Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
2010/3/27 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com: At 07:39 AM 3/26/2010, Michel Jullian wrote: No wonder, the cold fusion experimenters say my cell makes excess heat but they won't let skeptics see it with their own calorimeter. I intend to fix that, you know. Good. Obviously, common sense starts at IQ 159 in CF researchers ;-) Except the first cells won't be calorimeter-ready, they might not generate anough heat, that would take a different, and more expensive design, I suspect.I'm just looking for neutrons. I know, boring. Who can solve the energy crisis with a few neutrons? Part of the point about CF is that it doesn't generate neutrons. Well, usually not. Usually not, or usually not many? Isn't it the exceptions to the rule that are fascinating? If I had a cell that was capable of serious heat generation, I'm not sure I'd turn it over to a skeptic. I'd try to find someone reasonably neutral. (i.e., someone *normally* skeptical but dedicated to fairness and honesty and careful work.) That's what I had in mind, skeptics in the noble sense of the word. Dishonest skeptics will never see the excess heat, not until the field will have entered mainstream. Michel
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
At 06:30 PM 3/26/2010, Michel Jullian wrote: 2010/3/26 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com: Michel Jullian wrote: So, you would not believe the Wright brothers unless they let you fly their airplane? A better analogy is that I would not believe them unless I saw them flying it with my own eyes. If that is what you want, you should be satisfied with Rob Duncan going out to see the calorimeter at Energetics Technology. He is an expert, much better at determining whether it is working than you or I would be. Eyes stand for calorimeter (or more exactly energy balance measurement system) in my analogy . Duncan didn't bring in his own measurement system so he didn't see the excess heat for himself. Six of one and a half dozen of the other, please. Rothwell is correct because the general work of Energetics Technology has been verified by others, and Duncan was able to inspect the equipment, operating cells, and experimental data. Jullian is correct that Duncan's observations would not be enough to rule out fraud. If we assume no fraud, which is always where we should start, though fraud should remain a background possibility until replications are completely independent, the significance of Duncan's investigation is that, looking at the data ET had collected, and at their experimental setups and operation, he concluded that what they conclude from it is also what he concludes from it. So, absent fraud, we have a set of experiments showing excess heat. Significant excesss heat, not some marginal amount that raises issues about accuracy of calorimetry. Given that this is no longer any surprise, that hundreds of research groups have independently found excess heat in the palladium deuteride system, and, frosting on the cake, with lit birthday candles, helium is found by multiple studies to be correlated with the excess heat, when helium is also collected and measured, at a significant value close to the figure for deuterium to helium conversion, the only importance to Duncan's confirmation is: (1) a skeptical (but not dead yet!) prominent physicist was impressed and is now actively encouraging more research. (2) Energetics' numbers reflect their experimental data. They are unlikely to be the result of some stupid mistake. Fraud remains a possibility, in theory, because a fraudster might be motivated to exaggerate results to gain more funding for continued research. It's happened. But given who Dardik is and his history, it's extremely unlikely. (If you look at the history of his celebrated delicensing in New York, there was no fraud found, and it appears that the result was simply from a board view that his unorthodox approach was quackery, at a time when New York was cracking down on this. He had, and has, a lot of very satisfied patients, and where do you think the ET funding came from? Pass-the-hat donations at Quacks Anonymous? Fleeced patients? No, one very satisfied and very wealthy patient. Definitely, his approach is unorthodox, but it's simply conceptually different, and he makes no scientific claims that I've seen. I'd love to see controlled research on it, but it would be, as with many such things, very difficult. Suppose someone could talk to you and change your attitude? Could this affect your health? Most of us would be likely to say, yes, at least in some circumstances, it could. Okay, prove it with controlled research! It's not completely impossible, but also not easy, and Dardik isn't interested, nor would I be, in his shoes. Is his concept of waves responsible for ET's relative success? Maybe. The concept is not outrageous, and could result in new approaches in many situations that would, sometimes, work. It's not a rigid theory of causation, as far as I've seen.)
