BREAKING NEWS: 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Still Applies
Popular Mechanics and NBC’s Dateline have produced a story that looks at various devices that purport to improve fuel efficiency by allowing your car to run on water. Shockingly, they’re frauds. All of them.
The theory behind all these devices is that your car can run a generator which then produces electricity to split water molecules into two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen through electrolysis, which are then fed back into the intake manifold and recombined in the combustion chamber of your car’s engine.
Anyone even tangentially familiar with basic scientific concepts should know this won’t work. Even if there weren’t losses in conversion from different energy types–mechanical to electrical, electrical to chemical, and chemical to mechanical–as well as the loss of energy through friction and electrical resistance, the energy required to break the bond between the three atoms that comprise water is definitionally greater than that produced by recombining them back into water. Were this not the case, a single drop of H2O could provide the world with infinite amounts of renewable power.
That these kinds of contraptions have enjoyed such a popular following for so long among otherwise intelligent individuals should be surprising–unless you also consider that well-respected economists have their own version of a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the economic edition, a dollar taken from the productive part of the economy is spent instead by the unproductive part, which through the magic of a “multiplier effect” produces more money than was originally in the system at the start. It’s bupiks. For were it true, if one tax dollar spent by the government added more than one dollar to the economy, then one hundred trillion dollars would have an even greater effect. But, still, people, even Nobel laureates, believe it.
Whether it’s fiscal or fuel, you can’t get something from nothing. And the bitter clingers who delude people into believing otherwise are going to run our economic engine into the ground.
(ht:GR)
March 30th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Econ 201: The Myth of the Economic Multiplier
A direct examination shows that money is used for transactions. Money and goods are repeatedly exchanged, but extra production is not “stimulated”. Only the original production that earned the money is created, then it is traded. The multiplier is 1.
Excerpt:
The appearance of 6 rolls at the table is new value appearing in the dinner table economy. The wave of spending and re-spending sends value around the table. The Economic Value approach sees 6 rolls of spending, followed by a wave of 5+4+3+2+1 of re-spending, for a total of 21 rolls of Economic Value, and a 3.5 Economic Multiplier (3.5 x 6 = 21).
But there are only 6 rolls. The re-spending distributes the rolls; it doesn’t create more rolls. The real value of 6 rolls is overcounted by looking at the roll-passing transactions.
/Excerpt
Some researchers find economic multipliers by looking at production and GDP statistics. They even find different multipliers for different industries, a sure sign that something is amiss with their methods. They are double-counting the effects of spending.
The government provides a greater lie. Obama’s team promotes the idea that taxes are better by a factor of 1.5 than private spending for stimulating the economy. The offered reason? The government spends all of the tax money, but the individual would save some of it.
By this admission, there is no extra stimulus from government spending, they are just spending the money that you wouldn’t spend for yourself! Stealing from you is supposed to be good for the “economy”.
Cargo Cult Economics: Government Multiplier on Taxes