How About No More Electric Boats?

Wow, that sums it all up right there.

 

What? So in 500 years and all petrochemicals are gone; mankind needs to revert to dung burning for heat?

 

It is far worse. The idea that all 'green' technologies are bad happens when some little girl on the left suggests otherwise.

Frankly, laughable.

I'm still waiting for the gas pill and the hydrogen combustion engine !!!

I live a mile from perhaps the highest producing gasoline plant in the US. Those two-3 guys made a ton of money.

 

All those darn liberals, teaching folks how to read, what were they thinking?

 

Care to share your sources on those numbers?
If the cowboy made a dollar a day plus room and board, it means that the whole dollar was disposable income, to be spent on a gun or buying gold. In a 4 week month he would make 24$, so he had some money not only for the gun, but also for whiskey. If your gold equivalence is true, the modern cowboy needs 2000$/month disposable income to afford the same. The solid middle class foreman of today needs to earn 500-1000$ per day to equal his ancestor. Wich foreman earns enough to buy an ounce of gold every two days from his wages? That would be around 210 000$ net per year by my calculation.

Yes, there was a time when a blue collar worker could earn enough for wife, kids, 2 cars and a suburban house, but as I said, that was a favorable conjunction after WW2. It's gone and it won't come back, and people need to understand that is was a freak accident. It's like discovering oil on your land, you make a lot of money as long as it flows, when it stops its over. You can try blaming god for it, but it helps as much as blaming the government because the chinese make a cheaper product.

 

I have to wonder about fuel cells.If you can capture the water vapour,they could be good.I used to think they were automatically a good thing until I talked to a just retired environmental scientist who informed me that both methane and water vapour are bigger problems than CO2.I have seen an experimental trimaran which was solely driven by a combination of solar panels and wind generators that charged batteries,it might not be the answer to all boating challenges but it worked and somebody is doing the pioneering work that we might all be able to benefit from.

 

They have been discovered a long time ago. De Beers controls the market to keep the prices up.

 

There are a number of interesting sounding energy technologies being looked at. Most equate to conversion to electricity in order to use that energy. A few can tap into the heat and use that to convert it to motion, such as steam engine technology (the basic technology that nuclear power plants is to turn their turbines). I checked out a few sites talking about Frenette friction heaters. The concept, whether it does what is claimed, or not, would create usable heat.
Eugene Frenette / Eugene Perkins: Friction Heater (US Patent # 4,134,639, etc.) http://www.rexresearch.com/frenette/frenette.htm. The question is, how best to turn it.

As for the economy, it is a state of mind in the social group brain. There is nothing about the price of anything that exists independent of the willingness and ability of the group to either work hard enough to sell it at that price or buy it at that price. Any change in the amount of hours of work it takes to buy a staple item to live on will eventually be offset by a need to change what one charges for that hour of labor. At the point that prices get beyond reach of the potential customer, the product loses value. Something that can't be sold is worthless.

 

DeBeers makes me wonder if there really is such a thing as a free market in many other products, where there is not some kind of an imposed but dreaded regulation?

 

Hopefully methane leaks can be kept to a minimum on the fuel side, for FC. There is still quite a bit of tweaking to be done to get fuel cells at their Optimum in non space travel apps . Water is a beneficial by product for the NASA version when used in a Space Capsule, I would guess. Cows seem to be a big source of methane pollution, so maybe special absorbing cow diapers and/ or masks will be forthcoming, ha, ha?

 

Wireless power transfer - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer
"Wireless high power transmission using microwaves is well proven. Experiments in the tens of kilowatts have been performed at Goldstone in California in 1975[79][80][81] and more recently (1997) at Grand Bassin on Reunion Island.[82] These methods achieve distances on the order of a kilometer."

"A rectenna may be used to convert the microwave energy back into electricity. Rectenna conversion efficiencies exceeding 95% have been realized."

Maglev - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev
"Maglev vehicles have set several speed records and maglev trains can accelerate and decelerate much faster than conventional trains; the only practical limitation is the safety and comfort of the passengers."

A step closer to sustainable energy from seawater https://phys.org/news/2018-08-closer-sustainable-energy-seawater.html
"The research group led by Leiden chemist Marc Koper has discovered a catalyst that minimizes the production of chlorine gas during salt water electrolysis. The invention can enable the direct production of hydrogen from seawater."

Scientists Create Energy By Repelling Saltwater From A Charged Surface – Intelligent Living https://www.intelligentliving.co/amp/energy-repelling-saltwater-charged-surface/
"Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a way to generate an electric voltage from a super-hydrophobic surface and saltwater. ... The charged surface is super water repellent and causes water to run over it much more quickly, allowing the water-electrolyte to gain a charge."

"“It doesn’t have to be saltwater, maybe there is wastewater that contains ions. As long as there are ions in the liquid, one can use this scheme for generating voltage.” Other scientists have noted that if this works, it could also be a breakthrough in future battery technology."

Yes in deed, there are some very interesting technologies being looked at.

Imagine a boat, such as a ferry, running on electric power beamed to them en route instead of having to carry batteries. With their movement through or over the water, they may be able to pickup electrons from the water surface, induce more power and even create a super-hydrophobic surface to help them travel with less friction, like a maglev train.

Clearly we are not there yet, but can one truly say we can't be there? Certainly, to get to a place like that, we would have to keep exploring the field of EMVs.

 

I don't see wireless power transfer getting an easy ride.Not because of insurmountable technical problems but because of perceptions among some sections of the community.We had years of scare stories about the "risks" from phone towers and even the likelihood of starting a conflagration by using a phone while refuelling a car.This,of course, involves a device emitting less energy than an average lightbulb.The elements of what might loosely be called consumer affairs reporting boosted this potential risk into an issue that raised their profile and increased their activity.I don't suppose too many of them have ever looked at a starter motor cranking and all the sparking within......

 

So true. Yet here we are, a cell phone in every hand with towers on every continent. At this point, even if a definitive study came out proving some small percentage of users got cancer from their cell phone use, it wouldn't be easy prying their cell phones out of their hands.

 

Sorry, but one of the places I'd never want to be is in the path of a focused microwave beam that's carrying enough power to move a vehicle. My brother was a fire control officer in the Navy, and talked about how they amused themselves using the missile-tracking radar to cook seagulls out of the air.

 

It sounds like a bad idea to expose oneself to a focused microwave beam. However, it demonstrates the possibilities of power transmission. The receiver is the other side of that equation and gathering energy from radiation is what radio antenna, satellite dishes, photovoltaic cells and induction coils do. It may not, in the future, require either the wavelength or the focus of microwave beams to accomplish useful work at that level. One must not put aside a technological avenue of exploration because the door seems closed today. Often, the opening of such doors takes the right preconditions and the insight to see it.