The Fallacy Of Alternative Energies

[James L Walker]

Authority, I just want to say that avatar of yours where Hitler is shaking hands with a alien is so you.

[James L Walker]

To Buffalo:

1) GLOBAL OIL PRODUCTION HAS BEEN IN A PLATEAU SINCE 2005

2) NET EXPORTS ARE DECLINING EVERY YEAR

The most important trend to focus on is the NET EXPORTS. Oil producing countries want to live like WHITEY in the western world. So, to do this, they have to increase their own consumption to do stupid things like drive around all day in SUVS.

This increased consumption decreases the amount of AVAILABLE NET EXPORTS. Forecasts are for NET AVAILABLE EXPORTS to decline from 33-34 mbd in 2010 (minus china & India) to only 16-17 mbd by 2020

3. BDI is affected by the massive over-supply of tankers

4. Oil demand surpassed pre-recession peaks in mid-2010

5. Modern oil discoveries are minute compared to the elephants that are about to tip into decline.

6. Modern oil discoveries are in extremely difficult to access locations.

[James L Walker]

http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/

Energy tsunami coming, ex-policymakers warn

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of 27 elder statesmen is sending an open letter to both presidential candidates and every member of Congress saying the country faces "a long-term energy crisis" that threatens the security and prosperity of future generations if swift action isn't taken.
The group includes Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and six other former secretaries of state or defense, former senators of both parties and a half dozen former senior White House advisers and other Cabinet officers for both Republican and Democratic presidents.

"We must re-examine outdated and entrenched positions," the group says in the letter to be sent Wednesday to the campaigns of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and to his GOP rival John McCain, as well as members of Congress and all 50 governors.

"...Foremost we must rise above a partisan differences and be united in our efforts," they wrote.

A copy of the letter was provided Tuesday to The Associated Press.

The call to action comes amid widespread anger over high energy costs from $4-plus a gallon gasoline to the certainty of record heating costs next winter and the prospect that America's energy priorities will have to be revamped in coming decades to address global warming.

Despite volumes of rhetoric -- often on largely meaningless proposals -- partisan disagreements have stymied action on energy issues in Congress this year.

Republicans have hammered away at opening new areas for oil and gas drilling, while Democrats have largely been targeting large oil companies for new taxes. Neither side has signaled a willingness to compromise.

That has to change, the elder statesmen wrote, focusing on the next president and members of the next Congress that will take office in January.

The open letter was the idea of the Institute for 21st Century Energy, a group affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has embraced largely Republican, pro-business approaches to dealing with energy problems. The Chamber, for example, has called for expanding domestic energy development, including opening offshore areas long off limits, and criticized new taxes on oil companies.

But retired Marine General James Jones, the institute's president, said the call to action reflects broad, bipartisan views and doesn't lean on one party or the other.

"There's an energy tsunami coming, and when you see it coming you better get on top of the wave, or you're going to get crushed by it," he said in an interview.

Jones, the 40-year military veteran who has had discussions about energy with both Obama and McCain, said he hoped the letter's sense of urgency will influence both campaigns. "Both candidates are still embryonic in their thinking about this," he said.

It's not only politicians who are faulted in the critique.

"We demand more energy and complain about high prices, but we restrict energy exploration and production. We embrace the promise of energy efficiency, but we are slow to make adjustments in our energy-intensive lifestyles," the letter says.

Production of electricity, for example, is taken "almost for granted." At the same time, people oppose new power plants and don't want to invest adequately in energy technology research, the writers say.

Thomas "Mack" McLarty, former White House chief of staff to President Clinton, said the letter emphasizes that "the next president is going to have to put energy right at the top of his agenda" and do it quickly.

"There will be a window there to build bipartisan consensus to move forward," McLarty said in an interview.

The letter includes 13 broad recommendations. They include aggressively promoting energy efficiency and reducing energy consumption, increased commitments to both nuclear energy and renewable energy sources, making coal more environmentally acceptable and moving transportation away from oil as a fuel.

