There is a 4th Jed - Ohmic heating in the electrolyte itself. Not overlooked by McKubre et al I'm sure.
How do you convince a skeptic?
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There is never any guarantee of anything in research and development. It wouldn't be "research" if it were guaranteed.
No one is convinced cold fusion will be figured out. On the contrary, it probably will not be figured out. Probably, the academic politics will continue, there will be no funding, and the researchers will all die off. However, if there were funding, the problems might be solved. Science often works. Not always of course. A great deal has been spent on things like plasma fusion and cancer research, but little progress has been made.
Pretty much all I was saying. Your primary objection is that it is not profound. It was not intended to be. But since I said it, you have to strenuously object and say I have no business making such an observation. And please don’t go off on a semantical diatribe about “fundamental”. You have a crying need to object to whatever I say, even if you basically agree with it. Surely you must have better things to do with your giant brain.
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Pretty much all I was saying.
No, that is not at all what you have been saying. You have been saying there might be some fundamental reason why cold fusion cannot be developed or controlled, which is rooted in "the fundamental nature of the phenomenon." This might be "the ultimate stumbling block." That is entirely different from saying, "we may not figure out how it works." The two are not even remotely related. Actually, they are usually opposite. A stumbling block is something you see after you learn a lot about the phenomenon. You don't see it when the phenomenon is poorly understood.
We have figured out a great deal about plasma fusion from tokamak reactors. One of the most important things we have learned is that the fundamental nature of the reaction is a stumbling block that will probably prevent commercialization. The reactor walls become too radioactive and embrittled. It is not likely this problem can be solved. More knowledge of cold fusion might reveal a similar stumbling block, but so far nothing like the problems with plasma fusion has come to light.
Your statements are not in evidence, and they are not logical. You have a crying need to twist your own words, deny what you said, restate things in ways you never meant in the first place, claim that I said the very opposite of what I said ("cold fusion is controlled"), evade the issues, and when all else fails, you have a need to whine and moan and kvetch about how mean and nasty and overbearing I am for pointing out your dumb mistakes. Mistakes which are never your fault because poor innocent little you has never even read the literature; you assure us you know nothing; so expecting you to get it right is not fair. Not fair! It is overbearing and haughty for anyone to point out your mistakes.
You act like a 4-year-old in need of nap. In modern internet jargon, you are a snowflake. You would make a lousy programmer.
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Thanks for the immense blob of ad hominem drivel. You are a true scholar.
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he said he just did not want to
Kirkshanahan may already have tried to submit the papers.
the Electrochemical Society Journal has a high impact factor--~3.66
The ActaThermochimica had an IF of 0.8 in 2002,, going up to about 1.2 in 2005
ActaThermochimica may also have a lower bar,
judging by the political manner that Kirk's 2005 paper was expressed in..
Maybe the peer review filtered out some ad hominems but there was still
plenty of sly denigration of the results of Szpak and Storms and Fleischmann.
Maybe I should post the guts of the 2005 paper on this thread.
This thread is however becoming multipolar.
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Ok Jed. Have it your way. If it turns out that CF never ends up becoming a practical technology, it will be entirely a result of academic politics, the most powerful force in the world. A trillion-dollar industry will never exist because of it. End of story. Happy now?
***What's the deal, IO? You retracted your position that LENR was a field without replications, it doesn't seem to have cost you that much in terms of huffing and puffing. Now you seem to be holding the line on what Jed rightfully calls a vacuous truism. Maybe you should retract this approach I would call yayawawa -- wherein you assert something that you think is reasonable given the people around you who are asserting similar things, and then when you're challenged on it you say "yeah, yeah, whatever whatever (Yayawawa)" and try to hide behind handwaving and inexact language.
If your position is that there's something about LENR that lends itself to never being solved, then say it. If you don't have the background to support that statement, then accept it as the conjecture it is, and let those who have more background rip into it.
I'll give you an example. I have my own theory that LENR is a multi-pronged phenomena that starts with a Linear BEC. I call it my V1DLLBEC theory.
There's a gaping hole in the smile of my theory, which is that BECs are much less likely to form as the temperature goes up. So, a fusion environment is created by the Linear BEC, but soon the temperature of the lattice is too high to support BECs.
