[quote]BackForMore wrote:
If you are able to devise a way to “produce more energy than you put into it” you will be very wealthy indeed though the USPTO will summarily reject your patent applications since they do not recognize claims to perpetual motion machines / systems. Such schemes violate the basic laws of thermodynamics and therefore cannot exist. [/quote]
If you can prove that it works, and the application complies with the law, the USPTO has to grant the patent.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
BackForMore wrote:
If you are able to devise a way to “produce more energy than you put into it” you will be very wealthy indeed though the USPTO will summarily reject your patent applications since they do not recognize claims to perpetual motion machines / systems. Such schemes violate the basic laws of thermodynamics and therefore cannot exist.
If you can prove that it works, and the application complies with the law, the USPTO has to grant the patent.
Just a little nitpick.[/quote]
Um, the US did patent a motor. Not so sure it is a perpetual. Still, though?
The problem is the intial source of energy or the turn over/start up energy source. The problem also, is out put. How big of an object can be moved.
Of course, if we could fly using the Ion Theroy it would be great but still would have to have an energy start up source. Does a prepetual motor work in the vaccum of space?
The link to Howard Johnson’s motor (gotta love the name)
[quote]58buggs wrote:
Um, the US did patent a motor. Not so sure it is a perpetual. Still, though?
[/quote]
Occasionally you will see an article in the newspaper or in a magazine that lists “bad patents” that have issued from the PTO. Every once in a while, something slips through the cracks.
My point was that you can patent a perpetual motion machine, as long as you can prove that it really is a perpetual motion machine.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
BackForMore wrote:
If you are able to devise a way to “produce more energy than you put into it” you will be very wealthy indeed though the USPTO will summarily reject your patent applications since they do not recognize claims to perpetual motion machines / systems. Such schemes violate the basic laws of thermodynamics and therefore cannot exist.
If you can prove that it works, and the application complies with the law, the USPTO has to grant the patent.
Just a little nitpick.[/quote]
While your assertion is true it does not contradict my statement. There does exist a policy within the USPTO to reject all applications that attempt to claim perpetual motion machines, hence my use of the phrase “summarily reject” as that is precisely what will happen. Of course upon being notified of said rejection the inventor is free to argue the merits of his invention but since inventions that produce more energy than they consume violate the basic laws of physics this will be an uphill battle.
[quote]Majin wrote:
That’s because electricity costs so much less these days. But with less oil, coal prices will also go up, along with natural gas. And, in turn, electric power will cost much more as well. Not to mention that demand is constantly increasing. That’s what our whole economy is based on. We’re gonna take a hit one way or another. Soon enough we will not be able to provide enough for the demands placed at affordable prices.[/quote]
Yes, I’ve heard this argument before though I still fail to see any merit in it. Trading a certain amount of a cheaper (read “less socially useful”) form of energy for the same amount of energy in a more valuable (read “more socially useful”) form is a good thing. Arguing that certain hydrocarbon deposits should not be produced on EROEI grounds is just silly since the market will always determine the utility of their production. If the venture is successful, production from the new source enters the market and has a net positive impact for consumers; if the venture fails the knowledge of its failure enters to industry and yields a net positive benefit in the form of experience. Allowing the venture to proceed is a win/win proposition despite what the hydrocarbon Luddites might say about the matter.
[quote]Majin wrote:
This is the same argument. You’re assuming that there’s always an unlimited cheap electric power source to convert hydrocarbons into usable fuel.[/quote]
Not at all. I’ve suggested that such energy arbitrages might exist in the market (they do and always will), have suggested that over time the market will find and remove them (your assertion immediately above), and have implicitly assumed that by the time this comes to pass other arbitrages will arise or new energy storage media will have surpassed those we rely upon today.
[quote]Majin wrote:
I’m a proponent of trying to advance breeder and mixed oxide reactors, but so far everyone in Europe shut theirs down and Russia is the only one still trying something. Hopefully these things will eventually fly.[/quote]
Again: they work just fine, they aren’t in widespread use because it’s cheaper (economically and politically) to simply mine and refine uranium than to breed new fuel in breeder reactors. Their day is coming but not in my lifetime.
[quote]ElbowStrike wrote:
Excellent. Then to recuperate some of the costs, the government should take a share in the profits from the use of the patents resulting from their subsidies.
The revenue going to further subsidies of technology. Eventually run the entire program without tax dollars, but with a self-maintaining, arms-length trust-fund administered by the gov’t.[/quote]
As to the first bit: yes, absolutely … and that’s roughly how it works. When the US government funds research they typically either take ownership of or take an ownership share in the intellectual properties that result. However where government is playing a proper role it is likely that the research they fund is so far from commercialization that their patents will be long expired before products come to market. That’s not universally true by any means but it is the point where governemnt can best speed progress while staying out of the way of private industry.
As to the second bit, I disagree. The government has no place setting up industries that compete with or seek to supplant those in the private sector, that way lies an inefficient, bureaucratic, centrally-planned economy that can only bring progress to a screeching halt as politicians rather than entrepreneurs and businessmen determine what will be built and how that will be accomplished. The world has already tried that, it doesn’t work well.
[quote]ElbowStrike wrote:
I’d like to see governments take any revenue resulting from renewable resources (hydro, geothermal, solar, wind, etc.) completely off the tax rolls. It makes the industry more profitable, stimulates further growth, and creates a competitive incentive to produce more profitable (read: more efficient) technologies in that area.[/quote]
I couldn’t disagree more. Governemnt shouldn’t be in the business of choosing among alternatives in the market. When it meddles in the markets we get things like the “15 by 20” ethanol fiasco that has chosen perhaps the poorest alternative and which has already had massive unintended consequences in the form of skyrocketing grain / food prices. The US government is simply too big to choose winners in the markets without creating massive waves of painful unintended consequences.
[quote]BackForMore wrote:
Trading a certain amount of a cheaper (read “less socially useful”) form of energy for the same amount of energy in a more valuable (read “more socially useful”) form is a good thing.[/quote]
It’s a good thing, but there’s not even the slightest guarantee that we’ll be getting a 1:1 and it’s silly to assume that whatever the costs end up being, the market will ‘just take care of it’.
I never said not to proceed with production, but to quit acting like there will be enough for everyone and pretending that this is just an economic swing.
Unconventional oil production blows ass so far, and the decline of light crude will pull most other sources with it into large price increases.