Re: [Vo]:Jed and others 2012 predictions please
Alain Sepeda wrote: many (not all) Green will try to oppose LENR because it is agains their agenda. it is breaking their plot to make a better world by reducing comfort, energy, consumption, sins, and corruption of the nature You don't know what you are talking about. You are just parroting misrepresentative B.S. peddled by ideologically, politically or financially biased propagandists. Greens are used to being traduced like this. The mainstream green movement does not yet acknowledge the reality of LENR because we have been approached by an endless stream of people claiming magic 100mpg carburettors, magic magnet motors, overunity hydrogen generators, MEGs etc etc etc over many decades. In short, all magic solutions so far have been lies and bullshit so, until conclusively demonstrated and accepted, we're not going to change any priorities yet. I can assure you that around 15 years ago, a motion was taken to the Friends of the Earth Conference: This Conference notes the recent proliferation of reliable scientific evidence for the reality of Cold Fusion energy and many other similar devices. As they herald the rapid end of both the nuclear and fossil fuelled industries, and hold out the prospect of cheap, abundant, pollution free energy, free from the control of individual nations or large corporations, they will obviously have a dramatic effect on most of our campaigning. This Conference calls upon the Board of Friends of the Earth to investigate the scientific reports, satisfy themselves as to the validity and potential of the new energy sources and then to rewrite our basic campaign strategies to take the coming revolution in energy supply into account and, further, to actively promote the new devices as a solution to global warming and pollution. When these devices become mainstream we will be fully prepared to hit the ground running. Unfortunately, back then, the evidence was by no means clear cut and, although there was plenty of interest (and some excitement) in the concept, the view was that the best thing to do was to wait it out. Decentralisation of energy supply and the cost and energy effective conservation and recycling of materials is an incredibly deep aspect of green thought, all of which would be achievable with LENR devices. In 1996 I wrote an article for Infinite Energy (click for link) that speculated that, although there could be some novel problems if everyone had as much energy as they desired, that overall the environemental effect of LENR would be beneficial as it would enable the Green movement to concentrate more on habitat and biodiversity protection and all the other stuff apart from climate change and peak oil. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Jed and others 2012 predictions please
I see Vorl Bek is over on Vortex B talking to the Grok thing. He/she wrote The 'green' people completely ignore our insanely large population thus proving beyond doubt that he/she knows absolutely nothing and just makes stuff up. Even more laughably, they also promote wattsupwiththat.com - the biggest anti-science disinformation and propaganda site on the internet - as some sort of authority! Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Cold Fusion Economic Effects
Chris Zell wrote: Once the emergence is established, there will be evidence of public grief by various enviromentalists and climate change activists. Only a few will observe what this teaches about their real motives were I'm not having a go at Chris directly here but he repeats a common theme. I'm getting a bit sick and tired of assorted flavours of self interested political ideologies ascribing black motives to environmentalists and attempting to traduce them by hoodwinking the views of the too gullible public. I won't deny that within the broad spectrum of people that would describe themselves as environmentalists are a minority those with peculiar motivations, as there probably is in any defined group, but to take isolated pieces of ambiguous evidence and extrapolate from the exceptions to suggest that those are the rule is just deceitful. There are real and obvious reasons why true environmentalists would be concerned if everyone got access to vast amounts of energy because of what they might do with it. Simplistic views that energy=good, more energy=better, most energy=best are a bit one dimensional in outlook. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Rossi feeding skeptics with much more skepticism.
Mouthy Mary - filtered to junk email folder Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Corrections to heat after death calculations
This Catania bloke didn't take the hint. Jed appears to be pursued by demons. What else would induce a Japlish translator to take up residence in a cold fusion forum. Apart from the actual researchers, Jed is, and always has been since 1989, one of the most significant figures in the cold fusion field. Obviously, Catania does not realise this but, like so many in the past, shoots from the hip to fill up the forum with dubious logic, false assertions and acres of attacking prose. These types go away in the end. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Corrections to heat after death calculations
I think Catania needs to be banned.. Talking about Horace he wrote You just don't have the patience, are incompetent or are plain ignorant and You're nuts . Pay attention to this, Catania. Both Horace and Jed, in different ways, are mental giants. You are a midget and a very rude incorrigible one too. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:A New Reason to Go Green
Jouni. Your comments are still wishful thinking and misinterpretation of what I wrote. you wrote: Nick, you are thinking too much of yourself, but actually your understanding is thinner than you might think. For example, IPCC does not differentiate old growth forests from modified forests and not even from forest plantations, although old growth forest can store up to one order of magnitude more carbon than what IPCC has valued. What you are still missing, despite your blizzard of rhetoric, is that climate science (and the forestry scientists in particular) who wrote the IPCC bit about forestry and mitigation are not as ignorant as you believe. Just about every man and his dog knows that old growth forests have an awful lot more carbon locked up in them than newly planted ones. If you imagine that lone geniuses like yourself can point out such an obvious solution to excess atmospheric greenhouse gases that they have all missed, you must have an excess ego. The big flaw in your plan is that you can't just create old growth forest with all the extra carbon stored below ground (that new growth plantation forests lack) - transparently obviously, it takes a long time to form! You yourself wrote: This is because it may take up to 500-1000 years, for old growth forest to regain it's ability to store carbon. Exactly!! So how can it be a solution to urgent current needs? If you claim that old growth forest is specifically being destroyed under IPCC guidelines so that new growth forest can be planted, then you have to provide real evidence beyond mere assertions, because this looks like an outrageously false slur. I have never seen it before and I sit on a governmental environmental advisory think tank. As a consequence, your apparent promoting of the concept of creating more old growth forest to absorb CO2 in any reasonable time frame - certainly over the crucial decades ahead - is a waste of time. Worse, it might fool the naive, or politically motivated, into thinking that there is a simple method that avoids having to take serious action. Please realise that your IPCC scientists are idiots who don't understand science and ignore simple solutions idea is a crazy one. It is rather like believing that there is a conspiracy to suppress inventors who claim to have 100 mile per gallon carburettors because the scientific establishment is too stupid to understand them or are so corrupted by self interest. You wrote: Because of this false reasoning, that young forests are better carbon sink, as they supposedly absorb faster carbon from atmosphere we are failed completely to prevent extensive logging all around the Earth. You are not thinking clearly. Newly growing forest absolutely does (there is no supposedly about it) absorb more atmospheric CO2 than old growth forest. Because of this, if one wants to use forestry as a part of one's mitigation strategy to stabilise or reduce atmospheric CO2 levels in timescale we have available to us (very short), it is the weapon of choice. Following on from your false accusation of false reasoning you wrote: Instead, IPCC has recommended to clear the forest for biofuel plantations I think you might have to provide a reliable source for this outrageous statement! In case you didn't realise, I fully support protecting old growth forests - I'm an environmentalist, damnit and I don't know any other environmentalists who support felling it! - if we had 500 -1500 years to stabilise the atmosphere, it would be an extremely good strategy, assuming that we could find space for it and still grow enough food... but we don't have that time. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:A New Reason to Go Green
Jouni repeated some climate science denier ideas. Have you ever heard of the term straw man, Jouni? Your comment is completely full of them. Probably the most ludicrous is For those who are not mathematically orientated (like all climate scientist . Try looking at www.skepticalscience.com where you will find a whole lot of (full of real maths) answers to just about every denialist peice of propaganda out there Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:A New Reason to Go Green
Jouni Valkonen. You didn't understand what I wrote. The main strawman you used was to suggest that climate science somehow ignores or knows nothing about the effects of forests and their potential to mitigate CO2 levels. You even implied a conspiracy to avoid mentioing them. Laughable! Try looking at the latest (2007) IPCC report on mitigation of climate change http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch9.html - this link destroys your whole case because it includes a LOT about forestry practices, afforestation etc. Read it and then apologise to all those whose intelligence and integrity you have insulted, including me. Clearly you are yet another of the countless people who just assert their opinion without any form of proper checking at all. That you said that www.skepticalscience.com is perhaps the worst quality page on climate science! shows that you REALLY don't know what you are talking about. Your maths relating to trees may be OK but mere arithmetic, without a sensible or rational context, is a waste of time. You claim (about me) - But, you yourself proved that you do not have any mental resources to do the math and calculate how much carbon 3 gigahectares of forest could store What you think is proof shows exactly how good your judgement is! You haven't though through your ideas about forestry. From the IPCC document paragraph 9.2.1: The global forest cover is 3952 million ha (Table 9.1), which is about 30 percent of the world’s land area Your point seemed to be that we could soak up all the excess greenhouse gases by starting to create 3 giga hectares of forest and, for the purposes of this argument, I will temporarily assume that is correct (by ignoring many inconvenient factors you obviously did not consider). Let me just ask you - where will the trees go? Most of the land that we currently use for agriculture (approximately 4.8 giga hectares - about 38% of global land surface area) is cleared forest. Does your oh-so-smart head care not that, although we will have stabilised the climate, we won't have anything to eat because trees will have displaced food crops? Perhaps in future, before you pontificate with your eccentric, impractical and misleading ideas, and insult people who don't deserve it, you ought to re-evaluate just how valid your views are and start by applying maths in a rational fashion. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:new data global warming is not a problem
Frank and Mike. Don't get too excited. The article you linked to is heavily biased by the rhetoric of James Taylor from the libertarian/right wing think-tank lobby group, the Heartland Institute. In fact he goes so ridiculously over the top with his various uses of alarmist (count them!) that it becomes clear that what we are reading is propaganda, not fair comment. Denialist sources like this pounce on and promote any evidence at all that supports what they want reality to be and completely ignore the vastly greater amount that does not. The author of the paper that all the fuss is about is Dr Roy Spencer who has long had an idee fixe that the climate sensitivity is much less than just about every other practicing climate scientist believes . He keeps trying to prove this because, if true, it would mean that although more fossil fuel emissions will still increase the greenhouse effect and lead to further global warming, the end result will not be dangerous and may be relatively benign. This is because feedbacks would barely amplify any warming. He and his fellow sceptic scientist Dr John Christy - who make up (with Richard Lindzen) just about all of the credible sceptic scientists around - were responsible for the very long term denialist myth that ground based measurements showed warming while satellite based measurements did not because their previously published work with satellite sensing of global temperature proved to be wrong because they did not correct for orbital drift/decay. When they eventually did, the warming signal became clear. Trying not to be too ad hominem, it must be mentioned that Spencer is an intelligent design creationist, so presumably expects that intelligence to have designed the climate system so that we can't destabilise it - so that God won't let us screw things up! Evidence from palaeo-climatology (way before 4004 BC...) suggests that the climate does not have a benign negative feedback to influences that force warming or cooling but has actually reacted strongly in the past. It's always possible that this time he's onto something but his new paper has not been hailed as revolutionary. Here's an excerpt from reaction: New research suggesting that cloud cover, not carbon dioxide, causes global warming is getting buzz in climate skeptic circles. But mainstream climate scientists dismissed the research as unrealistic and politically motivated. It is not newsworthy, Daniel Murphy, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cloud researcher, wrote in an email to LiveScience. The study, published July 26 in the open-access online journal Remote Sensing, got public attention when a writer for The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think-tank that promotes climate change skepticism, wrote for Forbes magazine that the study disproved the global warming worries of climate change alarmists. However, mainstream climate scientists say that the argument advanced in the paper is neither new nor correct. The paper's author, University of Alabama, Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer, is a climate change skeptic and controversial figure within the climate research community. He's taken an incorrect model, he's tweaked it to match observations, but the conclusions you get from that are not correct, Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas AM University, said of Spencer's new study. What Spencer did was to build on his earlier work - rather comprehensively debunked here http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/just-put-the-model-down-roy/ Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Rossi: our reactors now produce a totally dry steam
