THHuxley wrote:
(4) Am I the only one who can see the irony of LENR advocates dismissing an interesting but speculative hypothesis that might explain a well established historic anomaly because it is "not possible" or "too unlikely"?
There is perhaps some irony here.
There is definitely a lot of irony. The CF community has used every tactic they complain so much about being applied to them and their work on me and mine. There are many more examples of this than have been brought up here.
(1) the order of magnitude of the errors they imply as compared to (2) the levels of error actually seen in electrochemical calorimetry experiments day to day in a laboratory and (3) suitable cross checks on your math to ensure that you haven't slipped up by a factor of 1e1, 1e2 or 1e10 somewhere.
Re (1) and (2): The problem is that the CCS is a systematic error in these experiments and thus doesn't look like 'normal' error. That's why they interpret it as signal instead. You have to do a full Propagation of Error calc on the equations used to derive output and excess powers to note it. POE calcs are something the 'old school' didn't often do. They became more important recently (in the 80's and 90's) because of the push for high levels of quality and process control.
Checking (3) is definitely a correct thing to do. Of course, I'm saying the CCS in these cells is a 1% effect. That is at the limits of modern technology. Less and the effect would be unnoticeable, more and we would have less reproducibility that we have today, which probably means F&P wouldn't have been comfortable publishing their work that got the field started.
if a suggested source of error would be not too surprising at all to an electrochemist
Most electrochemists are shocked at the mixing of gases in the cells. Normally the gases are kept separate. As such, it is probably unlikely they would immediately note the FPHE (i.e., the at-the-electrode recombination/CSS explanation).
There are, here, then, two calibration constants. Ed claims that the "zero" can fluctuate up to 50 mW (with the setup he was using).
You referenced lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEexcesspowe.pdf
In Fig. 2 of that paper, 3 calibration results are presented:
ELECTROLYTIC (64 points, Initial) W = - 0.18317 + 7.1221e-2(DJ)*F
JOULE HEATER (11 points)W = - 0.23893 + 7.2107e-2(DJ)*F
ELECTROLYTIC (Final Calibration) W = - 0.14405 + 7.0892e-2(DJ)*F
The 3rd cal slope constant = 99.5% of the 1st, the Joule heater cal is 101.2% of the 1st. And Storms talks about 1.6% variation over several months. Is that 1.6% 1 sigma, or 2, or 3? Irregardless, all of Storms results illustrate my point, which is depending on when you look and how you look, you can (will?) get different constants.
Now what is the impact of that? Lets assume Pin = 20W. Using the 1st eqn., (DJ)*F = 283.387. Putting that into the 2nd eqn. predicts a Pout of 20.2W, or a 10% excess heat signal, just because you used a cal constant that was 1.2% different. What if the cal constant was 3% different. Then you would get Pout= 20.6W, a 600mW excess heat signal, again just because you used a different cal constant. This is just simple arithmetic. Why is it so hard for you to follow?
Ed's 50mW (1, 2, or 3 sigma) number is the baseline fluctuation. He does not consider the CCS problem.
When Shanahan is talking about a 3% shift in calibration constant, he is talking about the product of m and CP, but variation in the flow rate should also be there. It's the multiplier.
In the raw data, the F values are separate. Yes, variation in the flowrate will add to the total variation, but that is a separate discussion from the CCS problem. As is variation in the temperature values used to calculate the temperature difference (DJ in the above).
I also recall (which means I might recall incorrectly) that the POE calc shows the flow rate variation to be a smaller component of the total variation. It's usually best to deal with the larger components first if you can (since improving flowrate precision will not alleviate the CCS problem at all, meaning the error bars on the calulated output power won't change).
The basic first question is whether or not a 3% change in calibration constant during an experiment is reasonable.
The reported data show it is. As well a 3 sigma band of +/-3% is a psuedostandard as I mentioned elsewhere.
For this to affect the results, the shift must occur during the experiment. This is not "random shift" as some have said about CCS.
Thank you. In saying that, you would be the firat out of the cold fusion community to acknowledge that fact, at least publically. Yes. The CCS could be random in some cases, but does not appear to be in F&P-cell calorimetry.
When it actually occurs is unclear. A best guess is that it occurs continuously as the electrode is activated and deactivated by whatever processing profiles it is subjected to. But who knows, might be a step function too.
There is one problem: flow calorimeters have differing construction and would seem likely to differ in the effect that positional shift would have.
