And yet, for 5 years Rossi fooled you into thinking he had proved LENR by making errors in power measurement.
Not me. I stopped paying attention to him long before 5 years elapsed. I never trusted his input or output measurements because he refused to let me come and measure them, and he refused advice given by me and many others. I reported that soon after I first heard of him, and on every subsequent occasion when he refused advice, such as the time he almost blew up the people from NASA.
That Louis, is turning the facts upside down. Making the aggressors the victims, and the victims the aggressors. How clever. Facts are, FPs, and those that followed, meekly presented what they found in their labs, and were attacked by the mainstream...of which you are part of, for simply doing what they felt was right.
You say I turned facts upside down, and then you say nothing that contradicts what I said.
I agree they were attacked by the mainstream, and I have no objection to your pointing that out. I object to the claim that the mainstream did it corruptly, selfishly, and dishonestly. That's what I find low. And I am using *your* argument to support my objection. If they had actually thought there was something to cold fusion, they would have been more certain than anyone that it would soon be vindicated, and therefore there is no way they would have risked their reputations by attacking it. This is why in they did *not* (for the most part) attack cold fusion in those first few weeks after the press conference. The most enduring critic and skeptic was effusively positive about cold fusion until he saw the evidence.
Not me. I stopped paying attention to him long before 5 years elapsed. I never trusted his input or output measurements
Whether they were his or someone else's has no bearing. You wrote
"Rossi has given out *far* more proof than any previous cold fusion researcher."
and
"There are videos and data from the Oct. 6 test. That test is irrefutable by first principles."
and I don't recall you ever denying the ecat represented evidence for LENR until the law suit commenced.
Five years.
I agree they were attacked by the mainstream, and I have no objection to your pointing that out. I object to the claim that the mainstream did it corruptly, selfishly, and dishonestly. That's what I find low.
Louis,
We will have to agree to disagree in that case. We have been over this time and again, yet neither of us have changed our stance. I still believe you guys were mean, petty and politically motivated, while you believe you were just doing your duty after having concluded within 3 weeks, that CF was a pseudoscience.
So you think he is deceitful, although not "deliberately" so. I am sure that will give him some comfort if he ventures here.
Semantics: I think to be deceitful is to deliberately deceive. So I don't think he is deceitful. I think a lot of people are fooled by small amounts of alleged power using small amounts of fuel.
Anything in the range of 100W for six months that's passed the minor hurdle of peer review?
Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via complications to simplicity. Phys. Lett. A, 1993. 176: p. 118. Granted, those were hours or days, not six months.
and I don't recall you ever denying the ecat represented evidence for LENR until the law suit commenced.
Evidently you did not read every comment I published.
Input makes no difference. It is direct current, and therefore easily accounted for, and subtracted. Beiting could reduce it or eliminate it with better insulation.
You may be satisfied with output at some fraction of the input, but as I said, I'm not. I believe if he could eliminate input he would. As you once said "... It is utterly impossible to fake palpable heat.... I do not think any scientist will dispute this. ...An object that remains palpably warmer than the surroundings is as convincing as anything can be..." . If someone can do that without input, they surely would.
QuoteThe output from burning wood or coal does not scale with the fuel.
The total output energy most certainly does, provided all the wood or all the coal burns; that is to say that it is all treated the same.
QuoteThe energy of a modern variable yield nuclear bomb does not scale with the fuel. It varies from 0.3 to 80 kilotons (Wikipedia) with the same amount of fuel.
Right. The fuel is definitely and deliberately not treated the same.
In Beiting's experiment he could have all the fuel prepared the same, and heated to the same temperature. If he claims that is what produces the heat, then it should scale, or it's not accurate to call it an energy "density".
QuoteIt [self-sustained heat] was reproduced hundreds of times! If the DoE had sent someone to France I am sure they could have seen one.
What? It only works in one country?