Rossi: About all the others, honestly, I do not care too much, they are either competitors, sometimes disguised as Research Laboratories anxious to validate, fake journalists sent by the same, or just honest sceptic who are not important for our market. Our universal credibility will come from our working plants that we will sell to our Customers. He's certainly got a very bad case of Chris Tinsley's inventor's disease or he's faking. His mention now of totally dry steam has clearly been made because of Steve K's visit. It has been made to forestall further criticism of/investigation on this point. Big smelly red flags! The bit about universal credibility coming from working units sold commercially raises another red flag to those of us who have seen many such promises before. It could not be red flaggier unless he mentioned shipping devices... Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OT:Economic crisis and post-capitalism
Steven V Johnson wrote: Who all this global debt is owed to is of course the 64 quadrillion dollar question National debt has existed for a long time. When I was growing up I used to wonder why, if just about every country had a debt, they didn't simply pay each other off and then most countries would be debt free. It was only subsequently that the answer became clear - the debts are owed to our future selves. The banks loan money into existence because of the fractional reserve banking system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking and that is why growth is so obsessed about by economists and politicians. There can never be enough real money around to pay back current debt and so the economy has to continue expanding/growing to generate enough new real funds to pay back those past debts. The big problem that we face is that the economy can only be made to grow by yet further debt obligations being taken on - more money loaned into existence. The debt alway races ahead of our ability to pay it back. The entire world economy is a a form of Ponzi scheme. While we still had room to expand into and resources looked effectively infinite, the Ponzi scheme continued to work. Nowadays we are reaching the limits of growth - population, raw materials extraction, soil erosion, habitat destruction etc. We are almost certainly wrecking a benign climate. Standard growth of the global economy cannot continue without continuing to deteriorate the natrual systems that sustain us. If we don't grow the economy, there will be a gigantic financial crash to make the 1930s look like a wonderful time. There are no easy answers to what we need to do. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
As I mentioned, I said I would email the MD of the owner/operator of the 350 ft giant which the article claimed achived 15% of capacity. Here is his response (N.B. as we have corresponded/messaged before it's really informal...) Hi Nick, yep that one is ours. Things worth knowing on this front are - The figures they quote as efficiency measures (was it 20% for this windmill?) are actually Load Factor figures. Load Factor is a measure of the degree to which something operates at it's maximum capability over the year. Efficiency is a very different beast - our windmills are over 90% fuel efficient. The Load Factor of windmills is actually a measure of two things, the energy efficiency of a machine and the wind regime it operates within. The wind industry uses Load Factors as measures of on site wind resource. So for example typical load factors in England are 30% on shore. 40% in Scotland and 40% offshore. Typical load factors for coal, gas and nuclear plants are around 50% - and these are generators that do not depend on the weather for their operation. Typical fuel efficiency of coal might be 30 to 40%, Gas 40 to 50% and nuclear somewhere in between. Typical load factors for other every day items - cars - less than 1% mobile phones 1 or 2% kettles less than 1% These devices are not reckoned to be inefficient or un worthwhile because we do not use them anything like to their maximum rated potential. So this load factor argument is just a statistical device to discredit wind energy, a trap for the unwitting. Hope this helps. - Different subject - Jed wrote: However, unlike wind power, PV produces peak electricity at exactly the moment when demand peaks during the summer, because air conditioning kicks in when the sun is hottest. America is not the whole world! In Britain, we don't really use air-con much. I guess our peak electricity is in the winter when we have electric fires on. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
Jones been wrote: According to this story, wind energy in England, is not living up to expectations. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361316/250bn-wind-power-industry-gr eatest-scam-age.html Virtually every sentence of this blatant propaganda, let alone every paragraph, is highly arguable. This is not surprising as the author - Christopher Booker - is probably the chief global warming denialist journalist in the UK - think Limbaugh crossed with Beck and Inhofe, except he's smarter and his arguments are not as crassly stupid as those of the US types. The cherry picking and misrepresentation he indulges in here is quite spectacular. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
JB wrote: Is there an actual figure for all of England on the percentage of capacity which is achieved in practice to compare against the prior projected percentage which was used to justify the investment? Not a perfect reply to the above, but it gives some idea... http://fullfact.org/factchecks/wind_turbines_performance_capacity_muir_trust_express_daily_mail-2646 Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
Jones Beene wrote: However, the most alarming statistic in the piece, if it is accurate and not an aberration - should be easy to check on: the 350ft turbine outside Reading... performed so poorly (working at only 15 per cent of its capacity)... I have emailed the MD of the firm I think built this turbine for the other side of the story. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Weak Winds for Brits
Jed wrote: I do not know of any environmentalist support for cold fusion except our poor lonely friend Nick Palmer here, but I doubt that environmentalists will be strongly opposed to it. I don't know of any direct environmental movement support or belief - the general feeling seems to be interested scepticism. Greens got, and probably still get, bombarded by people mentioning 100 mpg carburettors, cars that run on water, magic magnet drives, orgone, overunity motors etc. Amongst all the crap who would notice a diamond? As Jed points out, some environmentalists are softening towards nuclear power (including me) but that is mainly because the need to avert dangerous climate change is so large that nukes are probably the lesser of two evils. The nukes that people like me might favour would be generation 111's with completely passive safety systems, built away from fault lines and tsunami prone areas. Gen. IVs would be even better. Assuming that there is the traditional LENR lack of high radioactivity in the Ecats, Jed is also right that environmentalists won't be very strongly opposed to them. The key aspect is the ability they may have to widely scatter generating capacity, by putting affordable power into the hands of the people at the local level, instead of the supply being monopolised by huge utility corporations. They would stabilise international politics too. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:RE: Rothwell goes into brain freeze
Re: the Jones/Jed spat Part of it might be explained by the confusion between factor of 2 or 3 and factor of 1000. If one was meaning orders of magnitude and the other wasn't, the flame war might become more resolvable. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Rossi impact betting pool?
I'm far more optimistic. My guess (if we're talking about a sale of the proposed 1 MW unit). First mention in major mass media other than Washington Times (already happened). [1 day] Major coverage in mass media; i.e. front page news, everyone else copies. [2-3 days] Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Latest Rossi news at PESN
Robin wrote: ..Well maybe not quite. The problem with this is that the general public only understands one kind of nuclear. I'm afraid that educating them in the subtleties is going to take a while. Do we know what, if any, radiation is created by this process? Specifically, are any long lived radioactive isotopes made and if so to what degree are they beta/alpha emitters or give off gamma rays? People are only wary of conventional uranium/plutonium nuclear processes because they are (rightly) concerned about the waste products that need isolating for centuries, the consequences of industrial acccident and the nuclear proliferation issue. The fear here is either rogue states diverting civilian nuclear material to weapons grade plutonium production or whether terrorist groups could get hold of nuclear material which they could fashion into a crude bomb with their bare hands - if they could find a martyr who didn't mind dying for the cause (seemingly not a problem). Also, of course, non fissionable grade material can be converted into dirty bombs. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Replicating Rossi at home
If by some quirk of luck, the Cincinnati method of making the tile was similar to the Arata method I don't think they made them. The tile I saw in Chris Tinsley's living room literally WAS a kitchen tile (I'm 90% sure) with a melted hole in it. Chris remarked something like you ought to see it when the reaction lights up. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Replicating Rossi at home
Jones wrote: Arata, et al inventing an ingenious way of getting the correct size powder with ceramic binder via oxidation of zirconium based alloys. Hmm. Wasn't it the Cincinatti group, from way back when, who used zirconium to achieve anomalous effects, like the tile burn experiment that Chris Tinsley replicated? Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Replicating Rossi at home
Jones. The tile burn was an effect that caused a hole to be burned right thought a ceramic tile (like one you would find in a kitchen or bathroom) using (if I remember rightly) no more than 50 watts input. The effect used a secret sauce but Chris was under an NDA. He did let slip that it was only one substance. Subsequent information from the Cicinatti group about other matters gave me the very strong hunch that their sauce was zirconium related. I saw a tile that Chris had burned a 1cm hole through. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Monday Update to Release Information on Self Sustain Mode
noone wrote: So if this turns out to be legit (I'm 99.9% convinced it is) what is the global significance? Big. Very big. As Douglas Adams, describing space, said: Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Input power must be far lower than ~10 kW
Mitchell Swartz: I think your problem is that you think Jed's report on the Patterson cell was presented by Jed as a scientific assesment of the exact heat generated. If that had been so then all of your frequently repeated objections would have some validity. Instead, what Jed saw and reported on was a ballpark measurement that very significant quantities of heat were being generated in a short space of time. Hyper accurate calorimetry was absolutely not needed to show that a lot of heat was being generated. There is a type of scientist who delights in finding and measuring tiny signals, often analysed from such a mountain of noise that a casual observer would not notice anything happening out of the usual. What Jed, and many others here are interested in, is any new physical phenomenon that is large enough to generate power to run our civilisation. Messing about with tiny optimal operating point signals is academically interesting but doesn't cut the mustard if the goal is to replace fossil fuels or conventional nukes. Knowledge is valuable but engineering solutions is what we need. That is what Jed was trying to ascertain and, to any reasonable person, he succeeded. Patterson's beads looked promising for further development. So, once and for all, stop ranting on about Bernard instability in vertical flow calorimetry. Such small fractional watt distorting effects can, as you say, magnify a tiny signal mixed in with the environmental noise but are insignificant if you are looking to verify a kickass kilowatt. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
[Vo]:Focardi Rossi Piantelli
Are there any big media interested yet? Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Focardi to hold press conference, demonstrate 16 kW heater at Bologna U.
