[Greenbuilding] Greenbuilding Digest, Vol 11, Issue 13

[Keith Winston]

>
> From: Carmine Vasile <gfx-ch at msn.com>
>
> Nick: It's not just a "metal plate clamped onto the pipe"; it's an
> ultrasonic resonator that extracts energy from running water. It takes a
> while to begin working and will NOT "cost you heat energy" either.   Before
> you condemn an invention you should do some homework. Carmine
>

I think Nick's point about costing heat energy has to do with the heat
dissipation of adding a fin to a tube. But in any case, if it "extracts"
energy from running water, something happens: either the water gets colder,
or there is greater resistance to flow in the pipe, as far as I can tell.
But I've never seen anything that operates anything like this: resonators
generally require very specific flow rates or frequencies that they are
tuned to (i.e. the Takoma Narrows bridge bounced around for months before
the conditions became perfect for it's destruction). This device doesn't
specify anything about the flow rate. It also doesn't actually enter the
water (that would open up regulatory cans of worms, no doubt), so where does
this energy come from and how is it extracted? Why don't we use this
incredible energy extraction technology to solve the worlds' energy
problems? You say "do some homework", but I can't figure out the homework to
do? There's no there there.

One of the prominent features of humans is our ability to lie, including
(and perhaps especially) to ourselves. One of the major advances/results of
the development of science was to try to  provide a means for detecting and
controlling our fabrications and exaggerations... even when we believe them.
Our scientific understanding is always limited, so maybe this device is
pushing the frontier, and it does something that we don't understand and
can't properly explain. But that's not what I see: instead I see
science-like mumbo-jumbo that is self-contradictory and meaningless. Which
speaks to me of purposeful misleading. No independent testing, no
peer-reviewed articles... Not even an honest "we don't underrstand how the
hell this thing works, but it's amazing" (hint: that probably doesn't sell
too many doo-hickeys).

The green technology field is full of hand-waving empty promises, and  they
can severely undermine the confidence people have in new technologies. But
I'm probably raging pointlessly here: this is as old as human society. And
maybe undermined confidence is a good thing: the problem here is not that
people lie, but that people don't question.

Keith
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