Other senders of the letter include former Secretaries of State James A. Baker and George Shultz, former Defense Secretaries Frank Carlucci, William Cohen, William Perry and James Schlesinger; former senior White House advisers Howard Baker, Robert "Bud" McFarlane, Kenneth Duberstein and Brent Scowcroft; former Energy Secretaries James Watkins and Spencer Abraham; former CIA Director James Woolsey; former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans; former Democratic Sens. J. Bennett Johnston, Sam Nunn and Charles Robb; and former Republican Sen. George Allen.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington ... 9553_x.htm

No-Growth Capitalism’s post-crash manifesto
Commentary: Branson leads war against ‘business as usual’


SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — “It’s about revolution,” warns Sir Richard Branson, founder and chairman of Virgin Group, in his new book “Screw Business as Usual,” a declaration of war against today’s out-of-control capitalism.

Branson’s at war, on the attack. His command center is the Carbon War Room where message becomes action, rallying an army of entrepreneurs into what I see becoming a game-changing New No-Growth Capitalism.

Click to Play Robot aims to learn from humansEccoRobot is built to mimic the human form with hopes that it will produce human-like cognitive features. Ben Rooney reports from the InnoRobo conference in France.
“My message is a simple one: business as usual isn’t working … business as usual is wrecking this planet … Resources are being used up; the air, the sea, the land are all heavily polluted ... The poor are getting poorer … Many are dying of starvation or because they can’t afford a dollar a day for lifesaving medicine.”

Sounds like a profile of Ike, Patton and MacArthur, generals who successfully waged a near-impossible war. The world needs more like them to wage this war, “turn capitalism upside down-to shift our values from an exclusive focus on profit to also caring for people, communities and the planet.”

Yes, capitalism is wrecking the planet … is using up resources … creating poverty, starvation, disease … epidemics, inequality, climate failure … and yes, warfare … remember the Pentagon prediction that by 2020, the planet’s “carrying capacity” will be so drastically compromised that they’re already planning military defense systems for the coming “all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies.” Yes, by 2020.

Capitalists are short-term thinkers, don’t care for people, planet
The Carbon War Room is the command center for the counteroffensive: But they better act fast. As economist Bill McKibben wrote in Foreign Policy, it “might already be too late.” Former Greenpeace CEO Paul Gilding went further in “The Great Disruption”: “It’s time to stop worrying about climate change … brace for impact.”

Why? Population growth is out of control, headed for 10 billion by 2050, predicts the United Nations. And Jeremy Grantham, whose firm manages $100 billion, warns the planet can’t feed 10 billion. Still, global leaders turn a blind’s eye to the consequences, ignore this hot button issue to our peril.

Yes, Branson’s heard all these warnings. But his optimism is as infectious as his smile. He senses a new global dawn sweeping the world, a “vibrant and definite sea change from the way business was always done, when financial profit was a driving force.”

He hears more and more people openly shouting “screw business as usual.” More accurately: Screw capitalism. It is “time to start caring for people, communities and the planet,” caring for someone other than just their shareholders and their insiders. Now that shift would indeed be a historic game-changer.

How to survive in a world without Perpetual Growth economics?
In planning ahead, we do need Branson’s sea change, a totally new way of thinking and a dramatically new economic system that focuses on three goals for the next generation outlined in our earlier “Save the World” manifesto, goals that parallel Branson’s. Goals that today’s capitalists are certain to fight, just as they’ve been fighting to kill all reform efforts since the 2008 crash.

But after the coming global economic collapse these essential goals will define the New No-Growth Capitalism, if the planet is to survive:

Does it support the prosperity of all economic classes worldwide?

Will it help create a sustainable planet for the future generations, in 2050 and beyond?

Will our leaders encourage stabilization of the world’s population?

Classical economics is fatally flawed, driven by Perpetual Growth mind-set. We will self-destruct unless we “turn capitalism upside down … shift our values.”

Get it? The central hypothesis of today’s economists — all of them from Bernanke’s Fed staff, the World Bank, IMF, CBO and White House economic advisors, to economists in Wall Street banks, think tank and academia — is their unquestioned acceptance of the core dogma of Perpetual Growth. Stick to that and America, the planet and civilization will all crash.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-gro ... _news_stmp

[James L Walker]

EROEI
In physics, energy economics and ecological energetics, energy returned on energy invested (EROEI or ERoEI); or energy return on investment (EROI), is the ratio of the amount of usable energy acquired from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy expended to obtain that energy resource.[1][2] When the EROEI of a resource is less than or equal to one, that energy source becomes an "energy sink", and can no longer be used as a primary source of energy.