Different construction is routinely expected to produce differing results. However, as the heat capture efficiency approaches 100%, as do many of the calorimeters used in CF research, the differences mean less and less.
New info for you, never before published: During the extensive email discussion of Ed's work with Ed, he attempted to show me data that he thought invalidated my POV. Howwever, I always showed that it easily fit into my POV. In one case he supplied data that showed a calorimeter he had used was 78% efficient. As it turms out, that calorimeter was the same one used to produce the data I reanalyzed, EXCEPT that the water tube in which the flow calorimeter water flowed was not in contact with any part of the top of the cell. Ed was dissatisfied with this 78% calorimeter, so he modified the cell so that the water flow tube now made intimate contact with the cell top, and he ended up with a 98% efficient calorimeter. So, one can look at that and guess that up to 25% of the heat is going out the top of the cells.
. If I have it correctly, if the heat is shifted away from the water exit, it would cause a greater proportion of the heat to be lost through the cell walls, instead of leaving through the flow. to be part of the 2% not captured by the flow. This would, then, cause an underestimate of power generation, not overestimate. In the flow calorimeters I've seen, the recombiner has always been closer to the flow exit, but, obviously, it could be done either way. (Hey, how about reversing the flow?)
"if the heat is shifted away from the water exit," - this is not the relevant parameter. The extent of contact of the water flow tube to the cell surface is the relvant parameter. The thing you should be concerned with is moving the heat out of the low detection efficiency zone into the high detection efficiency zone.
The vent tube (which you call a water flow exit) in an open cell represents a material pathway for heat to flow out. If the calorimeter design does not atttempt to capture that heat, the calorimeter's overall efficiency would be lower. That probably means a greater CCS effect is possible. See Oriani's paper I have discussed here previously to observe this effect directly.
Shifting heat out of the zone where the vent tube is located, which is presumed to be in the low heat capture efficiency zone, will presumably cause it to be detected more efficiently, producing a greater temp increase in the calorimetric fluid. That will be interpreted as excess heat because previously a larger part of that heat was lost and not measured. Now it is measured, but under a calibration equation derived for the case where it is not. That is the root cause of the CCS, heat moves from a loss pathway to a measurement pathway, but that represents a new steady state with a different calibration equation.
Reversing the calorimeter fluid flow should have a minimal effect. Instead, you want to relocate the primary heat loss pathways from the low efficiency zone to the high efficiency one. Simply flipping the cell upside down would do that, but then you have the problem of the electrolyte running out the vent tube or the recombiner being underwater. So some redesign will be required to solve little issues like that.
Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
What he was critiquing was never formally published.
E. STORMS, "Excess Power Production from Platinum Cathodes Using the Pons-Fleischmann Effect", preprint, Eighth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Lereci, Italy, May 21 - 26, 2000
The Proceedings were published.
Yes, and I cited the paper. Shanahan is looking for "wrong." That was not under peer review, and that is what I had in mind under "formally published." That means that the editing of the paper could be problematic. That's all. It's really dicta. The "Shanahan problem" is visible here. The post I wrote is a beginning of a study of his hypothesis, by no means complete. I then raised, as I had come across it, a possible problem with his theory. His response is to claim I'm unteachable.
Few people are teachable with a teacher like that. I'm still working on understanding the hypothesis. I have not yet studied the comments on it from others. (I read over most of this years ago, but I mean "studied.")
Kirk, please drop the hostility. It's not necessary and it really doesn't help you get your message out or understand, at least, the response.
That problem is that positional shift from recombiner to cathode, if it happens, would appear to be likely to cause undermeasurement of recombination heat, not overmeasurement. The examination caused me to think of possibly reversing the flow in a flow calorimeter and seeing if it alters results. I would expect some (small) shift. What I'm looking for is relatively easy ways to test the CCSH. But pump design, etc., might not make it easy unless the experiment is planned for it.
This is the basic problem with Shanahan's analysis. It is a theoretical "could happen" analysis. That does not mean that it does happen or that it is even likely to happen. If it is happening though, this then creates a need to understand a host of phenomena that are considered settled. I long ago noticed and wrote about the irony, once Shanahan was not allowed to respond to the "10 scientists."
Heat/helium definitively shows that CCSH is not a major factor. We can go over the literature.
Storms addresses recombination in his 2007 book, p. 172. He seems to accurately describe the CCSH, though only very briefly. He then says "This error is shown by Storms to apply to neither flow nor to Seeback calorimetry, although the isoperibolic method can be affected."
