Steve, the terseness of your response to Brian begged for a response along the lines of what I posted.

You did not take the time to explain what you meant in general, how it applied to Brian’s proposed explanation of “why not concentrate, pressurize, and liquify the CO2 . . .” specifically, nor to explain your terms (i.e. “coefficient of performance”). I searched the whole of the previous posts for prior reference to that term, since you advised us to “look at [those] words” very carefully, before googling it.

In light of the sweeping and apparently revolutionary character of your leading two statements, you certainly should have taken that time. It is hard to imagine that neither the amount of energy required matters, nor that energy is available (apparently in unlimited quantities and at no significant cost) for the process you propose or “for any other purpose.”

1. The U.S. Patent Office has, indeed, issued patents for supposed perpetual motion machines, having only determined subsequently that for this and certain other classes of machinery and processes, additional requirements must be met. The burden of proof is on the Patent Office to prove a device does not work, and they usually do not take on that burden, for various reasons – particularly cost. Therefore the existence of a patent, despite your claim to the contrary, does not in any way assure that the device or process works.

2. You wrote that, for me “to make such a statement about the INFORMATION PROVIDED [emphasis mine-mw] indicates that [I] cannot accept that coefficient of performance can exceed efficiency.” In the context of the “INFORMATION PROVIDED”, your statement is simply funny! And, as a sailor, I am intimately acquainted with how propulsion is achieved by sails, and I’m also reasonably knowledgeable about heat pumps and the laws of thermodynamics. I can assure you that energy is simply not just out there for the taking at anything like near-zero cost.

Flinging a term like “coefficient of performance” around with the expectation that your special knowledge of the esoteric term gives you some advantage in argumentation just doesn’t work. Not in the age of Google! It is simply a ratio of performance gained versus energy used to achieve that performance, and thus does nothing to advance your argument.

3. And providing such extraordinarily specious arguments as proposing that I am somehow similar to some physicist who once advised the patent office against the plausibility of heavier than air flight just leaves you looking silly.

Now, if you’d care to explain in any detail why Brian is wrong is proposing that the process you proposed would be too energy intensive and thus costly, I’d be happy to be so enlightened.

Mike W.