Chris Tinsley once described me as one of the Cold Fusion Advocates. Yet again, wearily, I open up one eye and prepare to look over the parapet tomorrow. Here's hoping for minimum disappointment Nick Palmer blogspot: Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer For the people - and the Planet - because they're worth it Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 12:21 AM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Focardi to hold press conference, demonstrate 16 kW heater at Bologna U. This discussion group has a photo of Focard and Rossi standing next to the experiment: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ensl=itu=http://22passi.blogspot.com/2011/01/bologna-14012010-la-fusione-fredda.htmlei=dlIvTaADi66wA9m62JYJsa=Xoi=translatect=resultresnum=2ved=0CDcQ7gEwATgUprev=/search%3Fq%3D%2522focardi%2522%26start%3D20%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN%26tbs%3Dqdr:w%26prmd%3Divns - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Focardi to hold press conference, demonstrate 16 kW heater at Bologna U.
Hi Peter, You should be able to subscribe. I use Blogger just like your blog does. At the top there is a follow button and there a is subscribe to posts buttton in the side bar just above the Twitter logo. My blog is mostly about environmental matters and cold fusion gets mentioned rarely these days. If it is truly capable of generating lots of clean power in the near future, it could be very significant in protecting our climate and economy and obviously I will be covering it more. I do appear to be one of the very few environmentalists who give credibilty to CF. cheers, Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC Progress in One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project
Lao Tzu: Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish... ... and you'll feed him for a while until he invents and uses industralised factory ships to Hoover up all the fish and drive them to the brink of extinction. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:NanoSpire
I must admit, I thought the story about the bus to be too schmaltzy to be true. It was based on a factual incident but it still was too schmaltzy. It was a bus of tourists (the story doesn't exclude that they were tourist kids though...) but Philip died when his car was rammed by a bad driver - he did not sacrifice himself. I still think that this Mark guy using this story in the way he did still raises red flags. It all reeks of fantasy/hallucination/Walter Mitty. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:NanoSpire
I think the bit about his brother being a secret service agent and saving a bus load of kids raised the biggest red flag to me. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Bloom Box Enters Production Phase
Robin van Spaandonk may have missed Australia's home grown kicks-the-Bloom-box's-a*s device, the Bluegen from Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd. http://www.cfcl.com.au/BlueGen/ Here's a presentation about the device - similar technology to the Bloom box - high temperature fuel cell - grid connected. The Bluegen however is sized (constant 1.5kw output) to generate sufficient CHP heat and power for an average house with some left over to export to the grid and has the world's highest electrical efficiency in small scale generators - 50-60 electrical efficiency and is set up to use the waste heat to provide hot water at an overall efficiency of 85%. Can use natural gas or the similar product from anaerobic digesters. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: EXTERNAL: [Vo]:My critique of an experiment posed by Dennis Cravens
The LED will not be convincing. How about just training an IR camera on it and putting the image on the web? A slow stream of air passing the cell would warm up and clearly show on the image. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Downwind Faster than the Wind (DWFTTW)
This must be a scam. As Jed said, at the point where the craft is going downwind at the speed of the wind, the relative wind across the propeller would be zero so it could not accelerate from this point on. If it did, the force from the prop would reverse anyway. Even more obviously, if it can accelerate from a position of zero relative wind then one could start it off in no wind conditions and it would accelerate - perpetual motion just isn't that easy! Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Jobs Obama trying to create and pictures from PA that say it all
Frank wrote: Hundreds of good jobs that are now forever lost. Increased efficiency, foreign competition, restructuring. In other works no job no more. A story that repeats acorns this nation. How is Obama going to fix this? Import tariffs that level the playing field. Past tariffs that were intended to be protective of slack, lazy businesses were bad. Tariffs intended to keep wealth circulating locally are nothing but good. Competition is only fair or sustainable between nations that are at similar levels of economic development. The gigantic error that the Western world made in the last couple of decades was the pursuit of the cheapest goods/services, and the most efficient systems, without regard to the economic facts that locally produced goods/services (which may end up being, and indeed probably would end up being, nominally more expensive than the foreign/out of state competition) nevertheless end up being better for keeping the local economy going and keeping wealth and where it is generated - which protects jobs. Globalisation was a really stupid ideologically driven move. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Doh ! (slaps forehead) !
Orionworks uses the manufacture of APWs (all purpose widgets) to analyse work and reward. Imagine if the APW's are made to last a long time, to be easily repairable and, at the end of their very long life, the materials they are made from can be easily recycled to make new APWs. Now imagine that this durability/longevity is so extreme that the APWs last long enough that they could be bequeathed to your children... and they could pass them on to their children etc etc. Given a stable population, after a short while everyone would have everything they need (all purpose widgets, remember?) with little or no need for further work to manufacture new stuff. Raw material extraction would plummet. Such a civilisation would have virtually no conventionally measured economy, yet everyone would be basically well off and wouldn't need to work all the hours there are just to keep buying flimsy stuff widgets designed to fall apart. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Towel folding robot
I seem to recall it said that each fold took about 23 minutes... Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Krivit's new claim, transcript of ACS Krivit Pop Quiz
ABD wrote: Do the statements contradict each other? No. McKubre says that he provided a correction. An EPRI representative says that no correction exists. These two statements are not in contradiction. Eh? Have we fallen through the looking glass again? Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:glabal warming conference
The one thing Australia has is gigantic quantities of sun and vast spaces of outback - so vast that the biggest concentrating solar power plants (focusing mirrors) would have effectively no significant impact on habitat or species, so just about all greenies would support them. However, distributed micro-generation ticks a lot of sustainability boxes so domestic scale cold fusion/LENR devices would have a lot of advantages. I don't think there will be any one solution to future energy supply. Until we can realise CF/LENR technology which doesn't destroy the (expensive) lattice/matrix that supports it, I don't think we can expect energy too cheap to meter too soon. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
[Vo]:Re: [Vo]:Wired: America's Wind Energy Potential Triples in New Estimate
Jed wrote about the US's wind potential. You Americans, particularly the right-wingers, ought to stop any obstructive tactics right now or your country will end up as a second rate power in the low carbon economy of the future. What China has been doing has been put forward as an excuse to do nothing because they're building coal fired plants or they won't bother with renewable energy. This couldn't be more wrong. China has now surpassed the US in renewables and is growing installation at an incredible rate. http://greeneconomypost.com/greening-china-surpass-america-4782.htm/comment-page-1#comment-7446 short url http://bit.ly/d9tyjf On a similar tack 100% Renewable Energy Achievable for Europe by 2050: Study This article says that Europe and North Africa can achieve complete independence from fossil fuels by 2050, and that all the technologies necessary for such a transformation are already in place. This is achieved without nuclear or carbon capture. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]: scepticism was Request for fusion definition
ABD wrote Those people in the canoe, observed by a previously reliable scientist, were wearing clothing, as well, and the movements they were making were probably just exercises Here is a funny exposition of pathological scepticism well worth five minutes of anyone's time http://drboli.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/the-duck/ Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Fusion confusion
ABD Perhaps Steve is defining the W-L theoretical reaction (and any other method that does not involve brute force smashing of the Coulomb barrier) as not fusion to differentiate it/them from the popular perceptions of mainstream science that Cold Fusion cannot happen because of the Coulomb barrier and the lack of the expected quantity of neutrons. Face it, the barriers against getting mainstream science to acknowledge the reality of these effects are still high because the consensus view was crystallised decades ago. The mainstream got used to that idea - it's almost unconsciously accepted now. Unless busy scientists accidentally encounter the published work, they will just assume that any papers must be wrong so they can safely ignore their existence. In their mind fusion=coulomb barrier+neutrons therefore cold fusion is impossible. By promoting/introducing a theory or theories that are not classical vanilla fusion, which won't set off the alarm bells and defence mechanisms of the mainstream, perhaps Steve is indeed using semantics but it is the semantics inside the heads of the mainstream that is the barrier to acceptance of the phenomena as real... Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Sea Power News
Robin linked to the wiki article on the Rance tidal plant. That's just across the water from here and I've driven over the barrage numerous times. I suppose the novel feature of the new plant is that the turbines are free standing and operate off tidal current, whereas the Rance has a dam that fills up then is emptied out when required for power. Building dams is expensive. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:A positive comment about cold fusion in the New York Times
Jed spotted Google's “green energy czar,” Bill Weihl, being positive about cold fusion in the NYT's green blog. Later in the same interview he went on to say: But if it clearly violates the laws of physics, then we’re not interested. If it is something that looks like it has the potential to be really earthshaking, then we could be interested. But unfortunately we can’t fully evaluate all possible technologies, so we aren’t able to make that judgment call on every type of alternative energy. Fusion and cold fusion, for example, are both areas where we felt that we could not develop enough expertise. Furthermore, the amount of money that would be required to make real progress was prohibitive: if we put $10 million into something, well in a couple years they’d need another $50 million, and a couple years after that they’d need another $200 million and so on. Perhaps he is open to someone like Jed or Steve pointing out that the investment required to get serious progress in cold fusion/LENR engineering would be highly unlikely to follow the hot fusion model - he has conflated the two fusions and thereby written off both as too expensive to risk insufficient reward. If he realised that LENR holds out much better near term promise of a return, he might put the resources of Google into research. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:steorn january experiments announcement
Terry wrote: I assure you that the magnetic cycle is conservative. No pulse motor, no pure magnet motor nor any combination will save us from the oilies. Frain motor too? Nick Palmer
Re: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC Nick Palmer uploads video on Climategate
Rick Monteverde wrote: Nick Palmer has zero credibility on this particular issue as he has openly advocated on this forum that it should be ILLEGAL to voice opposition to the theories of global warming! Suck on that, you intellectually inferior First Amendment huggers. To actually achieve that would be the ultimate expression of the inherently vicious suppressive intent of such people, the nature of which has been exposed not only by those emails, but right here as well by Mr. Palmer's previous comments. Just say No to Democracy and Diversity should be their slogan. I think you're going to have to dig up some evidence of that Rick. Perhaps you have been listening to too many Limbaugh'esque talk show propagandists without critical analysis. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Total and MIT announce solar battery project