So the 2nd phase of my theory is more yayawawa. I say that SOMEHOW a fusion environment has been created, making it favorable for P+P fusion (which is the most common form of fusion in nature by far), and then it generates fission as well due to collisions generated and gamma rays getting collimated & fractionalized. Thë only evidence for that side of the theory is that Celani's wire gets more superconducting as the temperature goes up, so there is some coralling of atoms going on. The point is that at that point I am retreating to the word "somehow" and yayawawa because I simply don't have a handle on why LENR:would proceed to the 2nd phase of its internal condensed matter fusion/fission/electronCapture process.
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Thanks for the immense blob of ad hominem drivel. You are a true scholar.
I suggest you address the technical issues. Tell us what stumbling block has emerged from cold fusion that might prevent the practical use of this energy. If you are a true scholar, surely you can answer. You are the one who made this assertion, not me.
I believe I have shown you are wrong by pointing to examples of stumbling blocks in plasma fusion, muon catalyzed fusion, and other research. If you disagree, you should point out why my examples do not apply.
If your position is that there's something about LENR that lends itself to never being solved, then say it. If you don't have the background to support that statement, then accept it as the conjecture it is, and let those who have more background rip into it.
Well said. There is nothing wrong with a conjecture. Anyone is welcome to say "this is speculation but . . ." Speculation is often interesting. It is often thought provoking. It may lead you to figure out reasons to support your idea later on. In this case, IO speculated that there might be a hidden stumbling block. That has occured to many people. It has given rise to discussion and careful consideration of what a stumbling block might look like, and how we would know we are seeing it. So far, researchers do not think any such block has emerged. As far as I know.
An example of a stumbling block that has been discussed is the limited supply of palladium. Fleischmann was the first to discuss this. He knew a great deal about palladium. Probably as much as anyone in the world. He once estimated that about a third to half the world's energy could be produced with present supplies of palladium. It was a very rough estimate. I discussed it with him. I know much less about palladium, but I looked at the use of Pd in automotive catalytic converters, and made a rough estimate based on thin film technology and the amount of heat Pd thin films survive in exhaust systems. I think that if pure Pd is needed, and Ni-Pd and other combinations do not work, Fleischmann's estimate of one-half the world's energy is in the ballpark. However, even this would be revolutionary. It would upend the energy market, vastly reduce the cost of energy, put most other sources out of business, and end the threat of global warming. I think Pd-Ni and other other combinations will work, so supplies can be stretched and cold fusion can be used for all applications. In some cases indirectly, such as by generating H2 and O2 for earth to orbit spacecraft.
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I’ll bow to the 153 replications and the Forbes 100 Best Electrochemists. Fine - it’s real.
The title of this thread is "How do you convince a skeptic?". Please let the forum know how it was that you went from one position to this new , less skeptical position.
You posted this little tidbit wrapped around a bunch of vacuous truism & inexact language yayawawas on the Clearance Items thread. But when you were vociferously defending that LENR is not a replicated scientific fact, it was on a thread dedicated to that pursuit. Why post this information on Clearance Items?
I find your approach to this field of inquiry kind of quizzical. I recall Mitchell Swartz once saying that he approached the field of LENR originally to DISPROVE it and was surprised to find so much factual and scientific support for it. Perhaps that is the case for you as well.
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“No one is convinced cold fusion will be figured out. On the contrary, it probably will not be figured out. Probably, the academic politics will continue, there will be no funding, and the researchers will all die off. However, if there were funding, the problems might be solved. Science often works. Not always of course. A great deal has been spent on things like plasma fusion and cancer research, but little progress has been made.”
This works for me. Or is the only Jed-approved response is that since I cannot cite a technical issue that will prevent CF from being “tamed”, I therefore must conclude that it will and that your statement that the problems only “might be” solved is unreasonable and way too speculative.
I would indeed make a lousy programmer. You, on the other hand, would make a splendid party hack who never met an argument too petty not to fight to the death.
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I think Pd-Ni and other other combinations will work,
In keeping with the spirit of this subthread, your statement here is a conjecture. But it is a conjecture with some scientific support behind it, at least for now.
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I think Pd-Ni and other other combinations will work
Indeed- you only need the merest sniff of palladium to encourage many combinations to work. So a little would go a very long way. And Pd/Ag works even better than pure Pd.
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Kirkshanahan....
Maybe I should post the guts of the 2005 paper on this thread.
This thread is however becoming multipolar.