Miles was criticized by Jones et al based on part on the recombination possibility. It's been said that Miles successfully defended his work. Storms also mentions Shkedi et al and Swartz. Yes. Mitchell Swartz. Swartz, M.R., "Potential for positional variations in flow calorimetric systems." 1996.
But is there a neutral review anywhere? This is often missing in the field, and this cuts both ways: tertiary review. Sometimes there is not even secondary review. Questions are left open for decades.
The biggest flaw in the 1989 DoE review was that no review process was established. Instead, there was a reliance on the journal system, which is hit and miss and heavily impacted by information cascades. There never was a tertiary review of the primary cold fusion findings, heat, and, then, after 1991, helium.
I wrote my Current Science paper as a move toward that, to encourage confirmation with increased precision. That paper was polemic, because it was intended to create a response: support for research to address a fundamental issue. It was not intended to "prove" that cold fusion is real, though it does claim that as a preponderance of the evidence position, making sure that "cold fusion" remains undefined as to actual mechanism.
Essentially, the reasons for rejection "d-d fusion" were probably sound. Read McKubre in Current Science, that same issue. The "negative replications" are part of the body of experimental evidence that shows the characteristics of the FPHE. This is how science moves on, through integration, not through rejection of anything but fraud.
Shanahan visibly attempts to dismiss all other findings in the field, coming up with complex and implausible explanations for them, without his underlying "reason," CCSH, ever being demonstrated with controlled experiment. I'm suggesting that he went way outside of what he knew and found; he came up with an idea and then, to defend the idea, he has a massive problem: if CCSH is the systematic error that explains the FPHE, then all the correlated effects must also be errors of some kind.
It appears to me that Shanahan makes at least one error the same as Jones. I think I should have a conversation with Mr. Jones. It's about time.
Meanwhile, the Swartz paper. It's listed in the lenr-canr.org bibliography, but there is no publication mentioned there. Storms has "J. New Energy 1 (1) 126-130. Why isn't Swartz's paper hosted on lenr-canr.org? Well, I asked that question, some years back, and found out why. I'd rather not repeat what I found at this point. Dirty laundry stinks. It's similar to why Shanahan's work is not all hosted on lenr-canr.org, but ... worse.
The Swartz paper is hosted on his web site: http://world.std.com/~mica/posvar.html
KS:
QuoteObviously, after all the writing I've done here and elsewhere, Abd still doesn't get it. Thus the label 'unteachable' applies.
Perhaps he forgot to put on his Power Balance wrist band this morning.
I think he wears it as a bandanna.
That was not under peer review, and that is what I had in mind under "formally published."
All the information I have says it was peer-reviewed. Typically this is done by conference attendees, and is thus considered a more lenient or favorable crowd overall, than straight submision to a journal. I believe it was published as a book. It's listed on Amazon with 2 used copies available.
I then raised, as I had come across it, a possible problem with his theory. His response is to claim I'm unteachable.
That's because you are. I have repeated things many times for you (primarily for others though) and yet you still continue to say things like the next quote below. QED
That problem is that positional shift from recombiner to cathode, if it happens, would appear to be likely to cause undermeasurement of recombination heat, not overmeasurement.
Totally opposite of what I say.
Heat/helium definitively shows that CCSH is not a major factor. We can go over the literature.
CCSH. Not my concern, not my theory.
Miles was criticized by Jones et al based on part on the recombination possibility. It's been said that Miles successfully defended his work. Storms also mentions Shkedi et al and Swartz. Yes. Mitchell Swartz. Swartz, M.R., "Potential for positional variations in flow calorimetric systems." 1996.
During that time frame, the CCS was not known.
Shanahan visibly attempts to dismiss all other findings in the field
As someone else noted, I dismiss claims of the reality of LENR as premature. As also noted elsewhere, you can't prove it doesn't exist.
Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax: “There are, here, then, two calibration constants. Ed claims that the "zero" can fluctuate up to 50 mW (with the setup he was using).”
You referenced lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEexcesspowe.pdf
In Fig. 2 of that… [etc.]
This was a useful, constructive answer, for which I thank Kirk. I intend to review it.
This is a side-discussion, peripheral to the discussion of the CCSH, but possibly relevant to why Dr. Shanahan doesn't get traction within the LENR community.
Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
That was not under peer review, and that is what I had in mind under "formally published."