I read Horace's link to Total's research venture into solar battery storage and what did I see at the bottom of the page? This link may be old news but it was news to me http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2247854/blacklight-gains-academic Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Reactionless drive claim: Emdrive
Harry asked: Does he have a video showing that there is no ion wind? Amazingly, yes. I love the low-tech garage-tech smoke generation system http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9NViY0DnkcNR=1 Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
[Vo]:zinc air bettery
The bettery approaches? This article (particularly page 2) discusses a sort of flow cell technique although they don't mention it by name, comparing it instead to a fuel cell. http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23812/ Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Nickel has unique physical properties
Just a thought: has anyone ever tried aiming neutrons from a Farnsworth Fusor at a loaded sample of nickel/H or palladium/D? I assume a Fusor could be tuned to emit neutrons of any kinetic energy one chose? Fusion is regarded as so difficult because the temperature needed to overcome the Coulomb barrier is millions of degrees but in terms of electron volts it is no problem at all. It is trivial to achieve fusion in a Fusor. I just wondered if a guaranteed easy source of fusion neutrons may set off the LENR reaction. Another thought: how about forming a nanoscale sponge out of ceramic piezolectric/triboelectric material, plating it with P or Ni, loading it up with D or H and then zapping the piezoelectric material with high frequency/high amplitude electric voltage. See what happens. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
[Vo]:Re: including ALL the physics...
Mark Iverson linked to a report http://www.rdmag.com/Materials-Fuller-physics-helps-solve-materials-mystery/?wnnvz=cIpb87iV1KLyC3Pk about high temperature superconductors and how a theoretical assumption did not square with experimental measurements. Quote from the linked page: Comparing experimental data with predictions from exact theories and first principle calculations is one of the major parts of any scientific method, allowing scientists to make sure they have a full grasp of the basic principles at work and to study if there are gaps in our understanding This lot realised (eventually) that experimental results trump theory - or a least that results can suggest that there is a problem with a theory, or its application and assumptions. If they know how to investigate and what to do about anomalies, why doesn't Big Nuclear Science? Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Fleischmann
Jed has shot from the hip, unfairly. Steve's visit to interview Fleischmann at his house, prior to both of them then going on to the Rome conference, was organised and agreed over three months previously. After everything was finalised, and very close to the interview date, it transpired that Fleischmann was in New York with the Energetics technology people (Dardik) and may not be back in time. Extra expense changing flights and accommodation ensued to fit it with this last minute change. Arriving in England, we were not even sure that Fleischmann had returned home but Steve phoned up anyway only to be greeted with a stonewalling American voice (that turned out to be Ryan Freilino of Energetics) that claimed to be part of the medical team treating Martin F, that he was to ill to answer the phone (the Fleischmanns have a cordless phone) and that there would be no interview. I've heard plenty of bullshitting Yanks in my time and this was total bullshit, or I'm a Dutchman. Steve decided that as there was to be no interview we might as well buy Martin some flowers and a get well card. We delivered these in person and were met by Sheila F and Ryan Freilino, who repeated the he's too sick to see anyone line. Steve made some remark expressing sorrow that Martin was not responding to the Dardik LifeWaves treatment (bear in mind that Martin had been well enough to be in New York and to travel back to Tisbury which can be grueling even for people in the best of health). Mysteriously, Martin F turned up at the Rome conference a few days later, apparently as healthy as anyone can be with his underlying medical conditions, which no-one has disputed. Upon being asked whether the I vant to be alone messages were from him or others, he replied other people. Either the LifeWaves treatment had a near miraculous effect as soon as Steve politely walked away from their door or MF wasn't anywhere near as ill as Freilino alleged and the whole story was just the Dardik's controlling access to someone they are trying to use to give their operation credibility. They have lost any credibility they may have had with me, if this is the way they operate. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Fleischmann
ABD and Jed. You are both completely failing to digest the point that this interview at Fleishmann's house was arranged and agreed months in advance. Jed and ABD's's bluster, imputing invasion of privacy, is ridiculous. If someone turns up for a scheduled interview it is not an invasion of privacy - there is no privacy angle whatsoever involved. JR: Fleischmann is under no obligation to meet with Krivit or anyone else. He is under no obligation to give a reason why he does not wish to speak with Krivit. Yes he is if he agreed to it - even if Steve lived in the same town. That flights, travel, expense and a lot of time were involved as well makes it doubly so. It is very rude to behave otherwise. Perhaps you also missed that the factor that caused all this interference with a long arranged interview was the SUBSEQUENT involvement of the Energetics types who presumably caused the effective reneging by Martin of his being able to make the scheduled appointment *while he was still in the US* and healthy enough to do several interviews. Their involvement caused Martin to delay his return to the UK. I already mentioned that flights and accommodation had to be altered because of this. JR: When Sheila told you Martin did not wish to see you, that should have been the end of the story. She did not say that. I remember it as Freilino saying that Martin was to ill to see anyone (which is not the same as not wishing to see us) - Sheila only acquiesced. That is quite different. In any event, it really was the end of that story because then we wished the Fleischmanns well and left. ABD: Nick, you are here reporting as fact what Krivit told you, with not the bare text but with interpretation, such as stonewalling. You guessed and you were wrong. The conversation with Freilino was on speaker phone. I heard all but the first couple of words of it. I will go further - I felt that the tone that Freilino adopted was sinister and heavy. At that point we did not know it was Freilino (he did not identify himself), or indeed that there would be anyone other than the Fleischmanns there. I found it very chilling. He claimed that he spoke on behalf of the medical team (implying more than one) and to a Brit, used to the British Health Service the way he said it made my flesh crawl. A medical team to us suggests that someone is at death's door and the team is working frantically to save them - not giving them minor exercises to do at defined intervals in some born-again biorhythms new-age medical procedure. JR: As it happens I suffer from neurological problems similar to Fleischmann's As it happens, my wife suffers from similar neurological problems which could render her incapable of doing an interview, chainsawing or picking up a spoon. If she was well enough to do interviews in one continent, travel to another then fly on to a conference, all within a few days there is no way in hell she could be reasonably well, extremely ill and reasonably well again so fast. It is clear to me, who was there, that Freilino was controlling the situation. It is perfectly possible that Martin was tired, or very tired, by his trip back home but that is not what Freilino said - he said he was too ill. ABD: (about me) I don't doubt your honesty in the report, but most of your report wasn't your own direct experience, but quite likely hearsay from Steve; yet you would have witnessed some of what Steve reported, and you omitted the negative parts of it from your own report. Again you are wrong - it wasn't hearsay neither did I omit anything significant. The only part I cannot swear by is Martin's comment that it was other people (rather than him) who were behind the obfuscation because I did not go on to Rome. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:Fleischmann
I seem to recall that essential tremor is eased by alcoholic beverages whereas Parkinson's is not. Anyway, it's a good excuse to buy some wine... Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com
Re: [Vo]:clever electric bike design
Jones Beene linked: http://ecobike.diytrade.com/sdp/462663/4/pd-2542849/5790431-0/Folding_Electric_Tricycle.html One of the irritating, almost unpleasant, things about trikes is that they don't bank over on corners or cambered road surfaces (my wife has an electric one). This machine looks as if it can bank over, whilst still keeping the stability of three wheels. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it BlogSpot Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer
Re: [Vo]:Papers uploaded but having trouble downloading
Jed - I had this problem myself very recently. Try Firefox Tools- Options- Applications - you might find that Firefox has set itself to always ask about opening pdfs. The effect is that nothing happens and the tab hangs. I am sure you will figure out what to do to fix it. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:ClockworkRubeGoldberg
Hello Mike, Yes, it doesn't look like big springs are able to be used for storing much. I was hoping they could be wound up during high wind or hot sun times for overnight use. Michel sent me the following which about nails the idea but I wonder if they just mean a straight helical spring as opposed to the spiral mainspring type - would there be a difference in the theory? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density Excerpts from their main table: Storage type MJ/kg MJ/L EEStor (claimed) 1.2 5.7 battery, Lithium ion0.46-0.720.83-0.9 Flywheel 0.36-0.5 battery (NiMH), High Power0.250 0.493 battery (NiCd)[5]0.14 1.08 battery, Lead acid[5] 0.14 0.36 Spring 0.0003 0.0006 Springs therefore don't seem to be a practical energy storage solution (mass per stored kWh is about 1000 times more than that of other types) Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:ClockworkRubeGoldberg
Harbach Jak wrote: So in that vane; Some Mother-earth-news types back in the 70's notice that a simple and effective way to get water pumped up hill from a cased well was simply to hoist a small piston air-compressor up a pole with wind-fan blades fabricated on to the drive shaft and simply 'pressure-up' the capped well casing. And with a skinny PVC pipe running down into the water of the well acting as a straw the 25lbs of air-pressure or so would pump a steady stream quite high as needed into an over head tank. It works great and is almost absurdly 'low-tech.' Yup this is what I was getting at. I wanted to avoid converting the wind/sun/waves/tide etc into electricity which is then stored in a battery or used to pump water uphill etc. Direct conversion of renewable energy into stored mechanical energy would cut out the lossy middlemen stages. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
[Vo]:Clockwork
Gnorts, Vorts Anyone have any idea if big clockwork mainsprings could be used at a domestic level to store energy - and how to calculate available storage capacity? Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:Gulf Stream energy
Jed wrote: What do you mean by that? Are you suggesting that the Gulf Stream may stop or shift locations? It's regarded as a long term possibility depending on how far and fast Greenland melts. The film The Day after Tomorrow was based on this change in ocean circulation. At the time, the film was criticised for making the slowing and halt of the current very rapid (instead of taking the hundreds of years it was expected to take). While still not an immediate danger, observations show that the ice sheets seem to be melting/breaking up much faster than the IPCC predictions at the time (and even those of the 2007 IPCC report)... Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:Perspective on Heat Vs. Everything Else
Horace wrote: I have suggested this is one reason that magnetic fields from permanent magnets provide enhanced fusion rates in SPAWAR experiments. I like the type of experiments in 50's science fiction where the experimenter would, after years of getting nowhere, on a whim, pick up a NIB magnet and shake it by their cold fusion cell to be instantly rewarded by a blinding wave of light and heat... Nick Palmer
Re: [Vo]:Hydrino represents Lorentz contraction in the opposite direction from event horizon
I know Horace and Steven have been commenting on this topic critically but I kind of got what Frank was on about the first time (in amongst the confusing word salad). The event horizon stuff escapes me... Here is (I think) a testable hypothesis that would offer support to this time dilation between Casimir plates. Fire short half life particles/atoms though the gap between the plates and see if there is an effect on their lifespan. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:vortex balls!
