Are Great Energy Technologies Being Suppressed?

We’ve all been told that this was so, and we’ve all had the notion that it might be true.  Forty or fifty years ago we had claims of the auto carburetor that gave drivers 400 MPG (but the car companies made it illegal). More recently, we saw gadgets (also banned by the auto companies, and rejected by no-nothing chemists and physicists) that involved various forms of water and hydrogen.

Now, we read claims about waste-to-energy or other sources of (relatively) clean energy, like this one:

At the plastic association’s test facility, we saw raw plastics including tires being dumped into a hopper at the end of a structure not too much bigger than a grocery store rack. In the center were spigots from which lamp black from the labels; molten steel from the tires and other reusable materials were gathered. At the end was a large hose which fed the recovered liquids into a waiting tanker to be taken to Texas to be refined into oil. …However, as a (man) explained to us, if they promote the fact that 67% of the waste in our landfills is paper and construction debris, no donations come in. But, if they push plastics which only account for 13% of the landfill, the donations pour in. So, because heat is used to convert the plastics, they got Oregon and then other states to call it ‘burning’ and outlawed the process.

We need to be supremely skeptical of both of these.   The first one defies the laws of physics, and both of them defy common sense.  So, these are technologies that are reliable, safe, and cost-effective but “suppressed by their greedy patent owners” or “were made illegal by corrupt officials in Oregon?”

If such things existed, China or any of the other dozens of countries around the world where IP protection is meaningless would have them on the street and sold profitably in about 15 minutes.  It would take another 15 minutes for everyone around the world to know that this was taking place. Total turn around time: 30 minutes max.

Btw, I happen to know that certain states do, in fact, regard pyrolysis/gasification as “burning,” and refuse to provide permits for plants based on this technology to be built.  Unless I’m mistaken, I live in one. Lawmakers in these states are, in fact, idiots (or worse) and will eventually be replaced.  But my advice here stands.  If any of these processes were cost-effective, they would have been happening decades ago in any of the countries that have almost zero environmental standards (while they pay through the nose for gasoline and diesel), and/or have identically zero respect for IP rights.