All the information I have says it was peer-reviewed. Typically this is done by conference attendees, and is thus considered a more lenient or favorable crowd overall, than straight submision to a journal. I believe it was published as a book. It's listed on Amazon with 2 used copies available.
What information? There is minimal review process for conference papers. "By conference arttendees"? There seems to be no process for that. No voting, for example. Yes, it is a "more lenient" crowd. Blatant nonsense gets "published" this way, sometimes. The crowd knows it, but is polite as hell. Conference papers are useful, but, ah, "viewer discretion is advised." A conference paper by a reputable researcher may have some weight based on the experience and reputation of the author. However, the fact of publication in a Conference compendium is almost meaningless.
My point about "not formally published" was minor, not major. It appears that Storms made his raw data available, so Shanahan was able to use that. That is not common, unfortunately. I asked Parkhomov for his raw data, the spreadsheet, from his original report. I cleared my request with McKubre to make sure it was appropriate and polite. McKubre told me to go ahead. No response. People are still citing that original informal publication as if it proves something.
QuoteAbd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
That's because you are. I have repeated things many times for you (primarily for others though) and yet you still continue to say things like the next quote below. QED
Shanahan is not competent to assess my teachability, and his quote doesn't show what he thinks. There is a mirror question, is Kirk teachable? If he repeats the same objections over and over, after being answered by experts, has he learned anything?
He has an excuse. They make mistakes. However, the real question for me, if I were Kirk, would be whether or not I can learn about communication. How can one communicate with people if one believes they are wrong?
The belief creates a nonverbal communication that will also leak through text. And it arouses instinctive reactions.
To move beyond this generally takes training. Having gone through that training, "teachable" is called "coachable" in the training. It runs contrary to the normal responses of most people. Standing in front of a phalanx of experts, defending myself, was remarkable. I was told to shut up and listen. So I did. I may have been "right" about this or that, but I was missing the trees for an imaginary forest. And then, not seeing the trees, I did not see the real forest.
It is difficult to handle this kind of communication in on-line, because the communication is low-bandwidth, and it is trivially easy to project emotional states onto text, and thus to maintain cycles of reactivity.
QuoteAbd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Totally opposite of what I say.
Say where? Not here, previously. I don't recall ever seeing the argument I made, in fact, nor did I know how Shanahan would respond. It was an obvious question. How was it stated?
"If I have it correctly ...." and "So it appears ..." ... i.e, if I have it correctly, it appears to me. Those are "facts." If we had a believe that whatever appears to me is truth, then, yes, we'd have an issue. however, I don't have that belief and neither does Kirk, so what is going on here is that he is assuming my position as a "CF'er" or something.
I was describing my reactions, not "truth" or fixed position. This was, then, a question. If a student asks a "stupid question, does it mean the student is "unteachable"? Some incompetent teachers will think so. If a child is so unfortunate as to have one, it can alienate that child from the subject forever. Happens all the time. A skilled teacher will reflect on the question. What is underneath it? Where is the path to communication? How can I take responsibility for the success of this work?
QuoteAbd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
CCSH. Not my concern, not my theory.
CCSH is shorthand for Calibration Constant Shift Hypothesis. It's neutral, and was coined to describe Kirk's hypothesis. It was also, possibly, incorrectly described as "random." But that is trivial. That would be "random CCSH," not CCSH itself
Heat/helium shows that heat measurements could not be routinely far off. It certainly does not cover most FPHE experiments. However, it covers enough to make it clear that what I understand so far of Shanahan's proposal can't actually apply to all "cold fusion" results, even if it theoretically could, and might actually apply to some. (Which, by the way, Storms acknowledges. Kirk does not acknowledge and build on agreement.)
That it is possible, that recombination is a significant problem, is denied by experts, but funny thing, experts in calorimetry are not accepting Shanahan's idea. For the right or wrong reasons.
Shanahan has failed to engage other experts, as far as I can tell. Why not? How about Dieter Britz? How about collaboration with Stephen Jones? Indeed, how about finding anyone else who knows enough about the hypothesis and the facts behind it to explain them?
QuoteAbd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Miles was criticized by Jones et al based on part on the recombination possibility. It's been said that Miles successfully defended his work. Storms also mentions Shkedi et al and Swartz. Yes. Mitchell Swartz. Swartz, M.R., "Potential for positional variations in flow calorimetric systems." 1996.
During that time frame, the CCS was not known.