Horace rather plaintively wrote:I've updated:http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/HullMotor.pdfto include the contents of my recent vortex posts, in the hope that, unlike the last 6 years, maybe in the next 6 years someone will read it and think, Hey, the torque is indeed due to magnetic hysteresis.Unfortunately,Full many a rose is born to blush unseen, And waste its fragrance on the desert air Thomas Gray: Elegy in a country churchyardNick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Fw: [Vo]:vortex balls!
- Original Message - From: John Berry To: Nick Palmer Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2009 11:58 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:vortex balls! Unfortunately,Full many a rose is born to blush unseen, And waste its fragrance on the desert air On the subject of such, well I did just give a method that logically should create energy. I am pretty sure that it can't be easily explained away within known laws of electrodynamics. In other words I believe it could only fail if relativity is wrong. There are not many ways to create energy that add up within the accepted model of physics, but this is one has no takers? Personally I only find it to be a curiosity but only because I believe I have better. If you don't believe my aether model then this should logically be the solution to the worlds energy problems. Did I fail to explain the effect clearly enough... This either disproves (special) relativity or creates energy in violation of the first law of thernodynamics. Horace, you are reasonably well clued in on electrodynamics, no view on this? On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Nick Palmer ni...@wynterwood.co.uk wrote: Horace rather plaintively wrote:I've updated:http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/HullMotor.pdfto include the contents of my recent vortex posts, in the hope that, unlike the last 6 years, maybe in the next 6 years someone will read it and think, Hey, the torque is indeed due to magnetic hysteresis.Unfortunately,Full many a rose is born to blush unseen, And waste its fragrance on the desert air Thomas Gray: Elegy in a country churchyardNick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:OT video
John Berry wrote: For something genius, watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA I can second this - it's very funny. It's a literal interpretation (you'll see what I mean) of Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart video. I suspect Cold Fusion powers the eyes of the choir... Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:New drill to make geothermal easier
Re: the extra heat into the environment if we use deep geothermal wells. I wrote the following in my Cold Fusion - an environmentalist's perspective article for Infinite Energy magazine. The human population is forecast to stabilise at around 11 billion by the middle of the next century and if each human was then using a constant 30 kilowatts, which may very well happen if we have unlimited energy to run our homes, transport and manufacturing processes etc, then we would be adding around an extra 1/750 of the heat that Earth intercepts from the sun. This might be insignificant globally but, as the climate seems to have a fractal nature and be vulnerable to the butterfly effect, it may conversely have large effects. Fractional changes in the solar insolation due to tiny variations in Earth's orbit are thought to account for the periodicity of ice ages. In any event, the outpouring of so much waste heat in areas of high population density would certainly have an effect on the local microclimate and so this effect should be guarded against - it may be that we will need to radiate the waste heat into the night sky to get rid of it. If geothermal proved to be a problem, I think it would be easily soluble. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:Traffic flow
I looked at the animation for this idea and, frankly, Bill's animation is head and shoulders better. The core reason behind phantom jams is absolutely obvious with Bill's whereas this one is pretty confusing unless you understand the idea in advance of watching it. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
[Vo]:OT: carbon capture
Jeff Fink wrote (3rd June): If you put me in a room where CO2 is double the ambient, I won't even notice. If you put some potted plants in there with me they will love it and grow like crazy. Vegetation on this planet is starved for more CO2. Jeff Here's a Climate Crock of the Week video showing how dangerous and misleading this CO2 as plant food propaganda from the denialists is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFGU6qvkmTIeurl=http%3A%2F%2Fnickpalmer.blogspot.com%2Ffeature=player_embedded Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
[Vo]:test
Just testing to see if Eskimo.com is letting my messages through yet. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
[Vo]:Tesla coil music
If you're going to waste energy, you might as well have fun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqoRaphiEk Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:Red Hot Lies
The author of this book is almost certainly a professional liar or deluded or - giving him the most benefit-of-the-doubt possible - he is seriously misled and is not capable of making a valid rational assessment of data and evidence in the face of the glaringly obvious. He uses cherry picked phases taken out of context, misleading logical fallacies and well established black propaganda techniques. Although people like this are definitely consciously using exactly the same tactics that the tobacco industry once used (to try and avoid liability for the fact that they were knowingly killing their customers) they misrepresent (they lie about) their position as being one of scepticism. It is not. They are impervious to information that conflicts with their position (most of it!) and they deliberately select and twist and misrepresent that small portion that is ambiguous. This is nothing like climate change scepticism, this is out and out denial and lying. Author Chris Horner: http://www.desmogblog.com/chris-horner http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Chris_Horner Horner's basic modus operandi is functionally identical to Rush Limbaugh's pernicious drivel. Here is a sample Limbaugh quote Despite the hysterics of a few pseudo-scientists, there is no reason to believe in global warming. This is a an example of a Big Lie (actually a colossally gigantic lie) taken straight from the 101 handbook of deception and propaganda as used by Goebbels. The Heartland institute deniers conference has just taken place where these Big Lies were ten a penny and objective truth and analysis were conspicuous by their absence. This took place (probably not coincidentally) more or less simultaneously with the Copenhagen conference of genuine climate scientists which sketches out an uncomfortable future. http://www.climateark.org/CopenhagenClimateConference/ Heartland Institute funded their deniers conference. Heartland has a long history of being well-funded by the tobacco industry and fossil fuel companies. Not that Heartland discloses which corporations and foundations fund its operations; it, like many think tanks, prefers secrecy. Heartland president James L. Bast recently claimed that by not disclosing our donors, we keep the focus on the issue. Probably enough said! Here's a pdf file about general denier tactics http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/global%20warming%20denial%20industry%20PR%20techniques%20report%20March%202009.pdf An excerpt: There is a long and well-documented history of the development of very effective public relations techniques that are used to create doubt about the realities of scientific conclusions that threaten to impose government regulation on corporations. Most of these techniques were developed and honed by public relations professionals working on behalf of the tobacco companies to downplay the harmful health effects of cigarettes in the late 80's and early 90's. For the last ten years or so, these same PR techniques have been used very effectively by free-market think tanks and fossil-fuel funded organizations to sow public doubt about the realities of climate change in the hopes of delaying government action on the issue. Thomas Malloy is fond of implying that liberals and environmentalists and anyone he perceives as being left of him are actually suffering from mental illness. He has been note to quote some bonkers source that claims this exact point. Thomas said today: Leftists are smart enough, but they have an insanity which makes them unable to see the error of their ways. Specifically, they seem unable to overcome the effects of this insanity Does this remind anyone of the situation of the loony in the asylum telling anyone who will listen that they're the only one who is sane and everyone outside in the world is mad? Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Fw: [Vo]:Red Hot Lies
Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it - Original Message - From: thomas malloy temall...@usfamily.net To: Nick Palmer ni...@wynterwood.co.uk Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 4:47 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Red Hot Lies Nick Palmer wrote: The author of this book is almost certainly a professional liar or deluded or - giving him the most benefit-of-the-doubt possible // Thomas Malloy is fond of implying that liberals and environmentalists and anyone he perceives as being left of him are actually suffering from mental illness. He has been note to quote some bonkers source that claims this exact point. Thomas said today: /Leftists are smart enough, but they have an insanity which makes them unable to see the error of their ways. Specifically, they seem unable to overcome the effects of this insanity/ Does this remind anyone of the situation of the loony in the asylum telling anyone who will listen that they're the only one who is sane and everyone outside in the world is mad? You hit the nail right on the head Nick, one of us is insane. --- Get FREE High Speed Internet from USFamily.Net! -- http://www.usfamily.net/mkt-freepromo.html ---
Re: [Vo]:Organic farming under threat...
