On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 9:18 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence <[email protected]>wrote:
> > > On 02/21/2011 03:01 PM, Joshua Cude wrote: > > > Promises have been made by Pons & Fleischmann first in 1989 (just watch > their interviews on youtube, where they claim it is the ideal energy source: > clean and unlimited and simple) and then by just about every cold fusion > advocate since, including McKubre on 60 minutes promising cars that don't > need refueling, Rothwell's entire book of promises, and promises from shady > characters like Dardik and Rossi. There are endless promises every time the > topic arises. [...] Cold fusion [...] has not delivered. > > > So, I guess the stuff I work with is all bunk, all just phony-baloney, it's > lies and coverups, it can't be real, because we don't succeed in delivering > on our promises. It's really too bad, if the sort of stuff I worked on were > real, it would make a big difference to the world. But we miss on our > promises, so it's all hokum; that's totally conclusive, air-tight reasoning, > Joshua sure hit the nail on the head there. > > It's hard to comment without specifics. But I also gave an example of a technology that has not delivered on its promises (high temp superconductivity), which is nevertheless a legitimate phenomenon. But it is able to demonstrate proof-of-principle on a small scale. In the case of cold fusion, it's not the failure to replace fossil fuels after 20 years that's the problem. It's that in spite of grandiose promises, even proof-of-priciple has eluded the field. Yes, advocates will say it has been proven beyond a doubt, but the fact is that it has not been proven to the DOE or to mainstream science. They can't even make an isolated device that generates unambiguous heat in obvious excess of its own weight in rocket fuel. That, I submit, is a very small barrier to legitimacy. If the world accepted proof-of-principle, it would forgive failure to deliver on the big stuff for a very long time. Look at hot fusion for proof of that.