Kirk is deflecting. Recombination was considered. Swartz considered positional error in flow calorimetry. What may not have been considered is an anomaly, unexpected (and unconfirmed) chemistry, a substantial deviation from normal electrolytic gas behavior. As well, Storms explicitly considers Shanahan, and this was written in 2007.
QuoteAbd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
As someone else noted, I dismiss claims of the reality of LENR as premature. As also noted elsewhere, you can't prove it doesn't exist.
Can't prove what doesn't exist? Kirk, My point is that when one attacks a large body of findings by a large body of researchers, well, isn't it obvious? Extraordinary evidence is required, not merely circumstantial, right? Not merely some possibility.
This is not evidence that you are wrong. This is about social process. The heat/helium evidence is direct. Kirk, with Jones, you more or less argued that if there was possible error in heat, and possible error in helium, therefore, garbage in, garbage out. This neglects the function and power of correlation. Yes, correlation is not causation, but ... correlation can show that there is some common cause, and I've seen no plausible common cause that covers the rather extensive experimental evidence.
However, it was precisely because of such concerns as have been raised -- and others --, that I considered it so important to repeat the heat/helium work with higher precision. And I've asked Kirk -- and others -- to suggest possible artifacts for them to look for and avoid or test. I have never seen Kirk say "Great idea!" or anything like that. Heat/helium is, in fact, a partial test of whether or not CCS error applies to the calorimetry in heat/helium studies.
Does he have any prediction for how that will turn out? This will not only check for correlation, but actually measure the ratio with increased precision, because it is now known, because of stupid questions that I asked, how to release all the helium, instead of it being afflicted by a loose variable, how much helium is retained by the palladium. Will the correlation across multiple experiments by multiple groups tighten up or show more scatter? Will the value settle? On what?
I have a personal suggestion for Kirk: trust Reality, far more than anyone's ideas about it. As well -- and this can be more difficult -- trust human social process, that it will eventually settle on deeper understanding.
And if you seek to communicate your ideas, do not blame people for rejecting them; rather, take responsibility for effective communication. I ran into a skeptical reviewer at Current Science, he hated my paper. I did not whine to my friends, who might have been able to find a workaround. Instead, I recognized that I'd failed to communicate. So I rewrote my paper. And he was, then, enthusiastic.
What goes around, comes around, Kirk. All the best.
What goes around, comes around, Kirk. All the best.
This discussion reminds me of a Felini movie, where two old men discuss about their brides being more pretty 50 years ago...
I hope You will soon focus on a much simpler and undoubtable experiment.
There is definitely a lot of irony. The CF community has used every tactic they complain so much about being applied to them and their work on me and mine. There are many more examples of this than have been brought up here.
That's an aspect of irony, but not the first I noticed. The irony is the response of mainstream journal editors and publishers to Shanahan. The irony is that Shanahan imagines a 'CF community" that would be like a responsible individual or coherent organization, refusing to listen to him.
From my point of view, much of the LENR community became stuck in a reactive response, creating dysfunction in many ways, inhibiting the ability of researchers to communicate their work to the mainstream. I developed a strategy for addressing this, and have been supported by major figures in the field.
Shanahan is alone, effectively, on the outside complaining that nobody will listen to him. He has not accepted that his communication methods aren't working. He has not learned to "speak to the listening," as it is called, to identify what is possible and stand for it, as distinct from identifying what is wrong and trying to demolish it with "superior argument," that is superior almost entirely in his own mind.
Here, in a very recent answer (maybe his latest) he actually does address some issues, showing a willingness to discuss instead of just complaining about that "unteachable Abd," who will surely be unteachable if he is called that over and over. Or maybe he will learn anyway, he has a habit of doing that, of turning garbage into compost into food.
Shanahan can make a difference, if he chooses to. However, it might require becoming a free intelligence not bound by his past, even though informed by it. I can say this about that: it is fun.
I find the insult here completely inappropriate.
I am not sure that I would describe Wyttenbach's comment as an insult Thomas. Unhelpful possibly, but the web is no place for thin skins or even a good place to find love. It looked like a light-hearted remark to me, and as such should be ignored. Perhaps your other feud with Wyttenbach is colouring your interpretation of this limp joke a little too highly?
(1) A condition-variable process at the electrode can cause recombination at the electrode/liquid surface.
Electrolysys (by current) of H2O/D2O is well understood since far more than a century. Any chemical reaction in a liquid is based on an equilibrium, thus recombination is always accounted for.
Did anybody ever ask Kirki, what he claims is going to recombine? H2 and O2 usually shine up at different isolated places. They never meet again..at least not in the fluid!!