The natural or original sources of energy are not usually included in the calculation of energy invested, only the human-applied sources. For example in the case of biofuels the solar insolation driving photosynthesis is not included, and the energy used in the stellar synthesis of fissile elements is not included for nuclear fission. The energy returned includes usable energy and not wastes such as heat.

Because much of the energy required for producing oil from oil or tar sands (bitumen) comes from low value fractions separated out by the upgrading process, there are two ways to calculate EROEI, the higher value given by considering only the external energy inputs and the lower by considering all energy inputs, including self generated. See: Oil sands#Input energy

EROEI and Net energy (gain) measure the same quality of an energy source or sink in numerically different ways. Net energy describes the amounts, while EROEI measures the ratio or efficiency of the process.

High per-capita energy use has been considered desirable as it is associated with a high standard of living based on energy-intensive machines. A society will generally exploit the highest available EROEI energy sources first, as these provide the most energy for the least effort. With non-renewable sources, progressively lower EROEI sources are then used as the higher-quality ones are exhausted.

For example, when oil was originally discovered, it took on average one barrel of oil to find, extract, and process about 100 barrels of oil. That ratio has declined steadily over the last century to about three barrels gained for one barrel used up in the U.S. (and about ten for one in Saudi Arabia).[citation needed] [3] Currently (2006) the EROEI of wind energy in North America and Europe is about 20:1[4] which has driven its adoption.

Although many qualities of an energy source matter (for example oil is energy-dense and transportable, while wind is variable), when the EROEI of the main sources of energy for an economy fall energy becomes more difficult to obtain and its value rises relative to other resources and goods. Therefore the EROEI gains importance when comparing energy alternatives. Since expenditure of energy to obtain energy requires productive effort, as the EROEI falls an increasing proportion of the economy has to be devoted to obtaining the same amount of net energy.

Since the discovery of fire, humans have increasingly used exogenous sources of energy to multiply human muscle-power and improve living standards. Some historians have attributed our improved quality of life since then largely to more easily exploited (i.e. higher EROEI) energy sources, which is related to the concept of energy slaves. Thomas Homer-Dixon [5] demonstrates that a falling EROEI in the Later Roman Empire was one of the reasons for the collapse of the Western Empire in the fifth century CE. In "The Upside of Down" he suggests that EROEI analysis provides a basis for the analysis of the rise and fall of civilisations. Looking at the maximum extent of the Roman Empire, (60 million) and its technological base the agrarian base of Rome was about 1:12 per hectare for wheat and 1:27 for alfalfa (giving a 1:2.7 production for oxen). One can then use this to calculate the population of the Roman Empire required at its height, on the basis of about 2,500-3,000 calories per day per person. It comes out roughly equal to the area of food production at its height. But ecological damage (deforestation, soil fertility loss particularly in southern Spain, southern Italy, Sicily and especially north Africa) saw a collapse in the system beginning in the 2nd century, as EROEI began to fall. It bottomed in 1084 when Rome's population, which had peaked under Trajan at 1.5 million, was only 15,000. Evidence also fits the cycle of Mayan and Cambodian collapse too. Joseph Tainter[6] suggests that diminishing returns of the EROEI is a chief cause of the collapse of complex societies. Falling EROEI due to depletion of non-renewable resources also poses a difficult challenge for industrial economies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_ret ... y_invested

[James L Walker]

Supposing there were a way to take care of the energy issue, regardless of actual technology/physics/etc., which are irrelevant for my point, IF that solution or technology is not necessarily of such nature as to REQUIRE centralized control as facilitating centralized social control systems, such as money/wealth, it will NOT be funded by any entity operating within the pyramidal system. No-one in a position of power, or anyone who seeks power, will have any desire for the dissemination of any technology that eliminates scarcity. IF free/ridiculously cheap and decentralized energy/material sources could be found or created they would be visciously oppressed as they would mean the end of the entire societal structure as it stands, although generally only the crap parts. No solution will be 'found' at this point, because any solution of sufficient magnitude means the end of both slavery and the useless over-class.

