If only Beth knew Carnot
The Gang Green movement is built around articles nearly identical to this one. The author is usually cute as a pixie, but like many if not most Gang Greenies, I think they have mechanical IQs that allow them to do little more than look under the hood.
http://www.earthtechling.com/2012/11/compressed-air-motorcycle-breaks-80-mph-with-ease/
As we (DIYers) know, compressing air is full of heavy losses, we generate a lot of heat in the process, and we know making that heat costs us dearly. But this is only part of the many problems with compressing gases as an energy source.
Now.. before we analyze Beth’s article, we read the ‘About the Author’, we note what she often writes and who she writes for, and I think she might be a good example of my theory… ‘There are a lot of people out there who desperately want to believe in Fairy Dust.’ I am left to ask.. does Beth get paid well to deceive others, or does she deceive herself as well? Does she ever ponder even for a moment and ask, “if this were true, why wouldn’t they be everywhere?”
That bit about no infrastructure to pump air, who wouldn’t ask.. just how much trouble is it to pump air? As a Father I wonder.. does her Father ever wonder about what she writes? A Father’s question might be, “Dear Daughter, do you ever question the wisdom of those who lead your parade?”
Don’t you love the Air Powered Car, and do note the mention of it under Beth’s article….. they say it’s ready to go into production and that’s been the case for 10 years for the car shown, but there have been others for the last 100 years. A Greenie will never ask, and my theory is… ‘to doubt the Gang Green stories is like admitting their God is dead.’
GB
i can’t remember to whom to credit the following
“if there were no God, man would have to create one”
no truer words have ever been spoken!
how convenient it would be to deny the existence of God and create one that mandates what you believe in!
how nice it must be to view the “ten commandments” as the “ten suggestions”
the left “gang green” bunch seem to be devoid of God so is it any wonder they deify and anoint those that believe or promote their beliefs.
that must be so nice for them, never having to bow to anyone or anything, never having to admit there is something bigger than they are.
when one places man at the center of the universe, with everyone and everything orbiting himself, he is deluding himself…
so it follows those of that ilk would fall for every snake oil salesman that comes down the pike.
i guess when you place yourself at the center of everything, you have no use for history, or the future, just today… and you are left to reinvent the wheel over and over again.
einstein said it best
“the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result”
how many air cars, air motorcycles, air whatever must we see paraded about? likely many from no till the end of time.
George:
do you remember what our friend mr. thoreau said of the village idiot in “walden” ?
ignorance is bliss?
those gang greenies must be some of the most blissfully insane folks that ever walked the planet
bob g
Bob,
It’s the cocksure attitude that gives them away, there is no need to think about their course, they are sure of it!
I reflect on a conversation I found the other day, the paragliding community very upset that one maniac was all it took to shut all Para gliders out of a flying spot, and among those para gliders are those who are cocksure that other sportsmen have no right to their sports!
Yes, there are PGers that know sportsmen don’t need guns of certain kinds or colors, they know that no one needs more than six rounds, and yet they think everyone will agree, they have a right to fly! They can’t grasp the fact that there’s many people who would take their gliders in order to make a shelter for the poor, what right do they have to fly when others are going hungry? And now.. they want a motorized paraglider?
PGers are likely to destroy their own sport, they’ll impose rules on themselves and invent their own collapse unless they wake up soon, it’s certainly not all of them, but enough.
Lots of HOT AIR around Washington. If we could just figure out how to tap its thermal energy it would be Like a perpetual motion machine
I don’t know, George. I read the article and I think the compressed air power system has some merit. But I’d REALLY like to see a motorcycle run 60 miles on a single SCUBA tank. That’s really optimistic! I forgot the equation that one uses to determine the energy content represented by a 72 cu. ft of room temperature air at 2500 psi. I recall it involved some simple calculus which I had to know once, then never used again.
But seriously, the concept of using expanding compressed air to power an engine seems to me like it could be a viable idea. The only problem is, as the article pointed out, it takes power to compress the air in the first place. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is a cold-hearted b_tch!