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
At 07:37 PM 3/26/2010, Michel Jullian wrote: I am just stating a fact, not judging the validity of anybody's claims.There would be no airplanes today if the Wright brothers hadn't allowed skeptics to judge their claims with their own instruments (=own eyes in their case). Luckily, they were not that stupid. Jed knows the Wright history very well. It took years before those general replications took place. Seeing an airplane fly is pretty easy, if you are there at the time. Seeing excess heat is far, far more complex. What claim hasn't been independently tested here? You do know that McKubre at SRI did run the superwave technique with his own calorimeter, right? Is there anything preventing anyone from replicating these results? What? How? In other words, skeptics *are* allowed ... to judge their claims with their own instruments. If not, what's preventing them? I'll tell you. A belief that the results are bogus, a belief that is not based on eyewitness, but attachment to old theory and views. It's difficult and expensive to duplicate the ET work, so skeptics aren't rushing to try it. In 1989, skeptics did rush to try, but too many with a motive to discredit the work, and they clearly didn't wait long enough. Miles, at the ACS conference, pointed out that his work was cited in the 1989 DoE review as a negative replication. I think I've read that when he started getting positive results, he tried to inform them, but it was ignored. In 1989, it was a set-up, I'm afraid, or, perhaps, there were too many physicists too easily relieved that they didn't have to examine the assumptions they had been making for a good chunk of a century, nor did they have to worry about losing their funding to this upstart claim. And then angry that their sleep had been disturbed. Here is the real problem. With the ET/Fleschmann cell approach, there is high variability, cell by cell. The exact cause of this variability is elusive, though there are theories that can be explored and tested. So, here, claim must be seen as a specific claim for a specific experiment, that they got some high value of excess heat in that experiment. This is inherently not reproducible specifically. You either were there, partly (as Duncan) or completely (buying and installing the equipment, calibrating it, etc.), or you weren't. You can never reproduce *that specific experiment.* You can only run similar experiments, as close as possible to the same conditins -- which might be impossible! -- and see if you get statistically similar results. Exact replication, for these excess heat results with Fleischmann cells, is a wild goose chase. However, if you measure both excess heat and helium, and you use the same techniques for helium capture and measurement, and for excess heat, and across many cells, you can, in fact, reproduce results on the heat/helium ratio. Pretty closely, my guess. Individual cells will vary in excess heat, but not in the heat/helium ratio, unless a very different process is triggered, which remains possible. (Suppose the variation is caused by some trace contamination, unidentified. Suppose trace contamination also alters the predominant reaction. You might see variation in the ratio. This cannot be ruled out from what results I've seen. Helium, though, proves fusion if we set aside fusion pathway. (And excepting some fission possibilities that seem like serious stretches to me, and which really involve the same process as fusion, i.e., nuclear *combination*.)
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
At 05:10 AM 3/27/2010, Michel Jullian wrote: 2010/3/27 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com: I intend to fix that, you know. Good. Obviously, common sense starts at IQ 159 in CF researchers ;-) Geez, I mention the result of one test told to me in the 1950s, and it keeps bouncing back. I'm smart, sure. As a girlfriend used to say about her Master's degree in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street in New York, probably the most prestigious school in the field, with that and a quarter I could get a ride on the subway. This was a while ago There are some very, very smart people in this field. It's not necessarily a protection from error. That takes an ability to listen, which may be even less common among very smart people than with ordinary people, for smart people can get stuck in a habit of being right Except the first cells won't be calorimeter-ready, they might not generate anough heat, that would take a different, and more expensive design, I suspect.I'm just looking for neutrons. I know, boring. Who can solve the energy crisis with a few neutrons? Part of the point about CF is that it doesn't generate neutrons. Well, usually not. Usually not, or usually not many? Usually not. I.e., of many, many reactions, only a very few end up producing neutrons. And maybe not any at all, i.e., the primary reaction never produces neutrons, but it does produce some hot reaction products, perhaps, that then can cause secondary fusion and therefore some neutrons. Isn't it the exceptions to the rule that are fascinating? If I had a cell that was capable of serious heat generation, I'm not sure I'd turn it over to a skeptic. I'd try to find someone reasonably neutral. (i.e., someone *normally* skeptical but dedicated to fairness and honesty and careful work.) That's what I had in mind, skeptics in the noble sense of the word. Dishonest skeptics will never see the excess heat, not until the field will have entered mainstream. Problem is, you need a relatively rare combination. Someone who is carefully skeptical but who has not only the inclination to check this out, but the opportunity, i.e. the time and access to resources. But it will happen. The job of those who are already convinced should be to make it easy. Organize the information better, so that access is quick and clear -- and balanced. Don't exclude skeptical material, rather develop consensus about it that is, again, clear. Let unresolved issues be unresolved issues, don't paper them over with unproven hypotheses. Suppose there is a website, might even be lenr-canr.org. Every common question or claim about cold fusion is answered there, in a presentation that is accessible immediately and that is concise and focus, as well-written as possible. So, someone comes up with a Standard Stupid Statement in a blog, very quickly and effeciently someone familiar with the web site can quote the Stupid Stement without argument, then point to the URL of the standard answer that is utterly clear and fully evidenced (possibly on subpages, citations, etc). And this site, by the way, invites criticism, so that if it's defective, it can be fixed. The top-level page isn't publicly editable, that's done by consensus with the approval of site management. So it doesn't get cluttered with discussions and arguments that can go nowhere. What will happen? I don't know, but I'd like to find out!