QuoteI wouldn't say the best evidence ever,
Well you said "one of the best reports in the history of cold fusion"
QuoteAll you can do is come up with bogus reasons to reject it,
After 30 years, I'm patient. No sense finding little errors in every new claim. If what he claims in the abstract holds up, he should have a self-sustained experiment soon. And then I'll dance in the aisles like they did when they thought Dardik's super-dooper waves produced cold fusion.
Evidently you did not read every comment I published.
Could you provide a link to your first denial that the ecat works?
Louis,
We will have to agree to disagree in that case. We have been over this time and again, yet neither of us have changed our stance. I still believe you guys were mean, petty and politically motivated, while you believe you were just doing your duty after having concluded within 3 weeks, that CF was a pseudoscience.
I don't necessarily disagree that there was some meanness and political motivation. After all, no one wants to see money spent on something they regard as futile. So that represents a political motivation. I think if the government considered funding flying pigs, then meanness and political motivation would be justified.
My objection is claiming they were dishonest and corrupt, and their entire motivation was selfish. If we can agree that they really believed that the possibility that cold fusion was real was vanishingly small, then our only disagreement is on how forcefully they were entitled to express that view.
You may be satisfied with output at some fraction of the input, but as I said, I'm not.
Ah, but you have no technical reason not to be satisfied. You cannot point to any weakness or reason to doubt the results because there is input power. Your "satisfaction" is mere emotion, without any rational justification. So it has no place in a technical discussion. You might as well say you reject the results because you don't like the color of the calorimeter cover.
Your statement is also ignorant, like Garwin's objection which is impossible but if it were real, it would reduce the estimate of excess heat, not increase it.
[I wouldn't say the best . . .]
Well you said "one of the best reports in the history of cold fusion"
Ah, you bring out the English instructor in me (ESOL teacher). There is a difference between "the best" and "one of the best." The first refers to a set with only one member, as in "the president" or "the 20th century." The second refers to two or more things. In this case, it means there are other experiments as good as this.
If you are a native speaker of English I am a little surprised you did not know that. Perhaps you did know this, but you are a troll, digging up silly reasons to argue and be disagreeable?
Could you provide a link to your first denial that the ecat works?
I don't recall. As I said, in one of my first reports -- and in many subsequent ones -- I said that Rossi refused to let me measure input and output, so I do not trust him. I often said that any businessman should run from the room upon encountering him. That turned out to be true! And, as I said, I described how he almost blew up the people from NASA. That seems like a pretty damning record to me, but apparently you think I was engaged in high praise. It makes me wonder what I would have to say about someone before you would say I am being critical.
Shane, here is what I said. You seem to think I accused Beiting of cheating or lying when I did the exact opposite.
QuoteShane, it's an error, not a trick in the traditional sense of trying to deceive. Nobody is accusing Beiting of that.
Shane wrote:
QuoteReally, I do not know where to start. But here goes, Louis claimed Beiting was tricking, or making stuff up, "to deceive", not me. You, I and THH know who Louis is, and his skeptical anti-LENR history. Right?
No. Louis specifically did not say that. Nobody said that. There is no evidence whatever that Beiting is in any way dishonest. I am not clairvoyant. I don't know and I don't care who Louis is or who you are. Unless someone makes a claim by virtue of their training or experience, the facts are what matter, not who one thinks the person writing the post is.
QuoteAnd you have been saying that same thing about Celani for at least 3 years. You obviously missed it, but he responded to you long ago about your criticisms. Others here have pointed that out to you over time, but for some reason it has not registered with you.
It has been said by several people in several places. Dr. Celani was kind enough to proffer some responses here and to describe his new research which is somewhat better. IIRC, he only went from one wire to four but he increased the twists in the wires. That's insufficient. Also, how the results of power out/power in for that experiment were not clear, again IIRC. I brought up Celani because his experiment is also one which could be made self-running if his results are valid.
QuoteThe output (power, that is) from burning wood or coal does not scale with the fuel.