...Stockholm syndrome

[James L Walker]

To Buffalo on oil fracking:

OK, here's the plan:

(1) Buy up mineral rights from the desperate folks who have lost their jobs and otherwise seen their home values disappear;

(2) Frack the shit out of the underlying ground and rock structures by pumping huge quantities of the most toxic cocktail of chemicals imaginable into the ground;

(3) Permanently and irreversibly contaminate all groundwater supplies for miles in all directions from each fracking well;

(4) When anybody bitches about the water coming out of their faucets catching on fire, and their hair falling out, explain to them that it is a natural phenomenon only coincidentally related to the nearby fracking activity;

(5) If that doesn't convince somebody, tell them to prove that any particular gas well owned by any particular company polluted their water well;

(6) Go to Congress and lobby for a law exempting fracking activity from all federal regulation. No...wait...scratch that one...it's already been done.

(7) Run commericails in prime time explaining that fracking is a novel, safe, and non-polluting technique that will provide energy independence for America;

(8) Get rid of the toxic shit in your effluent pools by misting it into the air on sunny or windy days, and channelling it into nearby streams in the middle of the night;

(9) Sell natural gas and its by-products, keep all the money for yourself, and shift the clean-up costs, and the costs inherent in making huge parcels of American lands uninhabitable except via trucking in clean water, to the taxpayers.

(10) Suck all the money out of the dummy corporations actually doing the fracking and then shut them down before anybody actually wakes up and files suit.

(11) Form new dummy corporations to frack the shit out of the ground somewhere else in the USA.

This should work really well for us until folks have to start trucking in water from 500 miles away.

[James L Walker]

The military Pentagon PDF file on expected global energy scarcities amongst other future projected problems for the globe:

http://www.thinkglobalgreen.org/GBNDocu ... ervlet.pdf

[Calrid]

Oil is on the way out, I don't need a telescope or a microscope to know that. However I don't think it's soon enough to say we are all doomed because of it. I don't think we can envision the next 50 years of tech and just claim we are fucked. Hell prove me wrong.

See no one within their right minds thinks we can coast on oil and converting coal to oil forever, but then no one within their right mind is thinking that.

[James L Walker]

Oil is on the way out, I don't need a telescope or a microscope to know that. However I don't think it's soon enough to say we are all doomed because of it. I don't think we can envision the next 50 years of tech and just claim we are fucked. Hell prove me wrong.

See no one within their right minds thinks we can coast on oil and converting coal to oil forever, but then no one within their right mind is thinking that.

If global petroleum disappears fast enough without any alternative of energy to supplant it in replacement of upholding the continuance of current infrastructure one can say without a doubt that modern civilization is doomed worldwide.

No amount of magical or happy thinking will change that.

If current infrastructure cannot be maintained which a lot of projections show it can't because of it's unsustainability it will spell nothing but catastrophe.

If current infrastructure does not hold then two thirds of the world population will inevitably die off because of such a catastrophe.

[James L Walker]

One has to be blind to not see that the encroachment all over the middle east by the United States amounts to nothing but petroleum wars.

The scarcity of oil started in the early 2000's worldwide where the fight for dominance in controlling the last bit of oil that flows through the earth is well underway.

That is all due to peak oil and the military expansion of the United States with the help of other nations only shows the desperation of slowing down the inevitable.

[Calrid]

One has to be blind to not see that the encroachment all over the middle east by the United States amounts to nothing but petroleum wars.

The scarcity of oil started in the early 2000's worldwide where the fight for dominance in controlling the last bit of oil that flows through the earth is well underway.

Oh yeah we got your number, you are just making all the scientists give up so your Reptillian masters can take over, well I am not falling for it any more. You can all just get bent.

You're all just conspiring to bring the world to ruin, and now I am not going to take it any more.

[James L Walker]

One has to be blind to not see that the encroachment all over the middle east by the United States amounts to nothing but petroleum wars.

The scarcity of oil started in the early 2000's worldwide where the fight for dominance in controlling the last bit of oil that flows through the earth is well underway.

Oh yeah we got your number, you are just making all the scientists give up so your Reptillian masters can take over, well I am not falling for it any more. You can all just get bent.

You're all just conspiring to bring the world to ruin, and now I am not going to take it any more.

That is not a fucking argument or a rebuttal. Simple bullshit defamation does not work on me.