You lot must realise that I usually put forward a strong environmentalist line on this forum. But I have to say I agree with the anti-organic methods posts in this thread but... but... but... firstly, organic farming will only use fungicides when necessary, whereas conventional agriculture has a planned spraying regime, often several times, as a matter of course. If modern fungicides etc have genuinely improved to the point where they are equal to, or superior to, the old organic methods in lack of toxicity and most importantly in bio degradation and lack of accumulation in the environment, then certainly the traditional methods should be reviewed but I don't hear the agricultural companies shouting this from the rooftops as I am sure they would if it was genuinely true. Bear in mind that agri-fungicides tend to kill everything and there are plenty of beneficial fungi that should be kept in the soil. An example - I live in a place where a big crop for our farmers is early potatoes, which are prone to potato blight (a fungus) and so they spray the crop routinely to prevent this getting a hold. Because of this all the other beneficial fungi in the environment of the field get killed. It is a fungal free zone. Organic farmers I know don't have such a vulnerability because the natural beneficial fungi in the environment are already on the plant when it pushes through into the light. The existing good fungi have already populated the habitat of the potato leaves thus leaving not much of a niche for the blight fungus to get a hold on. They still get blight but it does not get such a hold and is managed by cutting the affected plants down early. Another example - the potato crop also suffers from eelworm and so nematicides are routinely applied to the non-organic crop. A well established organic field has fungi which literally have lassos which catch the nematodes. The crop still gets eelworm attack but it is much less of a problem than it is to those who farm with dead soil. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
[Vo]:more power - arrh, arrh!
Gnorts, This Australian company has just announced 60% electrical efficiency for their solid oxide microgeneration combined heat and power unit - 85% total efficiency! http://www.cfcl.com.au/ Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:Climate Change
in activity, is only about 20%. Do you really think that scientists working in the field would not know about this and take it into account? This it's all the Sun idea is another classic fool the gullible lie from the denier lobby ruthlessly repeated on denier blogs - the actual small number of scientific sceptics working in the field do not use it because it is stupid Faced with the cold hard facts, these people changed the name from global warming to climate change Another shameless distortion from the denier lobby. The current emphasis on saying climate change rather than global warming is actually a response to the muddying of the waters by the denial lobby who tried to fool the public by exploiting the misleading nature of the short description global warming for their own ends. Global warming refers to the average temperature (energy) of the whole Earth climate system. Global warming doesn't mean that everywhere will uniformly warm by the same change in temperature. Some places will get very much hotter and dryer or others will get very much colder and wetter or icier. In part, due to the mindless distortion of the deniers who use incidents such as exceptional cold periods of weather as some sort of irrational proof that the globe isn't warming, the public description of the phenomena tends now to be climate change. The deniers seized upon this change in description and one of the current outrageous pieces of propaganda from them is that because the climate has sometimes changed naturally in the past that therefore the current change that we are seeing cannot be due to humans. Such a stupidly illogical piece of crap would be laughable if the potential consequences weren't so dangerous. As for atmospheric pollution, it's clear to us that volcanoes contribute way more pollution that all human activities. How can it be clear to you? Where do you get your misinformation from? Why do you choose to believe it rather than the truth? This volcano lie is wrong wrong wrong - massively wrong, blatantly wrong yet the gullible parrot it without thought or analysis. It is another example of endlessly repeated denier black propaganda. As a matter of scientific fact volcanoes only put out about one/one hundred and fiftieth (0.7%) of the CO2 that people do. The other things they emit actually have a cooling effect http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html Scroll down to INFLUENCE ON THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT. This simple fact is easily checkable. Check it now! After you have done, you must change your mind on this one. You may then reflect that if the sources you rely on can be so wrong or are so blatantly lying to you, that maybe a whole lot more of what they are saying is lies and propaganda too. The bottom line is that you want to take the weather predictions seriously; (remake the economic system) of people who can't forecast the weather beyond 10 days with any level of accuracy, when they make predictions 100 years in the future. You have fallen for another denier lie - they deliberately attempt to confuse weather and climate in the public's mind. Predicting weather is like predicting how many times red or black comes up in the next few spins on a roulette wheel. You won't get rich. Predicting climate change is like knowing that, over time, the red and black incidents will statistically work out at around 50-50 - the casino gets rich. Nick Palmer
Re: [Vo]:Climate Change
Thomas sent me notification of this show but I do live on the other side of the Atlantic timewise so it was not really possible for me to contribute to an American talk show (even if I thought it would be a good idea). I listened to the (Dennis Prager) show afterwards via streaming media and all I can say is I am shocked. Is this show a typical example of such shows? I have heard that Rush Limbaugh is a shock jock but this show was like listening to a broadcast of Josef Goebbels's inspired Nazi propaganda. Goebbels said That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result, he also wrote. It is not propaganda's task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success. The people behind this radio show either know they are doing propaganda or they are stupid/irrational/insane by virtue of their inability to see what is real and what is not. We do not have any shows like this over here, although we do have Jerry Springer vs. Trailer trash type shows. The climatologist featured (Joe Bastardi) is actually a meteorologist TV weather guy. These people are not authorities on climate change, neither are they scientists in the field, but if they are otherwise factual and non- propagandist they obviously have every right to speak on this topic as a non authority. He was however presented as an appeal to authority - a logical fallacy inasmuch as he does not have authority to speak by virtue of his career. He and Prager kept on making references to Al Gore and constantly used the latest denier tactic of the month - by implying that because the climate changed in the past naturally and continues to change that therefore even if the climate is warming that it is nothing to do with people or there is nothing we can do about it or that it would be too expensive. This should immediately tip off anyone who follows this subject that the show was not a fair and objective presentation of a debate but low manipulation of people (see Goebbels). He kept on confusing the difference between weather and climate, thus demonstrating that he is either a) stupid or b) evil and he introduced veritable battalions of strawmen arguments thus again proving conclusively that he is a) stupid or b) evil. His basic technique was to do the so called gish gallop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish http://www.youdebate.com/cgi-bin/scarecrow/topic.cgi?forum=3topic=22020 This is a technique that rhetoricians such as Bastardi use to snow under the other side with a blizzard of assertions, strawmen, red herrings, unattributed statements etc. They can fire off 30 highly dubious points in five minutes which would need a couple of hours (at least) to carefully and accurately correct. They generally restrict themselves to bandwidth/time limited media so there can be no effective answer to their spiel, which has been compared to that of snake oil salesmen. Having heard one of these shows for the first time I have to say that they appear to be a great evil - spreading lies and distortion and misrepresentation and manipulating gullible people all in the name of free speech - liberty? - more like licence! Nick Palmer
Re: [Vo]:Climate Change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/11/climate-change-misleading-claims This article gives a very balanced view which highlights the problems of exaggeration and poor media reporting on the general appearance of the topic. It makes clear that AGW sceptics (like Prager and Bastardi) are wrong and, on the other hand, that the most dramatic of the doomsayers are saying things that the conservative consensus statements of climate science don't say. Of course, the science may be wrong but it could be wrong either way. Until we have run the experiment, nobody can be certain which way it will end up - planetary feedbacks could keep the temperature fairly stable or we may pass a tipping point, known or as yet unknown, whereby the greenhouse effect is amplified, in which case the doomsayers will probably be right. Release of the undersea and tundra methane deposits would be one such mechanism. Nick Palmer
[Vo]:Re: Unstoppable Global Warming...
