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From a 2005 post https://pesn.com/archive/2005/...

Summary... the City of New Orleans is sinking, and sliding off the continental shelf. It's doomed even if sea levels did *NOT* rise.

> The river is moving away from the city. The city is sinking because of its
> weight, because no upbuilding by new muck for many decades, because of
> being cut off from the fresh water, because it is sliding off a cliff (the Continental Shelf),
> and because the Oil and Gas Industry is extracting oil out from under it.
> It is a city that for all intents and purposes is now Sea domain.

And, oh yeah, the very fact that ships can navigate from the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River is an anthropogenic artifact.

> To understand the City of New Orleans one must first understand the
> massive Mississippi River delta. New Orleans was built at the site of the old
> "French Quarter" on the high ground adjacent to the Mississippi river.
> This location was picked because the Mississippi River didn't have a mouth
> into the ocean. The river simply went into the "Black Swamp" and disappeared.
> This was where ships headed down river had to stop and unload their
> goods to be transshipped across Lake Pontchartrain to the sea. This was
> done by unloading the goods at the docks and then hauling them to the
> lake where shallow draft boats would take the goods to the seagoing ships.
>
> By using some ingenious methods, Henry Shreve -- after whom
> Shreveport, La., is named -- forced the river to dig its own channel out to
> the sea where it now goes. This allowed the ocean-going boats access to
> the enormous Mississippi river. This, together with the work of the US Army
> Corps of Engineers, produced what is functionally the largest ocean port on earth.

Most industrialized countries are seeing their birth rates plummet (like Italy). People are also feeling a law of diminishing returns of more stuff. So, it is not clear our population or per-capita energy demands are likely to continue to grow that much. Not saying they won't (evolution argues fast growing subpopulations might expand and dominate) , but there are certainly counter trends to exponential growth. Nature has a way of turning exponentials into S-curves...

One the plus side, expanding into the galaxy could give humanity another 1000 years or so of exponential expansion. :-)

But here is an important point. As Julian Simon points out in "The Ultimate Resource", the human imagination is the ultimate resource, since it creates all other rsources (often by figuring out how unused stuff can be made into resources or existing stuff can be reorganized into better resources).
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

The USA once faced a "Peak Whale Oil" crisis in 1846. Yet we moved past that because someone figured out you could get a form of oil from the ground instead of just from whales. See:
http://io9.com/5930414/1846-the-year-we-hit-peak-sperm-whale-oil

If our population continued to grow exponentially, there would be quadrillions of people around to imagine new ways to deal with this issue of energy. I don't know what they might be in those four areas I mentioned (wants, efficiency, distribution, and availability). Or maybe it will be an innovation in some new area somehow. For example, maybe someone will figure out how to tap the zero point energy of the vacuum as both a source and sink of energy and matter? Or maybe someone else will figure out multiple universe theory, or some notion of our universe as a simulation.

I don't know for sure what it would be, or that someone would find it. But, are you willing to bet on your current conception of physics as being undeniable 100% accurate fact that sets hard limits for all time against the imaginations, research, and hard-work of many quadrillions of people (and sentient AIs) working together for hundreds of years? Are you willing to wager on that certainty to the point where, as with TFA where the author says essentially it would be better that all those quadrillions of people should never exist? Wouldn't that claim of omniscient certainty be an ultimate definition of self-centered hubris? Or at least, wouldn't it be "non-scientific", given scientists should always be open to falsifying their theories?

See also, as just one example from:
"They really ought to have known better."
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~fringwal/stoopid.lis
""Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth decimal place."
      -- A. A. Michelson, 1894
[On the occasion of the dedication of a physics laboratory in Chicago, noting that all the more important physical laws had been discovered]"

See also Isaas Asimov's short-story "The Last Question", with the recurring line:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
  "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER".

Online here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0

You may well be right in the end. But there are a lot of uncertainties before then... And clearly there are a lot more obvious possibilities than TFA considers.

For example, Europe just issued a patent for for Francesco Piantelli's LENR process (aka "cold fusion"):
http://pesn.com/2013/01/24/9602268_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_January24/

http://pesn.com/2013/01/03/9602259_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_January3/

The same may be starting in medicine and (re)realizing how important nutrition is:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Informative summary, thanks 0x7e!

Some other economic and political aspects as well:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

The biggest thing about this article is it shows how quickly something taught in science textbooks for decades like the notion of "absolute zero" is slowly realized to be, if not 100% false, then at least a gross oversimplification. We may someday say the same about things like LENR (Cold Fusion) or even deep issues like consciousness and spirituality (Charles Tart's work, for example). Examples:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
http://pesn.com/2013/01/03/9602259_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_January3/
http://web.archive.org/web/20090308132014/http://suppressedscience.net/physics.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Elaborating on my previous posts, as I wrote about in a term paper project for a 1980s college undergraduate course run by Prof. Steve Slaby, called "The Technological Imperative of the Arms Race", technology is an amplifier -- the question is, what sorts of things do we want to amplify?

The book "Descartes' Error" makes the point that we can't "reason" without emotions. This seems obvious to me now, but back in college it did not seem so in a philosophical sense. Modern psychology can show us how our emotions drive our reasoning process (even as reasoning can provide feedback that may affect our emotions and again our reasoning etc.). And our emotions are generally first determined by our values (including psycho-physiologically values, like perhaps a instinctive reaction to a snake or a bad smell). And those values in turn are generally determined by our personal biology, our family upbringing, our friends and neighbors, our personal history, and our culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error

Albert Einstein talks about aspects of that in an essay at this link where he says that science can perhaps tell us something about what seems to be, but science can never tell us what should be. And our thoughts on what should be are the basis of our actions (including how we direct our thoughts). The essay:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

I haven't finished reading it yet, but there is a recent New Yorker article (still available as full text) about a scientist and his feelings about the ethics about his past research on weapons of mass confusion derived from nerve gas:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/12/17/121217fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all

One discussion of it here:
http://incunabula.org/2012/12/the-doctor-behind-the-armys-psychedelic-manhattan-project-has-some-regrets-weed-isnt-one-of-them/

I was thinking as I read the New Yorker article (around the part I stopped at), that these scientists, or at least the scientific enterprise in general, had other choices than to make the next weapon or the next defense for a theoretical attack. They could have focused on using science to make the world work better for everyone (or at least most people) and thus reduce conflicts, like Bucky Fuller did with his focus on "Livingry". They also could have researched the social and organizational issues behind war and other conflicts, like Morton Deutsch did or Alfie Kohn did. Thus this essay by me mentioning such people:

I can wonder if we'll see the same with so-called "cold fusion" (LENR)? Example:
http://pesn.com/2012/10/18/9602209_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_October18/

Well, you're free to "wonder", but no amount of wondering will make pipe dreams real. I opened your link, and splattered all across the page was promotion of some Italian dude's "self sustaining" (aka perpetual motion) machine. Stop being so gullible. That's not the sort of website to go to for information about heroic lone wolf inventors oppressed by The System, it's a place to go to for uncritical promotion of cranks and frauds.

