Re: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
yes, renewable , except hydroelectric, is not yet cost effecive and need huge progress. It is still developed because some see no alternative. as soon as an easy energy requires 10 times less investment than what is needed for the cheapest energy, nuke, 100 times less than the worst renewable, all the investment will be stopped. the existing source will be kept, easy oil and gaz, old nuke, coal... no other will be supported anymore... solar and wind , like shales, tight oil, off shore, have no future. they are justified by expensive energy and limited fossil resources... It seems recently that many companies and intelligent government (I exclude demagogy states) slow down renewable and move to tight hydrocarbons and thorium... Beside the fashion, the ideologist, and the desperate lobbies, many people realize that it won't work. Another deception is probably that governments have hoped that occidental countries could develop an oligopoly on that technology to fight asia, but china captured the market quickly with coal-fired cheap energy and huge research investment... many recent green policy (Renewable, REACH, CO2, incandescent lamp ban) seems , beside ideology, to be fed by desire to capture a competitive advantage by moving the standards, China managed finally better than occident,and today business are desperate to get advantage. 2013/1/18 Arnaud Kodeck arnaud.kod...@lakoco.be I often agree with you to a very large number of topics. But here, I’m not. Once the LENR is commercially available, the energy prices will decline slowly but steadily. The wind turbines and solar (heat, or photovoltaic cell) require a huge amount of capital per kW/h produced. Thus, the investments in those green power technologies have very long term, before becoming positive. This therefore requires that the price of energy does not decrease. ** ** I’m not saying that LENR will immediately replace all other kind of energy sources. That will take ages, before LENR energy will be the 1st energy source in the world. Fossil fuel still has a long term view. ** ** But for the so called “Green Power Technologies”, LENR will stop all the investments in this field. I think Siemens is aware of this as well. There are too many investments to do with low certainty of money back (in case of commercially available LENR reactors). For sure, I will not, for ever, invest my money in those technologies. -- *From:* Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] *Sent:* vendredi 18 janvier 2013 22:24 *To:* vortex-l@eskimo.com *Subject:* Re: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP ** ** Arnaud Kodeck arnaud.kod...@lakoco.be wrote: My guess is Siemens. Why? 1. Because they stopped all their investments in Green power technology (Wind, Solar, …). If LENR becomes a commercial reality, all the business with “Green Technology” will be obsolete in the second after.* *** ** ** It would premature to stop those investments now because LENR might come to pass. Even I think so, and no one is more confident that cold fusion has to potential to displace all other sources of energy than I am. ** ** It has the potential, yes. But first it must be controlled, then developed. There is no telling how long that might take. Even if I saw a working Rossi reactor, I would not advise Siemens or GE to abandon development of all other energy technology. Not just yet. ** ** - Jed ** **
RE: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
It would premature to stop those investments now because LENR might come to pass. Even I think so, and no one is more confident that cold fusion has to potential to displace all other sources of energy than I am. It has the potential, yes. But first it must be controlled, then developed. There is no telling how long that might take. Even if I saw a working Rossi reactor, I would not advise Siemens or GE to abandon development of all other energy technology. Not just yet. You carry a strong streak of pragmatism in you, Jed. If I had anything to say about what our DoE ought to fund, I'd do my best to hedge my bets by diversifying as much as possible. That means I would make sure LENR research got a fair share of the nation's portfolio as well. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
The solution is to fix capitalism so it does the job it is supposed to do: Manage risk. People who do signal processing can understand this analogy: Imagine you are trying to get a good signal by integrating it over time. The very first thing you do is take a null reading from your instrument to establish zero. Then when you expose your instrument to actual phenomena, you know that whatever number comes out of the A/D converter has to be discounted by the reading you took in the absence of the phenomena. If you don't, you'll end up integrating what is sometimes called the DC component of the signal and long before you can get any meaningful data about the phenomena, you'll have saturated your summation. What we're been doing in capitalism is the equivalent of failing to subtract out the DC component. The desired signal we're looking for -- the proper distribution of capital in the economy -- ends up being utterly washed out in a phenomenon that many mischaracterize as the rich get richer. The whole point of capital accumulation is to allow the rich to get richer under the correct circumstances because that way capital is invested most