Hi Steven Vincent Johnson, Yes, I use "pragmatic skepticism" to define my role in my own mind, namely, common sense applied to details that can be comprehended by a scientific layman, which since December, 1996 has been a successful strategy for finding flaws in CF research -- "pathological skeptic" does not apply to me, who wants CF to be real via evidence, and who is hardly hidebound by dogmas of any kind on any level, heartily convinced by experience that reality is immediately infinitely creative and subtle...
I am content to let my Achilles take over the fight: http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/10/28/energy-catalzyer-extraordinary-scams-require-extraordinary-claims/#comments Joshua Cude says: October 29, 2011 at 22:39 In addition to Maryyugo’s reservations about this show, I can add that even if the data, as presented, is accepted, it does not constitute evidence for excess heat, let alone heat from nuclear reactions: 1. No evidence is presented that the water is all converted to steam. Rossi says he collects the unconverted water, but gives no explanation how. The steam is at 105 C or so, but the internal pressure is almost certain to be significantly elevated by even a small amount of steam formation. Moreover, given the size of the pipes, a full conversion to steam is at 650 kg/hour is not plausible. The only thing the data show definitively is that the water is heated to 105 C, and that corresponds to a total output heat of about 370 kWh instead of the 2635 kWh claimed. 2. The total input heat is not given. The input heat from 12:30 to 18:00 is given as 66 kWh (during the “self-sustained” period). But according to the spreadsheet, the heat was turned on at 10:30. The report does not indicate the power level, but it would only have to be about 150 kW (for 2 hours) to account for the total output energy as calculated in (1). Since there was a 500 kW diesel generator on site, this seems perfectly feasible, and it is also consistent with the power level Rossi said would be used to ignite the reaction. Finally, we don’t know if the device was still retaining heat from earlier runs. After all, the water was heated from 15 to 30 degrees at time zero.
