PHILIP WINESTONE wrote:
Good points. When you consider it, measuring accurate "global
temperature" is a far more difficult situation than most people know.
No doubt this is true, but "most people" are not the ones who are
trying to measure it. Measuring the temperature in a calorimeter is a
lot harder than most people realize too, but I am 100% sure that the
leading cold fusion researchers such as Fleischmann, Miles, Oriani
and Storms are doing it correctly, despite the difficulties. They
cannot all be wrong, or the experimental method itself would fail, as
I said. The results would be all over the place. (Random, that is,
and uncorrelated with helium and so on.)
In an off-line message to Winestone, in response to his suggestion
that I read the Canadian self-appointed expert, I asked him:
What is the URL?
. . . and I pointed out:
In any case, I am not qualified to judge the methods used by experts
to measure air temperature, so I probably cannot tell who is right.
But my point is this: If cold fusion teaches us anything, it is that
we should not gainsay experts, or take the word of one lone outsider
against the opinions of experienced experts who have worked for years
on experiments in the field.
Many people think that the lesson of cold fusion is that lone
outsiders or mavericks are sometimes right and experts wrong, but it
is just the opposite. Fleischmann, Pons, Bockris, Oriani and hundreds
of other cold fusion researchers are the preeminent experts in
electrochemistry and calorimetry. They are not mavericks at all.
This is true of nearly all the "lone maverick" stories you read about
in science and technology, such as H. pylori causing ulcers, or
Townes and the maser. The Wright Brothers are the best example.
Despite all the pseudo-history and silly nonsense that has been
written about them, they were emphatically NOT mavericks or outsiders
to aviation. They knew more about the science anyone else, and they
had golden experimental data from their wind tunnel. See Wilbur's
1901 paper if you have any doubts about that:
http://www.wright-house.com/wright-brothers/Aeronautical.html
They *were* aviation science; they knew everything worth knowing, and
they had read the entire valid literature, which was compiled by
Chanute. (I think it was about 100 papers, some of them were pretty good.)
The prominent people who have publicly attacked cold fusion are all,
without exception, outsiders, loners, flakes & idiots such are Robert
Park and Gary Taubes. I know the opposition leaders well, and they
are the stupidest people I have ever encountered. They are totally
unqualified to discuss this research -- or any research.
Winestone wrote:
If you're going to go around spouting about, or agreeing with those
who spout about the increasing global temperature, you ought to know
how this is measured and if this measurement technique has a degree
of credibility.
My response:
I am probably not qualified to judge that, and I very much doubt that
you or this fellow in Canada is, either. In this matter, we have to
trust the scientific process, peer-review, and the expertise of
experts, and I am sure we can, because these are experimental results
after all, and experiments always work in the end. There is no doubt
the glaciers are melting worldwide, and that record temperature are
being set worldwide.
- Jed