wisely. What we've been doing is, instead, to leave the DC component in the economy which rewards many very risk averse people simply because they are rich. The DC component in the economy actually has been given a name by economists who study the theory of investments called Modern Portfolio Theory: The Risk Free Interest Rate The Risk Free Interest Rate is sometimes represented in a theoretic portfolio as The Risk Free Asset, which is usually defined as something like the long term average of short term Treasury notes. The Risk Free Interest Rate is the null signal level of the economy. If you don't subtract it out your economy is doomed to maldistribution of capital. Many, understandably, try to fix the symptoms of this failed model of capitalism by going to government capitalization of risky enterprises such as technology development. But while the government may be capable of sustaining losses incurred by programs like The Shuttle, The Tokamak, etc. since it can always turn to the private sector for taxes, but had better have that power because it has a lousy track record of appropriately managing risk in technology development so its losses are enormous. Worse, it builds up bureaucracies that find competence threatening and it is precisely because those bureaucracies can sustain losses that they are so destructive. Now to get specific, The Risk Free Interest Rate finds its way into every investment decision when establishing liquidation value of a portfolio -- and liquid value is where its at when the all important liquidity of the economy is taken into consideration by monetary authorities. No one, and I mean NO ONE in either political party wants to hear this, but what has to be done is replace taxes on all economic activities with a single tax on the liquidation value of assets at the risk free interest rate -- and distribute as much of that revenue as possible in a citizen's dividend -- not through government programs. On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 5:29 PM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson orionwo...@charter.net wrote: It would premature to stop those investments now because LENR might come to pass. Even I think so, and no one is more confident that cold fusion has to potential to displace all other sources of energy than I am. It has the potential, yes. But first it must be controlled, then developed. There is no telling how long that might take. Even if I saw a working Rossi reactor, I would not advise Siemens or GE to abandon development of all other energy technology. Not just yet. You carry a strong streak of pragmatism in you, Jed. If I had anything to say about what our DoE ought to fund, I'd do my best to hedge my bets by diversifying as much as possible. That means I would make sure LENR research got a fair share of the nation's portfolio as well. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
Re: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 5:54 PM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: But while the government may be capable of sustaining losses incurred by programs like The Shuttle, The Tokamak, etc. since it can always turn to the private sector for taxes, but had better have that power because it has a lousy track record of appropriately managing risk in technology development so its losses are enormous. Worse, it builds up bureaucracies that find competence threatening and it is precisely because those bureaucracies can sustain losses that they are so destructive. The bureaucracy problem in the US and elsewhere is a real one. There are many examples of that in everyday life to point to, and they take different forms. One form is a government organization that has no real accountability; it is given a charge of some kind, and its members basically do as they please. I interact on a periodic basis with one such organization and its subcontractors. So the problem of unaccountable bureaucracy is a real one, and one could argue with some persuasiveness that this is what has been seen with government intervention in the alternative energy sector and in its funding of basic research. Personally, I think that while there is validity to this line of reasoning, it simultaneously misses the point when we're looking at the question of how best to spur innovation in a field like LENR, or how to best manage the accumulation of capital so that everyone has an opportunity to live in prosperity. My own sense is that we've let the theorists go wild, and they're running all over the place making good work of turning fairly straightforward empirical problems into a mess of theoretical and ideological confusion. The two examples I mentioned are ultimately empirical problems -- (a) spurring innovation in LENR and (b) moving society in a direction in which a rising tide lifts all boats (it does no such thing at the present time; quite the opposite, in fact). With these problems we've thought ourselves into knots. We've come up with explanations, on one hand, that go something to the effect that any government intervention will inevitably lead to overweening bureaucracy of the aforementioned kind; and, worse, to fascism and black helicopters and so on. On the other side we've retreated back into theories that pay no attention to such concerns, and we've essentially said that more taxes will fix everything (this summary, in my opinion, simplifies and mischaracterizes a much more nuanced set of