I always welcome your optimism about the future, Jed, and you can be
counted on to give the counter argument. However, I think you are
missing several unique features of LENR that will cause the future to
be different from how normal events take place.
Unlike most technologies, even the new ones, a huge basic
understanding is normally in place on which understanding of the new
idea can be constructed. This is not the case with LENR. No one has a
basic understanding how it works. Success has resulted from luck. In
addition, the number of people who have even a rudimentary
understanding is very limited and growing older by the minuet.
No effective way exists in the West to teach this limited knowledge to
the next generation - to the scientists and engineers who would be
needed to manufacture the devices. A race is on is to acquire this
knowledge and Rossi has a head start. If this knowledge is being
acquired and developed in China, the rest of the world would have no
access. Of course a Manhattan-type program might speed up the rest of
the world getting the knowledge after China put generators on the
market.
If you suggest the device could be reverse engineered, you would be
wrong. If you propose using a lot of bright physicists to figure out
the process, you would also be wrong. The active region is too unique
and too small to allow reverse engineering unless you know what to
look for. The physics profession has already demonstrated its basic
inability to explain the effect. A physics education is actually a
handicap. Consequently, once the West wakes up and discovers it needs
to compete with China, most of the present information will have been
lost from the West and rediscovering the knowledge will take too long.
By the time the required knowledge is obtained, China will be far
ahead. But, that is only my opinion based on 23 years of study.
The fact that this very serious and plausible situation exists and
nothing is being done, gives little hope that the response later will
be any more competent, no matter how much self-interest is focused on
the problem. This is the global-warming problem all over again. Once
again, by the time the danger is obvious, the response will be too
little and too late.
Ed Storms
On Jan 5, 2014, at 11:11 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Axil Axil <[email protected]> wrote:
As the U.S. will soon become the world leader in fossil fuel
development and worldwide sales well into this century, it is not in
the interest of Russia, the U.S. or its other energy producing
allies to sponsor a competitive or more rightly a superior energy
source. If the past is prolog, the U.S. will attempt to restrict
LENR to secret military operations like Drone power, small naval
vessel power plants, and remote base power sources.
This scenario is unrealistic. The U.S. government does not have the
power to restrict a technology in this fashion. Once it becomes
generally known that cold fusion is real, no government, corporation
or other institution will have the power to stop it from being
developed and deployed. The lure of money will be far too strong.
Consumers will demand it.
Corporate CEOs, Senators and other powerful people often imagine
that they are in control of events, but that is not the case. A
corporate CEO is a slave to his customers. Whatever they demand he
must supply.
By proclaiming that the LENR technology is top secret and a
dangerous nuclear application with weapons of mass destruction
potential . . .
This cannot be done. Knowledge of the technology is already too
widespread. These devices are not that complicated to make. After
people realize it is real, every industrial corporation will begin
frantic efforts to replicate it. They will soon surpass Rossi, just
as in 1909 competitors soon surpassed the Wright brothers. Even if
the U.S. government claims LENR is top secret or dangerous, other
governments will ignore it.
The most important military uses of cold fusion will be in ordinary
civilian technology such as automobiles, telephones and flashlights.
Not in exotic weapons. The most important technologies of the WWII
were trucks and DC-3 airplanes. See the quote from Eisenhower in my
book. If the U.S. does not allow widespread use of cold fusion in
civilian technology, our military will soon be weakened. Military
leaders understand this, and will not let it happen.
People here who extol the Chinese government and economic system
have exaggerated ideas about its effectiveness. It is far from
perfect. The U.S., the EU and Japan are still in the aggregate far
ahead of China, well integrated with one another, and more capable
of developing cold fusion rapidly. It is far from a foregone
conclusion that China will lead in this technology, although it
surely will play an important role.
This reminds me of the notion that the Chinese have somehow put a
hammerlock on the market for rare earths. That's ridiculous. The
U.S., Canada and other countries have huge supplies of rare earths.
We stopped mining these metals because the Chinese produce them at a
much lower cost. They do that because they ignore their own
environmental laws and they pay their workers very little. The U.S.
and Japanese manufacturers could easily pay a few extra pennies per
magnet or per cell phone and make up the difference. If the Chinese
ever again threaten to embargo these materials to jack up the price,
I am sure the U.S. will do that, and Japan will revive North
American production. I expert they are doing that now. See:
http://oilprice.com/uploads/AC1025.png
I remember in the 1980s when people claimed that Japan was the
economic powerhouse of the future. I found this notion ludicrous, as
did most Japanese people I knew. Of course it was and remains a
major industrial power, but there was never anything magic about the
government, MITI, their corporations or their educational system
that would put them far ahead of other countries.
The only time in history when one set of nations progressed far
ahead of others was the industrial revolution from 1700 to 1900,
when Europe and the U.S. became far wealthier and technically ahead
of Asia and the third world. That was because of unique conditions
that will never reoccur. The biggest reason was lack of
communications. People in Japan and China did not know what was
happening in Europe or the Americas. Now they do know, and there is
no chance they will miss out on any major technological advance. And
no chance we will miss out on a breakthrough in those countries. If
consumers in Europe or China begin buying cold fusion powered cars,
consumers in the U.S. will hear about it.
(remember when they want to mobilize popular opinion: "We don't want
the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."), they can maintain their
worldwide advantage in fossil fuel sales of coal, oil and especially
liquefied natural gas.
Not a chance. No one can sell a technology when a rival technology
is half the price, or ten times cheaper, or a thousand times cheaper
-- as cold fusion will inevitably become. You might as well suggest
that by mobilizing popular opinion the government might have
prevented the use of electric lighting, automobiles, or computers.
Or that it might persuade people to go back to using horses instead
of automobiles. No power on earth can prevent people from adapting
technology which is far better or cheaper than the old version.
- Jed