Mark Iverson wrote: A little bit of the opposing evidence... http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st279/st279.pdf -Mark This is not evidence - it is misleading propaganda from S. Fred Singer, one of the biggest deniers around. It relates to his book Unstoppable global warming every 1500 years. Singer used to say that there was no global warming until the real scientific evidence piled up so much that he could no longer deny it so he reversed his position and wrote this book that now says that OK, the globe IS warming but it is nothing to do with us and is all down to natural cycles. He is bonkers. If the globe is warming naturally due to some discovered cycle then it is even more barking mad irresponsible for us to continue to add extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Singer would look at his own house burning down due to a lightning strike (natural event) and turn the central heating up because it was otherwise a chilly night. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:Scientists Agree Human-Induced Global Warming Is Real
Mark Iverson wrote: So what? Here's a place that has 31,072 petition signatures, all with degrees, nearly half with PhDs/MDs. Science is NOT done by concensus! http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/Signers_BY_State.html http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Review_Article.html This is the infamous Oregon petition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition which was relaunched. The signatories are almost exclusively people from other disciplines than climate science. The Oregon petition is a textbook example of the appeal to authority fallacy. The recent (smaller) survey that launched this thread is not such an example because it was done within the field. Here is a criticism of the original Oregon petition: The Oregon Petition has been used by climate change deniers as proof that there is no scientific consensus, however they fail to note the controversy surrounding the petition itself. In April 1998, Robinson's Oregon Institute, along with the Exxon-backed George C. Marshall Institute , co-published the infamous Oregon Petition claiming to have collected 17,000 signatories to a document arguing against the realities of global warming. The petition and the documents included were all made to look like official papers from the prestigious National Academy of Science . They weren't, and this attempt to mislead has been well-documented. Along with the petition there was a cover letter from Dr. Fred Seitz a notorious climate change denier (and big tobacco scientist), who over 30 years ago was the president of the National Academy of Science. Also attached to the petition was an apparent research paper titled: Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. The paper was made to mimic what a research paper would look like in the National Academy's prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy journal. The authors of the paper were Robinson, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon (both oil-backed scientists) and Robinson's son Zachary. With the signature of a former NAS president and a research paper that appeared to be published in one of the most prestigious science journals in the world, many scientists were duped into signing a petition based on a false impression. The petition was so misleading that the National Academy issued a news release stating that: The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science. The newly relaunched petition (in 2007) with a claimed 32,000 signatures appears to use the same misleading paper written by the Robinsons and Soon which has been comprehensively demolished as misleading and deceptive not to mention highly based on old discredited or superseded papers. Nick Palmer
Re: [Vo]:Homegrown wind generators
It's true that small wind turbines are more of a threat to birds (because they spin faster) but this is mostly when wind farms are constructed on ancient migration routes, particularly when they are placed in areas where there is a natural throughway such as between two areas of higher ground that birds are likely to use when migrating. Painting the blades in an asymmetric pattern (to induce flicker - but watch out for epileptics too) also helps. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:The PickensPlan website
Dime Box Richard wrote: At any one time as many as 1/3 of the mills are down for maintenance. The cost of repairs including crane rental fees to remove a generator or blade 100 plus feet above ground gets sorta costly This looks wrong. I am sure they are far more reliable than that. Without looking at official figures, I can tell you that from Jersey's North coast I frequently see the wind farm on the French coast (about 18 miles away) and I can't ever remember seeing one down (5 years). I have driven though several other wind farms in various locations and have also never seen one stationary (unless there was no wind) or being worked on. This 1/3 figure sounds like gross black propaganda from someone unless your US farms are supplied by the equivalent of Walmart instead of the equivalent of DeWalt... . Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:The PickensPlan website
It is from the Greening Earth Society -- the U.S. coal lobby that favors global warming. (I kid you not.) Ahh! That figures. I know about them. I've got a feeling it might have been them that came up with that infomercial about CO2 that concluded CO2 - they call it pollution - we call it life. Edit - no it wasn't - it was the Competitive Enterprise Institute http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_VmMIbWKoo Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:OT: Snowstorms in the Midwest
Steven A. Lawrence wrote: That's incredible! Of course, you're correct, and it's simple arithmetic, but I had never seen it expressed that way before. That's just 5.5 acres of dry land per person -- and if you leave out desert, ice caps, mountaintops, and other marginal land it's even less. I'm amazed these figures aren't more widely known. Take a look at this from the BBC which is based on the United Nations Environment programme GEO4 report from 2007 which sort of references them. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7056601.stm It shows how many hectares per person we have and how it has been shrinking over the years. Up until I saw the GEO4 report, I hadn't seen anyone else had done this calculation. I first did it back when we had a population of about 3.6 billion - round about 1970 - when I was still at school. When people in the late 60's had raised concerns about overpopulation in the future, scoffers (deniers!) worked out that the entire world's population could squeeze onto the Isle of Wight (off England's South coast - about 147 square miles in area), thus making the world back then appear a pretty roomy place. I did the complementary calculation at the time (no calculators then...) and discovered that if the global population was evenly distributed over the land surface of Earth, then each person would only have an area of land 220 yards square as their personal environmental space! Obviously some of this area would be hostile desert, ice fields, mountains, rainforest etc. The world suddenly looked rather cramped. I even wrote a poem featuring the figure (and blue whales and advertising) - excerpt follows - the population is in a jam, two hundreds yards square for every man! Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:OT: Snowstorms in the Midwest
Mark Iverson quoted John Coleman (Weather channel) as saying: The compound carbon dioxide makes up only 38 out of every 100,000 particles in the atmosphere, he said. That's about twice as what there were in the atmosphere in the time we started burning fossil fuels, so it's gone up, but it's still a tiny compound, Coleman said. So how can that tiny trace compound have such a significant effect on temperature? This proves beyond all doubt that Coleman is either being deliberately deceptive or doesn't understand what he is talking about. The figure is more or less correct but considering that the majority of the atmospheric gases are not greenhouse gases, his statement is HIGHLY misleading - whether deliberately or otherwise, one can only speculate. This deceit has been used a lot by the denialist lobby and has been comprehensively destroyed many times. The main gases in the atmosphere are nitrogen and oxygen, which make up 78% and 21% of the volume of air respectively. The remaining 1% of the atmospheric gases is made up of trace gases. These include the noble gases of which the most abundant is argon. Other noble gases include neon, helium, krypton and xenon. The remaining trace gases include the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour and ozone, so-called because they are involved in the Earth natural greenhouse effect which keeps the planet warmer than it would be without an atmosphere. Although CO2 is only around 383 ppm - 0.0383% - of the total atmosphere, it is responsible for about 9–26% of the total greenhouse effect. Water vapour, although seemingly a greater contributor at 36–70%, cannot increase in the atmosphere (extra humidity always precipitates out very quickly as rain or snow - which would seem to nail as a non-starter that gigatonnes of seawater solution that cropped up here recently) and so is NOT far more important as a greenhouse gas than CO2 is - this is another denialist deceit that they keep on plugging, again long after it has been proved to be false. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:OT: Snowstorms in the Midwest
and cumulative pesticides etc not to mention room for the multitude of wildlife and plants that generate our oxygen etc and form the ecological web of life without which we could not survive. Each person's environmental spaceship can also be seen as a globe about 1km in diameter within which we have a patch of Earth about 270 meters square, 70% of which is ocean, leaving the aforementioned patch of land 150 metres square to live on. I think that shows that Earth is pretty cramped and it is beyond rational belief that our activities are not affecting things. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:OT: Snowstorms in the Midwest
Philip I read that blog - http://ker-plunk.blogspot.com/ - there are a lot of blogs like this endlessly recycling denier myths that have been shot down a hundred times. Climateaudit.org or Watts up with that are much better (although their comments sections are even more full of the fooled, the gullible and the blinkered libertarians). There are far too many half truths, exaggerations, misrepresentations and false statements in the kerplunk blog to dissect here but amongst the two biggest are the famous old the hockey stick has been debunked lie (it hasn't - it really, really hasn't) and the slightly less famous tropospheric temperature one. Here is a reasonably up to date statement by the guy responsible for analysing the measurements whose work USED to suggest that there was an anomaly until they found the errors in their own work. The denier blogs and propagandists seem reluctant to show the new info though... So where does that leave us? An Executive Summary by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, co-authored by John Christy of UAH concludes: Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. While these data are consistent with the results from climate models at the global scale, discrepancies in the tropics remain to be resolved. This difference between models and observations may arise from errors that are common to all models, from errors in the observational data sets, or from a combination of these factors. The second explanation is favored, but the issue is still open. In other words, according to UAH, satellite measurements match the models apart from in the tropics. This error is most likely due to data errors. According to RSS, satellites are in good agreement with models. Most of the denier myths are exploded here (not the best, most definitive or clearest but probably the largest number in one place) http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:OT: Snowstorms in the Midwest
Global warming is what we are doing to the AVERAGE temperature of the planet. Climate change is what will result. It is true that the political elements pushed the climate change label to confuse people. A lot of the denialist propaganda now comes from, or is sponsored by, just two organisations - the Heartlands Institute and the Cato Institute. Now that Big Oil and Big Coal no longer officially disagree with climate change/AGW most of the clever spin and bullshit is down to these so called think tanks. Technically, the natural trend is that we are headed towards an ice age but we won't get there for another few thousand years. Despite this the planet is measurably warming due to our activities. This should ring even louder alarm bells. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:Solar Energy Ltd. intends to develop cold fusion
Jed wrote: What could this be? My guess: two words; one name: Russ George Absolutely definitely is George. The following taken from half way down the 10-Q nails it. Results of Operations During the three months ended March 31, 2008, the Company focused on resuming research and development activities in connection with cold fusion technologies, discontinued iron-fertilization prove out measures in connection with Planktos Corp., divested substantially all of the assets of Planktos Corp. and pursued financing commitments for its ongoing plan of operation. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:'Heavy' drinkers live longer
IMO, vegetable oils are responsible for small holes in artery walls, which the body then tries to fill with cholesterol. In short vegetable oils are not healthy alternatives, they are the primary cause of heart disease. The healthy alternative is nice heavy animal fats. Hey Robin, you'll have to explain why vegetarians get far less heart disease then! Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:The evolution of good governance
Jones Beene wrote: Although its economy is generally so far to the left as to be called socialist by detractors in the NeoCon movement, due to its entitlements and innate humanism, it is ironically also one of the most free market and capitalist farm economies in the world - less regulated than the US or Brit farmer - which only indicates that *true liberalism can be the ideal form of capitalism.*Eat you heart out, Remi. Generally speaking, the Dutch are also amongst the nicest people in the world too - co-incidence? I think not. Nick Palmer On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:OFF TOPIC News of the bailout
Remi Cornwall wrote: They are forever talking about the character of the republicans but one needs to look at the character of the left: a motley crew of the self-loathing, anarchists, vandals, control freaks, low standards, low achievement, anti-patriotic scumbags. More total crap from Remi - no wonder some find some of those on the right to be not very nice people at all. As Remi's M.O. is to turn up here every year or so, vent a lot of hot air then disappear again a few weeks later in a puff of sulphurous smoke for another year or so to let his bile stocks build up again, perhaps it won't be long before he's off again. Any body else counting the minutes? Nick Palmer (slightly right-leaning environmentalist) On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:GM Chevy Volt at CalCars
John Steck shot a load of stuff from the hip... snipped Oh dear, I didn't realise that according to John, the kind of neo-con thinking that got us into the various messes we're in, or about to be in - Climate change, peak oil, global financial meltdown and global overpopulation was what was needed to fix things in future too!! Are you feeling lucky, punks? On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it
Re: [Vo]:Sunspotless
Rick wrote The position I take is based on my and others' interpretation of the facts, and I'll stand on that. Lindzen is entitled to his opinion, as are you to yours. Your position would only be acceptable if the various opinions were of equal weight. They are not. Lindzen's opinion counts a lot because he is the just about the most serious climate sceptic and even he admits the things I have listed. Some of the rest may have been scientists previously but they are no longer speaking scientifically, they have mutated into pundits and they use false logic, misleading half truths and out and out lies to sway opinion. You claim to have interpreted the facts but your postings reveal that you are not looking at facts, you are looking at what the deniers tell you are the facts - these people are lying to you - frequently, relentlessly, blatantly. Their method is to keep on telling the Big Lies over and over, changing them slightly, introducing new variations to keep things fresh, but still non-stop lying. They keep on relaunching the same old propaganda methods with plausible lies, massive omissions etc.The very best light that can be put on what they say is that, due to the nature of the Internet, old ideas and websites just keep on surfacing and people keep coming upon the supposed facts without realising, OR BEING TOLD BY THE PROMULGATORS, that these facts and theories have been shot to pieces a million times already, sometimes as long ago as 15 years. The denier arguments are like Freddy Kruger - you just can't seem to kill them permanently. It comes down to this. You seem to have a BELIEF, that has little genuine scientific credibility, massaged and encouraged by professional liars and deceivers that we are not screwing up the climate. Then there are those who have a BELIEF, backed up by the most credible scientific knowledge we have that there is a very strong chance that we are indeed screwing up the climate. If we weigh the various opinions, yours is of less worth because, by looking at the consequences of the various beliefs, reckless or cautious, we can easily ascertain what to do about greenhouse gases. You have no right to risk everybody else futures with your over-confident view. I know you are American, but Christ does your national ego know no limits?
