Free Energy == Bad Science

So I got a video sent to me via email today. It it a 2 minute clip from a Cleveland news broadcast. This guy, a retired tv station owner, was inspired in the middle of the night to cure cancer. His idea is to inject nanoparticles of metal into the body and for some reason the metal particles will attach only to the cancerous cells and then when blasted with RF (Radio Frequency) energy the metal would heat and kill the cancer cells....ummm ok. Anyway, so this guy starts to work on this idea and then finds that if he exposes saltwater to RF energy he can burn the gas that is given off by this. To demonstrate this "amazing" achievement he puts his hand in the field and shows no ill effect. He then inserts a fluorescent light bulb (attached to nothing else) into the field and it lights up. Then he puts a container of saltwater in the field and lights a flame on top from the gas. He has the flame on the bottom of a small engine and it starts rotating. He goes on to say how this can solve the "energy crisis" and the newscasters are awed.
The guy who sent me the video, which I will post if I can figure out how, wanted my take on it. So here goes:
1) Perpetual motion machines, free energy, etc don't exist. You can't get something for nothing. That applies in life and in physics, especially in physics.
2) Is it possible for someone to cure cancer "by a dream" or other random piddling around? Sure! Is it likely? Hell NO!
3) When water is exposed to energy hydrogen can be a by-product and hydrogen is "slightly" flammable. However, the energy required to generate the RF energy to do it is more then the energy that you will recover from burning the hydrogen.
4) The fluorescent light trick is a standard phenomenon of fluorescent tubes exposed to RF fields. Many magicians use this trick. It is also a very good way to detect RF fields.
5) The little engine they showed rotating right along on the small heat input was a Stirling engine. Stirling engines are external combustion engines. They are very neat and work great on the small-scale but not too easy to replicate on a large scale. It is actually a popular science project to make a small one that runs off the heat of your hand....hmmm I know, lets harness people to create the energy we need....oh wait that idea was already done. They are neat to watch but can't actually put out much power.

*****RANT ON*******
I hate how the media promotes crackpots like this. That includes celebrities who think they know a few things about the environment and science, when most of it is bad science. For example, the maximum return on corn-based ethanol is 1.3 units of energy for every 1 unit of energy put into it. This sounds like 30% return, a pretty decent return when you consider that the standard power plant is doing great if it is running at 30% efficiency. However, when you take the total life cycle analysis into account and the energy of producing the corn and transporting the corn, you rapidly get into single digit returns. Cellulosic ethanol has maximum returns on the order of 16 units of energy per unit of energy put into it. This allows for realistic returns to make it worthwhile if the basic scientific problems with cellulosic ethanol can be solved. Note, that although you get more then 1 unit of energy out for every unit of energy put into the process this is NOT free energy. The extra units of energy are from the plant bio-mass which is extracted from nutrients in the soil. Carbon density of the bio-mass has a large effect on the process. This is not free energy because those nutrients must be replaced in the soil. Oh yeah, it is the same nutrient material that over long enough time and conditions can become coal, oil, and/or natural gas. Nature is funny like that. I still say go solar, wind (which is a form of solar), and hydroelectric (especially tidal) for big returns on energy investment.

And remember boys and girls, no matter what celebrities say, DO NOT run E-85 or other ethanol fuels in your car on a regular basis if it is not a Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV). Disregard this if you like the idea of your fuel injectors not working, reduced fuel efficiency because your car's computer can not call for the right fuel/air ratio, and my personal favorite your steel fuel lines corroding on you since a by-product of ethanol combustion is water! FFVs have stainless steel fuel lines and modified computer programs.

******RANT OFF***********