I missed it. I checked my email tonight, saw an email from KitchenSlut, and noticed the word “Lutec”. Something about the Cairns Post… I then saw that the URL he was pointing out to me had 2010 in it, not 2001. “No smegging¹ way”, I thought, “the Cairns Post couldn’t be that stupid”. I was wrong. The Lutec Free Energy machine is back on the pages of the Cairns Post.

Lutec popped up in the Cairns Post back in 2001, claiming that they had invented a device that could produce more energy than it consumed – a free energy machine that they said they would soon start selling to the public. They just needed some “investors” to help them finish it off. The Cairns Post provided the cranks with a podium to shovel their story out, and “investors” gave Lutec the money they sought. Predictably, no product appeared, and the story vanished for years. Now it’s back, and it hasn’t changed. The “inventors” are again promising the device will be available in a couple of years.

This is very simple… If the Lutec machine can put out more energy than it consumes from the grid, they can simply feed a bit of its output into its input and provide a limitless supply of free energy. Once started,the machine should run forever even when unplugged from its power source. How about getting Lutec to authorise Ergon Electricity to release all their electricity billing information. I’m guessing their office still runs up a bill. This despite the fact that, if their claims were true, they should be supplying the grid with huge amounts of energy. They’re not.

“Free energy” machines have a tendency to be whack-a-mole operations, surfacing intermittently to suck up more money from gullible “investors” falling for the perpetual promise of a commercial release “real soon now”. The big day never comes, and the “inventors” disappear for a while to live off the money of their dupes. Some of the “inventors” are sincerely deluded, others are just straight out con-artists. I don’t know which category the Lutec guys fall into.

Then there’s the Cairns Post, which needs to learn that a “local angle” does not make a story credible or even newsworthy. This isn’t the first time reporter Daniel Bateman has been sucked in by a local crank – not long ago he also gave a podium to Henry “if evolution is true, why don’t crocodiles have mobile phones” Gobus. The decision by him and his editor to draw attention to Lutec is more troubling due to the money involved.  In 2001 the Cairns Post helped the Lutec company get money from gullible “investors”, and now they’re helping again. It’s extremely irresponsible journalism, and one wonders where the line between being a newspaper and being a willing accomplice lies.

I also have to wonder how long it will be until we see Bateman reporting about fossils in inter-dimensional portals in people’s wall paint or killer triggerfish. Perhaps an interview with Billy Mango?

For information on Lutec, see Ratbags’s coverage of the 2001 kerfuffle. Nothing seems to have changed, including the Cairns Post’s willingness to promote bullshit.

1: Yes, I really do use the BBC family friendly non-swear word smeg from Red Dwarf.