![]() | Legislative Updates on The Energy Bills: Today is the Day, Make Your Voice Heard | The Oil Drum | Updates on the Energy Bills and a New Version of the RPS: There's Still Time to Call Your Member! | ![]() |
59 comments on Why We "Waste" Energy: The Second Law of Thermodynamics Explains--UPDATED 8/7
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
59 comments on Why We "Waste" Energy: The Second Law of Thermodynamics Explains--UPDATED 8/7
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
- What "Lower Consumption" Means
- Tricking and Treating the Future
- Meeting Energy Decline Part-Way - Potatoes?
TOD:Europe
- The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction - Part IV: Energy from Breeder Reactors and from Fusion?
- The US stimulus and "green jobs"
- EROWI - energy return of water invested
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Saturday 7th November 2009
- The Bullroarer - Friday 30th October 2009
- Details of Solar Flagships Released
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“Men argue; nature acts.”
—Voltaire
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.










GAIA Host Collective
Schmitz did say an "atmospheric" steam engine, i.e., not pressurized.
And a vacuum is applied to the other side of the piston?
No vacuum involved, just compression/expansion of
refrigerants.
Where IS that 'Theory of Everything' ?
Here
it is !
I am presently in vocational training in HVAC/R.
RE: "atmospheric"
That is a non-rigorous term. All refrigerants have a change of state that enables them to move heat from one place to another. The change of state is dependent on temperature AND PRESSURE. PSIG a parameter of regergerants is an absolute value, atmospheric is a relative value, i.e. at about 1200 feet elevation PSIG is 14.7.
Where IS that 'Theory of Everything' ?
Here
it is !
But why do you link to a crank science site in every sig? How do you expect anyone to take you seriously?
Am I asking an old question here or does this guy troll for this sort of nonsense every time he posts?
I quit posting much of anything that challenges
conventional wisdom cause of this attitude. History of technology is full of these kind of attitudes. I'll let time
solve this issue. Or not.
"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=air+conditioning+
refrigerants&btnG=Google+Search">Google
So what's the difference between this link on this issue and other over more controversial issue's ?
Don't answer, it's a rhetorical question.
To TOD Staff: Thank you for a personally
valuable site. I just hope it stays free. I will read it as much as I can. But I will keep my posting within limits of conventional thinking. I hope air conditioning
technology is conventional enough.
Where IS that 'Theory of Everything' ?
Here
it is !
I am presently in vocational training in HVAC/R.
Try expanding your curriculum to include history of technology instead of tinfoil-hat physics. You might even get better at your job. And you would certainly be better informed about the situation we are discussing on TOD, and how we got to where we are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomen_steam_engine
I found that by typing atmospheric steam engine into the Wikipedia search box and clicking intelligently. You may have heard of Wikipedia, by the way. A couple of minutes there can save a whole lot of wasted time, effort, and typing, both your own and other people's, in a forum like this. And you get to learn things instead of attracting abuse.
Would it be possible to implement an automated test of the ability to use simple online reference tools like Wikipedia as a pre-qualification for posting privileges on TOD?
In a rush, I erred - I responded to 'atmosphere' as
a adjective not a noun, since it was in quotes. I am guilty.
New sig. Heh.
Flaws
in EM Theory
I like this idea (and not just for TOD).
However, TOD has more pressing needs. One of them is a review system which allows pieces like this to go before more eyeballs before they get posted. TOD has people with the technical chops to catch errors like Schmitz's before publication, but Drupal doesn't allow read-only access to the publication queue for review purposes (according to SuperG, it's all or nothing).
Commenters are understood (mostly) not to be speaking for TOD. Our articles are another matter, and I think most will agree that errors in basic science should be cause to return an article to the author for correction before the public sees it. Drupal doesn't have the features for this sort of workflow, and from discussion behind the scenes I can tell you that the people most intimately involved don't think it will be easy.
This sort of thing may happen again. I just want to make clear that the problem isn't the people so much as the system we have pressed into service for TOD.
Does your VocEd include a grounding in classical thermodynamics?
If you don't understand the details of the "theory of everything" you link to, do you have any business promoting it?