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
No wonder, the cold fusion experimenters say my cell makes excess heat but they won't let skeptics see it with their own calorimeter. Michel 2010/3/25 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com: I should have added -- Nothing like what I have described has happened so far because no one in the energy business realizes that cold fusion exists. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
Michel Jullian wrote: No wonder, the cold fusion experimenters say my cell makes excess heat but they won't let skeptics see it with their own calorimeter. So, you would not believe the Wright brothers unless they let you fly their airplane? Actually, for most experiments, this demand makes no sense. Look at the schematics from SRI, China Lake or Energetics Technology. The cell and the calorimeter are the same thing. They are one and the same object. One calorimeter cannot be or replace another, any more than you can take a marble statue out of the statue and put it in another piece of marble. Or than you can take the 7x magnification out of a pair of binoculars and put it into a I-pod to test it out. The calorimetry is a function of how the cell operates. Some of the experiments Ed Storms has run use a small cell placed in a Seebeck calorimeter, where the two are separate objects. It might be possible to move something like this into the EarthTech MOAC, but I still doubt it would work. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
2010/3/26 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com: Michel Jullian wrote: No wonder, the cold fusion experimenters say my cell makes excess heat but they won't let skeptics see it with their own calorimeter. So, you would not believe the Wright brothers unless they let you fly their airplane? A better analogy is that I would not believe them unless I saw them flying it with my own eyes. Actually, for most experiments, this demand makes no sense. Look at the schematics from SRI, China Lake or Energetics Technology. The cell and the calorimeter are the same thing. They are one and the same object. One calorimeter cannot be or replace another, any more than you can take a marble statue out of the statue and put it in another piece of marble. Or than you can take the 7x magnification out of a pair of binoculars and put it into a I-pod to test it out. The calorimetry is a function of how the cell operates. Some of the experiments Ed Storms has run use a small cell placed in a Seebeck calorimeter, where the two are separate objects. That's a more sensible way to do things IMHO. It might be possible to move something like this into the EarthTech MOAC, This would be so nice, I am sure it would make Scott's day to witness excess heat at last! but I still doubt it would work. Why? Michel
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
Michel Jullian wrote: So, you would not believe the Wright brothers unless they let you fly their airplane? A better analogy is that I would not believe them unless I saw them flying it with my own eyes. If that is what you want, you should be satisfied with Rob Duncan going out to see the calorimeter at Energetics Technology. He is an expert, much better at determining whether it is working than you or I would be. This is actually closer to Wright brothers test than most people realize. For a non-expert observer, the early flights were difficult to distinguish from an uncontrolled powered hop. Many people in the early 1900s put powerful internal combustion engines onto various contraptions and managed to fly them in the same sense you can fly a washing machine if you put a large-enough propeller on it. This was not actually flight. The Wrights rigorously defined the technical attributes of what constitutes flight carefully in their lectures and papers. At Kitty Hawk in 1903 they flew before the Coast Guard rescue team. Those people were experienced sailors and experts at small craft, but probably not qualified to determine this was a flight. In 1904 - 05 in Dayton they flew before hundreds of people, and they got ~50 leading citizens such as a bank president to sign affidavits. By this time they were a 100 feet in the air, flying for 40 minutes. However, a bank president is not an engineer or aviation expert, so an expert might still question his judgment. In 1908 they flew before a bunch of reporters at Kitty Hawk, but as usual the reports were garbled and unreliable, much like today's mass media reports of cold fusion. It wasn't until August 8, 1908 that Wilbur flew before real aviation experts, at Le Mans: Bleriot, Archdeacon, Zens, Henri de Moy and others. Those people had been trying to fly for years, but they could barely stagger off the ground. When they saw Wilbur fly, they were astounded. Speechless. The difference between what Wilbur could do and what they could do was analogous to a cold fusion cell producing 100 mW of 15% excess heat, and a working 10 kW cold fusion power reactor. These were highly egotistical people but they said (for example) We are beaten. We don't exist! The next day every newspaper in France declared that the Wrights were masters of the air -- which they