Also, if you had bothered to read that Telegraph article in depth instead of skimming for material to support the "scientific orthodoxy suppresses geniuses" narrative, you'd have noticed that less than 10 years after Ovshinsky attracted some harsh criticism, Sir Nevill Mott acknowledged Ovshinksy in his Nobel acceptance speech. Because, you see, he won it for work in a field of study which Ovshinksy kicked off. That's actually a relatively short time scale for controversy to acceptance.

By the way, real scientists like Ovshinsky basically welcome harsh criticism of any bold new claims they happen to be making. You're always going to be your own work's biggest fan -- but if you're honestly pursuing the truth you have to be aware that means you can't be your own work's best critic, so the only way you're going to ever be sure that you've done it right is to put it out there, let it get attacked, and see if you can figure out how to save it. Ovshinsky did figure out how to defend a lot of his key ideas. Guys like Pons & Fleischmann (the "inventors" of cold fusion) couldn't. Because there wasn't anything there.

Too bad about prostrate cancer; here is some advice on reducing the risk for those of us (males) who carry on:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/prostate-cancer-dr-fuhrmans-diet-advice-for-prostate-health.html

Hooray, let's hear it for yet another dose of worthless diet advice pseudoscience! (hint: if you read it on a site which, by its very name, implies you can become "disease proof", it's probably a load of crap)

And all the professional physicists and engineers denied that amorphous semiconductors were possible for many years, even when confronted with evidence... See for example:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9621164/Stanford-Ovshinsky.html
"In 1960, with his second wife Iris, a biochemist, he founded Energy Conversion Laboratories (later renamed Energy Conversion Devices, or ECD) at Rochester Hills, Michigan, to develop his ideas, and in 1968 held a press conference at which he announced that he had succeeded in making a "glass transistor" that relied on a principle which (with understandable immodesty) he called Ovonics. This breakthrough, he predicted, would eventually lead to desktop computers and television sets "hanging like portraits on the wall". The announcement made the front pages and ECDâ(TM)s stock (the company went public in 1967) soared. Within days, however, semiconductor engineers dismissed the idea and ECDâ(TM)s stock price collapsed. Most scientists had never heard of amorphous materials, and some rubbished Ovshinsky as a high school dropout and former machinist with no university qualifications. He was branded a crank. Eventually, though, Ovshinskyâ(TM)s theories proved correct, ushering in a whole new field of solid-state physics."

I can wonder if we'll see the same with so-called "cold fusion" (LENR)? Example:
http://pesn.com/2012/10/18/9602209_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_October18/

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciplined_Minds
"Disciplined Minds is a book by physicist Jeff Schmidt,[1] published in 2000. The book describes how professionals are made; the methods of professional and graduate schools that turn eager entering students into disciplined managerial and intellectual workers that correctly perceive and apply the employer's doctrine and outlook. Schmidt uses the examples of law, medicine, and physics, and describes methods that students and professional workers can use to preserve their personalities and independent thought."

I've always found the story of Stanford Ovshinsky inspirational. He was like a more-well-grounded Bucky Fuller. Too bad about prostrate cancer; here is some advice on reducing the risk for those of us (males) who carry on:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/prostate-cancer-dr-fuhrmans-diet-advice-for-prostate-health.html

Sorry, but you and whoever modded that post down missed the point. There is an apparent affect where imploding small bubbles in liquid can cause nuclear fusion or some similar process involving very hot temperatures like the surface of the sun and so possibly emit radiation as evidenced by the production of light (although the details remain controversial). Ultrasonic sound waves can apparently cause such small bubbles, and so the proposed idea of injecting drugs using ultrasonic waves to cause small bubble may be a potential radiation risk. From the wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_fusion
"Bubble fusion, also known as sonofusion, is the non-technical name for a nuclear fusion reaction hypothesized to occur during a high-pressure version of sonoluminescence, an extreme form of acoustic cavitation.[1] The mechanism of sonofusion was proposed in 2002 by Rusi Taleyarkhan. Experiments in following years have produced conflicting results about whether it is possible to cause a fusion reaction with this method."

Emphasis being on "nuclear fusion".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence#Nuclear_reactions

And this supports the original poster's point about free radical damage. Maybe free radicals are caused by radiation from the imploding bubbles?

If you want to learn more about bubbles and possible radiation, watch this youtube video about snapping "Pistol Shrimp", who use the effect to stun prey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeFUO2F7Gvw

So the question is, could this be happening in this attempt to inject medicine via ultrasonics? Compare what is quoted above from Wikipeida with this part of the summary of the original article: "When ultrasound waves travel through a fluid, they create tiny bubbles that move chaotically. Once the bubbles reach a certain size, they become unstable and implode. Surrounding fluid rushes into the empty space, generating high-speed 'microjets' of fluid that create microscopic abrasions on the skin."

Imploding bubbles are referenced in both.

Of course, many mainstream physicists may find this idea of bubble fusion heretical, same as they object to the idea that nuclear processes can go on at the surface of a metal lattice (or maybe inside one):
http://pesn.com/2012/09/06/9602177_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_September6/
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/05/11/184239/bubble-fusion-researcher-faces-fraud-trial
http://science.slashdot.org/story/04/04/19/1117201/bubble-fusion-results-replicated-by-4-institutions?sdsrc=rel

Am I saying typical ultrasounds used for diagnostic imaging produce this sonofusion effect? No. Although now that you bring the issue up, maybe they can?

By the way, as far as ultrasound and the developing human brain and ear related to ultrasounds performed during pregnancy, even without radiation issues, consider:
"Prenatal exposure to ultrasound waves impacts neuronal migration in mice"
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/34/12903.full

What are the implications?
http://www.naturalchild.org/research/yale_ultrasound.html
"Physicians should continue to be prudent about the use of ultrasound and perform the study only when medically necessary and when benefits outweigh risk, according to the American College of Radiology. The advice comes in the wake of recent findings by Yale researchers that link prenatal ultrasound exposure to brain damage."

Maybe that is not the best study in the world, but you seem to me to be ignoring the context here. I was originally responding to a comment that included stuff on asthma, allergies, and fibromyalgia. The page I am citing and the references covers many allergies, and fibromyalgia in that context (fibromyalgia in practice perhaps often being a catch-all phrase for joint pain which can have multiple causes). Also, you are just out of hand dismissing an MD's report on his own decades of clinical experience. And that experience is also reflected by reports by others, if you look around. It is just not extremely profitable or easy advice to give in this society, compared to pill pushing and surgery selling.