(2) The more recombination at the electrode, the less recombination at the recombiner. This means a larger heat source in the electrolyte and a smaller heat source in the air. This further means the air temperature goes down relative to the electrolyte temperature (a little). This then means that the total heat loss from the cell for given total power released (which is what determines the effective calibation constant) goes down. Hence an apparent over-reading of heat.
You are I think disagreeing with the argument (2) - but it seems pretty water-tight to me. Further Kirk's anecdotal comments (which I'm sure could be checked with Ed) show that for at least one cell this effect is likely to be significant even at relatively small amounts of electrode recombination.
Now you must deal with the suggestion about this continuing to be a problem after the heat has passed through multiple thermal barriers (e.g., a cell immersed in a bath of water). One of Kirk's replies: if the feedthroughs for the instrumentation pass through the top of the enclosing apparatus, there might continue to be a problem. Theoretically possible? Hard to say. Speculative? Couldn't be more so.
Did anybody ever ask Kirki, what he claims is going to recombine? H2 and O2 usually shine up at different isolated places. They never meet again..at least not in the fluid!!
Your presumption is incorrect. One of the earliest criticisms of CF calorimetry, in particluar F&P's, was that it ws a single point measurement, i.e. one thermocouple (or thermistor, or whatever they used) for the high temp reading. The question was: How does one know the measured temp is the 'correct' temperature? The TC may have been placed in a hot spot (or cold spot).
This is a legitimate concern. Experiments may contain thermal stratification. F&P addressed it by conducting a dye experiment. They dropped a single drop of a dye solution in an operating F&P-type cell, and watched its dispersal. They concluded radial mixing was 7X faster than vertical, which assures that good mixing was occurring and thus their calorimetry was good. I accept their result and the good mixing conclusion. That means the O2 bubbles get to the cathode (and the H2 bubbles get to the anode), at least in some portion. Cell design will clearly affect that amount.
This "O2 never meets H2" idea was used by Ed Storms in his 2006 rebuttal to my 2002 paper (originally submitted in 2000). In my reponse, published as the next paper after his comment, I pointed out the same facts as above and added that the manufacturers of the computational fluid dynamics software called Fluent had a test case in their Web resources that modeled the downwards flow of bubbles in a glass of Guiness. Aside from the that image's comedic value, it proves that bubbles can flow in any direction in the real world if the entrainment conditions are right. Trying to physically limit bubbles in well-mixed volumes is a lost cause.
Now you must deal with the suggestion about this continuing to be a problem after the heat has passed through multiple thermal barriers (e.g., a cell immersed in a bath of water). One of Kirk's replies: if the feedthroughs for the instrumentation pass through the top of the enclosing apparatus, there might continue to be a problem. Theoretically possible? Hard to say. Speculative? Couldn't be more so.
One of the characteristics of this whole debate is that people can't seem to believe a 1-2% heat loss can produce the "FPHE". Failing to accept the idea is an example of forcing experimental results to fit preconceived notions. While we certainly have theory to guide us, we should never assume we have it "all". Error bar magnitude must be determined based on the impact of all components of variation, not just the ones we want to be important.
The facts remain that a small calibration constant variation on data obtained in a highly efficient calorimeter can produce a (non-random in this case) variation many times the baseline fluctuation. That is not speculation, that is published fact. General principles present in defining how that happens (such as needing to use a minimum of 2 zones to describe cell/calorimeter function) can be extrapolated appropriately to other scenarios.
The specific system considered here is a closed cell with electrolyte at bottom, and air space at top, and a recombiner (which will obviously be a significant source of heat) at the top in the air space. The cell has liquid coolant flowing adjacent to the electrolyte but not at the top and has a 78% (or so) efficiency. That means that 20% (or so) of the cell's heat is not captured by the coolant, or is captured by the coolant and lost before the coolant temperature measurement. Kirk says (private communication with Ed) that a modification to this design in which the coolant abuts the cell top as well shows a 98% efficiency.
Other way around THH. The cell producing the data that Ed Storms claims shows excess heat and which I used to show a CCS is a viable possibility was the 98% efficient cell (closed with recom. catalyst). That cell was a second generation design. The first generation was the 78% efficienct cell that did not have a calorimetric fluid collecting heat from the top. So, published data gives the 98% number, unpublished data gives the 78% number.
But you are correct that this lets us know the rough magnitude of the heat loss out the top.
