Talk:Free energy suppression conspiracy theory/Archive 1

Removed reference to libertarians
"Some libertarians and anarchists support the theory based upon the idea that dependence upon expensive energy is perpetuated by governments in order to control the populace by means of hydraulic despotism."

--Explanation--

Whether or not certain far-right extremists who call themselves "libertarian" believe in the suppression of clean/renewable energy technology, the vast majority of those who follow the libertarian model would not see the issue in the same context as anarchists, and thus grouping them together in this specific instance is inappropriate. Libertarians, by definition, would see any suppression of certain energy technologies as merely evidence of interplaying market forces, whereas anarchists would consider the suppression of such technologies as the 'required end result' of human political/social/national processes that inherently require all nations and large institutions to be "evil" (or at the very least left in a moral quandary that requires ill-action).

E.g. whereas the libertarian would merely yawn and say "well obviously" and find very little morally repugnant about the institutional support of fossil/nuclear fuels via "suppression" of clean fuels (indeed, according to the libertarian model, such "suppression" would be a very natural consequence of supply and demand), an anarchist would point to the suppression referred to in this article as specific evidence to support his or her political point of view. As such, grouping them is contextually inappropriate.

A counter argument: A libertarian could be called a type of anarchist who is not morally outraged, and indeed may be encouraged, by what both understand to be the common state of affairs of the geo-political interface between market and government/multi-national-corporations. As such, there is nothing specifically "wrong" with grouping libertarians and anarchists together in their beliefs on clean-energy technology.

However, the edited statement is misleading, as it suggests that there is a common moral complaint between the two belief-systems. That is just not the case. Implications of the term "hydraulic despotism," for example, lends to my argument.

69.137.229.214 13:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)anonymous

Removed nonsense
Removed nonsense:

"Free electrons exist diffusely in all matter, air, and space. All that is needed is a device that can catch these free floating electrons, such as a solar cell. Electron collectors also exist in nature: plants, cold-blooded reptiles, magnets, and water. Theorists point out that energy is free in nature, and so free energy collectors and concentrators must have been invented many times in the past."

- Omegatron 06:50, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * .... well done!   &mdash; Kieff | Talk 08:09, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

explanation put on user's page:

Regarding your free energy edits:

"Zero cost electricity bill - The energy comes from free-floating electrons found everywhere in nature."

"Free electrons exist diffusely in all matter, air, and space. All that is needed is a device that can catch these free floating electrons, such as a solar cell. Electron collectors also exist in nature : plants, cold-blooded reptiles, magnets, and water. Theorists point out that energy is free in nature, and so free energy collectors and concentrators must have been invented many times in the past."


 * 1) Electrons are not energy.  See Electrical energy.
 * 2) If the energy "comes from" the electrons, how is it extracted?
 * 3) Solar cells do not collect free-floating electrons.  They collect light, or electromagnetic radiation, and convert it into a voltage.
 * 4) Even then, "catching electrons" or concentrating them would require an expense of energy, so it wouldn't be "free", would it?

Sorry if I sound mean-spirited. We welcome your contributions, but we'll revert things that are considered "nonsense" by 99.9% of established science. - Omegatron 22:40, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Merge
The article appears to be merged.

Supporters?
I'd find it very interesting to know if there are any supporters of this theory who have some higher education in physics or chemistry. (Or even someone who passed the high-school courses in said subjects.) The best would be if someone could find a publication in favor of the theory in a peer-reviewed paper. (I realize this might be difficult, as the theory is being "supressed" :-) PeR 13:17, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * yeah, it's just internet cranks who think they can make perpetual motion machines. but how do you say that in an NPOV way?  :-)  you won't find it in any peer-reviewed papers, although they base their "theories" on legitimate things like the casimir effect, zero point energy, etc.  they seem to know even less about that stuff than i do, though. - Omegatron 16:53, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)


 * -> Quest for zero point energy : engineering principles for 'free energy' inventions / Moray B. King. Kempton, Ill. : Adventures Unlimited ; Provo, UT : published in association with Paraclete Publishing, c2001.  03:49, 8-7-06 (UTC)