By the way:
"The relation between vitamin D deficiency and fibromyalgia syndrome in women"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21894355

And:
"5 Ways To Control Fibromyalgia With Diet: New research shows that picking these foods may ease pain"
http://www.prevention.com/node/27278
http://www.prevention.com/health/health-concerns/5-ways-control-fibromyalgia-diet/5-veg-out
"Some researchers speculate that oxidative stress may be a cause of fibro symptoms. Oxidative stress occurs when the body doesnâ(TM)t produce enough antioxidants to battle cell-damaging free radicals in the body. Most fruits and veggies are packed with important antioxidants, like vitamins A, C, and E, which fight free radicals to keep your body normalized. Certain studies also show a raw, vegan diet can improve symptoms, but thatâ(TM)s difficult for most people to follow. If you do choose to eat meat, though, opt for a small portion of grass-fed beef. "It is an excellent source of iron and vitamin B12, both nutrients which are extremely important in keeping your pain-processing nervous system healthy," says Holton."

Of course, they don't cite their studies; some other studies are mentioned here:
http://www.beyondveg.com/cat/links-out/raw-research.shtml

So, be skeptical of new information. But how about being skeptical about old information, too? And maybe going a bit further and looking around for yourself at a new idea (or an old one that was forgotten or driven out socially)? It's not very scientific to just dismiss all new ideas for lack of enough evidence (for example, what kept us from LENR (Cold Fusion) for two decades because some hot fusion scientists at MIT could not replicate an experiment in a week or two where success would have jeopardized their own livelihood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Pathological_skepticism
http://pesn.com/2011/12/27/9601994_History_of_MITs_Blatant_Suppression_of_Cold_Fusion/

The scientific enterprise in our society is so messed up in so many ways, as reflected in the quotes I collected here; one example:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"In the laboratory, Latour and Woolgar observed that a typical experiment produces only inconclusive data that is attributed to failure of the apparatus or experimental method, and that a large part of scientific training involves learning how to make the subjective decision of what data to keep and what data to throw out. To an untrained outsider, Latour and Woolgar argued the entire process resembles not an unbiased searc

...both of the library variety and the hands-on variety in his practice. He cites thousands of reference sin his book "Eat to Live" and has had thousands of patients over his career.

Researchers at Harvard University have seconded the vitamin D deficiency hypotheses as a potential cause of autism.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/news-archive/2009/new-harvard-paper-on-autism/

Yet your post got modded +5 insightful. Still so much mis-info on slashdot about health... But I still feel it is slowly improving. And you are reasonable to be skeptical.

You might like this article critical of Dr. Hyman:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/09/08/dr-mark-hyman-mangles-autism-science-on/

None-the-less, if you truly are a hard-working skeptic and not just a lazy skeptic-of-just-new-ideas, the entire scientific enterprise has failed in several big ways in relation to medicine, as I quote here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors -- to a striking extent -- still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science."

So, it is hard to move beyond that. Look at what happened to the guy who suggested doctors wash their hands after dissecting corpses before they then deliver babies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
".. As a result, his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Other more subtle factors may also have played a role. Some doctors, for instance, were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands, feeling that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.[7]:9[Note 6]
Specifically, Semmelweis's claims were thought to lack scientific basis, since he could offer no acceptable explanation for his findings. Such a scientific explanation was made possible only some decades later, when the germ theory of disease was developed by Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and others.
During 1848, Semmelweis widened the scope of his washing protocol, to include all instruments coming in contact with patients in labour, and used mortality rates time series to document his success in virtually eliminating puerperal fever from the hospital ward. ...
In 1865 JÃnos Balassa wrote a document referring Semmelweis to a mental institution. ... He died after two weeks, on August 13, 1865, aged 47, from a gangrenous wound, possibly caused by the beating. ..."

Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder too for twenty years...
http://pesn.com/2012/09/06/9602177_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_September6/

Who are the real charlatans of medicine?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
"In the most recent study investigators reviewed 61 trials, involving 25,388 patients, in a meta-analysis comparing angioplasty and stent placement with no treatment or medications alone. A meta-analysis pools numerous studies on the same subject. The findings indicated that there was no evidence that angioplasty and stent placement for coronary artery disease resulted in fewer heart attacks or deaths when compared to patients with the same level of disease who

I think somewhere around $60M per piece, maybe even more given very limited availablity of plutonium-238. USA already ceased production of it::
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2011/09/11/senate-energy-bill-includes-no-pu-238-funding/
PU-238 can only be bought from Russians (as it was done in case of Curiosity power source):
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/08/mars_rover_curiosity_its_plutonium_power_comes_courtesy_of_soviet_nukes_.single.html
Hovewer RTG will be producing heat and 100-200 W of electricity for 100 years.

I would say something like this is needed:
http://pesn.com/2012/08/22/9602166_Existence_of_1200_C_E-Cat_Test_Report_Confirmed/

From the mid 1990s by the Vice-provost of Caltech: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

More like that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Also:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/

All reasoning is also based on emotion, which relate to perceptions, assumptions, priorities and preferences which are, to some extent, outside of pure rationality (which why "technocracy" has many issues).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error

But the biggest issue is that our socio-economic-political system is not well-adapted to handle "externalities" including systemic risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Any reasonable projection over the next twenty years shows we will almost certainly have dirt-cheap PV given exponential growth of that industry and rapidly dropping costs. We may even have hot or cold fusion in that time (and other things). With alternatives on the way, there is not a very good case to be made for risking destroy our groundwater for just a bit more fossil fuels:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Solar_power
http://pesn.com/2012/07/19/9602138_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_July19/
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/414559/a-new-approach-to-fusion/
And so on...

Accounting for externalities (including US defense spending for long oil supply lines), renewables (and energy efficiency) have been *cheaper* than fossil fuels since the 1970s... Two resources on that from around 1980:

An may work: http://pesn.com/2012/07/05/9602122_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_July5/

BTW, google on "iron sun" as well as "electric universe". I've been wondering if the sun is powered by LENR reactions from quantum tunnelling boundary evaporation of neutrons from a huge iron-nickel mass? The hydrogen seen on the surface of the sun may not be representative of what is below the surface, same as much of the earth is covered with water, but only a mile deep. The core of the Earth may be heated by a similar boudnary evaporation and LENR process? The universe may have a lot more iron decaying into hydrogen than hydrogen fusing into iron...

Thanks. Please also see my point on four interwoven economic alternatives (gift, exchange, subsistence, planned) in reply to someone who disagreed with you.

By the way, "disruptive" energy technology is just around the corner:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

And if that was not enough, maybe even "cold fusion" which is becoming understood as actually just a proton plus a metal-surface electron becoming a neutron and being absorbed by nearby matter, leading to standard radioactive decay:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/News.htm
http://pesn.com/2012/01/13/9602010_NASA_LENR_endorsement_spin_cycle_to_clear_past_suppression/

Thorium power (being pursued by the Chinese and Indians) is another energy alternative, too.