were. What Rob Duncan saw in Israel was a lot closer to a working 10 kW power reactor than it was to a 1989 style 100 mW reaction. Some of the experiments Ed Storms has run use a small cell placed in a Seebeck calorimeter, where the two are separate objects. That's a more sensible way to do things IMHO. I like Seebeck calorimeters for many reasons, but the other kinds are fine too. Not particularly less sensible. It might be possible to move something like this into the EarthTech MOAC, This would be so nice, I am sure it would make Scott's day to witness excess heat at last! He should go to other people's labs, and learn from them. but I still doubt it would work. Why? It is fragile. It probably needs Ed to actually operate it. It might need the temperatures and conditions inside the Seebeck, which might be quite different from those of the MOAC. (I don't know. I am not familiar with the latter.) - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
I am sure this is a subject no one is interested in but me, BUT, I wrote: This is actually closer to Wright brothers test than most people realize. For a non-expert observer, the early flights were difficult to distinguish from an uncontrolled powered hop. In 2003 on national television news an expert at Kitty Hawk tried to fly a replica of the 1903 airplane. In 2005 someone in Dayton tried to fly a replica of the 1905 flyer, which was far better than the '03 machine. You can see the videos on YouTube. Have a look! You will be hard pressed to determine whether these are controlled flights or washing-machine-with-propeller stunts. You can't tell if the pilot is in control of anything, or merely along for the ride. The second flight is a bit more what you expect, but it ends in what most people would call a spin-out and crash. The shaken pilot emerges and quotes the old adage: any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. When you do research into fundamentally new, unexplored subjects, it can be hard to distinguish success from failure. For a non-expert, it can even be hard to know what you are looking at. For example, people who do not understand helium or instrument errors can make drastic mistakes. (People with the initials S.K.) Imagine you are a reporter or bank president in 1906 and someone asks you did that thing really fly? You might have difficulty giving an honest and competent answer. The Wrights were superbly skilled bicycle riders and pilots and they seldom spun out or smashed to pieces, but if you happened to be there on a bad day you would get the wrong impression. In 2010 if you ask a reporter at the APS is cold fusion real after all? you should not expect a reliable or meaningful answer. Suppose a reporter or amateur reads this blog: http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/2010/03/acs_cold_fusion_calorimeter.htmlhttp://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/2010/03/acs_cold_fusion_calorimeter.html They would find messages from someone who does not understand helium or the W-L theory, and crackpot notions about calorimetry from Kirk Shanahan. They would be would have difficulty judging what's what. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
2010/3/26 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com: Michel Jullian wrote: So, you would not believe the Wright brothers unless they let you fly their airplane? A better analogy is that I would not believe them unless I saw them flying it with my own eyes. If that is what you want, you should be satisfied with Rob Duncan going out to see the calorimeter at Energetics Technology. He is an expert, much better at determining whether it is working than you or I would be. Eyes stand for calorimeter (or more exactly energy balance measurement system) in my analogy . Duncan didn't bring in his own measurement system so he didn't see the excess heat for himself. Michel
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
Michel Jullian wrote: Duncan didn't bring in his own measurement system so he didn't see the excess heat for himself. Oh give me a break. That's ridiculous. The technique was replicated as SRI and ENEA. CBS sent one of the world top experts in calorimetry to confirm it. What more do you want? Do you seriously think that Scott Little with his MOAC would provide better confirmation than this? Are you suggesting that Duncan can't recognize when an instrument is malfunctioning? Or that they might have fooled him with fake instruments? That is like suggesting that you could fool me into thinking someone is speaking Japanese when they are speaking gibberish. I can tell. It is my second language. Rob Duncan speaks calorimetry the way Edward Seidensticker spoke Japanese. You come up with such improbable reasons to disbelieve these results! You are grasping at straws, the way Dieter Britz does. One day you imagine that Rossi has somehow crammed $60 million of plutonium into his cell, and the next you tell us that the world's top expert in calorimetry may be so incompetent he doesn't know amps from volts. How else can someone mistake 0.8 W for 20 W? - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