Cleanup issues
I agree that this article is subject to some scientific and bias-related issues. To this end, I have, at present, edited the introduction and 'free energy utopia' sections. Further edits will follow when I have the time. I'd really appreciate some assistance in cleaning up this article.--ChrisJMoor 04:26, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Support from environmentalists?
I have perused large volumes of information from environmentalists and this is the first I have heard of the concept of "free energy". The article needs to indicate the low level of support that this theory has. Alan Liefting 08:03, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Over-unity devices
To balance the all criticism that originates mostly from trained scientific thinking the free energy inventors state the following:

Over-unity (OU) is the process where the output energy exceeds the input power. In heat pump you usually provide 1 part of electricity to transport 3-5 parts of heat energy into your house for example. The energy is transformed from the ambient temperature differences. What (trained) critics fail to see that all the over-unity devices are similar to heat pumps but not perpetual motion machines. Many of the systems do not actually violate the law of conversation of energy if you look on the system from the bigger picture (out of the box thinking). The most close to describing these systems are the ether (aether) physicists.

By definition the over-unity is the transformation of energy from some source - ambient (electron spin, thermal component), cold fusion, from the process called stochastic resonance, or from the ZPE (zero point) field to name a few.

There are many inventions Rex-research that employ the process described above or some physical anomaly. Some examples:

Electrical systems when transformation energy from coil to the load tend to cool down. Diesel engines converted to water steam detonation have the ice exhaust 50C lower the input (requires water above 27C) - yes you can convert a diesel car to run on water, some systems use antenna to receive the ambient energy through resonance, some systems use the certain anomalous type of Radiant Energy (used by Tesla, Moray) that manifests during perfectly tuned resonance. Radiant energy is sometimes called the cold energy and has strange behaviour against to known type of electricity.

Many systems that are in resonance (having relatively high resonance Q) are actually said to be over-unity. In reality those systems are made under-unity by using those devices in an impedance mismatch mode: like running three phase motors from a single phase using the capacitor to create the 3rd phase at nominal voltage is a waste. By using approximately 1/4 of nominal rated voltage level for the same setup and a capacitor (tuned to amperage minimum for the specific load) the energy transformation phenomenon appears on most motors (impedance match, efficiency goes very high) and that has been proven by many scientists and other replicators in the world (known as roto-conversion where 90% of energy is not lost using ordinary 3 phase motors). Energy originates in those systems from stochastic resonance and electron spin.

Weird text
Most of the article is pretty good, describing the various issues in a NPOV manner. That is, until it gets to the section called "Over-unity devices" (above). Can anyone defend this text? I think it should all be removed because it is unsourced gobboldegook. www.rexresearch.com is a compendium of pseudo-scientific claims worthy of Art Bell. I can't find even these exact instances there among the hundreds of articles. So unless anyone thinks this text is worthwhile or can be fixed, I'll remove it. (Or is it meant to show how silly these theories are? Even so, it'd be POV.) -Willmcw 09:39, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * It probably needs to be removed. I'm fairly sure it's provably impossible to harvest energy from electron spin.  Pakaran 15:23, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * The text looks fine to me. It accurately describes the conspiracy theory.   Don't forget that WP is not in the business of concealing myths or popular errors, it's in the business of describing them accurately.  If someone wants to debunk the claims of "free energy" inventors, first they need to avoid the straw-man fallacy by accurately describing the claims being debunked. --Wjbeaty 03:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned up for generally improved readibility
I improved the flow and readability.

No deletion edits were made, but some changes were made within "quoted" passages in the Over-unity Section. Quoted is in quotes because these passages are hardly quotable; there's too much jargon in them with no explanation for it--and they don't have posted sources, either. They should be simply set off as blockquote sections, but also need to be very looked over for accuracy. They need to have the sources shown. I see a lot of inaccuracies, but I'm not going to go way off and rewrite the passages entirely.

There is opinion in here that undermines the neutrality of the article. These appear mainly as paragraphs that try to put forth a defense for the topic but make the individual areas of the credibility debate themselves appear to be paranoid--that's not fair.

And I just don't think this topic is a conspiracy theory. It's simply an unorthodox area of science. It's not pseudoscience either, in other words. It's just theory. No theory is ever true; it's only as good as it gets until something better is discovered.

--Chiltep

Well, there's already a section on perpetual motion which discusses some of the science issues. The free energy community is definitely better characterized by "conspiracy theory" than by "pseudoscience"---for the most part, they're not engaged in arcane physics theories, they're *recounting* Nikola Tesla's arcane physics theories. -Ben

Calling magic science doesn't make it science. Reading this talk page is depressing.