The mystery of the human genome was sort of like a protective lock that prevented people from engineering terrible plagues. Now that mystery is going away, with lots of well-meant good intentions to cure genetic diseases and so on. With that protective "code" widely understood, we had better be sure to learn how to be nicer to each other, and use that knowledge to build a better society rather than tear everything down.

Or, in other words:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042546/quotes
"Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say "In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart... I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."

In general, our society needs to move to "A Newer Way Of Thinking" like Albert Einstein (and now Donald Pet) talk about, given we can either use abundance to build a better world for all, or we can use it to destroy that possibility for all:
http://www.anwot.org/
http://anwot.org/blog/2011/07/10/stren-70-why-do-we-have-destructive-aggression-and-war/

And a basic income for all is part of that transition to a newer way of thinking, even though it seems all these social trends are very slow processes. I've heard that is until the trends reach some tipping point like about 10% of the population understands them and values them, and then the trend races forward. It's amazing that it was considered as much as it was in Germany recently:
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_snd-basic-income.html

There really is no alternative to a newer way of thinking and related socioeconomic policy, given the power of WMDs at this point in the hands of disgruntled people at the edges of the society who may think the whole thing is grossly unfair. The miracle is that people are so peaceful anyway, and that things like blowback actually so rarely happen.

Likewise, if LENR (what was formerly called cold fusion) pans out, while it will open up many possibilities for good, it will lead to more destructive possibilities as well, and probably, after a brief spurt of new jobs, we will see massive formal-sector unemployment as energy can often substitute for labor. Related links (even if things are still up in the air, and solar panels are a proven technology also rapidly dropping in cost):
http://www.google.com/search?q=lenr
http://pesn.com/2012/01/12/9602009_NASA_Admits_LENR_Cold_Fusion_Game_Changer/
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/cold-fusion-being-studied-at-mit
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/newenergytimes-gets-three-nasa.html
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/billionaire-donates-money-for-cold-fusion-research-at-us-university
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Is NASA bullshitting too? In the last video on the post NASA said "It (LENR) has the demonstrated ability to produce excess amounts of energy, cleanly, without hazardous ionizing radiation, without producing nasty waste.". If it is demonstrated enough for NASA to post a video about it, calling it a game changer... I don't think it is bullshit. Why would a Chief NASA scientist come out and say this if it was a fraud?

Also in the Oct 6th E-cat test Rossi dismantled a E-Cat to prove there were not batteries in his device. http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:Photos_of_the_October_6,_2011_E-Cat_Test --- And a summery of the test, http://pesn.com/2011/10/08/9501929_E-Cat_Test_Validates_Cold_Fusion_Despite_Challenges/

The device is so simple DIY'ers are working them already using what was submitted for patent. Also the 1MW E-cat was sold after the customer performed their tests. See here : http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/

Firstly, NASA states in the last video on the post they have "Demonstrated" LENR. "It has the demonstrated ability to produce excess amounts of energy, cleanly, without hazardous ionizing radiation, without producing nasty waste." LENR is the more appropriate term for what we used to call "cold fusion" This is what the E-Cat uses. This tells me, NASA has devices that make energy with LENR. They refer to using Ni and H which Rossi is also using.

Also, the Rossi said in interviews that he is running his E-Cat at home, and other people in his team are running them. The link at e-catworld below refers to the interview where he stated this. http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/01/rossi-in-talks-with-home-depot-for-e-cat-distribution-interview-with-james-martinez-on-cah-flow-radio/

His e-cat is with Underwriting Lavatories and awaiting UL certification. This was stated on the latest interview with him. The PESWiki link links to the interview and has a partial transcript of the interview. http://pesn.com/2012/01/14/9602012_Momentous_Breakthroughs_Announced_During_Anniversary_E-Cat_Interview/

You can't forget about the 1MW plant that the customer paid $2 million for after the customer tested the unit.

Walt

There's no secret - did you even read/view the NASA presentation and video linked in the slashdot story?

Or how about this - a Nobel Prize winning physicist who believes the Rossi reactor is for real.

http://pesn.com/2011/06/23/9501856_Nobel_laureate_touts_E-Cat_cold_fusion/

Note that in the NASA video the scientist is talking about this as a very practical device for home generation of power and heat. The physics may not be well understood, but evidently trustworthy organizations like NASA have no problem creating devices that consistenty produce heat that cannot be explained using known physics (although there are a half dozen theories about what may be happening).

The trouble is that "cold fusion" got a bad name because the voices of those who were initially unable to reproduce the effect has heard over those (such as NASA!) who were able to. These types of process are now being referred to as LENR (low-energy nuclear reactions) instead, and serious research continues.

If you think the reality of LENR heat producing devices is a secret, it's more an indication that you get your news from Fox news than it is a reflection on the reality. Try listening to NASA instead of Fox news.

The fact that the thing is not engineered for high temperatures may limit its efficiency, but does not necessarily mean that there isn't a large generation of power in the system. It just means that there would be a much larger flow of the fluid to carry the heat away from the source and the fluid (light water, I think) could be at a low pressure. An observer saw a thermometer on the outgoing side registering about 109 degrees Centigrade. Not enough to melt many engineering plastics. The heat was reportedly dumped using some sort of radiator, and the fluid was recirculated to the cells.

I find it highly suspicious, however, that there was a generator set, rated at perhaps 500KW, running continuously during the test. Rossi's statement on this is that the genset was required to run pumps and instrumentation while the system was in 'self-sustaining' mode. It was also used to pump 400KW of heat into the system to raise the temperature to boiling point and get it there.

Time will tell, I guess.
Markets will fluctuate.
Someone will make a lot of money.

Let's hope it's real and Rossi builds and sells successful E-cats. It would change the world for the better.

Link to Rossi's own report:

http://db.tt/wu4OLbgk

Two seperate reports on the test:

http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3303682.ece

http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/

The fact that the thing is not engineered for high temperatures may limit its efficiency, but does not necessarily mean that there isn't a large generation of power in the system. It just means that there would be a much larger flow of the fluid to carry the heat away from the source and the fluid (light water, I think) could be at a low pressure. An observer saw a thermometer on the outgoing side registering about 109 degrees Centigrade. Not enough to melt many engineering plastics. The heat was reportedly dumped using some sort of radiator, and the fluid was recirculated to the cells.

I find it highly suspicious, however, that there was a generator set, rated at perhaps 500KW, running continuously during the test. Rossi's statement on this is that the genset was required to run pumps and instrumentation while the system was in 'self-sustaining' mode. It was also used to pump 400KW of heat into the system to raise the temperature to boiling point and get it there.

Time will tell, I guess.
Markets will fluctuate.
Someone will make a lot of money.

Let's hope it's real and Rossi builds and sells successful E-cats. It would change the world for the better.

