Jed, I got a little tired of the constant bitching on the site... Many, many words. I have more to do with my time and energy.
I didn't send you the URL of the National Post (nationalpost.com) because you have to pay unless you're a subscriber... and I happen to be one. Suffice it to say that the NP has been publishing many "denier" articles, the one I indicated being one of many. Having said that, I kind of "mixed" what another article said, with the one by "the physicist" in question. I believe some of the ideas to which I referred (like the sun's major influence), came from an article the day (or some days) before, by a chap called McKittrick, who is responsible for debunking the mathematics behind the famous "hockey stick" graph showing humans as nasty earthwarmers. McKittrick is one of those apparently erudite, intelligent, scientists who can explain things without referring to the rest of the world, including Al Gore and our own David Suzuki. Anyhoo, as for the attackers of Cold Fusion, you may or may not know that I am 100% behind cold fusion because what I've read - various papers, etc. - indicates that very definitely we're on to something. Add to that the fact that the sleaze factor behind what happened to Pons and Fleischmann, was simply nakedly incredible; I can smell a sleazeball a mile away, and these SBs made no scientific sense. Nature magazine totally offended everything I learned both before, during and after my engineering studies. But understanding the CF "glass half full" approach (ie - many, but not all, of the original experiments worked) doesn't mean that I think people ought to buy into every "big oil/big coal" conspiracy theory, and should therefore wear tinfoil hats. Oh, and I understand all too well the difficulty in creating a near-perfect experimental design, such as the calorimetry involved. But it has to be done. Far easier to let someone else do your thinking for you or let "the majority" speak for you, because the majority always knows... Doesn't it? P. ----- Original Message ---- From: Jed Rothwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2007 3:14:50 PM Subject: [Vo]:Beware of bogus history of "lone mavericks" 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