Compromise
I was wondering if anyone thinks there may be some truth to the story. Could it be that more fuelefficient engines are suppressed? Considering the fact that US build cars are clearly less fuel efficient than European or Asian cars. They have even became less efficient in the passed decade. It would suggest that American industry does not use the optimal technology. Secondly, there is a competition worldwide for building fuelefficient cars driving hundreds of miles on ONE liter of gas. These are highly evolved vehicles and in no way resemble ordinary cars, yet doesn't it seem strange that with such extremely efficient projects, industry would be unable to come up with an engine doing 30 km on one liter? --Nomen Nescio 04:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Nope. Nobody, no businessman in right mind suppress new potentially great product. They will use product as fast as possible to outsale competitors, drive them out of business and collect huge pile of money in bank account. Conspirologists fail to understand how science, technology, industry and business works.

AHA! I BELIEVE THE ABOVE TEXT SHOULD BE DISPLAYED IN THE MAIN ARTICLE BECAUSE IT CLEARLY ILLUSTRATES THE (RATHER NAIVE) PRO-INDUSTRY BIAS FROM WHICH IT IS WRITTEN.

I'm not so sure we should. that. After a while, you begin to wonder whether or not someone with such good spelling and punctuation would so blatantly go to far lengths to point out his bad grammar. I just got this bad feeling that this is some guy trying to pass himself off as an average joe, to get his opinions across without people thinking hes just saying what he is to defend his corporation. Or I could just be an idiot. Either way, we should just ignore it.


 * American industry actually use nearly optimal technology, just demand for fuel-eficient cars are low in US. American drivers respond to fuel saving technologies just buing more SUVs and vans.
 * Nice CNN article on topic:
 * http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/01/Autos/fuel_efficiency_trends/
 * --Eduardas 13:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the link. Interesting. Still, you contradict yourself. No bussinessman would suppress technology. But the fact that suboptimal technology is used in the US you explain by saying, there is no demand. If the technology is there, it will be used: that is what youy said. Didn't you? You are saying exactly what I am suggesting: it won't be used untill people ask for it. This is not a conspiracy but good bussiness.--Nomen Nescio 23:12, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Some misunderstanding. Technology used in U.S. car industry are not 'suboptimal' and not really different from European or Asian technology. All companies (american, european, asian) can build high-fuel-efficient cars AND powerfull luxury high-fuel-consuming cars. Just average american consumer preferences are different. Most americans prefer powerfull comfortable cars (SUVs for example), many europeans prefer less powerfull fuel efficient cars. --Eduardas 10:25, 26 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually American manufacturer's indeed have been very lazy in creating real innovations and doing real fresh research. During the 1990s in USA the SUVs became hughely popular (they still are). American SUVs are built on very old construction: steel frame, stiff rear axles etc. - these construction come straight from rugged pick up trucks and have their pros. Yet no higher research and development were needed in developing these cars.
 * The typical american v8 is structurally very close to the chevy small block designed in 1950s. Pushrod engines are hard to find in any new cars manufactured outside USA (well is sort of mean Mexico). In Europe the fuel is highly taxed and while the gas in US is now around 3.20-3.50$/gallon in Europe over 6-7$/gallon has been common for quite some time already.
 * Obviously higher gas prices have created an environment where there higher need for efficiency. Typical computer controlled turbo diesels get mileage similar to hybrids and they have been around for years now.
 * AMerican manufacturers have wasted all the money the got from their cheap to produce leather interiored pick up trucks (SUVs) - failing to use those profits to prepare to the future needs is the probelm they have to deal with now.
 * There is no conspiracies here - just short sighted business - instead of investing in new technology the choice have been to cash from existing. Worked fine during the cheap gas 90s - now the trend is changing.
 * Direct injection, variable valve timing, hybrid technology etc. recent iprovements are all coming from overseas.

24.126.242.195 05:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)Kerosene

Mass-energy
Last time, when I edited this page, I was going to write a rant here about the poor science I'd replaced. Instead, I edited the page and left it at that. Now my science gets "corrected", by an anonymous IP editor. I'll try and explain (without losing my temper, if possible) why what I wrote is correct, relevant, and strong.