Link to Rossi's own report:

http://db.tt/wu4OLbgk

Two seperate reports on the test:

http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3303682.ece

http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/

Well, the first part of your prediction came true. They are claiming it generated 473 kW for 5.5 hours in self-looping mode. Not near 1 MW, as you predicted.
http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/

I'll believe this one when Al-Jazeera starts picking it up...

http://pesn.com/2011/10/28/9501940_1_MW_E-Cat_Test_Successful/

This is the gold: (emphasis mine)

Power for start-up (resistive coils that provided heat to the reaction chambers) was provided by the large and loud genset (was making all the noise) you see that is nearly as large as the small shipping container in which the 1 MW E-Cat plant was arranged. Once the reaction chambers got up to temperature, they were maintained by the heat produced by the reaction. I'm not sure why they kept the generator running after that, but I would guess it was for back-up or safety. I'm sure the engineers testing the system made sure what the power levels were at all times.

I don't think I have to explain why I emphasized that part :-)

As I suggest here, the solar system does not have enough people: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

As Julian Simon suggests, the more people, the more creative ideas:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

How else would we get the idea to grind up rock to fertilize soil?
http://www.remineralize.org/

Or to make solar power cheaper than coal?
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Or to invent the computer mouse?
http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/vision-highlights.html

Or to create terrific participatory democracies?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010

Or to move beyond war by thinking better?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
http://www.anwot.org/

Or maybe even to have cold fusion?
http://pesn.com/2011/09/14/9501913_Rossis_One_Megawatt_Reactor_Gets_A_New_E-Cat_Model/

The human imagination (empowered by education and health and access to basic resources) is indeed the ultimate resource.

However, the October 8th test reports are starting to come out and are looking more and more convincing: http://pesn.com/2011/10/08/9501929_E-Cat_Test_Validates_Cold_Fusion_Despite_Challenges/

I really do want to believe, but after finding an article that has real facts about the E-Cat, it seems like a joke.

One argument skeptics are making about the most recent test performed is that the system was only allowed to self sustain for 35 minutes before the test was ended. Skeptics are trying to state that due to this short period of time, the energy expended that kept the water boiling was due to "thermal inertia." Simply put, they are trying to say that the heat retained in the metal and other materials in the device was enough to keep the water boiling for 35 minutes. This is absurd for many reasons.

Ok, when I have a rapidly boiling pot on the stove and turn it off, the boiling does stop in 1 minute, not 35. So, I can see why people are stumped after witnessing this "parlor trick."

The steam temperature of the E-Cat only dropped about 10 C (from 130 to 120 C) over the course of 35 minutes. This indicates that a very large amount of energy was being produced via a cold fusion reaction. If there was not a cold fusion reaction taking place, the water would have stopped boiling immediately, and the temperature would have dropped much more.

You and I have very definitions of "a very large amount of energy". We're talking about nuclear fusion, and you say that keeping a pot of water at 125 degrees qualifies as "a very large amount of energy"?

The Steam temperature is very different than the water temperature. I'm assuming that while the steam temp dropped from 130 C to 120 C, the water temp dropped from 400 C to 99 C. If you put the steam temp sensor far enough away from the production source, this seems about right. Even at 400 C, the water won't instantly boil away, and especially not if it is under pressure. I'm beginning to understand exactly how this parlor trick works.

The Wired article makes it sound as if the company has already designed the consumer unit, and is ready to put it in production. The facts I've listed above make it sound more like a strange phenomenon that warrants a bit of investigation. These are very different things. If the reaction in the lab isn't even self-sustaining, how can they be discussing the design of consumer units yet?

You make some excellent points, but what about something like this?

Remember, the USA helped create bin Laden by funding and training and arming him to fight against the USSR...

Yes, I agree on the need to switch to alternative energy and energy efficiency. The total US military budget is somewhere around US$1 trillion per year (or more with interest). That's a lot of solar panels and wind turbines and home insulation. Amory Lovins (IIRC) suggested decades ago that just the operating cost for two years of the US Persian Gulf deployment force would be enough to imporve US energy efficiency to the point where we did not need the oil from the Persian Gulf. So, yet more irony. On that, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

The state of the art in Germany is now to build houses without furnaces, they are so well-built, well-insulated, and have air-to-air heat exchangers for fresh air without much energy loss.
http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/article/38940

Electric cars apparently use less energy per mile then it takes just to refine the oil into gasoline to go the same distance:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm

Another irony is that in the 1940s and 1950s nuclear physcisits realzied the thorium-based nuclear power would be inherently safer and more abundant than uranium and plutonium based nuclear power (you can't easily make bombs from thorium and it can't melt down easily because it is used already in the molten state and can be drained easily into cooling tanks) but thorium power was discarded precisely because it was safer (you could not make bombs from it). So, instead of cheap, abundant, safe thorium power, we got lots of nuclear bombs to fight over middle east oil fields and other resource rich areas we would not need to access if we had cheap power.

I wonder that will come out of this press conference tomorrow (still not sure if it is a scam or confusion or not):
http://pesn.com/2011/06/17/9501849_Defkalion_Announces_Energy_Catalyzer_Press_Conference/
"By now, most people following exotic energy breakthroughs have read about Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) cold fusion technology. It utilizes nickel powder, hydrogen gas, an undisclosed catalyst, heat, and pressure to produce large amounts of energy. The technology is capable of producing over 4 kilowatts of thermal power from a reactor vessel only fifty cubic centimeters in volume (about he size of your fist). Cold fusion research has been ongoing for two decades, and there have been thousands of successful experiments. However, Andrea Rossi's technology is the most promising cold fusion technology yet to emerge.
Andrea Rossi's company Leonardo Corporation has licensed the technology to the Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies Inc., with sole purpose to sell, license, and manufacture industrialized commercially applicable products using the Andrea Rossi Energy Catalyzer with global exclusivity rights; except the Americas. Defkalion has recently sent out invitations to certain individuals to attend a press conference about the technology on June 23, 2011. The invitation is self explanatory, and is posted below. "

But in any case, we'll probably have dirt-cheap solar panels in twenty years through nanotechnology or similar improvements in materials. We'd have had cheaper solar a lot sooner if either we had more government-funded R&D on them or if US consumers had to pay the true cost of fossil fuels up front (including defense expenditures and health costs and pollution costs and war risk).
http://www.iags.org/costofoil.html
http://www.energyandcapital.com/article

Maybe someday more -- is the eCat a scam or is it real? We may know soon...
    http://pesn.com/2011/06/17/9501849_Defkalion_Announces_Energy_Catalyzer_Press_Conference/
"By now, most people following exotic energy breakthroughs have read about Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) cold fusion technology. It utilizes nickel powder, hydrogen gas, an undisclosed catalyst, heat, and pressure to produce large amounts of energy. The technology is capable of producing over 4 kilowatts of thermal power from a reactor vessel only fifty cubic centimeters in volume (about he size of your fist). Cold fusion research has been ongoing for two decades, and there have been thousands of successful experiments. However, Andrea Rossi's technology is the most promising cold fusion technology yet to emerge.
    Andrea Rossi's company Leonardo Corporation has licensed the technology to the Greek company Defkalion Green Technologies Inc., with sole purpose to sell, license, and manufacture industrialized commercially applicable products using the Andrea Rossi Energy Catalyzer with global exclusivity rights; except the Americas. Defkalion has recently sent out invitations to certain individuals to attend a press conference about the technology on June 23, 2011. The invitation is self explanatory, and is posted below."