Your attempt to make me look delusional in order to detract from your own level of incompetency on the subject is not amusing.

[Calrid]

One has to be blind to not see that the encroachment all over the middle east by the United States amounts to nothing but petroleum wars.

The scarcity of oil started in the early 2000's worldwide where the fight for dominance in controlling the last bit of oil that flows through the earth is well underway.

Oh yeah we got your number, you are just making all the scientists give up so your Reptillian masters can take over, well I am not falling for it any more. You can all just get bent.

You're all just conspiring to bring the world to ruin, and now I am not going to take it any more.

That is not a fucking argument or a rebuttal. Simple bullshit defamation does not work on me.

Your attempt to make me look delusional in order to detract your own level of incompetency on the subject is not amusing.

Yeah you would say that, your delusional explanations that you expect me to believe and the incompetence of your rebuttal is not amusing either. See you haven't addressed my argument, so therefore I am right about your agenda.

Hell I know what you are trying to do, bring the world down so you masters can rule us, don't try and deny it, I have all the proof I need, the world is looking for solutions, but you are looking for a collapse, why is that, because you have been told to make it happen, I think so. You don't provide solutions because you know that there is no solution as long as your masters are pulling the strings. It's all so obvious now!

[James L Walker]

Calrid:

Yeah you would say that, your delusional explanations that you expect me to believe and the incompetence of your rebuttal is not amusing either. See you haven't addressed my argument, so therefore I am right about your agenda.

Hell I know what you are trying to do, bring the world down so you masters can rule us, don't try and deny it, I have all the proof I need.

I have shown the information here for my positions and the necessary argument as to why I maintain such a perception.

What have you or others shown in comparison? Nothing!

Again your silly jests or accusations are not amusing and are off topic.

[Calrid]

I rest my case.

Man it's all so obvious these people who are anarchists are actively trying to bring the world to ruin, after all its what they want. So rather than work with the world, they are under the employ of those best served by the ruin of society.It's all so simple it's not the conspiracy of government that is the problem. I can't believe I never saw this before, I am starting a web site called anarchy/conspiracy truth. We will discuss these so called truthers and their agenda to do everything in their self interest to ruin the world.

[Calrid]

Calrid:

Yeah you would say that, your delusional explanations that you expect me to believe and the incompetence of your rebuttal is not amusing either. See you haven't addressed my argument, so therefore I am right about your agenda.

Hell I know what you are trying to do, bring the world down so you masters can rule us, don't try and deny it, I have all the proof I need.

I have shown the information here for my positions and the necessary argument as to why I maintain such a perception.

What have you or others shown in comparison? Nothing!

Again your silly jests or accusations are not amusing and are off topic.

Oh for God's sake my jest is so apposite that you are terrified of addressing it.

Off topic? Then report me.

[James L Walker]

Calrid:

Yeah you would say that, your delusional explanations that you expect me to believe and the incompetence of your rebuttal is not amusing either. See you haven't addressed my argument, so therefore I am right about your agenda.

Hell I know what you are trying to do, bring the world down so you masters can rule us, don't try and deny it, I have all the proof I need.

I have shown the information here for my positions and the necessary argument as to why I maintain such a perception.

What have you or others shown in comparison? Nothing!

Again your silly jests or accusations are not amusing and are off topic.

Oh for God's sake my jest is so apposite that you are terrified of addressing it.

Off topic? Then report me.

I thought you were being serious for a moment.

The internet lacks emotions and facial expressions for what is being posted.

Only pussies and wimps report people.

[Calrid]

I thought you were being serious for a moment.

The internet lacks emotions and facial expressions for what is being posted.

Only pussies and wimps report people.

I was being serious.

Reporting not done it much, but I have reported spambots, just 'cause it's boring and threads that belong elsewhere. I don't see that as a bad thing. However I once killed a man on a thread because he was an idiot, I beat him to death with his own shoes.

[Gobbo]

Authority, I just want to say that avatar of yours where Hitler is shaking hands with a alien is so you.

Supposedly this is a real picture.