It's correct. Ok, so you burn a lump of coal and you get heat energy. Yes, that's a "chemical" reaction, but where's the energy coming from? The answer is simple: as chemical bonds are being broken and re-made, energy is released. Those bonds contributed towards the mass of the lump of coal, and the new ones will also contribute. Therefore, when you burn your lump of coal, the mass of the (coal + smoke + other material emissions) decreases. Only very slightly, and it's probably immeasurably tiny, but it will decrease. Nature laughs at our puny attempts to box reactions as "chemical" or "nuclear". To her, they're all energy.

It's relevant. The point is that mass-energy conversion occurs in all power stations which have fuel inputs, not just nuclear ones. And not just limited to power stations, either, but also people eating food and converting that to energy to live and move and have our being.

It's strong. The criticism is that we already convert matter to energy, it's just that we can't do it with a high efficiency or in large quantities. And that criticism is made strongest by pointing out that it happens everywhere; particularly that it happens in all fuelled power stations. Which is what I've made the article to say. Any change should be in the direction of expanding the scope of the mass-energy conversion's occurrence, not reducing it. Wooster (talk) 10:05, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Edits by the Tele2 Norge anon
(Tele2 Norge AS. Dynamic IP pool near Oslo) added this:

"The experiments have been replicated by several researchers, with openly publicized experimental data and setup details. The most renowned researcher in this field is the now deceased Dr. Eugene Mallove."

I reverted this because the reference to jlnlabs.imars.com (a website in Sweden) appears to refer to fringe physicist Jean-Louis Naudin, who is notorious for promoting alleged over-unity devices (see perpetual motion machine). The Eugene Mallove link goes to peswiki.com, Pure Energy Systems Wiki, which also promotes perpetual motion devices and free (as in no cost) energy.

Tele2 Norge, I see you read WP:CITE but please see WP:RS. TIA ---CH 07:23, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

This is innacurate
"Over-unity (OU) is the process by which output energy exceeds input power required to produce it. OU advocates distinguish this from "perpetual motion" (and avoid a violation of the law of conservation of energy) by saying that the extra energy is extracted from some infinite, invisible reservoir, such as the "zero-point energy field". However, to date there is no credible theory or experiment showing that such a reservoir exists."

Mainly the last statement. This resevoir is everywhere. Zero-point energy exists, and it might hypothetically be possible to utilize, but beyond that I can come up with limitless examples of energy sources that could hypothically be exploited for the purposes of OU.

Everytime people walk around, they heat up the ground they walk on, a sterling engine could in theory use the temperature differenced as a source of energy. For that matter one could imagine a sterling engine that had its heat source at the equator, and its heat sink at the north pole. This engine would run on an "infinite, invisible resevoir" For that matter windmills and watermills are OU devices. The difference is that the people claiming to have invented OU devices, say they have new sources that produce even more power. Tesla's invention (if it actually worked) would have been such a device, and seems to be based on a resasonable idea of collecting atmospheric energy (ala lightning bolts).

I think most of the free energy people are crack-pots, (I remain open to the idea that there might be a few who have really come across something), but regardless either this statement is off, or my understanding of OU is off.


 * Take away the "infinite, invisible" part, and you're going somewhere. Something that extracts energy from an unknown or undiscovered source.  Otherwise it's just crackpottery. — Omegatron 14:44, 14 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The anonymous poster above amply demonstrates a major difficulty with insufficiently educated people attempting to understand scientific concepts. They often seem to believe that "unseen" means "undetectable", when a great deal of modern science — the stuff that's proven itself by making 100 years of incredible technology possible — is based on unseeable things like electromagnetism, quantum physics, nuclear processes, and DNA. (By contrast, no "crackpot" idea not eventually backed up by scientific proof has ever remade our view of the world like any true scientific discovery has.) This confusing of popular meanings of words with their scientific meanings crops up everywhere and signficantly distorts debates on science. (Consider how lay people fail to understand what science means by "theory". To most, "theory" means "an unproven idea", but for a scentist it means "a explanation of the natural world that has substantial proof obtained through rigorous observation and experimentation" — not even close to the same thing.) People without a scientific education (or those who have forgotten theirs) should be very careful in making these kinds of arguments, lest they open themselves to withering criticism over their misunderstandings. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:52, 21 August 2006 (UTC)