positions, but I'm trying to draw a contrast). What both sides to this debate seem to fail to see is that it these things are largely American problems, created by American hands on American soil, and which go back to inadequacies in American ways of doing things. Some of these inadequacies include a system of checks and balances that make effective government nigh impossible; deep connections between financial patronage and political power that are at best unseemly; and a twenty-four hour news cycle that is draws to the wrongdoings of Lance Armstrong of all things; a pervasive mode of binary thinking that latches onto easy explanations and fails to really penetrate far into nuanced issues; and so on. To the extent that other countries are influenced by American dysfunction, they too fall into a situation in which there is a kind of governmental deadlock that allows in the absence of effective governance a kind of chronic and institutionalized predation by large corporations on consumers and on employees. What is lacking is a humble recognition on the part of people that many of these problems are being worked through and increasingly addressed elsewhere in the world, through trial and error, in small ways, here and there, across a range of areas. What is needed is commitment to an empirical, un-ideological learning process where small changes are tried out, and if they work, they are then further explored and expanded upon. If Denmark or Switzerland does health care really well, perhaps Americans have something to learn from them. If China is actively engaged in improving its primary education system and is starting to turn out some of the best scholars in fields such as physics and semiconductor research, perhaps there is something to be learned from them. What is required, then, is the consolidation of a learning attitude among the public at large and a will to try new things out. An attitude in which the ideological rhetoric is set aside entirely. One that is neither averse to well-conceived government intervention in specific areas nor naive about the consequences of letting a big bureaucracy consolidate itself. Either/or characterizations are wholly inadequate in such a context. Simple, empirical trial and error with modest amounts of investment. This is what Popper referred to as piecemeal social engineering, in preference to utopian scale social engineering. Perhaps it could do some good. Eric
Re: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
You're starting to engage in true progressive thinking but you're falling far short of what needs to be done to really apply the scientific method to the social sciences in an ethical manner -- said ethics being founded on the consent of experimental subjects: http://sortocracy.org On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 5:54 PM, James Bowery jabow...@gmail.com wrote: But while the government may be capable of sustaining losses incurred by programs like The Shuttle, The Tokamak, etc. since it can always turn to the private sector for taxes, but had better have that power because it has a lousy track record of appropriately managing risk in technology development so its losses are enormous. Worse, it builds up bureaucracies that find competence threatening and it is precisely because those bureaucracies can sustain losses that they are so destructive. The bureaucracy problem in the US and elsewhere is a real one. There are many examples of that in everyday life to point to, and they take different forms. One form is a government organization that has no real accountability; it is given a charge of some kind, and its members basically do as they please. I interact on a periodic basis with one such organization and its subcontractors. So the problem of unaccountable bureaucracy is a real one, and one could argue with some persuasiveness that this is what has been seen with government intervention in the alternative energy sector and in its funding of basic research. Personally, I think that while there is validity to this line of reasoning, it simultaneously misses the point when we're looking at the question of how best to spur innovation in a field like LENR, or how to best manage the accumulation of capital so that everyone has an opportunity to live in prosperity. My own sense is that we've let the theorists go wild, and they're running all over the place making good work of turning fairly straightforward empirical problems into a mess of theoretical and ideological confusion. The two examples I mentioned are ultimately empirical problems -- (a) spurring innovation in LENR and (b) moving society in a direction in which a rising tide lifts all boats (it does no such thing at the present time; quite the opposite, in fact). With these problems we've thought ourselves into knots. We've come up with explanations, on one hand, that go something to the effect that any government intervention will inevitably lead to overweening bureaucracy of the aforementioned kind; and, worse, to fascism and black helicopters and so on. On the other side we've retreated back into theories that pay no attention to such concerns, and we've essentially said that more taxes will fix everything (this summary, in my opinion, simplifies and mischaracterizes a much more nuanced set of positions, but I'm trying to draw a contrast). What both sides to this debate seem to fail to see is that it these things are largely American problems, created