[BUFFALO]

To Buffalo on oil fracking:
OK, here's the plan:
(1) Buy up mineral rights from the desperate folks who have lost their jobs and otherwise seen their home values disappear;
(2) Frack the shit out of the underlying ground and rock structures by pumping huge quantities of the most toxic cocktail of chemicals imaginable into the ground;
(3) Permanently and irreversibly contaminate all groundwater supplies for miles in all directions from each fracking well;
(4) When anybody bitches about the water coming out of their faucets catching on fire, and their hair falling out, explain to them that it is a natural phenomenon only coincidentally related to the nearby fracking activity;
(5) If that doesn't convince somebody, tell them to prove that any particular gas well owned by any particular company polluted their water well;
(6) Go to Congress and lobby for a law exempting fracking activity from all federal regulation. No...wait...scratch that one...it's already been done.
(7) Run commericails in prime time explaining that fracking is a novel, safe, and non-polluting technique that will provide energy independence for America;
(7) Get rid of the toxic shit in your effluent pools by misting it into the air on sunny or windy days, and channelling it into nearby streams in the middle of the night;
(8) Sell natural gas and its by-products, keep all the money for yourself, and shift the clean-up costs, and the costs inherent in making huge parcels of American lands uninhabitable except via trucking in clean water, to the taxpayers.
(9) Suck all the money out of the dummy corporations actually doing the fracking and then shut them down before anybody actually wakes up and files suit.
(10) Form new dummy corporations to frack the shit out of the ground somewhere else in the USA.
This should work really well for us until folks have to start trucking in water from 500 miles away.

I'll not dwell on the fact that you seem to have a problem counting to ten. That's a nice script idea for another global conspiracy movie (but Gasland has already been done, or perhaps that's where you got it). But it has nothing to do with reality (in this particular universe). I certainly can't speak for the oil industry in the USA, but nothing on your list is the least bit credible wrt Canadian practices. I'll just start with a few of your first points:

#1) Unemployment here in Alberta is up a bit due to the recession, but very few are losing their homes and mineral rights are pretty much owned by the Crown anyeay. In no areas of the province have home values been detrimentally affected by petroleum development; in fact prices up in Ft. MacMurray (where the tar sands are) have gone through the roof.
#2) Hydraulic fracs are designed (i.e. using computer models) to make sure they fit for purpose - i.e. the fractures produced propagate mainly within the intended zone(s) of interest. Few of the frac chemicals used are particularly toxic; most are benign, but they constitute less than 1% of the fluid used.
#3) Alberta has some of the best drinking water in the world. If your scenario was valid you would think it hard to find clean water here (given that fracs have been done in literally thousands of wells across the province going back 60 years). That simply is not the case.
#4) Here we are back to scenes from Gasland. Although Gasland is pretty much just pure sensationalism, there have been incidents and the industry needs to ackowledge them; make reparations and adjust operating procedures/practices to prevent them from happening again.

I am reminded of that saying, "If you don't believe in something, you'll fall for anything." It seems to me that the "global conspiracy" crowd have taken up such theorizing as a replacement for the supernatural. Methodological naturalism is the underlying and implicit philosophy of science - never attribute anything to supernatural causes. The conspiracy crowd have replaced "God-Did-It" with "BigOil-Did-It" or "Big-Pharma-Did-It".

[BUFFALO]

Just a quick one on James Clerk Maxwell.
(from Wiki):
"Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment created by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell to show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty."
"Several physicists have presented calculations that show that the second law of thermodynamics will not actually be violated, if a more complete analysis is made of the whole system including the demon."
"Real-life versions of Maxwellian demons occur, but all such "real demons" have their entropy-lowering effects duly balanced by increase of entropy elsewhere."

Maxwell's Demon has been built and even has uses within science. It does not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which still stands - you will not find a single main-stream academic within physics or engineering who will claim it has been invalidated.

[James S Saint]

Just a quick one on James Clerk Maxwell.
(from Wiki):
"Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment created by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell to show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty."
"Several physicists have presented calculations that show that the second law of thermodynamics will not actually be violated, if a more complete analysis is made of the whole system including the demon."
"Real-life versions of Maxwellian demons occur, but all such "real demons" have their entropy-lowering effects duly balanced by increase of entropy elsewhere."

Maxwell's Demon has been built and even has uses within science. It does not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which still stands - you will not find a single main-stream academic within physics or engineering who will claim it has been invalidated.

