrupting the natural selection process ourselves (by caring for the sick and the weak). ... The most far-sighted racial state in history, Sparta, systematically implemented these racial laws.”[18]

 

The racial laws to which Hitler referred resonate directly with his ideas in Mein Kampf. In his first edition of Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that the destruction of the weak and sick is far more humane than their protection. However, apart from his allusion to humane treatment, Hitler saw a purpose in destroying "the weak" in order to provide the proper space and purity for the strong

 

The book, released before the start of World War II, foreshadowed much of the racial policy that would spread from the domestic front in German homes to the newly acquired territory of the Third Reich.

 

and see this part:

Mein Kampf has assumed a key place in the functionalism versus intentionalism debate. Intentionalists insist that the passage stating that if 12,000–15,000 Jews were gassed, then "the sacrifice of millions of soldiers would not have been in vain," proves quite clearly that Hitler had a master plan for the genocide of the Jewish people all along. Functionalists deny this assertion, noting that the passage does not call for the destruction of the entire Jewish people and note that although Mein Kampf is suffused with an extreme anti-Semitism, it is the only time in the entire book that Hitler ever explicitly refers to the murder of Jews. Given that Mein Kampf is 694 pages long, Functionalist historians have accused the Intentionalists of making too much out of one sentence.

 

Granted the functionalism viewpoint also has merit.

 

 

On waging war against the whole world:

 

One of the more important debates of the book concerns the battle between the Continentists, including Hugh Trevor-Roper and Eberhard Jäckel, who argue Hitler wished to conquer only Europe, and the Globalists, including Gerhard Weinberg, Milan Hauner, Gunter Moltmann, Meier Michaelis and Andreas Hillgruber, who maintain that Hitler wanted to conquer the entire world. The chief source of contention between the Continentists and Globalists is the Zweites Buch.

 

The Globalists argue that Hitler's statement that after Germany defeated the United States, then Germany would rule the entire world clearly proves his intentions were global in reach. The Continentists argue that because Hitler predicts the war between the United States and Germany as beginning sometime ca. 1980, the task of winning this war in the 1980s would presumably have fallen to one of Hitler’s successors, as Hitler would have been at least 90 years old. The Continentists believe that Hitler, for his own lifetime, would have been content with ruling merely Europe.

 

A title means nothing. They hated communism, and built quite a healthy base to fight against it. Hardly socialist, wouldn't you agree? Regardless, the title was likely to draw in the common people as well.

 

 

I disagree and suggest you research this further, many of their policies were quite socialistic in nature. For starters, look at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

 

Politically, National Socialism is a variety of fascism that incorporated elements from left-wing and right-wing ideologies... In 1920, the Nazi Party presented its 25 point National Socialist Program, its key elements being anti-parliamentarism, Pan-Germanism, racism, collectivism,[10][11] Social Darwinism, eugenics, anti-semitism, anti-Communism, totalitarianism, and opposition to economic and political liberalism

 

I won't deny the Nazi party had some right wing tendencies, but in reality it was a mix of both todays conservative and todays liberal politics. Some left-leaning tendencies:

 

Though the "National Socialist leaders and dogmas were basically uncompromisingly antireligious",[44] the Nazi State primarily (but with exceptions) did not act officially in a directly anti-clerical manner except to those who refused to accommodate the new regime and yield to its power

 

Nazi publications and speeches included anti-capitalist (especially anti-finance capitalist) rhetoric.[15] ... The “corporation” was attacked by orthodox Nazis as being the leading instrument of finance capitalism, with the role of Jews emphasized

Hitler said in 1927, “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance.”

In place of ordinary profit incentive to guide the economy, investment was guided through regulation to accord to the needs of the State...The Nazis viewed private property rights as conditional upon the mode of use.[85] If the property was not being used to further Nazi goals, it could be nationalized. Government takeovers and threats of takeovers were used to encourage complance with government production plans, even if following these plans cost profits for companies...Taxes and subsidies were also used to direct the economy.

(emphasis mine)

 

Additionally, Nazi Germany had a National Health Care Plan

 

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/national-health-care-medicine-in-germany-1918-1945/

 

And strict gun-control laws

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Germany

 

IMO, the Nazi party would not easily fit in either the political left or political right today.

...At any rate, I don't know as any useful information could be derived from pV = nRT.

if you don't think this equation is useful then I don't think we can help you with your questions. Study up on this equation, Sayonora is showing you where you are wrong.

But that's just it — we do have more data. The statement that was bastardized referred to warming since 1995. Once you look at several decades, the signal is no longer masked by the noise.

I agree, clearly the world is warmer now than in the past. The real question that is unanswered is what should we do, now we know the earth is warming? What I question based on the information in the links is the accuracy of the projections; because the severity of the problem affects what we should do. Do we need a crash program to address this, or do we have time to gradually phase in a more sustainable society? These relevations do not give me confidence we have quantified the severity of the problem ... as for

 

As to the rest, we already had a thread on the email issues, and I think it's off-topic for this particular thread. I was discussing/debunking the specific claim in the article in the Daily Mail. They made it sound like Jones was saying one thing, when he said something quite different.

I also agree, and since we have drifted off topic I'll stop it here.

 

(PS I am not a spammer )

 

Glad to hear it. Spammers are getting sneakier, I don't like to waste my time with them.