Too bad the economic development of this is so conventional; alternatives:
    http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation

http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004123.html
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
http://www.remineralize.org/

Lots more if anyone looks..

You make a good case, and you probaby would like this book by Bernard L. Cohen that says much the same:
    http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/BOOK.html

Also, at some point, even with meltdowns, we can just site new nuclear plants where the old one melted down. So, Fukushima is now a good place to site more plants, as is Chernobyl, given the evacuations and the grounds are already contaminated. We could also produce synthetic fuels in those areas and ship them elsewhere. And we could build lots of robots to do the work.

Thorium reactors are even safer and we have much more thorium (thousands of years) than uranium and plutonium (hundred years?) for reactors.. But ironically it is said that thorium technology was not developed in the 1940s and 1950s precisely because it was safer and you could not make bombs from it.

With all that said, I'm still rooting for stuff like solar roadways, maglev wind, or the Rossi/Focardi eCat.
    http://www.solarroadways.com/
    http://www.maglevwindturbine.com/
    http://pesn.com/2011/05/31/9501837_Cold-Fusion_Number-1_Claims_NASA_Chief/

Even various forms of hot fusion are looking promising.

Although solar thermal could have done the job from the 1970s and on. Renewables IMHO have been cheaper than fossil fuels when you consider the externalities like pollution, health impacts, risks, defense costs, and so on.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

One can argue about the externalities from different nuclear options (such as who pays for the permanent evacuation around Fukushima or follow on effects like loss of agriculture or other economic problems in the area). If we do see a nuclear resurgance, it is going to look very different than today's plants (or should).

Conventional nuclear tends to be fairly centralized which has various political implications in a democracy. Yes there ideas like Hyperion, but they still probably require big central plants to make them and reprocess them. Mainstream nuclear in general requires a higher level of transparency then our society seems capable of on a sustained basis so far. Fukushima is just one more example of that lack of transparency or foresight.

Still, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, as if our society ran off of cheap thorium power, our politics might be better and less short-term if it assumed abundance instead of scarcity.

The good news is, we have lots of energy options, and the human imagination continues to invent more of them:
    http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR40.txt

If this has anything with the mysterious white lights that were reported during the quake (apparently not an entirely uncommon, but still unexplained, phenomenon), and if there could be any connection with what some researchers are saying about major earthquakes being linked with solar flare activity.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25?pagenumber=2
    "Commentary: China's economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016 [based on PPP] ...
    This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
    "There are two systems in collision," said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU's Stern business school. "They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism." What we have seen, he said, is "a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That's very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages."
    The next chapter of the story is just beginning. ..."

See also:
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
    http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
    http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation

What tinkerers related to science and technology can do though?
    http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
    http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/

There are people who share Tesla's dream of extracting energy from the aether. They don't grok physics like Tesla did, and there is active resistance from the devotees of materialist-based science, which is why progress has been so slow. The Pure Energy Systems wiki is the best place to go if you want to get a better idea of what innovations dreamers are thinking up. I saw my acquaintance's truck on the front page one day... :)

Here's an article that's on the PESwiki front page right now, about Tesla Coils unleashing the aether.

What's most interesting to me is how many people, who've been trained in the Heaviside/JP Morgan version of electromagnetism and science grounded in materialist philosophy, are allergic to the idea that thermodynamics is just a special case & that the universe also has organizing principles. Science was switched to assume that "matter is all there is" sometime in the early 19th century by 2 or 3 guys in their 20's (I'm sorta trying to figure out who these three men were, but I don't really care that much - maybe I'll write the speaker).

Hence the search for a "smallest" particle / building block of matter. The alternate view is that matter's fundamental nature is not something "hard", but simply interacting force fields. Conventional Science already knows that atoms and protons and neutrons are mostly "empty space", and E=mC^2, so the leap is very, very small at this point.

I don't grok aether physics but know at least two people who do, and two more who would be up for sainthood if they'd lived 600 years ago in Europe (after they'd been burned at the stake, of course).

All the evils of the switch to a materialist-based philosophy of science have been unleashed in the world today. The only thing left in Pandora's box is "hope". The heirs to JP Morgan won't allow the DOE to invest in fundamentally "game changing technology" that would make the hydrocarbon-based energy economy completely obsolete, but there is still hope that the forces of Tesla's vision of energy will be unleashed. As soon as I figure this all out I'm going to revise my domain, . :)

It still looks plausible! http://pesn.com/2011/04/07/9501805_Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Validated_by_Swedish_Skeptics_Society/

The Earth gets something like 10000X times more energy every day than we use that day in our civlization.
    http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

So what is the problem you are so worried about? There is room for quadrillions of people living in space habitats in the solar system, too. Why be such a doomster? Renewable energy is now close to the price of fossil fuels, but without the environmental costs (where fossil fuel companies privatize short-term profits and socialize long-term costs). We mainly have social problems, not technical ones. See also:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource

Have you really studied the technical possiblities for making the world work for everyone, and further, making the solar system work for quadrillions of people? We do have some big problems, but we have billions of people to help solve them. It's problematical to on the one hand say humans are a geological force and then on the other to deny that such a powerful force could be used to some benefit if we had the social will to do so. Thin film solar, wind generators, moving away from meat consumption, grinding up rocks for fertilizer, and maybe even cold fusion, are all parts of the solutions.
http://remineralize.org/
http://www.nanosolar.com/company/blog#177
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/

It is people who have used their creativity to come up with those sorts of ideas...

I cry BULL SHEEET.

New Technology is the production of a new physical product and it changes the way we think about the Universe because we discovered a new law, principle or mathematical relationship in nature.

A good example is break throughs in energy that are happening world wide, that the oil companies are desperate to keep you from knowing about.

http://pesn.com/2011/01/27/9501752_Italian_cold_fusion_saga_continues_with_new_papers_released/

Including paying MIT dorks and their lackies to destroy the careers of people who work in science in the name of maintaining a OIL world.

-Hack

Go Michigan. This site http://peswiki.com/energy/News reported this story yesterday. It also reported a story from Michigan State University http://pesn.com/2011/04/14/9501810_Wave_Disk_Engine_Sips_Fuel/ about a new type of engine. So two big announcement about energy and they are both developed in Universities in the state of Michigan.