by American hands on American soil, and which go back to inadequacies in American ways of doing things. Some of these inadequacies include a system of checks and balances that make effective government nigh impossible; deep connections between financial patronage and political power that are at best unseemly; and a twenty-four hour news cycle that is draws to the wrongdoings of Lance Armstrong of all things; a pervasive mode of binary thinking that latches onto easy explanations and fails to really penetrate far into nuanced issues; and so on. To the extent that other countries are influenced by American dysfunction, they too fall into a situation in which there is a kind of governmental deadlock that allows in the absence of effective governance a kind of chronic and institutionalized predation by large corporations on consumers and on employees. What is lacking is a humble recognition on the part of people that many of these problems are being worked through and increasingly addressed elsewhere in the world, through trial and error, in small ways, here and there, across a range of areas. What is needed is commitment to an empirical, un-ideological learning process where small changes are tried out, and if they work, they are then further explored and expanded upon. If Denmark or Switzerland does health care really well, perhaps Americans have something to learn from them. If China is actively engaged in improving its primary education system and is starting to turn out some of the best scholars in fields such as physics and semiconductor research, perhaps there is something to be learned from them. What is required, then, is the consolidation of a learning attitude among the public at large and a will to try new things out. An attitude in which the ideological rhetoric is set aside entirely. One that is neither averse to well-conceived government
Re: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: If they are not time wasters, we will ask them to sign an MFMP Full Disclosure Agreement (FDA) as soon as possible. That sounds like the opposite of a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). I approve! - Jed
RE: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
Who is this big European consortium? All suggestions are open here . My guess is Siemens. Why? 1. Because they stopped all their investments in Green power technology (Wind, Solar, .). If LENR becomes a commercial reality, all the business with Green Technology will be obsolete in the second after. 2. They abandoned all the nuclear fission activities. 3. Rossi has told to be in contact with them. 4. They have a lot of cash to invest Arnaud
Re: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
Arnaud Kodeck arnaud.kod...@lakoco.be wrote: My guess is Siemens. Why? 1. Because they stopped all their investments in Green power technology (Wind, Solar, …). If LENR becomes a commercial reality, all the business with “Green Technology” will be obsolete in the second after. It would premature to stop those investments now because LENR might come to pass. Even I think so, and no one is more confident that cold fusion has to potential to displace all other sources of energy than I am. It has the potential, yes. But first it must be controlled, then developed. There is no telling how long that might take. Even if I saw a working Rossi reactor, I would not advise Siemens or GE to abandon development of all other energy technology. Not just yet. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP
I often agree with you to a very large number of topics. But here, I'm not. Once the LENR is commercially available, the energy prices will decline slowly but steadily. The wind turbines and solar (heat, or photovoltaic cell) require a huge amount of capital per kW/h produced. Thus, the investments in those green power technologies have very long term, before becoming positive. This therefore requires that the price of energy does not decrease. I'm not saying that LENR will immediately replace all other kind of energy sources. That will take ages, before LENR energy will be the 1st energy source in the world. Fossil fuel still has a long term view. But for the so called Green Power Technologies, LENR will stop all the investments in this field. I think Siemens is aware of this as well. There are too many investments to do with low certainty of money back (in case of commercially available LENR reactors). For sure, I will not, for ever, invest my money in those technologies. _ From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: vendredi 18 janvier 2013 22:24 To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:A Big European Consortium has an eye on MFMP Arnaud Kodeck arnaud.kod...@lakoco.be wrote: My guess is Siemens. Why? 1. Because they stopped all their investments in Green power technology (Wind, Solar, .). If LENR becomes a commercial reality, all the business with Green Technology will be obsolete in the second after. It would premature to stop those investments now because LENR might come to pass. Even I think so, and no one is more confident that cold fusion has to potential to displace all other sources of energy than I am. It has the potential, yes. But first it must be controlled, then developed. There is no telling how long that might take. Even if I saw a working Rossi reactor, I would not advise Siemens or GE to abandon development of all other energy technology. Not just yet. - Jed