I am just stating a fact, not judging the validity of anybody's claims.There would be no airplanes today if the Wright brothers hadn't allowed skeptics to judge their claims with their own instruments (=own eyes in their case). Luckily, they were not that stupid. Michel 2010/3/26 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com: Michel Jullian wrote: Duncan didn't bring in his own measurement system so he didn't see the excess heat for himself. Oh give me a break. That's ridiculous. The technique was replicated as SRI and ENEA. CBS sent one of the world top experts in calorimetry to confirm it. What more do you want? Do you seriously think that Scott Little with his MOAC would provide better confirmation than this? Are you suggesting that Duncan can't recognize when an instrument is malfunctioning? Or that they might have fooled him with fake instruments? That is like suggesting that you could fool me into thinking someone is speaking Japanese when they are speaking gibberish. I can tell. It is my second language. Rob Duncan speaks calorimetry the way Edward Seidensticker spoke Japanese. You come up with such improbable reasons to disbelieve these results! You are grasping at straws, the way Dieter Britz does. One day you imagine that Rossi has somehow crammed $60 million of plutonium into his cell, and the next you tell us that the world's top expert in calorimetry may be so incompetent he doesn't know amps from volts. How else can someone mistake 0.8 W for 20 W? - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
When someone places their calorimeter in your excess heat be sure to take precautions. ;-) Harry __ Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
At 07:39 AM 3/26/2010, Michel Jullian wrote: No wonder, the cold fusion experimenters say my cell makes excess heat but they won't let skeptics see it with their own calorimeter. I intend to fix that, you know. Except the first cells won't be calorimeter-ready, they might not generate anough heat, that would take a different, and more expensive design, I suspect. I'm just looking for neutrons. I know, boring. Who can solve the energy crisis with a few neutrons? Part of the point about CF is that it doesn't generate neutrons. Well, usually not. Isn't it the exceptions to the rule that are fascinating? If I had a cell that was capable of serious heat generation, I'm not sure I'd turn it over to a skeptic. I'd try to find someone reasonably neutral. (i.e., someone *normally* skeptical but dedicated to fairness and honesty and careful work.)
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
Horace Heffner wrote: Suspending the program, in fact, would have a highly negative effect on U.S. jobs, AWEA said. At a time when the construction unemployment rate is nearly 25% and the manufacturing unemployment rate is 13%, this proposal could cost 85,000 American workers their jobs, . . . This is a measure of how big the wind industry has become, which in turn is a measure of how much political clout it now has. Compare this to the coal industry which presently employs 82,595 people: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_and_jobs_in_the_United_Stateshttp://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_and_jobs_in_the_United_States As I have pointed out previously, the coal industry periodically tries to shut down the wind industry, by pushing through new regulations that will make wind turbines in the US illegal. I estimate that wind has taken 2% or 3% of the coal business, but it is pretty clear that at the present rate of expansion within a few years it will be more like 10 or 20%. The coal people are fighting for their livelihood. They cannot win now that wind employs more people than they do. More voters, that is. In a sense, this means we reward whatever industry comes up with the least labor efficient methods. That is not a good thing. In the 1960s it was obvious to any technically knowledgeable person watching an automobile assembly line that employed far more workers than were needed, and that many of those people could easily be replaced with robot machinery. They were not, because having many workers gave the automobile industry enormous political clout, and also a base of loyal customers -- the employees, suppliers and people they knew. One auto executives famously said, when shown an assembly machine that could do anything: Anything? Can it buy cars? This make-work scheme, of people taking in one-another's washing, worked for a long time. Until Japanese cars began to arrive. By the way, General Motors did not go out of business because it had too many workers today, or because it paid them too much. It went out of business mainly because it had too many retired workers from the 1950s and 60s, and widows of retired workers. There is not a lot they can do about that. If they could have competed head-to-head with newly started Kia factories, their productivity per dollar paid to workers would have been good enough to stay afloat. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Stimulus Suspension Would Put 85,000 Wind Jobs at Risk
I should have added -- Nothing like what I have described has happened so far because no one in the energy business realizes that cold fusion exists. - Jed