An I wrote about on Slashdot was it approaching a decade ago?
    "Both CATS and DOGS are needed... (Score:2)"
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=5821178&sid=62113

See also, from J.D. Bernal in the 1920s(!):
    http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/world/
"Imagine a spherical shell ten miles or so in diameter, made of the lightest materials and mostly hollow; for this purpose the new molecular materials would be admirably suited. Owing to the absence of gravitation its construction would not be an engineering feat of any magnitude. The source of the material out of which this would be made would only be in small part drawn from the earth; for the great bulk of the structure would be made out of the substance of one or more smaller asteroids, rings of Saturn or other planetary detritus. The initial stages of construction are the most difficult to imagine. They will probably consist of attaching an asteroid of some hundred years or so diameter to a space vessel, hollowing it out and using the removed material to build the first protective shell. Afterwards the shell could be re-worked, bit by bit, using elaborated and more suitable substances and at the same time increasing its size by diminishing its thickness. The globe would fulfil all the functions by which our earth manages to support life. In default of a gravitational field it has, perforce, to keep its atmosphere and the greater portion of its life inside; but as all its nourishment comes in the form of energy through its outer surface it would be forced to resemble on the whole an enormously complicated single-celled plant."

We can do this, and we can support quadrillions of people (and other beings) living in the solar system in space habitats. The only question is if we want to.

So, while there may be limits to growth, we are nowhere near them when considering the solar system.

That article is just ignorant in part because it ignores things like laser launched craft or possibly the new cold fusion ideas (by Rossi, if they work out):
    http://pesn.com/2011/04/07/9501805_Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Validated_by_Swedish_Skeptics_Society/

Also, it says resources are not concentrated, but that is what energy and robots are for.

So, it is a pretty ignorant and defeatist article.

A better thing:
    http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/

My hopes:
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
   

Ahem. the meme that will not go gentle into that good night: http://pesn.com/2011/04/07/9501805_Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Validated_by_Swedish_Skeptics_Society/

If the USS Ronald Reagan had a couple Mighty Pumps in its inventory, these could be attached to the catapult steam lines. An electrical generator could be attached to the pump's drive shaft, generating power. Then they'd just run a cable to the shore to power the cities affected by the disaster.

The USS Enterprise has 310 megawatts of thermal power. I don't know how much of this could be sent to the catapult lines... Nimitz-class carriers have 2 reactors instead of 8, and generate ~190 MW of thermal power.

There is some historical legacy for using an aircraft carrier to power a city:

... Each of Lexington’s four electrical generators could produce 35,200 kilowatts. All together, the generators were powerful enough to fulfill the electricity requirements of a decent sized city. And, for 30 days that is exactly what she did. ...

-When USS Lexington Powered A City

Lots of people have found my site this week (/. post on Sunday, google, etc), and the link about the MYT engine was one of the more-commonly followed links. This page has better information about the MYT pump/engine:

The MYT [Massive Yet Tiny] Engine as a pump/compressor purportedly exceeds existing pumps/compressors in providing massive pressure, volume, and flow -- all in one unit. This attribute makes it ideal for geothermal energy, among many other such applications.

-Angel Labs eyes geothermal for MYT Engine application

When Disaster Strikes, Send the Enterprise. I just did my first newspaper interview this morning. :)

Well said!

See also:

Plans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3_table_of_contents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Cars:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en

Agriculture:
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

But, with all that said, the same sorts of reasons solar energy is getting better (better materials, better designs, better discussions, better insights into physics) is the same reason small scale nuclear is getting better (even as I would agree solar is safer and more decentralized than conventional nuclear). And example of small nuclear:
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/

Related case for nuclear power:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/

Let's say, in a moderate worse case in Japan that 100,000 people die from some nuclear radiation accident and the clean up cost a couple trillion dollars. Nuclear power still might have been cheaper in Japan, all things considered, than coal which causes a lot of pollution and related illness.

Would it have been cheaper in that sense than solar and wind? Probably not...

Still, given this is the worst quake to have hit Japan in a century, and the nuclear plants are not being talked about as having total meltdowns, this event itself might prove how safe they can be in some situations.

Of course, dealing with direct terrorism intended to cause them to malfunction may be a different issue, but many major industrial facilities, like at Bhopal, have that risk. And ideas like Hyperion help reduce that risk. Ultimately, if we try harder to make our global economy work for everyone, we might have less fears that people will commit terrorism because the hate us because we support their oppressors for various reasons...

On economic transformation, see:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation

BTW, an example of perhaps cold fusion (still needs more confirmation):
http://pesn.com/2011/03/07/9501782_Cold_Fusion_Steams_Ahead_at_Worlds_Oldest_University/

Personally, I want to be able to print solar panels in a solar-powered 3D printer. :-)

"Is fusion available yet?" http://pesn.com/2011/03/07/9501782_Cold_Fusion_Steams_Ahead_at_Worlds_Oldest_University/

The real deal?

In the last weekend of June, as part of an expo highlighting the life and inventions of Nikola Tesla, AV Concepts is going to help James Turner of Teslanet Entertainment Network introduce a new presentation method that has never been done before. A 2-D high-definition screen at the MGM Grand in Vegas will be the backdrop, with holographic images in front of it, interacting live with 30-40 performers on the stage. They're calling it "4-D – The next level of entertainment." This will be the first venue ever. And what better subject to do it with than the Father of the 20th and 21st centuries! A young actor posing as seeking material for a science fair project will transition from real, to holograph to 2-D, then back, as part of the 1.5-hour show. Bruce Heyning and his wife have joined the project as executive producers for the show. Bruce has been credited for the technical features utilized for uniforms in the movie Tron and this year's Super Bowl halftime show. What breakthrough free energy energy technologies would be good to include in the exhibit hall?

If it really works they could create a business out of it and retire.

From their webiste
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/

"This recent public demonstration alone is is a huge development, but what's more, they also claim to be going into production, expecting to have these available for purchase commercially within a year. This would become the world's first commercially-ready "cold fusion" device. The first units are supposed to ship in three months, with mass production commencing by the end of 2011."

They ripped off my business model! I have another waiting for events like this:

1. See invention
2. Claim business model included an invention
3. Hire lawyers
4. Profit!

No question.

"The summary must be joking about the ocean gyres."

There are questions about the guy running this company, up here in Washington state.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_pasco_biomass.html

http://pesn.com/2009/08/07/9501560_CEO_appealing_GreenPowerInc_shut-down_order/

Some have voiced serious concerns that this is all snake-oil, primarily because the man hides behind "trade secrets" protection and doesn't really have to discuss how all this works(precisely the reason state regulators shut him down--they cannot really know if he is in compliance if they don't know what he is doing, and so far he hasn't told them). He has also failed to pay some of his employees yet claims he will be hiring up to 500 more employees even though the technical data suggests he only needs 5 people per shift, had the company's demonstration truck burn down, and according to the Seattle PI article, been evicted from his plant location.