That is like reading Bible script.
The "Second Law of Thermodynamics" was originally written as a LAW that forbid any reverse entropy period of the total system. Maxwell gave them hell about it and used his "thought experiment" as an example of what could defeat what they were calling a LAW thus, it could be stated as a law. They publicly laughed at him and named it "Maxwell's Demon" in an effort to defame him. At that time, they had no way of doing what he proposed could be done. Once technology got more refined, it was accomplished.

But Science by that time was already the new religion not capable of admitting mistakes, everything was a "LAW". After too many "laws" got broken, they eventually promoted that "we really should be calling them theories". Everything that had been stated as a "law" became a "theory" after that - except the "Second Law of Thermodynamics". That SLT was merely reworded, time and time again in an effort to make it legitimate. It finally (after 130 years) came down to being stated as a "TENDENCY" (but still not a theory). And that is how it is stated now. But think about that for a second, how many laws of any kind are stated as a mere tendency? Is it a physical law that women are shorter than men just because there is a tendency for it? I merely refer to it as "The Second Speculation of Thermodynamics" because it was never proven in the first place.

[Calrid]

Just a quick one on James Clerk Maxwell.
(from Wiki):
"Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment created by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell to show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty."
"Several physicists have presented calculations that show that the second law of thermodynamics will not actually be violated, if a more complete analysis is made of the whole system including the demon."
"Real-life versions of Maxwellian demons occur, but all such "real demons" have their entropy-lowering effects duly balanced by increase of entropy elsewhere."

Maxwell's Demon has been built and even has uses within science. It does not violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which still stands - you will not find a single main-stream academic within physics or engineering who will claim it has been invalidated.

That is like reading Bible script.
The "Second Law of Thermodynamics" was originally written as a LAW that forbid any reverse entropy period of the total system. Maxwell gave them hell about it and used his "thought experiment" as an example of what could defeat what they were calling a LAW thus, it could be stated as a law. They publicly laughed at him and named it "Maxwell's Demon" in an effort to defame him. At that time, they had no way of doing what he proposed could be done. Once technology got more refined, it was accomplished.

But Science by that time was already the new religion not capable of admitting mistakes, everything was a "LAW". After too many "laws" got broken, they eventually promoted that "we really should be calling them theories". Everything that had been stated as a "law" became a "theory" after that - except the "Second Law of Thermodynamics". That SLT was merely reworded, time and time again in an effort to make it legitimate. It finally (after 130 years) came down to being stated as a "TENDENCY" (but still not a theory). And that is how it is stated now. But think about that for a second, how many laws of any kind are stated as a mere tendency? Is it a physical law that women are shorter than men just because there is a tendency for it? I merely refer to it as "The Second Speculation of Thermodynamics" because it was never proven in the first place.

Well done you've successfully shown that entropy is full of shit. I'm not sure it's ground breaking, I first came across the idea when talking to a work colleague about of all things black holes, entropy came up as example of philosophical bullshit, along with black holes no one has ever seen and their properties no one has ever measured.

I think it's a good analogy whilst it would be inapt to say black holes don't exist any more than entropy means anything more than statistical waffle. Black holes don't actually exist yet either.

Put it this way a sample thermodynamic equation:



just happens to be derived from Maxwell's equations. It's correct, because it tallies with real world evidence and statistically is pretty spot on.

Entropy, well what the hell is it really? It's a concept about how work gets done, or simply energy works. It has no exact pictoral value because you can't actually show all the atoms in a material and how they behave. So yes it is not a law in the classical sense, and certainly not a law in quantum mechanics. It's only a useful concept if you don't actually mess around too much and stick with variables to derive energy of the statistical kind.

[BUFFALO]

It finally (after 130 years) came down to being stated as a "TENDENCY" (but still not a theory). And that is how it is stated now.

Mr. Saint, would you care to quote a single reference to a thermodynamics textbook or even an article from a reputable science journal that supports the proposition that the 2nd Law has been demoted to a "tendency".

[James S Saint]

So yes it is not a law in the classical sense, and certainly not a law in quantum mechanics. It's only a useful concept if you don't actually mess around too much and stick with variables to derive energy of the statistical kind.

Exactly, and in 1974, I "messed it around". My KD cell rectifies molecular motion without expending energy to do so, thus making useful order out of random chaos. It freezes the air and delivers the energy mechanically.