Sylvain’s Panama Adventure

Here’s a good example of the media’s ineptitude at critical thinking and providing valid information to the people. Start by watching this video of a news report: Fuel from Salt Water! Yes it does sound crazy, no it won’t change the world.

The reporter, obviously having no understanding of basic high-school science, buys the whole thing hook, line and sinker. First, he seems impressed by the fact that the radio beam cannot be felt by a human hand but it makes a fluorescent tube glow. Of course you can’t feel the beam you moron, it’s electromagnetic energy, radio waves. Do you feel the radio waves emanating from your cell phones and traversing your brain? And of course it will make the fluorescent tube glow, that what’s the phosphors inside the tube are designed to do, glow in the presence of energy!

Then for the “piece de resistance”, he aims his concentrated radio beam at salt water and causes some of the hydrogen and oxygen to separate into individual gases. The resulting mix of the two gases is called propergol and it is highly flammable. In fact, it often used as rocket fuel, so no wonder it can generate high temperatures! Again, anybody with basic high-school chemistry would recognize this for what it is: a very inefficient way of separating the elements of water, similar to the electrolysis of water experiment you should all have done in high-school. And armed with high-school physics, you would also recognize that it takes more energy to perform that separation then the resulting gases can provide. Therefore, this transformation consumes more energy than it produces! Oh, and by the way, water is not “one of the most abundant elements“, but it is composed of two elements H and O.

But not only does the reporter fail to recognize these basic facts of life, the anchor totally falls for it too! She oohs and ahhs and declares: “I want it!” Gee, why not just say “Hallelujah, our world is saved!”. This is completely irresponsible news reporting. The really sad part though is that the general population has no more understanding of basic science than these morons do, and when this “miracle” fails to materialize, they will once again blame the oil industry for killing it! Shame on you WKYC, you should know better. I suggest you all write to these idiots and tell them to smarten up.

Here’s another thing that science can teach you folks: critical thinking! Not only does it arm you with the knowledge necessary to understand the basic principles behind natural phenomenons, but it also teaches you how to think for yourself and separate facts from wishful thinking.

Given this abysmal lack of the most basic science education in the general population, especially in America, combined with the even more disastrous and irresponsible news media, it is no wonder that so many people think the way they do and believe in so many superstitions and fairy tales. How can you understand global warming when you don’t understand the basic facts of chemistry and physics behind it? How can you understand evolution when you don’t understand the basic facts of biology and probabilities behind it? How can the media report fairly and accurately on those important issues when they don’t understand them either? When you don’t understand the basic science, these issues become a matter of faith, a matter of you believe the most.

A nation that is trying to push science out of the classroom and is constantly bombarded by inept news reporting and false information, is a nation that is doomed.

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