The one curious thing is that the military tested his technology and actually published some hard numbers that to me seem rather impressive. Makes me wonder what sort of "garbage" went through his test plant.

  http://pesn.com/2010/02/19/959019_GPI_3rd-party_test_results_trash-to-fuel/

This is the best time-line I was able to find in regards to this company (not surprisingly, from the same website as the submitted article).

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Green_Power_Inc's_NanoDiesel:Catalytic_Pressureless_Depolymerization_(Oiling)

At least the writer of the submitted article is up front--"Note: I have a relationship with GPI, so this report is not truly independent." says the caption accompanying the photo in the article.

Can you say "media blitz"?

"The summary must be joking about the ocean gyres."

There are questions about the guy running this company, up here in Washington state.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_pasco_biomass.html

http://pesn.com/2009/08/07/9501560_CEO_appealing_GreenPowerInc_shut-down_order/

Some have voiced serious concerns that this is all snake-oil, primarily because the man hides behind "trade secrets" protection and doesn't really have to discuss how all this works(precisely the reason state regulators shut him down--they cannot really know if he is in compliance if they don't know what he is doing, and so far he hasn't told them). He has also failed to pay some of his employees yet claims he will be hiring up to 500 more employees even though the technical data suggests he only needs 5 people per shift, had the company's demonstration truck burn down, and according to the Seattle PI article, been evicted from his plant location.

The one curious thing is that the military tested his technology and actually published some hard numbers that to me seem rather impressive. Makes me wonder what sort of "garbage" went through his test plant.

  http://pesn.com/2010/02/19/959019_GPI_3rd-party_test_results_trash-to-fuel/

This is the best time-line I was able to find in regards to this company (not surprisingly, from the same website as the submitted article).

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Green_Power_Inc's_NanoDiesel:Catalytic_Pressureless_Depolymerization_(Oiling)

At least the writer of the submitted article is up front--"Note: I have a relationship with GPI, so this report is not truly independent." says the caption accompanying the photo in the article.

Can you say "media blitz"?

There are plenty of so-called businessmen out there with grandiose plans of converting biomass to energy without any pollution. Unfortunately, this sounds like one of them.

If you read the related links, you will see that GPI really can produce a quality product; according to this page you can take the output of their test plant and pour it into the tank of a diesel truck and it will just work. And if you read the claims, it seems it doesn't pollute the air while doing it (impurities from the input stream come out the far end as some sort of solid). Some combustible gas is produced as a by-product of the reaction (methane, I guess) and they plan to burn that to provide power to operate the plant, making it self-fueling. (The same thing is true of the Changing Worlds plant that converts turkey offal to oil.) In short, if these web pages are true, GPI is not making "grandiose claims" that aren't true.

Also, GPI seems to have some real problems paying bills on time. That has nothing to do with the technology. (And the Washington state DoE shutting them down didn't exactly help GPI to pay their bills on time.)

It seems the DoE shut them down because the DoE believes that GPI should have filed some paperwork related to burning trash. GPI went to the federal EPA and got a ruling that their process does not fall into the category of burning trash, and thus the DoE was wrong to require trash-burning paperwork.

I'm wondering if GPI could have avoided the problems by talking to the DoE more up front. One of the articles quoted a DoE representative as saying that the DoE had no idea what might come out of this plant, since nobody from GPI had filed any paperwork. But GPI filed paperwork with the EPA... are we to believe they withheld details of their process from the Washington state government but were willing to disclose the details to the EPA? If so, why?

I can't sleuth out the truth by reading all the newspaper articles on the web, so I don't know for sure what exactly is going on. I just hope that they get this thing going... efficiently turning waste into usable fuel is a win every way you look at it.

They claim they can produce diesel at a cost of less than $0.80 per gallon; at gas stations near me, diesel costs over four times that much, so they ought to be able to sell all the diesel they can make at a tidy profit. Then maybe they can pay back all the people to whom they owe money.

steveha

It seems clear to me that the author has never tried sourcing a custom made pump before. Redesigning equipment designed to operate at speed and pressure, and getting it produced takes a phenomenal amount of time. The up-front engineering hours alone would amount to months of work before the pump would be ready to run through a production line.

The MYT pump is simple. It has 22 parts, while a conventional piston pump/engine has thousands.

Furthermore, a geothermal energy company is looking to use the pump on one of their wells.

Geothermal Application

For that reason, Morgado has been successful in talking one renewable energy company, The Tesla Corporation, LLC, into using his system for harnessing the geothermal energy found on their land in Southern Utah. In fact, Co-President, Korey Robinson, surprised Morgado the other day telling him that they have drilled and capped a small well and are now waiting for Morgado's 14-inch motor to plug into the well to harness the constant geothermal energy that is there. The engineers at Tesla Corporation looked at the data on Morgado's website, especially the graphs and charts on the rpm/torque and air pressure/ torque curves, ran the math, and concluded that he was right in saying that his engine would be a good fit for their application.

"The MYT engine is the most efficient expander for steam engines," says Morgado.

The problem is that Morgado is presently maxed out in his time and resources getting ready for the SAE-Oregon demonstration May 15, in which he plans to showcase his newest 6-inch engine design running on biodiesel.

He told me that with adequate financing in place, he could put his friend over at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on task in working up the engineering and materials needed to fit this application and customize the unit for this specific application. The steam and composition of the fluid from geothermal sources can be brutal on turbines, but Morgado thinks that his pump can be designed to handle this environment rigorously.

-Angel Labs eyes geothermal for MYT Engine application

Running the MYT pump off a nuclear reactor's steam lines would be very similar to a geothermal application. How hard can it be to get 22 components into production?

I didn't say he was an expert because of what his Dad did. I said he's brilliant and the kind of person who is way ahead of the class. Who his dad is contributed to that. Look at how far ahead he was of the slashdot crowd on the "Wilma the Capacitor" story published in 2006 at http://pesn.com/2005/10/25/9600196_Wilma_Capacitor/ just recently confirmed by science in April http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100413202850.htm He was totally lambasted by people such as you in Slashdot in 2006 http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/26/1158233&tid=232&tid=14

The Russians aren't even the first to suggest this. It's brought up at Pure Energy Systems. Considering the source, the views there should be taken with a grain of salt; it seems that they're probably overstating things a bit. Then again, maybe not so much, since the well does seem to have blown-up a platform and somehow foiled a "foolproof" blowout preventer.

So it seems that a large explosion to collapse a good bit of the well shaft suddenly would be a great way to stop the leak, rather than the half-assed methods tried so far. Does anyone seriously believe that dumping junk on the wellhead will accomplish anything meaningful, other than depositing even more waste into the ocean?