How ’bout getting around that by making your own compressed air? Duct some air into the cylinder of your engine, bleed in a little hydrocarbon vapor, compress the mixture, ignite it and you instantly have a high pressure mixture of hot CO2 and H2O, both of which are components of the atmosphere, and therefore can be called “air” to drive the piston, turning the rear wheel. You don’t need to carry a cylinder of air to propel the vehicle, just a little concentrated hydrocarbon which stores lots more energy per unit volume than does a SCUBA tank. Use a hydrocarbon with a long enough chain that it remains liquid at ambient temperature, say 6 – 15 carbon units long, and you’re in business! I’m told the stuff can be pumped right out of the ground in some places.
I don’t know what it is about these tree-hugging greenies like your friend Beth. Seems they’re looking for a complicated solution to a simple problem.
q.
Whoa. I have other concerns like quality control in the manufacture of pressure vessels rated to ‘hold’ at 2500 psi while strapped to a shaking, vibrating frame which also has the (although slight) potential of plowing into another vehicle or light pole! If the crash doesn’t do in the ‘driver’ the shrapnel resulting from the rapid escape of compressed air from the ruptured pressure vessel will … (there is a reason ‘pressure tests’ are performed on vessels/tanks using a non-compressable liquid!)
Good luck with that, Beth!
_Jim
PS. The picture of the bike looks to be a *toy bike* posed in a garage with the toy bike set just _inches_ from the camera while the garage wall is proportionally MUCH further away (giving the mistaken visual impression the bike is ‘normal’ sized)! She may have been ‘taken in’ (punked) by a friend (or foe?)
I think we need distill it down:
The Gang Green mind has the ability to make all things simple. It’s a great gift they think they have, and for some reason they think we deniers burden ourselves with unnecessary details.
It really is a sickness, an inability to think on their own.
Yes, just like other magic tricks, the magic man holds up the ‘free air’ for you to focus on. Those who are capable of minor acts of critical thought know that it is about the energy to put the air in the tank, and what work can be done by that compressed air? It’s all so easy to measure, and it has been understood as a big loser for even those school kids that were fully awake in eight grade science class. At least in my days.
I have written about Amonix, an expensive overly complex system promoted by our DOE. A seasoned auto mechanic could write 300 pages of why the system would never compete with existing systems on a cost per KWH basis. Just like Beth Bucknaked, focused on the ‘free air, the DOE was focused on cell efficiency. It is exactly the same issue as per the way I see it, and those who are forced to think for a living know that it is all about total costs to produce a KWH through the meter. Imagine a PV cell failing in the first two years, what is the cost of replacement, and how many did fail? Perhaps we compare the performance of solar PV power plant? NO! reality is far too boring for the Average Person..
Don’t expect Beth or the DOE to write about such things, reality has little to do with their mission as they see it.
Quinn,
It’s pretty amazing what percentage of articles posted on Gang Greenie sites are written by people just like Beth. I bet she’s been on a lot of snipe hunts..
These Idiots never cease to bemuse me.
They are always looking for the magic bullet and overlooking the fact that the most efficient, practical energy source available right now is the one being used.
Petroleum.
Sure it’s a long way from being perfect but it’s a lot closer to perfect than all their other tunnel visioned ideas. They seem to think that because something nasty doesn’t come out of the tail pipe, then a vehicle has no emissions at all.
I guess if you can believe that then you would see no problem with hooking a compressor to the compressed air engine and using it to replace the air used and running like that forever.
Maybe the greenwashed could put a windmill on the roof og the car and use that to compress more air as they drive along?
The only scary part about such sarcasm is the knowledge if you did try to flog such idiotic ideas to the greenwashed sooner or later someone would pat you on the back, call you a genius and give you a write up telling the world of the latest breakthrough in vehicle propulsion and emissions reductions.
The electric/ Biodiesel/ hydrogen/ algae brainwashed are all the same.
Don’t worry about the mountain of reaking shite out behind the back shed or the fact you put 30 Kw in to get one out, as long as the daisies in the front garden are blooming everything must smell like roses.
As with this case of ignorance, the rest are all the same.
So busy trying to invent a new wheel, they miss the fact the current one is round and come up with an octagonal one claiming it’s better than the current one they seem to think is square.
I had a person tell me about putting small wind mills all over his car, and then he’d drive the car via an electric motor, he didn’t have a clue as to why it might not work. But you only need listen, the gang greenie is invested in his religion, He’s already fully committed… the time to think is far behind him.
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