Sure it does. If I put more wood on a stove, it gets hotter. Of course, within limits until it uses more than the available oxygen or melts or whatever, and the scaling up is not linear in a real world stove. But of course it scales.
QuoteThe energy of a modern variable yield nuclear bomb does not scale with the fuel. It varies from 0.3 to 80 kilotons (Wikipedia) with the same amount of fuel.
That is a very strange example because a nuclear explosion is hardly designed to test whether or not nuclear fuel consumption scales. But it does. What happens in a variable yield thermonuclear bomb is that the amount of deuterium/tritium gas injected at detonation time can be varied. The number of neutrons produced by the primary is proportional to the amount of D and T. With more neutrons, more of the "fuel" is "consumed" (more matter is converted to energy). This device does scale.
(I am no expert on this so if someone with an appropriate specialty is around, I'd appreciate corrections if needed)
Are you suggesting that you don't/shouldn't expect more power output from a Celani reactor with twenty or a hundred wires than you would from one with a single wire? This particular scaling issue was raised quite a while ago. My memory may be faulty but I thought MFMP had said they would address it.
Jed Rothwell wrote:
QuoteNot me. I stopped paying attention to him long before 5 years elapsed. I never trusted his input or output measurements because he refused to let me come and measure them, and he refused advice given by me and many others. I reported that soon after I first heard of him, and on every subsequent occasion when he refused advice, such as the time he almost blew up the people from NASA.
Did you let the Swedish professors know of your concerns? How about Tom Darden before he signed up to give $11+ million to Rossi?
(If this is straying too much, I'd be happy to move that last question to another thread as per admins)
Finally, if a reactor was built that could make 100W for months without input power, it would be spectacular. It would resolve all doubts about some sort of nuclear process going on. How come such a thing has not been produced and provided for independent testing since 1993?
Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via complications to simplicity. Phys. Lett. A, 1993. 176: p. 118. Granted, those were hours or days, not six months.
So, no. This was ~100 W claimed for hours in 1993 using inferior calorimetry. But in 1994, McKubre's "replication" with better calorimetry got a watt or less with 10 W input. And in 2001 you lamented that researchers had not made the results stand out, and that Storms was planning a gala "One What / Watt? " party if he succeeded in getting one watt consistently. This almost 10 years after P&F claimed 100W.
Ah, but you have no technical reason not to be satisfied.
Rothwell wrote:
"Ah, but you have no technical reason not to be satisfied."
If what he claims were true, it would be *technically* possible to prove it in a much simpler and more direct way. That's a technical argument. It is implausible that he wouldn't do so if he could. That is a human argument, but compelling anyway.
After seeing the better part of the cold fusion community (including you) fooled to the tune of a factor of 6 by Rossi's claimed output power in a simpler experiment, it is a little rich to claim that Beiting couldn't possibly be making an error in power measurement of a few per cent.
Beiting's claims are similar to McKubre's more than 20 years ago, except that he doesn't have an excuse not to close the loop. The world is not going to pay attention to repeated claims that never get better. When an isolated system produces heat more or less indefinitely, it will get attention.
I don't know how magicians bend keys or spoons in contrived situations, and I don't really care, but I know that if they could really bend steel with their mind, they could easily prove it beyond any doubt, and would make practical use of it off the stage.
I don't need to understand how every new claim of perpetual motion goes wrong to be skeptical, because if it really worked, unequivocal proof would be easy.
It's ok if you want to spend the next 30 years like the last, every year hyping yet another claim of 1 watt out with 10 watts in, but if you want to get the attention of mainstream science, it's gonna take some progress -- preferably in the form of a self sustaining system. A new source of energy should not require an old source of energy to work.
Louis Reed wrote:
"If his fuel were producing a watt of power from nuclear reactions, then 20 times that amount of fuel at the same temperature would produce 20 watts."
