Continuing yesterday's thoughts.
Back in 1989, two chemists claimed to have created a simple table top apparatus that would work at room temperatures and that would create excess energy in amounts that, the chemists contended, had no explanation other than the incredible one: atoms were fusing.
The scientists were: Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. They were both sufficiently distinguished that the claim could not be dismissed lightly. Pons had a Ph.D. from the University of Southampton; Fleischmann from the Imperial College, London. That's Fleischmann in the photo that goes with this text, holding part of the apparatus, which was a little more complicated than Dogbert's.
Their claims set off a frenzy of speculation about what this would mean. Some thought it would be bad news -- that the human race could not be trusted with the prospect of unlimited energy this implied. The more usual view was that this was great good news -- an apparently insatiable hunger would at last final satiation. There would be no more wars for hydrocarbon supplies. And so forth.
Alas! (or Hurrah! if you prefer), it all turned out to be a fantasy.
That of course was the catalyst for the pair of Dilbert strips I quoted yesterday.
I bring it up because we're still looking for that satiation, though the search has passed on. I engaged in an exchange on a certain internet message board not long ago with a woman who was certain that various breakthroughs would soon make energy "too cheap to meter" [a phrase that goes back to the '50s and the days of the testing of very hot fusion] -- her twist on this was that she thought it would be a great socialist advance to have energy too cheap to meter. It would mean that the capitalists had at last cut their own throats, and that the world was ready to move on beyond scarcity economics.
Hurrah! (or Alas! if you prefer), that too is a fantasy whatever the specifics of the scientific advance. There is a difference of literally infinite significance between any cost for energy, any positive number reflecting that cost, on the one hand, and literally zero cost on the other. If we discard zero cost as a fantasy, then the idea is to get to a very small number. Too cheap to meter, though not quite free.
How would that come about? Isn't the measurement of costs simply another way of expending energy? It seems to me that any breakthrough that makes the costs significant lower also will enable more discriminating meters, so you're just chasing your tail on this "too cheap to meter" stuff.
Congrats, then, to Scott Adams for nailing the point in his own way.
It is a bit sad that you repeat unfounded claims by few outspoken and incompetent people, whose incompetence is reviewed.
ReplyDeleteCharles Beaudette wrote a very documented book with many citations that are evidences, and whic unlike the pathetic wwork of Huizenga, taubes and Morrison covers real experiments, and peer reviewed papers after 1989.
All is based on people trusting opinion of outspoken uninformed of unethical people. You can check it yourself if you take few hours (that very few people, including Nobel used).
The book is there
http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/lenr%20home%20page/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
The description of the situation is so:
"Unfortunately, physicists did not generally claim expertise in calorimetry, the measurement of calories of heat energy. Nor did they countenance clever chemists declaring hypotheses about nuclear physics. Their outspoken commentary largely ignored the heat measurements along with the offer of an hypothesis about unknown nuclear processes. They did not acquaint themselves with the laboratory procedures that produced anomalous heat data. These attitudes held firm throughout the first decade, causing a sustained controversy.
The upshot of this conflict was that the scientific community failed to give anomalous heat the evaluation that was its due. Scientists of orthodox views, in the first six years of this episode, produced only four critical reviews of the two chemists’ calorimetry work. The first report came in 1989 (N. S. Lewis). It dismissed the Utah claim for anomalous power on grounds of faulty laboratory technique. A second review was produced in 1991 (W. N. Hansen) that strongly supported the claim. It was based on an independent analysis of cell data that was provided by the two chemists. An extensive review completed in 1992 (R. H. Wilson) was highly critical though not conclusive. But it did recognize the existence of anomalous power, which carried the implication that the Lewis dismissal was mistaken. A fourth review was produced in 1994 (D. R. O. Morrison) which was itself unsatisfactory. It was rebutted strongly to the point of dismissal and correctly in my view. No defense was offered against the rebuttal. During those first six years, the community of orthodox scientists produced no report of a flaw in the heat measurements that was subsequently sustained by other reports.