Re: [Vo]:NIST debunking
Err guys, don't get carried away with the conspiracy - try to consider how long a pool of molten metal would stay molten... Mark Loizeaux, now president of CDI and one of the contractors in the clean-up is quoted in newspaper accounts and television interviews in the weeks following 9/11 as seeing molten steel in the bottoms of elevator shafts three, four, and five weeks after the attack. ... who seldom go out of the office except to show their bizarre video simulations which do not consider anything below the eight floor - and then to dodge questions about why they did not consider very basic things, like molten steel or like interviewing Mark Loizeaux - years later about why he might have changed some details of his original interview, AFTER the first report came out . When steel beams were pulled from these glowing pools, and there are videos showing this - many of them still had dripping metal coming from fairly straight cut marks. Was some worker down there in a 2000 degree inferno with a torch? Were these videos faked ? If so why didn't NIST say they are fake videos? Even if thermite was used, what mechanism could possibly keep pools of molten steel - molten - beams dripping - glowing - for WEEKS after they were melted. It's just not possible unless you want to bring in a LENR CANR angle!
Re: [Vo]:Sunspotless
Just to try to level the field wherein all the argument takes place over AGW. Richard Lindzen is probably the most respected of the atmospheric scientists who are sceptical about catastrophic climate change. He has been the AGW sceptical scientist-of-choice on many TV programmes and writes leading articles for newspapers such as the Wall St journal. From the Wall St Journal that Terry Blanton linked to http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 Lindzen said a variation of the position he has held for many years (early 90's). BTW, this is not cherry picked - it represents his frequently expressed opinion. To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. I hope that Vorts are sufficiently literate to understand exactly what he is saying here... The most serious sceptic is admitting that 1) there has been warming 2) that CO2 has increased in parallel with that warming 3) that CO2 should contribute to future warming. Virtually all of the AGW denier propaganda and deliberately deceptive claims can therefore be thrown in the bin - their main sceptical scientist does not back them up. Throw in the bin the urban heat islands, the increased solar irradiance, the so called debunked hockey stick (the debunking has since been debunked), the warming on other planets and all of the other, often mutually contradictory, theories and logical falsehoods that the denier industry propagates ad nauseam, despite them having been answered time and time again - they just keep on endlessly resurrecting them, like the killer in a Freddy/Jason slasher movie, as long as there are new gullible people to swallow it. Lindzen's argument is that he does not agree with the IPCC projections because he comes up with a different, lower, figure for the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gas forcing and feedbacks. He tacitly admits that there has been warming, that there will be further warming and that we are responsible for some of it. Where he differs from the majority is that his lower sensitivity figure leads to predictions of lower temperature rise and much lower probability of excess positive feedbacks adding to the problem. He states that there will be further warming and we will be responsible for it but it won't be a problem. He is effectively claiming that, according to his research, assumptions, projections and logic that in a similar situation, Dirty Harry usually has shot 6 bullets, or the last bullet always misfires, so challenging him won't be dangerous. The IPCC models say that their sensitivity figure, projections, assumptions and logic etc show that Dirty Harry will almost certainly have bullets left and that it will be at least risky to definitely dangerous to challenge him. A fundamental problem is that the actual sensitivity figure to various inputs CANNOT be known with certainty without a lot of experimental climate science, which I have pointed out, over the years, would need a time machine, as we only have one test tube to do the experiment in. It comes down to this - both the sceptical scientists and the far greater number of pro AGW scientists are advising us that they're assessments and assumptions about reality are better and more accurate than the opposition's. Neither has got sufficient experimental climate science behind them to fully validate their positions. Who do we trust? Answer - neither. What we should do is use the techniques of risk assessment to decide what to do.
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Apologies for the shouting in this post! Rick wrote: The skeptics point to those three things because those things correctly expose the serious problems AGW has - a lack of evidence for CO2 as a cause for warming. There is tons of evidence for CO2 as a (but not the only) cause for warming. The basic theory and experimental evidence goes back over 100 years. Rick - did you miss that it was Lindzen, the most credible scientist of the delayer/denier lobby saying that there HAS been, and WILL be further, warming and that WE ARE partially responsible for it because of our fossil fuel emissions. HE REALLY SAYS THIS and it is easy to check up because he has been saying much the same thing since the 90's. Because of this, the vast majority of the delayer/denier propaganda can be ignored as mutually contradictory stories made up to deceive people who don't check up the stories they are fed or are too willing to believe what they want to believe. It really seems as if Americans have a much larger per centage of their population who are vulnerable to this professional lying than elsewhere in the world. Here is another example of Lindzen's position http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200710/richard-lindzen-1.html Lindzen doesn't dispute that the planet has warmed up in the past three decades, but he argues that human-generated CO2 accounts for no more than 30 percent of this temperature rise. Much of the warming, he says, stems from fluctuations in temperature that have occurred for millions of years-explained by complicated natural changes in equilibrium between the oceans and the atmosphere-and the latest period of warming will not result in catastrophe. and also http://www.discussglobalwarming.com/blog/2007/04/09/global-warming-crisis-not-based-in-science-lindzen-speaks-out/ He doesn't dispute that global warming is happening: There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? The most serious scientist that the delayer lobby has got admits that global warming IS happening and that humans ARE responsible for some of it because of our emissions of fossil fuels. He further acknowledges that continuing to increase CO2 levels WILL cause further warming. His only real difference is that he thinks the warming will be a lot less than the IPCC forecasts and that the bad effects will be much less. Having read that, and hopefully having checked it out for yourself, you simply cannot keep stating what you have said previously and retain any credibility. (psst...again, want to bet it's the sun?) Err, no. The irradiance of the Sun has been comprehensively measured and at most 20% of the measured warming is down to this source. Try looking at this comprehensive rebuttal of some of the myths and false logic purveyed by the deniers and delayers http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
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I sent a voice input reply on this topic without any checking, be warned, the grammar etc is rubbish (but the ideas and the picture are good if you can sort them out).
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There will be a new book on global warming coming out, provisionally titled What's the Worst that could Happen?. It's written by wonderingmind42 AKA Greg Craven, a school science teacher from Oregon. He did a 10 minute Youtube video that went viral called How it all ends http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg. He got a a book contract on the strength of this and there has been an online collaborative effort (in which I have had a small part) to hack out a book version in 3.5 months. He just succeeded a couple of days ago. His angle was to explore a risk analysis method for Joe Schmoe to use for deciding what to do about potential climate change when the science isn't certain. It's pretty entertaining... Nick Palmer
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Nick, I think we can see that the deteriorating financial situation in Britain could create irrational behavior there as well. However, is it focused on religion being the solution as it is in the US? Do the Brits expect God to save them from their poor decisions? Ed Umm, tricky question. Britain is such a multiracial, multicultural society nowadays that there is no average Brit anymore - just a whole group of people with different conflicting beliefs. With the exception of the fundamentalist Islamics, I don't think anyone seriously expects any God to ride over the hill like the US cavalry. Even the Christians, while still believing in the power of Jesus to redeem etc, cling on to a rather theoretical hope as far as an interventionist God is concerned. We never really had your rather weird religious/healing TV channels, although now they are available on satellite. I think the Internet has made things worse now everyone can focus on totally immersing themselves in a topic with a narrow but concentrated range of psychological input. People are programming their perceptions by limiting their inputs to what they want to see - self brain-washing. The undoubted ability of the Internet to disseminate greater and more varied amounts of knowledge, to discerning types, than humans could ever access in the past is one thing. Much greater is the way people are using it to narrow their view and consolidate their (weak) positions by not seeing or ignoring the wider picture. The Internet, via forums and comment slots, allows people to see that there are thousands of other people who are brainwashed just like them and they feel strengthened in their position - as if somehow the fact that a lot of people believe the same as you makes your viewpoint automatically right or at least valid. This spread of an irrational way of looking at things is the true danger of modern communication. As political power comes from numbers of people believing the same stuff, I think we are in the early stages of the sort of unconscious, unquestioning group think that made the rise of the Third Reich so dangerous. The only reassuring aspect at the moment is that there many different groupthinks with conflicting belief systems. If we're heading into a period where human irrationality is further amplified by our technology, the last thing the world needs is just one set of beliefs. With the US neo-con think tanks having successfully propagandised many people into disbelieving in science, the world today is more dangerous than it was.
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Ed wrote: The problem is to determine what fraction of the population is not rational. I submit that the answer to such a question would help reveal the fraction of rational individuals that are present in a society. Apparently, according to my analysis, the level of rationally is decreasing in the US. This conclusion is not only consistent with this criteria, but it is supported by the behavior of the stock market and the government. Well, actually I was going to write the same sort of thing about spreading irrationality in my anti Yank piece of a couple of hours ago but I held back because I think exactly the same thing has happened in Britain. Not quite as much as in the good ol' US of A with your talk radio and Rush Limbaugh types but who's counting? Not quite sure if it is as bad in mainland Europe?