That is certainly not a foregone conclusion! If only it were that simple. Some of the Japanese researchers are using 100 times more of this ZrO2NiPd fuel, made as closely as possible to the Beiting's fuel, yet they are getting zero output. Or less output than he is getting, for various reasons that are becoming clear.
That does not contradict the conclusion. It indicates that the hypothetical (that the fuel is producing one watt from nuclear reactions) is probably wrong.
There is a difference between "the best" and "one of the best."
Ah, so Beiting's work is still not as good as you once though Rossi's work was since you thought Rossi had "given out *far* more proof than any previous cold fusion researcher" .
QuoteLouis Reed wrote:
"Could you provide a link to your first denial that the ecat works?"
I don't recall. As I said, in one of my first reports -- and in many subsequent ones -- I said that Rossi refused to let me measure input and output, so I do not trust him. I often said that any businessman should run from the room upon encountering him. That turned out to be true! And, as I said, I described how he almost blew up the people from NASA. That seems like a pretty damning record to me, but apparently you think I was engaged in high praise. It makes me wonder what I would have to say about someone before you would say I am being critical.
I know you were often critical of Rossi, but you often defended him anyway, and argued for the reality of the ecat in spite of his foibles.
Consider this from June 20, 2015:
"I think it is a good idea to give him the benefit of the doubt. We all know he is controversial and he sometimes contradicts himself. He says odd things. Yet I think he is worth paying close attention to.
"Many people blame him for the poor quality of the Lugano experiment. I doubt that he shares the blame. Both Levi et al. and Rossi insist that he had nothing to do with the design of the experiment, and no influence over how it was done after he assisted setting it up. I think that must be true, because the first set of experiments were done in his lab, where I assume he did have some influence, and those experiments were better than Lugano. His influence was beneficial. If they had done an improved version of those first experiments, it might have been a triumph."
Sounds pretty supportive of Rossi.
Or this from Aug 2015:
"Yes, I have been critical of Lugano too, and so has Mike McKubre. But as far as I know Rossi had no say in the design or execution of that test. That is what the researchers who conducted the test said, and what Rossi said. I think it is unlikely they are lying. I regard the notion that he magically masterminded it as yet another unfounded conspiracy theory. Rossi can be annoying. He riles people, including me. I think that triggers these unfounded attacks, weird conspiracy theories, and web sites such as "shutdownrossi.com" He brings out the worst in people."
So, critical of Rossi, and yet defending him at the same time.
And as for whether the ecat works, as late as 27 Dec 2015, nearly 5 years from his first public demo, you were more or less convinced the ecat worked. Maybe a little less than in 2011/12, but still (emphasis, mine):
"The only thing I know for sure about Rossi is that over the years several experts have tested his systems in his absence, and they have confirmed that the machines sometimes produce kilowatt levels of excess heat. They do not want to publish these findings, but I have seen them. They are based on conventional HVAC techniques, and at power levels easy to confirm, so I expect they are right. It seems to me that fact is more significant than Rossi's odd pronouncements on his blog. I do not know what to make of those pronouncements, but I do know what to make of flowing water, conventional flow meters, and thermocouples."
Here's hoping the lovely gammas that Norront Fusion (aka Olaffson and Holmlid) has offered a glimpse of are to put on a bit more of a show. Norront has a signal almost as lovely as atom-ecology lovely gammas though their hardware demands are considerably more onerous. Norront is being coy as they show but one of the many gamma peaks that are dancing daily here in Essex.
So, no. This was ~100 W claimed for hours in 1993 using inferior calorimetry. But in 1994, McKubre's "replication" with better calorimetry got a watt or less with 10 W input. And in 2001 you lamented that researchers had not made the results stand out, and that Storms was planning a gala "One What / Watt? " party if he succeeded in getting one watt consistently. This almost 10 years after P&F claimed 100W.
So what does this experimental data say, either Fleischmann was a master and McKubre sophomoric, or the titles were reversed. McKubre was always a man who could sell ice to Eskimos, I choose to believe in the old master.