The community of scientists at large never saw or knew about this minimalist critique of the claim. It was buried in the avalanche of skepticism that issued forth in the first three months. This skepticism was buttressed by the failure of the two chemists’ nuclear measurements, the lack of a theoretical understanding of how their claim could work, a mistaken concern with the number of failed experiments, a wholly unrealistic expectation of the time and resource the evaluation would need, and the substantial ad hominem attacks on them. However, their original claim of measurement of the anomalous power remained unscathed during all of this furor. A decade later, it was not generally realized that this claim remained essentially unevaluated by the scientific community. Confusion necessarily arose when the skeptics refused without argument to recognize the heat measurement and its corresponding hypothesis of a nuclear source. As a consequence, the story of the excess heat phenomenon has never been told."
the most shocking description of taubes and Morrison ethic is by Jed Rothwell, conforming Beaudette explanation at the end (explaining how undocumented were skeptic books)
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusion.pdf#page=4 (page 4)
by the way LENr is getting industrial
http://www.lenrftw.net/home/are-low-energy-nuclear-reaction-devices-real
http://www.lenrnews.eu/lenr-summary-for-policy-makers/
good reading
I followed one of the URLs you've provided. the one I've reproduced below. It got me to a one-page sheet with two further URLs, and already I felt like I was chasing a hare down a hole. http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/lenr%20home%20page/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
ReplyDeleteOne of the two URLs provided in the sheet at the other end of THAT one is to a site called "infinite energy magazine."
Now THAT brings e back to the logical point I raised above, and which you have not addressed. Is a phrase like "infinite energy" intended to suggest zero-cost energy? Or is it supposed to suggest that this breakthrough will get us to much cheaper energy, which will still nonetheless have a positive cost? There is a difference of literally infinite significance between those two possibilities.
it is a 400 page book.
Deletedid you read the quote ? did you find any non refuted claims beside the 4 cited ?
as groupthink theor show
http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20IOM%202012_07_02%20BW.pdf
the symptm of mutual assured delusion is to find quickly a method not to see the data.
IE is a foundation tha support cold fusion and others subject...
ok simply the name of the editor and you refuse to hear the story
classic. keep sleeping.
or you can read the content and check the data.
beside Cf you can read real stories
http://www.mosaicsciencemagazine.org/pdf/m18_03_87_04.pdf
this story remind us how media manipulate facts and consensus is build
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJcoldfusion.pdf#page=4
currently many industrial and agencies , from US, japan, Italy, switzerland, are no more delusioned, and start to take the consequence of evidences.
http://www.lenrnews.eu/lenr-summary-for-policy-makers/
http://www.lenrftw.net/home/are-low-energy-nuclear-reaction-devices-real
Nasa, toyota, mitsubishi, ST Micro, National instruments, Cherokee fund, Navy, Elforsk, ENEA, are now supporting that myth.
data are available with few efforts (few minutes).
I make a summary:
cold fusion is proven according to the scientific method, through many experiment, published and peer-reviewed by competent reviewed. it was challenged by crotics who were unable to bring rational critics that survived to review.
The process have been improved and currently the signal over noise and the reproducibility is very good.
some industrial claims are done, and don't follow academic process (which failed indeed), but respect classic business process, are funded and supported by industrial actor organization.
the evidence are public and skeptics simply manage not to read them.
the process is well document, groupthink, pathology of peer-review, academic incapacity to mange paradigm change, media manipulations...
nothing new or surprizing ins what happened.
It is a matter of self preservation that one doesn't commit to reading a 400 page book without some idea of whether it will be worth it For myself, yes, a sufficiently striking name of the magazine/editor can provide or can conspicuously fail to provide that assurance.
ReplyDeleteSo: what is the phrase "infinite energy" supposed to mean? As mathematicians have struggled for decades with different ideas about the infinite and transfinite, it obviously isn't self-explanatory. In this context, does it imply cost-less energy?