Yup. Shanahan is a good example of a hyperskeptic, not a real honest skeptic. Perhaps you should post a thread called "How do you convince a hyperskeptic?". It'll no doubt be a shorter thread and all these folks around here would be shy to allow themselves to be labelled hyperskeptic.
In my view the dividing line on this issue is those 153 peer reviewed replications of the PFAHE done by the top ~100 electrochemists of the day. If that satisfies a person , then they remain an honest skeptic. If their desire to move the goalposts is too strong, they're hyperskeptics.
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Or is the only Jed-approved response is that since I cannot cite a technical issue that will prevent CF from being “tamed”, I therefore must conclude that it will and that your statement that the problems only “might be” solved is unreasonable and way too speculative.
Since I have repeatedly said it probably will not be tamed, you are once again claiming that I said the opposite of what I actually said.
I have emphasized the difficulties. I point out that we do not even understand it well enough to control it. I have said that research does not always work, and that problems such as plasma fusion and cancer have not been solved even though hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on them. In IO's funhouse mirror, this comes that I insist he "must conclude" it will be tamed. The very opposite of what I said!
I would indeed make a lousy programmer. You, on the other hand, would make a splendid party hack who never met an argument too petty not to fight to the death.
Here you demonstrate why you would make a lousy programmer. This is not the quality of a party hack. It is the quality of an old-school computer hacker. Someone who will fight the problem to death, spending hours or days to find a bug caused by a misplaced comma. Nothing is too petty for a programmer, because a misplaced comma can crash an airplane. Someone who insists you define your terms, support your arguments, and address the technical issues with facts from the literature. A literal minded person who does not like ambiguity.
That's me.
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In keeping with the spirit of this subthread, your statement here is a conjecture.
Correct! But as Alan Smith and Mizuno pointed out, there is some support for this conjecture. It is not my imagination alone, which is a good thing, because I lack imagination.
Indeed- you only need the merest sniff of palladium to encourage many combinations to work. So a little would go a very long way.
That is what Mizuno claims, based on his 2018 experiments rubbing Ni mesh with Pd, or electroless plating it. Ed Storms pointed out there is very little Pd on the Ni from these techniques.
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Since I have repeatedly said it probably will not be tamed, you are once again claiming that I said the opposite of what I actually said.
I have emphasized the difficulties. I point out that we do not even understand it well enough to control it. I have said that research does not always work, and that problems such as plasma fusion and cancer have not been solved even though hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on them. In IO's funhouse mirror, this comes that I insist he "must conclude" it will be tamed. The very opposite of what I said!
Here you demonstrate why you would make a lousy programmer. This is not the quality of a party hack. It is the quality of an old-school computer hacker. Someone who will fight the problem to death, spending hours or days to find a bug caused by a misplaced comma. Nothing is too petty for a programmer, because a misplaced comma can crash an airplane. Someone who insists you define your terms, support your arguments, and address the technical issues with facts from the literature. A literal minded person who does not like ambiguity.
That's me.
Wow. You literally don’t understand what I write. I thought you were just playing games, but no. You are actually so literal-minded that you don’t comprehend sarcasm. Of course I don’t ascribe the view to you that you think CF will definitely be tamed. (I can’t believe I am explaining this...) My comment was to point out how absurd it is that what you said is basically the same as what I said if you don’t get your knickers in a bunch over the word “fundamental”. I got news for you: this is not a computer program and a misplaced comma is not going to crash it.
I completely agree with your little paragraph about the difficulties facing CF and, despite your linguistic nitpicking and knee-jerk yakking about the literature, it is essentially all I had to say about the subject. That you choose to make something entirely different out of it is your own tilting at windmills. But hey, who am I to keep a guy from ranting when it’s his favorite thing to do?
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I completely agree with your little paragraph about the difficulties facing CF and, despite your linguistic nitpicking and knee-jerk yakking about the literature, it is essentially all I had to say about the subject.
Did you say something new - unsaid before ??..
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Did you say something new - unsaid before ??..
Nope. I said something pretty innocuous (as far as I am concerned) and Jed has gone on a bender over it - as usual. Of course, I am somehow the enemy, so there you go.
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I am somehow the enemy
the interested victim..? iv
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the interested victim..? iv
Nah. We avatars have tough skins.
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We avatars have tough skins.
You are tougher than others who yap "personal" "personal"!
